We’ve written numerous articles on the do’s and don’ts of querying literary agents and publishers from our 19 years of experience helping writers make well-targeted submissions. But in case our words haven’t made a big enough impression, we hope you’ll pay close attention to these tips directly from Ashley Christman, Executive Editor and Publisher at Entranced Publishing. She was kind enough to be our guest blogger today and offer our readers some straight-from-the-source insider information on how your query is evaluated once it reaches her desk.

Would you like to guest blog for Writer’s Relief, or have us guest blog for you? Learn more here: http://www.writersrelief.com/guest-blogging-guidelines/

At Writer’s Relief, we offer proofreading services to writers of books, novels, stories, poems, and essays. If you would like to learn how to be a better professional proofreader or how to do a better job of proofreading your own writing, keep reading our helpful tips!

GalleyCat, a publishing industry blog, posted this just in time for women’s history month:

VIDA: Women in Literary Arts have released a report entitled “The Count 2011,” revealing that male writers outnumbered female writers in many publications last year.

Picking up on where last year’s report left off, this report tracks the statistics of gender balance among writers published at literary magazines, including The New Yorker (overall: 165 women, 459 men), Poetry (overall: 134 women, 179 men) and The Threepenny Review (overall: 19 women, 37 men).

They also looked at authors reviewed, book reviewers, and interviews at certain publications, including: Harper’s (book reviewers: 13 women, 65 men) and The New York Times (book reviewers: 273 women, 520 men).

Writer’s Relief Demographics
At Writer’s Relief, we take these numbers seriously; all writers should. Regardless of what factors may be causing this imbalance, the imbalance in and of itself is worth attention and concern.

The good news is that the publishing industry—thanks in part to the analysis of groups like VIDA, as well as the outcries of high-profile authors like Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult—is starting to pay closer attention to its own practices.

And we at Writer’s Relief thought we would do the same.