THE STORY CATALYST
PATH TO PUBLISHING PACKAGE
QUERY WITH CONFIDENCE
FIND YOUR “RIGHT-FIT” AGENT
To get a book deal, you need to query a literary agent.
But the market is ultra-competitive, so your query letter needs to be diamond-sharp to stand out.
It needs to hook the agent’s attention — it needs to be captivating. It needs hit specific marks. It needs to be clear what the book is about and why it needs to be in the world now.
This comprehensive package puts you on the path to success.
I’ll help you identify the “right-fit” literary agents—the ones who are:
- Most likely to respond to you.
- Most effective in selling to publishers who want to publish you.
- Most equipped to boost your book and your writing career.
You’ll receive a spreadsheet with detailed data on each agent suited to you and your book.
This one component of the service alone will cut long, tedious hours off your search, and it assures you that you’re knocking on the right doors.
I’m offering this package because I got tired of hearing writers tell me they had spent 40 to 80 hours compiling agent lists — or that they gave up and stashed their manuscript in a drawer.
For writers who take advantage of this package, that’s a great sigh of relief:
- No more mystery about agents who ghost you.
- No more frustration that you’ve put in so much effort, only to wonder if you did it right.
- No more turning that into a negative message about you or your book.
My work with you will advance your book farther, faster and easier. You will:
- Absolutely know that you’re putting the best version of your book out to market.
- Feel grounded in the knowledge that by investing in polishing your materials you are giving it your all.
- Be assured that you’re well on your way to creating an alliance that could last a lifetime.
This package is right for you if:
- Your book proposal is complete (for a nonfiction book).
- Your manuscript is complete (for narrative memoir or fiction).
- You want solid, actionable advice from someone who knows the dos and don’ts better than you do.
- You have tried it on your own — it didn’t work, but you are not ready to give up.
- You haven’t queried yet but you know it’s competitive, so you want to enter the book world the right way — and get a book deal sooner rather than later.
- You know deep down that it’s time for your book to be published.
Path to Publishing package
- Query letter revision that will get attention
- 30 “right-fit” agents who are ideal for you
- Review of two sample chapters by an expert book editor
- Ongoing support via email during the send-out period
- 50 min consultation with someone who is passionate about your book
- Postcard from Your Future Published Self (sent two years from final delivery of services)
QUERY LETTER REVISION
Includes high-level attention to:
Your hook
The absolutely irresistible, “can’t get it out of my mind” reason your book needs to exist in the world.
Your title/subtitle
Your title/subtitle are the most brand-forward aspects of your book. They are an expression of your hook. They are like an unforgettable billboard message.
Your elevator pitch
If nonfiction, encapsulated hook statement with clear benefit for the reader.
Your origin story
I’ll tell you how to create the halo effect about you — why you are the Unique Selling Proposition for your book. I’ll help you feel smarter and bolder.
Your platform
How are you known? How will you get the word out? I’ll sharpen up your language so you come across as a calm, confident author-expert-thought leader who already knows how to engage readers in a conversation.
Plus, all the usual stuff
Editing to make it clear, compelling and concise.
Guidance about personalizing your statement to the agent about why you’re querying that agent specifically.
Bonus: Story Catalyst publishing resources kit
WHAT DO I MEAN WHEN I SAY “RIGHT-FIT” AGENTS?
The spreadsheet you’ll receive will provide you with agents who are:
Active
Effective
Eager to build your career
Looking for the up-and-comers
Ideal fit
The customized-to-you spreadsheet contains 30 agents with links to:
Their website
Their Manuscript Wish List, if applicable
Their Publishers Marketplace page, if they have one
Their Publishers Marketplace overall sales record
Their Publishers Marketplace sales record in your genre
Notes about books and authors they have published that are customized to you
WHY IT’S SO IMPORTANT TO HAVE SOMEONE REVIEW YOUR SAMPLE CHAPTERS
You need to grab your readers from the first page.
I review your two sample chapters as an agent would, looking for key elements that I know agents are looking for.
Have you ever wondered how agents make such quick decisions about whether they will take your manuscript?
How is that possible when you send a 300-word query letter and 10 pages?
I know how, because I’ll read your chapters with an agent’s eye.
I am your agent advocate, and I’ll guide you with specific tools to shore up anything that needs to be bolder, clearer and more riveting.
50 MINUTE CONSULTATION
On a zoom call, we’ll make a strategy for sending out to agents and responding to their responses.
YOUR INVESTMENT
I’m passionate about helping authors get published, so this is a service I planned to make available for just $4,800, but because this is new, I’m discounting the programfurther for the first four authors to sign up.
Normally $4,800, now $3,600
A nonrefundable deposit of $200 secures your space in line. You can then make four equal monthly payments of $850.
Sure, you can go on Fiverr and find someone to spiff up a query letter according to basic editing conventions and garden-variety agent advice that you’ve already gotten from every panel you’ve attended, ever, at a writing conference.
You can also choose to go with peer coaching, joining a writer’s group and posting your query letter and letting people edit by committee.
Or.
You get my personal attention on your unique book and you target the right agents.
My authors get positioned for the best possible path to publishing and gain a literary career as a thought leader and influencer. They change lives.
So, stop spending money in all the wrong places, and invest in yourself in the right place, right moment, right solutions for all your needs.
Make your $200 nonrefundable deposit here, then we’ll set you up with installments. At the same time you make your deposit, you can schedule your first 15-minute consultation with me that will get us on the road to literary success.
SEE WHAT BOOKS MY AUTHOR CLIENTS HAVE PUBLISHED
WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR FUTURE PUBLISHED SELF HERE
Tell me why you’re ready. Or tell me how you’re getting ready. Write a Letter to Your Future Published Self here. If you give me your email, I’ll send you a note two years from now.
