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Wendy Lawton

About Wendy

Wendy Lawton feels equally comfortable at a computer, a writer’s conference or with a cool lump of clay in her hand. She’s been an artist, a writer and a literary agent. In her first career, as a sculptor and designer of porcelain dolls, she amassed more than 300 original editions. Lawton dolls were nominated for more than seventy industry awards, winning the coveted DOTY nine times, the Dolls Award of Excellence three times and receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004.

“Running a collectible business provided the perfect foundation for being a literary agent,” she says. “I’ve spent years developing product, analyzing market trends, and being involved in every aspect of the product supply chain.” And she believes that product development is the perfect parallel to book development. “Speaking as an author, I know we cringe to admit it, but creating books is largely about creating product.”

Wendy joined Books & Such in 2005 and was named vice president of the firm in 2011. She represents a number of successful, best-selling authors. She enjoys helping her clients to develop their ideas and chart their careers. She’s adept at working with authors to discover the core of their writing style, leading to a brand recognition for each author in the marketplace of books.

No stranger to the literary market, she has served on the faculty of several major writers conferences and has written eight books in her young adult Daughters of the Faith series. These books were followed by a series of four teen books and a nonfiction adult book. She won the 1999 Writer of the Year Award at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference. She also won the famous Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the intentional worst first line of a novel in the Children’s Literature category. In 2004 she received an honorary doctorate from Wilmington University, Delaware. American Christian Fiction Writers named her Agent of the Year in 2007.

Wendy acquires adult fiction & nonfiction books.

Query Instructions

Books & Such will accept e-mail queries for the following genres:

-Adult fiction and nonfiction.
-Teen and young adult fiction and nonfiction.
-Middle grade fiction and nonfiction.

We do not accept e-mail queries with attachments, or unsolicited phone or postal mail queries.

When submitting a query, please follow these guidelines:

Limit your query to the equivalent of one page.

Write a brief description of what your project is about (one succinct paragraph). Include the genre and subject of your manuscript, its unique elements, and target audience.

Highlight your vision for marketing your book, your writing experience, the name of the person (if any) who referred you to Books & Such, and whether you’re currently submitting your query to other agents.


If we’re interested in seeing more of your work, we’ll ask you to send the following as an email attachment:

For a novel (including young adult novels)

  • a synopsis (5-6 pages double-spaced) in which you tell us the basic plot and introduce us to your main characters.
  • the first three chapters (approximately 50 pages of the work).
  • your biography, with an emphasis on your qualifications for writing the manuscript and how you can help to market it.


For a nonfiction manuscript

  • a proposal, detailing the audience for your work, why you believe the work will attract significant readership, what current titles would compete with your book for readers, how you can help to market the book, and ideas on how a series could be developed, if applicable.
  • a chapter outline in which you write a paragraph description of each chapter.
  • your biography.
  • the first three chapters (approximately 50 pages of the work).
We do not accept submissions via the postal service.

Address

52 Mission Circle
Suite 122, PMB 170
Santa Rosa, CA 95409

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