1. You sent me a project in a category I don't represent. Please do not send me fiction, children's, YA, poetry, drama, or screenplays. I do not represent these areas at this time. If I don't represent the project category, there is no argument you can make about its worthiness or potential to make me rich. I don't have the contacts or knowledge base that I bring to nonfiction for adults.

I am however working on building the knowledge and contacts I need to represent one area I have not in the past: middle grades fiction and nonfiction. Click here for a quick FAQ about that.

2. You're writing a memoir, and I'm not irresistibly drawn from the outset. Read more about how I evaluate memoir.

3. You've sent me self-help with too broad a promise to the reader. If you're very famous, you can write a book on how to be happy. For the most part, if you're not, your book will seem bland on the shelf, unless there's something really quirky in the hook.

4. You're addressing too small a niche. Always a matter of opinion, and it's important to have a clear audience in mind. If you think your audience is everyone, that usually means it's no one.

5. You have a parenting book but no platform. Parenting is a very demanding shelf, and sales overall are tight. (Some publishers think moms are too busy to read; as a mother I don't buy that, but overall we're a busy population and we don't necessarily read just parenting books.) Every once in a long while someone breaks out here—The No Cry Sleep Solution was not initially supported with much of a platform, I believe. But it was such an arresting concept and promise that it has made its author rich. To be blunt, most of what I see doesn't come close.

6. Your book is depressing or would make its intended audience feel bad. People don't generally want to pay for this privilege, so you have to have a lot to offer—that they can perceive on the cover—to transcend this problem.

7. Issues of taste. I don't like the writing, I don't think something intended to be funny is funny, or the project offends me.

8. Common sense approaches to mental or physical health. Yes, this is exactly what our country needs to hear. Yes, a consistent exercise program has certainly changed my life. No, books won't sell without a hook. People don't need to go to the bookstore to learn that communication is good for marriages, that exercise is good for their bodies, or that smoking is bad for everything.

9. Unsolicited attachment. If your query isn't in the body of the email but in an unsolicited attachment, I'll decline. My guidelines clarify this and give other suggestions.

10. You forgot to tell me what the project is. If you send me a description of your platform but no description of your project, or an unclear description, I'll decline. The book is the product.