tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-356231282024-03-13T13:09:40.831-04:00The RejecterI don't hate you. I just hate your query letter.The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.comBlogger382125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-37582337819034398682016-11-29T16:57:00.000-05:002016-11-29T16:57:15.280-05:00NaNoWriMoI recently encountered a Salon article titled, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2010/11/02/nanowrimo/">"Better yet, DON'T Write That Novel: Why National Novel Writing Month is a Waste of Energy."</a> It might seem to some people that was an article I might have written (sadly, I am not a writer for Salon. I really need more work) but I'm going to go ahead and disagree with some it, and not just because I'm currently trying to finish up my own NaNoWriMo novel while fighting off jetlag and possibly pneumonia. But this section was particularly interesting to me: <br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>But even if every one of these 30-day novelists prudently slipped his
or her manuscript into a drawer, all the time, energy and resources
that go into the enterprise strike me as misplaced.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Here’s why:
NaNoWriMo is an event geared entirely toward writers, which means it’s
largely unnecessary. When I recently stumbled across a list of
promotional ideas for bookstores seeking to jump on the bandwagon, true
dismay set in. “Write Your Novel Here” was the suggested motto for an
in-store NaNoWriMo event. It was yet another depressing sign that the
cultural spaces once dedicated to the selfless art of reading are being
taken over by the narcissistic commerce of writing.</i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>I say
“commerce” because far more money can be made out of people who want to
write novels than out of people who want to read them. And an
astonishing number of individuals who want to do the former will confess
to never doing the latter. “People would come up to me at parties,”
author Ann Bauer recently told me, “and say, ‘I’ve been thinking of
writing a book. Tell me what you think of this …’ And I’d (eventually)
divert the conversation by asking what they read … Now, the ‘What do you
read?’ question is inevitably answered, ‘Oh, I don’t have time to read.
I’m just concentrating on my writing.'”</i></span><br />
<br />
It really is amazing how NaNoWriMo has taken off. I got involved with it around 2008, and done it more or less every year with some exceptions for family emergencies or because I was busy editing a novel that had a publication deadline. Only one of my November novels was turned into a book that was published, and its admittedly one of my weaker works.<br />
<br />
I don't think there's anything wrong with teaching writing being an industry, because I've always understood writing as an act that is very different from reading, and the two are not always connected. It's true that my favorite writing is when I'm doing something that I would want to read and just doesn't exist yet, but I've also written for more professional reasons, or even less professional ones, like I needed to finish NaNoWriMo. The <i>act </i>of writing is very different from the <i>act</i> of reading; they have their own demands and pleasures and are really two separate hobbies, and people can have as many hobbies as they want and spread their energies across them accordingly.<br />
<br />
I was probably 11 or 12 when my mother was on a trip and happened on a group of writers, and she expressed concern that I was spending all of my time writing, and therefore cutting back on my reading. They told her not to worry; that happened to all of them, but I would slowly circle back, or that's what she told me they said. They ended up being totally correct. On average, in my adult life, I read around 50 to 60 books a year outside of work or school. A lot of that is thanks to the luxury of being Shomer Shabbat (google it), so I have 25 hours every week where I can't work, travel, shop, or use electronics, and I don't have children, so that really opens my time up for reading, so I confess that I don't read a lot during the week. The overwhelming majority of the books are non-fiction, overwhelmingly history books or books on religion or culture, sometimes as research for something I want to write and sometimes just out of random interest, and I'm very lucky to live in New York, where there are stands full of cheap paperbacks at the same time as non-fiction is so popular, so I always have enough material to find while just walking around.<br />
<br />
There are undoubtedly writers with very small worlds who don't read enough and end up producing the same material over and over because their contact with new ideas is minimal (looking at you, Woody Allen, who doesn't read books or watch new movies or really interact with the world at all), but plenty of people get their inspiration from things other than books, and plenty of people get too much inspiration from books and just copy their favorite writers. As I kid - I was probably about 9 - I wrote a 400-page novel, still unfinished, that was basically a Redwall rip-off. But spending so much time writing each night (I wouldn't let myself go to sleep until I'd written ten pages, though to be fair the spacing on those pages was pretty wide) gave me a certain discipline about writing that has carried me through my professional life, and is always why I've never not finished NaNoWriMo, though this year's going to be a close one.<br />
<br />
I don't remember seeing submissions at work that were NaNoWriMo books, except maybe one or two. People know that 50,000 words is too short for a book, so the people who do submit books from that month are probably submitting them after finishing them in December or January, at a proper length. Generally people overwrite; I saw many more books that were way too long than way too short. I wouldn't be terribly upset if there's a shift in our word culture towards shorter novels, but that remains to be seen.<br />
