Task One: Start a contact list of literary agents and book publishers

Finding an agent/ publisher is the first step to selling your book proposal. However, even after you've sold your book proposal, you'll want to stay current with agent and publisher news to sell your next book proposal, and the one after that.

Start a contact list of literary agents and publishers; as you find snippets of information online, or in your offline reading, enter notes into your database. Information you might want to add includes: recent sales and the amount the book was sold for, movements of editors from one publishing house to the next, and publishing house changes.

Collecting and maintaining all this information shouldn't be viewed as a chore. It's vital business intelligence. It could also help you to increase your income by many thousands of dollars each year.

Task Two: Send out ten query letters to agents and publishers

Agents and publishers take time to respond. So today, you'll create a query letter for your book proposal, and will send it out to ten literary agents and publishers. You can choose to send only to literary agents, or only to publishers, or you may want to send out five to each group.