I've been a bit busy lately and haven't had the time to really research my next self publishing platform. So, instead of a the lowdown on Smashword.com (Coming soon, I promise!) I've got a few bits and pieces that may come in handy.
First off, my roving correspondent (okay, my buddy Gail Lewis) has returned from the James River Writer's Conference with some useful information for those of you looking for an agent. Gail is also in the midst of the glorious fun that is the agent hunt. If it weren't for the fact she already has three jobs and is working on writing a book, I'd try to cajole her into writing this herself. But, she's swamped, so here are her useful bits through me:
Agents do not want to see stories that start with dreams. More precisely agents see hundreds, if not thousands, of dream opening sequences a year and toss them all. So, if like Gail you did a ton of research on the kinds of book you intend to write, noticed no dream openings, thought, "Hey, here's a good way to differentiate myself," you've fallen into the same trap she has. Basically, it's a cliche, but a cliche you haven't seen in print because it never gets that far.
Next up: Query Letters. Agents want to see what your book is about. Do not leave any mystery here. They are not pleased when you are coy with what is going on. Those letters get booted. Remember the five W's? Make sure it gets into your query letter. (But in a pleasant, engaging, and unique way...)
Finally: What you think is important about your book may not be what the agent is interested in. Gail is writing fantasy fiction. Her's is a real world set YA about a group of magic users who stumble on someone who may be from their past and how they all interact and relate to each other. (She will write about her story here one day and do a better job of describing it.) Anyway, the main character, Penny, has an alcoholic father who moves them around constantly. He shows up like four times in the book and is more or less a vehicle to put Penny in the right place at the right time for the action to start up. Amid wizards, multi-dimensional monsters, a religion versus science theme, moving into a new school and finding out that you too are a powerful magic user, it is alcoholic parent that the agent was interested in knowing more about.
On my own fact finding this week I have learned the following things:
The find and replace function on Word is a very valuable editing tool. Due to recent developments I am going over my manuscript with a fine tooth comb and editing away. Here is a technique I've found that is good for making you see what you actually wrote, as opposed to what you thinkis on the page.
Locate an issue. The first one I tried was sentences that start with an introductory clause that starts with If. If blah blah blah, then blah blah blah. I've probably got 150 sentences that follow that basic pattern. Maybe fifty of them had a comma after that first clause. So, I searched for If, and all of those sentences popped up, and I was able to read each one by itself and add commas where warranted. I did that for every other common word that begins and introductory clause. A whole lot of commas got added.
Pleased by how well that was working, I tried conjunctions. I like conjunctions. I like long windy sentences with seventeen clauses, lots of commas, and lots of buts and ors. (I am rewriting, shortening, and tightening up most of them these days.) However, there are 6183 ands alone in my story. Probably 5500 of them are used correctly. The find function was painfully slow. I had images of still checking away three years from now until I noticed the find function has a subprogram called Highlight. For locating every conjunction on a page, so you can quickly check and drag your eyes to the next one, it's brilliant. The only thing I don't like about it is every time I change the document the highlighting vanishes and I have to redo it. Even with that, it's still much faster than manually finding each and, checking it, and hitting the find next button.
My other great nugget of wisdom this week is a grammatical one. No comma goes between and if. So, the correct form of this sentence is. We're going to the park, and if the weather is especially nice, we'll eat lunch outside.
The next installment of the Indie Book Review is due up soon. I'm almost done reading Tales From Gundarland, and will be expounding upon in the next week.
Showing posts with label the agent hunt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the agent hunt. Show all posts
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Agent Hunt: Farewell
So, here is where the active phase will end for many of you. You've found the agents you want, you've perfected your letter, you've sent it out. Now it's time to wait.
And wait. And wait. The generally accepted conventions of polite behavior hold that if you haven't heard back in three months, that it's okay to give the agent a little nudge just to see if your letter got there. (Side note: Like with everything else, if the agent's website says something different, go with what the website says.) And by polite nudge, I mean a short email along the lines of, 'I just wanted to make sure my query letter got to you. Thanks, Your Name' You do not at any time want to come off as Stan from the Eminem song.
