Okay, you've written your book. It's a great story. It has endless potential. You send out your queries. Days turn into weeks, and weeks into months. You start to wonder, what's the problem?

That was me. However, my wait was much shorter than others. I was finally finished with my novel in May, and I resolved to find an agent by the end of the summer.

When you're dealing with the publishing industry, you start to get used to the fact that the only thing you might hear for months at a time is the ticking of your clock or the beating of your own heart before you hear anything back from your queries. But if you've waited a really, really long time and you don't have an agent yet, don't despair. There is still plenty you can do in the meantime that will help you in the end.

Before I describe my simple tips to bide the time, let me tell you about my agent's partner. He worked on his book for fifty years. Yeah, the one with the five and the zero, not the one and the five. One day, he told his wife that he was finally fed up, so disgusted, as a matter of fact, that he was going to stop writing forever. To clear his head, he went for a walk. When he returned from his walk, a little calmer, his wife gave him a message. A publisher was finally interested in publishing his book!

So, first and foremost, don't despair, because you can have your book published at any time, even if it takes a little longer than expected.

In the meantime, there are a few productive things you can do, good things to help you get that publisher or agent. Here are my suggestions:

1. Work on your query letter. I need you to burn this one into your head. Your query letter is your one and only chance to talk someone into buying your book. I burned through about five versions before I really got it down right. Check out the latest Writer's Digest book of publishers because they have some great articles in there to help you with your query letter. You have to be able to put your whole story into one page, with all the main elements, including the ending.

2. After you set your book aside for a length of time, two or three months, pick it up again and read it again. It's a great thing to edit your book every day as you write it, but you need to do this part also. Everything you wrote, those little mistakes such as missed quotation marks, overlooked repetition, saying something twice (haha, see what I did there?), they all become much more obvious when you've gained some emotional distance from your story. You might have the best story in the world, but if your writing is riddled with mistakes, errors, inconsistencies, etc., it will be rejected because the whole point is to write well.

3. Make sure your manuscript is double spaced. My agent claimed I was almost responsible for blinding her, so it's something agents and publishers alike appreciate. Plus, it helps agents keep track of page count (250 possible words per page). And by the way, ignore Word's word count, because your agent or publisher will always look at it in terms of page count (250 words times number of pages).

4. Do yourself the biggest favor ever. Hire an editor. I work as an editor, and I have been lucky enough that my agent is part editor, part agent. My agent hires an editor for his own work, and he's a retired English teacher! Your book will have a polished, professional read to it. You need that set of eyes to look at your work for you. Even if you are self-publishing, you need to take this step also. You'll be happy you didn't neglect it.

So, some quick tips for you, and before you know it, you'll get that publisher or agent to say yes to your work.