OTHER SERVICES I OFFER
Maybe you’re not ready for this one. Maybe this is making you realize that you need to make sure your manuscript is an absolutely “yes.” Here are some of the other services I offer to help you get there.
- 1:1 book coaching and development
- Idea-to-Outline coaching
- Chapter Draft Support coaching and editing
- Developmental Editing of full manuscripts
- Path to Publishing Package – Find Your “Right Fit” Literary Agent
- Editorial assessments and revision plans
- Contemplative and generative writing retreats in settings such as Ireland, Taos, Scotland and Utah canyonlands
- Story Catalyst writing craft classes
- Story Catalyst community
- Uncommon Hours classes in designing and de-stressifying the writing life with leading-edge time management hacks and practices of mindfulness and creative visualization
- Uncommon Hours community
- Brand Catalyst branding and content creation that helps you engage your audience, raise visibility and build a thriving author platform
- Social media consulting on strategies for garnering media attention and audience engagement and development of coherent, captivating content marketing that builds your audience
- Creativity coaching about living a flourishing writing life
- Abundance coaching
- The Fire: consultations about agent query letters, targeting literary agents; consultations about publishing “companion pieces” in mainstream news outlets and magazines, literary journals to make the case for your book; consultations about publishers and other places to submit your work
- Consulting on leading retreats for writers, creatives, wisdom teachers and body-mind-spirit healers
START WRITING WITH PURPOSE NOW!
Let’s live the life written
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
LET’S HAVE A VIDEO CALL
TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROJECT
AUTHOR SUCCESSES
“A tale of resilience and grace, Little Sister chronicles, in riveting prose, a surreal childhood and does so without rancor or self-pity.”
~Amazon
PATRICIA CHADWICK
Little Sister
Post Hill Press, 2019
In this memoir, Patricia Chadwick writes about growing up in a Catholic cult, where children were separated from their parents. She gives an interview on CBS to Dana Jacobson. (Patricia came to me through kn literary, and it was an honor to help her finish this book!)
A change at the cellular level. Part travel memoir and part spiritual guide, Cleanse Your Body and Reveal Your Soul is one woman’s transformative quest with Ayurvedic Panchakarma (a fivefold detoxification treatment involving massage, herbal therapy, and other procedures) and the profound shifts that led to some sustainable, substantial life changes. Dissatisfied with a mainstream psychiatric practice, Dr. Pentz heads to India, where she undergoes an ancient, rejuvenating cleanse.
In his memoir, David Sorensen explores his identity as a coda, or a child of Deaf adults. He describes his experiences with the roles often placed on codas at a young age, such as interpreter, confidant, and decision-maker. His story reveals a person seeking acceptance and belonging while straddling the Deaf and hearing worlds, and shows how he found reconciliation within himself and with both worlds.
As a British citizen of Nigerian ancestry, Ade Anifowose had lived an invisible life—until he found a home in Atlanta with his American wife. One day on a Greyhound bus near the border of two countries, at a border patrol checkpoint in Las Cruces, New Mexico, officers stopped his bus. “Are you an American citizen?” they asked. Down the row, he heard, “Sí, sí, sí.”
He could not answer yes. He had been living and working in the United States for over 25 years, but…it was complicated. The moment of truth had come. “You’re going to have to step off the bus,” the officer said.
In one moment, the trajectory of his life changed unalterably. My Invisible Life is a narrative memoir that kicks off with his deportation from the United States of America, after living most of his adult life with his wife and family, friends and a large network of community. When he first moved to Atlanta in 1993, he had been on a search for belonging and found that he could be more African in Atlanta than in England. Now, he had been told that I did not belong.
PUBLICATION NEWS COMING SOON!
Have you ever wanted a way to bend the ear of the Universe – that is, the loving energy behind all creation? Yes, that Universe, the one that renders absolute and perfect manifestation. Know that the Universe hears what is in your heart. It hears exactly what you want for your greatest life.
Can your life be so crazy that it ends up making you functional?
If crazy can be influenced by a life beginning in rodeo and functional can be influenced by a profession as a therapist, then the answer is easy: You decide.
What it is to be “crazy” and what it is to be “functional” are relative to the individual. Sometimes, it takes a lifetime to distinguish between the two. And sometimes, it takes a book filled with a lifetime’s worth of experiences. Even those considered crazy.
OCD? It’s in there. Anxiety? In there. Trauma? Take a number. Substance abuse? All depends on how you define “abuse.”
Yet despite the titillation from the full-frontal crazy, the heart of this story is in resilience. And if you think resilience can only come from positivity, enlightenment, or deep breaths… think again.
We’re suffering.
We suffer individually and collectively. We suffer from an epidemic of worry. An epidemic for which we’re desperately seeking solutions, the perfect medicine for what ails us.
And we’re so connected. Yet, more disconnected than ever. Disconnected from our essential nature. Disconnected from our place in it all.
In our striving, we suffer. And in our striving to find solace for our suffering, we suffer.
All of this, Patricia A. Muehsam, M.D., understands.
In The Do-Nothing Cure: A Physician’s Tales, Teachings and Tools for Finding Your Way Home to Health, Muehsam, an extraordinary physician, teacher and thought leader, presents the antidote to suffering. Drawn from her years of exploring the heart of health, The Do-Nothing Cure presents Muehsam’s path out of a modern world that is frenzied and disconnected and into a realm where suffering does not exist and health resides. Living at the Guest House is how we find our way home to Absolute Health.
Forthcoming in 2021 from New World Library