What to do while waiting? Find more agents to add to your potential agent list. Start on your next story. Take a break from writing for a little while and let your creativity recharge. Work on building your brand (write fan fic, short stories, blog, anything to get your name out there and people interested in seeing what you come up with next. More on this in future blogs.) Knit. Cook. Anything but spend every minute looking at the clock waiting for the time when the post man shows up with today's mail. You will go bonkers if you do that. As writers we're already a tad more delicately balanced on the edge of sane than most people, stalking your mail man or potential agents will only make that worse.
Now, for some of you, and for me personally, reading and researching the whole agent thing may have put you off of it. For some of us, this moment of deciding that we aren't going to go that way means it's actually the start of a new direction. And that's the direction this blog is going to take. It's time to start talking self publishing.
If you're going the traditional route, keep reading, lots of good stuff on marketing your book (useful for everyone) and self publishing (say that collection of poems or short stories you just can't get moved, even though every agent and their grandma have told you it's brilliant) will be forthcoming. As well as more Indie Book Reviews. (If you have done the self published route, and are interested in being reviewed, drop me a line.)
And wait. And wait. The generally accepted conventions of polite behavior hold that if you haven't heard back in three months, that it's okay to give the agent a little nudge just to see if your letter got there. (Side note: Like with everything else, if the agent's website says something different, go with what the website says.) And by polite nudge, I mean a short email along the lines of, 'I just wanted to make sure my query letter got to you. Thanks, Your Name' You do not at any time want to come off as Stan from the Eminem song.
What to do while waiting? Find more agents to add to your potential agent list. Start on your next story. Take a break from writing for a little while and let your creativity recharge. Work on building your brand (write fan fic, short stories, blog, anything to get your name out there and people interested in seeing what you come up with next. More on this in future blogs.) Knit. Cook. Anything but spend every minute looking at the clock waiting for the time when the post man shows up with today's mail. You will go bonkers if you do that. As writers we're already a tad more delicately balanced on the edge of sane than most people, stalking your mail man or potential agents will only make that worse.
Now, for some of you, and for me personally, reading and researching the whole agent thing may have put you off of it. For some of us, this moment of deciding that we aren't going to go that way means it's actually the start of a new direction. And that's the direction this blog is going to take. It's time to start talking self publishing.
If you're going the traditional route, keep reading, lots of good stuff on marketing your book (useful for everyone) and self publishing (say that collection of poems or short stories you just can't get moved, even though every agent and their grandma have told you it's brilliant) will be forthcoming. As well as more Indie Book Reviews. (If you have done the self published route, and are interested in being reviewed, drop me a line.)
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Query Letter: The Paragraph of Doom
No one in their right mind looks forward to doing this. But, unless you're going to self publish, (and we'll get to that soon) you've got to do it.
You're whole book. In one paragraph. One paragraph small enough to fit onto a one page letter with at least three other paragraphs, two address blocks, a formal salutation, and closing. And no, you can't fudge the margins or use an eight point font. Call it less than one hundred words, possibly seventy-five. Eeep!
Now, I mentioned earlier that this paragraph is not the back of the book copy. But why not? After all, you are trying to sell your book to the agent, and the back of the book copy is trying to sell the book to everyone who picks it up.
And that's precisely why not. You are selling your book to one person. One person you can research. You can find that person's likes and dislikes. You know what books he's purchased before. You know what kinds of people he's worked with before.
In the case of my own book, and yours probably, there are a lot of angles you can play up when it comes to convincing your agent-to-be that you've got the book of his dreams. I can work on the fact that my main character is Jewish, the intense religious themes, and questions about theodicy and forgiveness if I aim at an agent who handles religious fiction. I can paint a story of an Epic Fantasy trilogy that will span modern day Urban Fantasy to High Quest Fantasy while weaving a classic love story between worlds, if I was hunting a fantasy agent. If I want I can minimize the fantasy aspect and show how it's dripping in erotic romance if I'm hunting an erotica agent.
