Monday, April 14, 2014

Query question: link or list?

My question - I won a national Canadian fiction award for a book published in 2012 by a small press. (It was actually the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction <http://canadianauthors.org/conference/caa-award-for-fiction-2013-shortlist/> ).

The award is not well known in the US, but it's totally legit. Is it okay to include a hyperlink to the award in a query? Or should I just list the award in the second to last paragraph and allow the agent to look it up?



First, congrats!

Second, I'm not a huge fan of hyperlinks in email for two reasons: 
1. my email management program finds them too spicy and often spits them into the spam filter (Priscilla eats anything) 
2. it offends my sense of aesthetics (this is just me, and clearly I'm deranged from paint fumes)

I'd list the award but not the link.  Remember though: that's my opinion not an ironclad publishing standard.



 

3 comments:

Carolynnwith2Ns said...

OMG woman are you painting again or are the fumes lingering? Girl you need to white-board your walls and get a deal on Sharpies.

Adam Heine said...

Agreed. It doesn't matter whether the award is well-known or not. If the agent is interested, they'll look it up. (If they're not, it wasn't the award that turned them off.)

PT said...

As a person who works as a web editor and works daily with emails, can I give technical point of view?

Don't ever assume that the receiver of you mail sees the hyperlink and formatting as you do.

How your link appeared on Ms. Reid blog is a good example. You probably sent it as a link to the award, but look how it ended on her email and then on the blog.

MS Outlook is the only email client/program which by default assumes that every receiver can see all formatting, links etc. Every other mail program I'm aware will strip all formatting, thus showing your mail as with very strange formatting and links.

And don't ever copy anything from MS Word to MS Outlook. That is a Dx for major catastrophes.

Sorry if I'm not clear, English is only my fifth language so I do mistakes...