As an aspiring author, I am well aware that there are plenty of guidebooks available on the writing process, not to mention articles and websites devoted to this subject matter. What I appreciate about this book is that it has condensed this information into a series of convenient chunks.

I should point out that this book has slightly more guidance for fiction manuscripts, but there is useful information for nonfiction authors as well. The material is organized alphabetically and covers everything from “dreams” to “punctuation” to “query letter” and even dealing with “rejection”

Each entry is relatively short; Kracht summarizes the point quickly, uses concrete examples, and then concludes with a checklist for authors to use when evaluating whether their manuscript is ready for the next step.

The two appendices at the end contain examples of query letters for fiction and nonfiction and a synopsis for a fiction book.

I would recommend The Author’s Checklist. This is a very useful guide. I enjoyed reading it and I know that as I get a little further in the process of preparing my manuscript for querying, I will go through the book to make sure everything is in order. I received a digital copy of this book, and perhaps a paper copy would have been easier to thumb through, but I do want to point out that I can use the “Go To” feature on my Kindle to access each of the different entries without having to flip through the alphabetical list.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley/the publisher in exchange for an honest review.