Bill Adler, Jr.

The Literary Agent's Guide to Getting Published is succinct, to the point, and pragmatic. Mr. Adler has substantial experience from the publishing side of things and gives us insight into what goes on inside an editor or agents head when a proposal crosses their desk. This book spells out the step-by-step process of coming up with a marketable book proposal, memorializing that proposal into a document agents and editors can use to justify publishing your book (including what kinds of show more market-data they need), and then gives the viewpoints of a respectable number of editors and agents about what they want to see to keep your proposal out of the slush-pile. The book then finishes with sample book proposals on a number of topics.

This information could potentially be very dry. However, Mr. Adler's experience on the other side of the fence, as an author who writes books about solving problems, peppers this book with just enough humor to keep it interesting without devolving into self-aggrandizement. He does, of course, promote his own books in this book. What sane author WOULDN'T? But the example he most often uses, a book about outwitting squirrels, is so humorous it adds a personal 'I've been where you are now' element to his writing that adds credibility to his advice show less

These stories are not necessarily the ones you'd see up for the Hugo Awards -- this isn't really a "best of" kind of anthology. However, this is exactly the reason why I enjoyed this book so much. I've already read the "best of" stories, and I was looking for something new. This book did a wonderful job of combining some of my favorite short stories in the genre with other excellent stories I'd never even heard of before. I originally purchased the book solely to get my hands on a copy of show more the story "Star, Bright" by Mark Clifton (one of my favorites since childhood), but thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the book as well.

As an aside, I've also found these stories to be well read and enjoyed by the junior and senior high students I teach. Short stories are a great way to introduce them to the genre of science fiction! show less

The stories may be dated now, but I was looking for something to listen to during my morning walk. This previously unread time travel anthology in my library served that need. Authors, many of whom are dead, wrote these short stories at the start of their careers. I think the thing that's different about old Sci-Fi is that authors didn't spend pages of text explicitly talking about pseudo-science in those days. What you read was pure fiction that left you wondering about the possibilities.

An amusing, quick read with some truly good info, but the topic doesn't bear book length discussion and the list of 101 stratagems seems to be included because the book needed a clever subtitle rather than for any real purpose.