<br />
I don't see NaNoWriMo as positive or negative. It just is. People want to write, and they now have a more concentrated outlet for that, and people who might not normally try something of this length would be encouraged to. Yes, a lot of nonsense will be<i> written,</i> but that doesn't always translated to a lot of nonsense being <i>submitted</i>, which is different. I don't see writing as selfish. It's a contemplative and difficult personal act done in one's own time, and everyone has the right to decide how to spend their time. Even if it's writing a piece for a blog and then just putting it in your NaNoWriMo file because it's November 29th and you've still got 8000 words to get on digital paper, because you've <i>never not finished</i>.<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br /></i></span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-51988616340899627812016-11-22T12:23:00.002-05:002016-11-22T12:23:51.233-05:00Renumeration<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Thank you for the post. I am an author with a finished book looking for
an agent. But first, I have to rewrite the outline that one agent was
kind enough to tell me sucked (and wasn't in the same league with the
query letter). Maybe I am looking for traditional publishing because I
want that validation. Maybe because it looks like traditional publishing
might offer some help in marketing the book. Maybe I'd just like enough
money from this to make up my expenses (so far, besides supplies, that
would be $342 for proofreading, which was the friends and family price)
and pay off the credit card. You, at least, are not afraid to tell me
the truth about renumeration. The self-published among my critique group
are not so forthcoming. (Me? If I never make a cent, I'll still be
fine.)</span></i><br />
<br />
I'm not really sure what "your outline sucked" means. I've never criticized anybody's outline. Usually if the outline has been requested, we just read it to make sure that the book doesn't go on any wild tangents that weren't mentioned in the query and end up destroying the book, which happens more than you'd think (a lot of people don't know how to end a book). Outlines are there to just go point to point to point. But other people must feel differently.<br />
<br />
Look, if you want to be published traditionally, go for it. You probably won't make a lot of money, but they'll do a really good copyediting and layout job, they'll give you some publicity, and you'll be more than just handsales. Your cover won't be unbelievably terrible. And you'll have status. Not a lot, but more than unsuccessful (and most self-published writers are unsuccessful) self-published writers do. The industry exists for a reason. Walking into a bookstore and seeing your book on the shelf is something has no real comparison.<br />
<br />
But if every agent you query to rejects your book, and I'm talking about more than 40 agents at least, there's probably a problem with the book.The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-12897106077743767102016-07-28T13:32:00.000-04:002016-07-28T13:32:44.305-04:00Pissing Off Agents for Fun and No Profit(shout out to <a href="https://intheinbox.wordpress.com/">In the Box</a>, a blogger after my own heart)<br />
<br />
Some of you may have seen the post going around by an author who was rejected at a pitch conference. I'm not going to repost it in full here, but <a href="https://intheinbox.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/how-to-get-yourself-blacklisted/">here's the link</a> for reference. It caught my attention because I actually know several of the people mentioned (Jennifer not being one of them), and they are all insanely good people who love to read and have devoted their lives to promoting authors and their works. There's just a few things I'd like to address specifically.<br />
<br />
(1) Agents love to read. Everyone in publishing loves to read. There's no other reason we're working in publishing - it certainly can't be for the money, as publishing is traditionally <a href="http://the-digital-reader.com/2016/01/18/entry-level-positions-in-the-book-publishing-industry-are-so-poorly-paid-that/">an especially low-paying industry</a> (because historically, it's had a lot of women in it, and you can pay them less). That's why we're so busy - because we're reading. And we're not just reading submissions. We're reading what's on the market, we're reading what's going on in publishing, and we're reading those classics we should have read in high school but we had that one teacher who didn't assign <i>Beloved</i>. (Oh, and lots and lots of fan fiction) On average, I read 50-60 books a year for pleasure or research for my own writing. When I was working as an assistant, I could knock out as many as five full manuscript submissions a day before my brain would turn to mush.<br />
<br />
(2) We don't remember everyone's submissions. There are submissions I'll always remember and probably be telling my grandkids about, like the novel about a man getting raped by his kitchen appliances that was somehow also really good, or some memoir-ish-enough pseudo thriller that made me think the author might have killed a bunch of people in Southeast Asia, but dang if I can recall the names of the authors. I don't remember my <i>friends</i>' names, much less the names of authors whose manuscripts I read months or years ago.<br />
<br />
(3) <i>Of course</i> we don't want your flash drive. Dude, cyber security 101, right up there with keeping a sticker over your built-in camera. At the last BEA in New York I asked a guy who worked at a house that imported fiction from China for a catalog, which must be the only time I ever asked for a catalog, and I was horrified when he gave me a flash drive. That he got <i>from China</i>. You know, the hacking center of the world? Plus I've seen <i>Mr. Robot</i> so that makes it all much worse.<br />
<br />
