In my last post, I mentioned Hashtagify’s trail of breadcrumbs leading me to the Twitter hashtag “#MSWL” and all the goodies contained therein. MSWL (Manuscript Wishlist) is a hashtag used by agents and editors to broadcast to the Twitterverse exactly what kinds of books they’re looking for. Oftentimes they look something like this:

But the hashtag does have some drawbacks. For one, a lot of authors spamvertise (if that’s not already a word, I’m laying claim to it here and now) their self pubbed books using #MSWL in theoffchance that an agent will see one of their thousands of selfpromotional tweets and think, “Wow, that author has one hell of a drive. I think I’ll take their book on!” This, of course, does not happen. Ever.

Another bit of a drawback is just the sheer volume of tweets! The hashtag is a double edged sword in many respects. On the one hand, there’s some really fantastic info being slung around for free. On the other hand, a lot of that info doesn’t pertain to you in the least bit and speed-reading through the vast amount of tweets might cause you to accidentally skip past the ONE tweet that is directed right at you.

This is where the formerly top-secret project by KK Hendin and Jessica Sinsheimer saves the day:

http://manuscriptwishlist.com/

The dynamic lady duo put together a simple, effective site that acts as a repository for all the #MSWL tweets that get shot out into the twitter void. In fact, they took it a step further and actively asked agents and editors to further expound on what they’re looking for. What kinds of anti-vampire warewolf romance agents have in mind. What flavors of intergalactic conspiracies editors are starving for.

Not only are the wishlists more robust, the site actually has a sorting system, one where you can peruse your genre of choice to see who’s looking for exactly what. No longer will you have to speed read through the endless wall of tweets – now all you’ve got to do is choose your friendly little genre and give it a nice, slow scroll, allowing you to read at your own pace.

So get your query letters together and tighten up those dusty manuscripts! It’s time to get on it.