Mark Malatesta Review by Bob DeKoch and Phil Clampitt | Mark Malatesta Reviews

Bob DeKoch and Phil Clampitt, the authors of Leading with Care in a Tough World (Rodin Books), provided this review of former literary agent Mark Malatesta. Bob and Phil worked with Mark to improve their manuscript, platform, book proposal, and query letter, which led to them getting interest from the president of a top literary agency. Scroll below to learn more. Click here to see all Mark Malatesta reviews. And click here to learn more about Literary Agent Undercover and The Bestselling Author after you read the review about Mark Malatesta below by Bob and Phil.

Mark Malatesta Review by Bob DeKoch & Phil Clampitt

We were looking for a way to break into the trade publication market, and knew the way to do that was through an agent—but we had no idea how to find the right agent. There are more than 1,000 of them. That’s when we found you, not through a referral but an Internet search. We started with your introductory coaching call, and that was extremely captivating.

You tried to tell us your long-term coaching was going to be intense, but we had no idea what that process would look like. Once we got into it, we realized how thorough it was, and how necessary it was to be that thorough. We came out of the experience with an excellent query letter, which gets your foot in the door, and an excellent book proposal.

You said we had to have everything ready, because agents sometimes respond quickly—and that was our experience. We got a good response to the first round of queries. Six agents were interested in seeing our proposal, and we had dialogue with all of them before settling on one. We didn’t go out and have a champagne dinner, but we certainly had a lot of high fives.

Our agent has been very valuable and helpful with his knowledge, and in making sure we ended up with a high quality book. All that prep work with you took more than a year: finishing the manuscript, improving our platform, choosing agents, and creating the book proposal and query. It was very necessary, and very valuable.

We’d heard of a query letter, but didn’t really know how significant it was. A good agent can get 10,000 query letters a year, and only pick five or six people to work with. So the query letter better be good. You don’t have much time to make an impression. The agent may not even read the written manuscript, but they read the query, and—if the query is good—the proposal.

One of the reasons our query and proposal were so good is that  you helped us with another absolutely essential thing: our platform. What we thought was a reasonable platform is much bigger now. You had us reach out to more than 100 influencers. Approximately 50 of them got back to us, saying we could send them a review copy of our book when it was published.

You’re very direct telling authors what needs to be done, and you guide your authors step by step. You also do things incrementally, instead of getting authors to bite off more than they can chew. You’re also realistic, professional, and knowledgeable. This industry is mysterious to people who don’t know. You help them work their way through that, and you give great advice.

You know what the game is, and we’re grateful.

Bob DeKoch and Phil Clampitt
Leading with Care in a Tough World: Beyond Servant Leadership
(Rodin Books, distributed by Simon & Schuster)

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Do You Want to Be Like Bob and Phil Who Provided this Review of Mark Malatesta?

Do you want to be like Bob and Phil, and get the president of a top literary agency interested in your book? Click here to get instant access to the Free Resources on our websites for authors and click here to find out how you can Schedule an Introductory Coaching Call. Mark Malatesta is founder of The Bestselling Author and Literary Agent Undercover, helping authors of all genres (fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books) get top literary agents, publishers, and book deals. The above review of Mark Malatesta, Author Coach was provided by authors Bob DeKoch and Phil Clampitt.