This book is going to be a benchmark. I have submitted several manuscripts to newspapers, publishers, and newspapers, and was having a hard time getting my voice across to an editor. This book is truly fantastic in that it helps writers understand from an editor's perspective what they are really looking for. It shows common mistakes people make that don't allow their manuscripts to really stand out, and shows how things can be tweaked, starting with the query letter, and moving on to the dialogue and then to the heart of the story in getting readers hooked and plot twists, etc. It is a great tool for people who are looking to get novels published, and is geared more towards those authors, than say, an author of children's books or a person who writes short articles for newspapers or magazines. I do recommend this book to anybody who is looking to get their work published because it has great tips for query letters, which is where it all begins.