So, as you sit there with your list of potential agents, take the time to write down what precisely they've sold, what it is they want in a book, and start to work on why your book is exactly what they want. At the same time (because, after all this is never easy) you need to keep in mind what your book actually is. In my case I may tone down the fantasy aspect, but if I leave it out completely and actually do get a manuscript request from an agent who handles erotic or religious fiction, I'll get a "no thanks" letter awfully fast, and be out the cost of a manuscript.
I'll once again borrow from the car shopping world. If you've ever had someone try to sell you a car that wasn't quite right, say trying to get you into one that cost too much, or had a bunch of things you didn't need, or was in much worse shape than claimed, you know how frustrating and annoying that is. You need to realistically assess you story. You need to know if you've got a Rolls Royce, a Subaru, a Honda or a Dodge and sell it as the best possible version of whatever it is you've got. Spending your hundred words talking about the aching beauty and immense clarity of human experience in your Literary Fiction story is great, assuming all of that is true.
So, how best to go about figuring out what your book is about? I suggest having a few people you know and trust read it and tell you. Seriously, what you think your book is about and what everyone else thinks it is about may be two very different things. Better yet, people you know and trust who you haven't already told what the book is about. (Because we all have talented reader buddies who we haven't talked the ears off of already...Yeah, I know exactly how realistic that proposition is. But assuming you have some people like that in your life, now is the time to ply them with gifts and a copy of your manuscript.)
Once you know it's time to write. And re-write. And re-re-write. And probably do it a few more times. Because here's the crux of this issue: this is the paragraph that makes your chance of ever getting an agent. There are a million ways of losing potential agents, and this is the one way to actually snag one. If you know people who have agents, beg them to read your letter, ask for brutal feedback. If you don't know anyone along those lines try to get people who will give you an honest answer to read your letter and answer this question: "Having read this, do you want to see my book?"
Lastly, good luck!
You're whole book. In one paragraph. One paragraph small enough to fit onto a one page letter with at least three other paragraphs, two address blocks, a formal salutation, and closing. And no, you can't fudge the margins or use an eight point font. Call it less than one hundred words, possibly seventy-five. Eeep!
Now, I mentioned earlier that this paragraph is not the back of the book copy. But why not? After all, you are trying to sell your book to the agent, and the back of the book copy is trying to sell the book to everyone who picks it up.
And that's precisely why not. You are selling your book to one person. One person you can research. You can find that person's likes and dislikes. You know what books he's purchased before. You know what kinds of people he's worked with before.
In the case of my own book, and yours probably, there are a lot of angles you can play up when it comes to convincing your agent-to-be that you've got the book of his dreams. I can work on the fact that my main character is Jewish, the intense religious themes, and questions about theodicy and forgiveness if I aim at an agent who handles religious fiction. I can paint a story of an Epic Fantasy trilogy that will span modern day Urban Fantasy to High Quest Fantasy while weaving a classic love story between worlds, if I was hunting a fantasy agent. If I want I can minimize the fantasy aspect and show how it's dripping in erotic romance if I'm hunting an erotica agent.
So, as you sit there with your list of potential agents, take the time to write down what precisely they've sold, what it is they want in a book, and start to work on why your book is exactly what they want. At the same time (because, after all this is never easy) you need to keep in mind what your book actually is. In my case I may tone down the fantasy aspect, but if I leave it out completely and actually do get a manuscript request from an agent who handles erotic or religious fiction, I'll get a "no thanks" letter awfully fast, and be out the cost of a manuscript.
I'll once again borrow from the car shopping world. If you've ever had someone try to sell you a car that wasn't quite right, say trying to get you into one that cost too much, or had a bunch of things you didn't need, or was in much worse shape than claimed, you know how frustrating and annoying that is. You need to realistically assess you story. You need to know if you've got a Rolls Royce, a Subaru, a Honda or a Dodge and sell it as the best possible version of whatever it is you've got. Spending your hundred words talking about the aching beauty and immense clarity of human experience in your Literary Fiction story is great, assuming all of that is true.
