The 2014 Writer’s Market is what I affectingly refer to as “the big book of meh”. Nine-hundred pages certainly sound exciting, but not when you compare the page count to that of a telephone book. And that’s what this is—a telephone book. The 2014 Writer’s Market is less than two-hundred pages of articles ranging from building a query letter to writing an effective blog, but over seven-hundred pages are dedicated to agent listings. If you don’t already have a telephone book doorstop, then the 2014 Writer’s Market is a good second choice.
You know this book has become dated when it even can’t be given away. Fellow writers return my offering of this book with an “oh, no thanks”. You would think that a massive book of agent listings would be pure gold to the writer. Nope. In reality, these resources are either dated or useless. I’d imagine people that want to publish in “Onion World” or the “Canadian Mining Journal” already know how to make those contacts. And no, I’m not kidding—those are actual and typical listings in this book.
While the website that publishes this book is an excellent resource for writers, this book is not as useful. Writers just seeking more advice can benefit by sticking with the site. Writers seeking agents will be better served elsewhere. Free agent searches like agentquery are excellent, but paid services like duotrope and writersmarket are also excellent choices. All these sites will be immensely more helpful than this sludge of listings that are nearly impossible to work through.
I’ll give some stars for all the work involved in putting this book together and for the contributing writers. I’m taking off three stars for compiling a bunch of information that is difficult to work through and nearly impossible to efficiently use.