So, how best to go about figuring out what your book is about? I suggest having a few people you know and trust read it and tell you. Seriously, what you think your book is about and what everyone else thinks it is about may be two very different things. Better yet, people you know and trust who you haven't already told what the book is about. (Because we all have talented reader buddies who we haven't talked the ears off of already...Yeah, I know exactly how realistic that proposition is. But assuming you have some people like that in your life, now is the time to ply them with gifts and a copy of your manuscript.)
Once you know it's time to write. And re-write. And re-re-write. And probably do it a few more times. Because here's the crux of this issue: this is the paragraph that makes your chance of ever getting an agent. There are a million ways of losing potential agents, and this is the one way to actually snag one. If you know people who have agents, beg them to read your letter, ask for brutal feedback. If you don't know anyone along those lines try to get people who will give you an honest answer to read your letter and answer this question: "Having read this, do you want to see my book?"
Lastly, good luck!
Saturday, August 21, 2010
The Great Agent Hunt: Part One
So, lets talk about finding an Agent. Like everything else in the writing world, this too is filled with scams. Keep Mr. Yog in mind, if the money is moving in the wrong direction (i.e. away from you) it's time to go running away.
For example: Reading fees, reputable agents don't charge them. They may want to, and I get that, because they have to read a whole lot of stuff to find the good bits and it would be nice to be paid for their time. However, a whole bunch of scammers noticed that authors are willing to toss money around like a man with a mid-life crisis trying to impress nubile blond girls, and opened up businesses that did nothing but charge reading fees. So to distinguish themselves, the real guys don't charge them.
If an Agent is hot for you but wants you to spend money on an editor, or research fees, or placement fees, or writing workshops, or anything other than what you already spent getting his attention, it's time to find another Agent.
From what I can find there's basically only one legitimate expense an Agent will ask you to incur, and that's the cost of sending them a pile of your manuscripts so they can be shopped around. Which, if you're like me and you wrote War and Peace II: This Time It's Even Longer!, that might be a real expense. Otherwise, they should not be asking you to shell out money.
The job of the Agent is to get you money. He goes out and gets a publisher to buy your book. Then you, and the Agent get paid by you selling copies of the book. Agents seem to get 10 to 15% of what you make. When you think about how much work they do for this money it's rather staggering. Supposedly Jane Average Writer will sell 3,000 copies of her book. If she makes 2.00 a copy, then Joe Agent will make .20 a copy. At 3,000 copies Joe Agent just made $600.00. He's doing how many hours of work for you for $600.00? If Joe can sell your book, Joe is a bargain. (We're not going to talk about how much work you did for the remaining $5,400.00.)
So, because of the work they do, and how little they get paid, it make sense to be kind to Joe and his readers and only query Agents who will actually be interested in your project. Nothing will get you rejected faster than sending out a "Dear Every Agent in the Western Hemisphere" letter. Joe's time is valuable. If Joe represents Christian Themed Cookbook writers, please do not send him a letter about how great your new Dresden Files meets the X-Files mystery thriller is. You've just wasted Joe's time and the cost of your stamp.
Go find five books you think are pretty similar to yours. Now, go find out who their agents were. That's where the hunt begins. Hopefully said agents have websites and blogs that will tell you exactly how they want you to send them things. Pay attention to what they have to say on those blogs. Tailor your letter to their specs. You want Joe Agent's reader to know you did your homework and were paying attention when you picked him.
Once you've gotten those first five agents, and mailed out query letters to them, go find another five. Keep doing this. Every time you get a "Dear Writer... We are sorry to say..." letter, send a new query out. If you've cleared out the library of every book even remotely similar to yours, then it's time to invest in Publishers Weekly's or Writer's Market, etc... There are lots of agents out there, and eventually you'll find the right one. (Though after five or ten rejections it might be worth while to rework your query letter.)
Why not start with Publisher's Weekly or Writer's Market? This is just a matter of personal preference for me. It comes down to this, anyone with money can advertise. An actual published book in your hands tells you that Agent was able to sell the book. A bunch of books is even better. On top of that, with the book in your hand you can check with it's Author, did she like her Agent? How well did the Agent do his job? What kind of contract did the Author get? How long did it take?
Once you get a letter back saying please send us more information we're interested, it's time to do more research. Before you sign a contract head over to Absolute Write and look the agent up. Or get on the discussion board and ask around. In addition to scams, there are Agents who just aren't very good. Time to put your feelers out into writer land and see what the others think about the person who just offered you a contract.
Of course, that's the fun part compared to what we'll talk about next: The Dread Query Letter!
For example: Reading fees, reputable agents don't charge them. They may want to, and I get that, because they have to read a whole lot of stuff to find the good bits and it would be nice to be paid for their time. However, a whole bunch of scammers noticed that authors are willing to toss money around like a man with a mid-life crisis trying to impress nubile blond girls, and opened up businesses that did nothing but charge reading fees. So to distinguish themselves, the real guys don't charge them.
If an Agent is hot for you but wants you to spend money on an editor, or research fees, or placement fees, or writing workshops, or anything other than what you already spent getting his attention, it's time to find another Agent.
From what I can find there's basically only one legitimate expense an Agent will ask you to incur, and that's the cost of sending them a pile of your manuscripts so they can be shopped around. Which, if you're like me and you wrote War and Peace II: This Time It's Even Longer!, that might be a real expense. Otherwise, they should not be asking you to shell out money.
The job of the Agent is to get you money. He goes out and gets a publisher to buy your book. Then you, and the Agent get paid by you selling copies of the book. Agents seem to get 10 to 15% of what you make. When you think about how much work they do for this money it's rather staggering. Supposedly Jane Average Writer will sell 3,000 copies of her book. If she makes 2.00 a copy, then Joe Agent will make .20 a copy. At 3,000 copies Joe Agent just made $600.00. He's doing how many hours of work for you for $600.00? If Joe can sell your book, Joe is a bargain. (We're not going to talk about how much work you did for the remaining $5,400.00.)
So, because of the work they do, and how little they get paid, it make sense to be kind to Joe and his readers and only query Agents who will actually be interested in your project. Nothing will get you rejected faster than sending out a "Dear Every Agent in the Western Hemisphere" letter. Joe's time is valuable. If Joe represents Christian Themed Cookbook writers, please do not send him a letter about how great your new Dresden Files meets the X-Files mystery thriller is. You've just wasted Joe's time and the cost of your stamp.
Go find five books you think are pretty similar to yours. Now, go find out who their agents were. That's where the hunt begins. Hopefully said agents have websites and blogs that will tell you exactly how they want you to send them things. Pay attention to what they have to say on those blogs. Tailor your letter to their specs. You want Joe Agent's reader to know you did your homework and were paying attention when you picked him.
Once you've gotten those first five agents, and mailed out query letters to them, go find another five. Keep doing this. Every time you get a "Dear Writer... We are sorry to say..." letter, send a new query out. If you've cleared out the library of every book even remotely similar to yours, then it's time to invest in Publishers Weekly's or Writer's Market, etc... There are lots of agents out there, and eventually you'll find the right one. (Though after five or ten rejections it might be worth while to rework your query letter.)
Why not start with Publisher's Weekly or Writer's Market? This is just a matter of personal preference for me. It comes down to this, anyone with money can advertise. An actual published book in your hands tells you that Agent was able to sell the book. A bunch of books is even better. On top of that, with the book in your hand you can check with it's Author, did she like her Agent? How well did the Agent do his job? What kind of contract did the Author get? How long did it take?
Once you get a letter back saying please send us more information we're interested, it's time to do more research. Before you sign a contract head over to Absolute Write and look the agent up. Or get on the discussion board and ask around. In addition to scams, there are Agents who just aren't very good. Time to put your feelers out into writer land and see what the others think about the person who just offered you a contract.
Of course, that's the fun part compared to what we'll talk about next: The Dread Query Letter!
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