(4) I've never been to a pitch conference. I've had some bosses go and managed some submissions. I also once received a submission that said "requested manuscript" all over it and the query specified that he'd met my boss at a conference she didn't go to. She was scheduled to go, and her name appeared in the brochure, but she hadn't actually gone because of a last-minute issue, so he'd just plucked her name off the brochure and hoped that she wouldn't remember that the meeting didn't happen. Who knows if <i>he </i>actually went.The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-50972434487055111882016-07-22T00:45:00.000-04:002016-07-22T00:57:01.279-04:00CalculationsLast night I was at an author reading at the Strand, New York's premiere overpriced used bookstore. I have to give them credit as a store for building and marketing their brand so well that people will work for them despite accusations of discriminatory hiring policies.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the author was a favorite comic strip artist of mine who now had her first collection published, by a traditional publisher and everything. She was swamped by fans, and the signing lasted over an hour and a half, so much so that I went down to the main store, bought some books, then came back up, and there was still a huge line. I wish her all the best.<br />
<br />
The Q&A was a bit awkward. People were happy about her success, but seemed to be under the impression that because she had one books published, she was rolling in dough and spending all of her time writing new comics to post on Tumblr, and those hand sales of the night were really helping her out. Meanwhile, I was estimating that if she made 7.5% (an average rate, though maybe not for illustrators) per copy at a $15.00 cover price, that meant she made ... $1.13 per book. Given the average costs of living in New York, even if her book is wildly successful, and she got some kind of advance, she'll be lucky to break even the first year, and beyond that, well, here there be dragons.<br />
<br />
When I got into fiction writing as a career, I was told that for the first book, I would make about a $5000 advance, then about $35,000 for each additional book, meaning if I put out a book a year (a very reasonable rate for me) I would do okay. In fact I would do better than being an editorial assistant at a publishing company, where the salaries I was offered were from 28-30K, which could move up to 35K in five years, provided I was promoted. So that seemed like a plan. <br />
<br />
Instead, my first advance was $1000 (after I talked them up from $500), my second advance was $2500 for a two-book deal, and several books continued in that vein until I was offered no advance at all and started self-publishing. At this point I have about fifteen major publications, between the novels, novellas, and short story collections, and I can't begin to make ends meet. (Skyrocketing health care costs don't help) <br />
<br />
What I really wanted to ask this poor author, but didn't, was "So what's your other job?" Because I'm curious. Most writers who are not also English teachers guard their actual source of income from the public as a source of shame, which ends up misleading aspiring authors. I didn't want to shame her; I was genuinely curious myself, as I find myself at a career crossroads. But I didn't ask for obvious reasons, though she did mention in passing that she got started on comics when she was bored on a night shift security job, which got me wondering how I could score a sweet job like that that let me sit at a desk and write all night, because those jobs usually prefer to hire beefy guys and she was not a beefy guy. <br />
<br />
What writers are doing for a living now has become a genuinely interesting question to me. An established pop culture writer, whose books I own, recently posted to social networks that he'd been hired to do an article but was posting to GoFundMe because he couldn't afford the transportation costs. In other words, the company had not paid him the money required to even get the assignment done, resulting in a loss for him. What was he writing for - exposure?<br />
<br />
If anyone wants to sound off on this, anonymously or otherwise, I would be interested. It would be good for upcoming writers to know what they're getting into. Not that I want to put you off from writing that novel. I just feel that if you're that committed, it'll happen anyway. The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-64986738434877078402016-07-13T13:00:00.000-04:002016-07-13T13:00:19.378-04:00Not-So-Old Mail<i>Hello Anonymous reject,
I am a University drop out. I suck at everything I do. In the year 2000 I rejected a publisher that offered me a $10 advance on a short story I wrote. It was a science fiction story. After fourteen years later, I finally picked up the courage to rebuild the story I wrote back in the year 2000 to turn it into an adult fantasy with mild sexual context. I must admit I have not had any luck with any publishers. A few have called my stories fascinating but not really what they are looking for. I feel that my style of writing contains too much strong language and I need advice on writing a better query letter and finding an agent or publisher with a stronger backbone. </i><br />
<br />
Awww. I don't have any context for this, but I'm sure you don't suck at everything you do.<br />
<br />
"Not what we are looking for" is a generic rejection phrase. There's not much to read into there, but it's honest. There was something they didn't like about the book, so they didn't take you on as a client because they didn't feel they could sell it to a publisher. Agents don't tell people why because we're not in the business of kicking people when they're down. (Trust me, you don't want to know our reasons)<br />
<br />
I don't think strong language and mild sexual content was the issue, considering sales of erotica on Amazon topping all of the charts, but if you think it was, just write another book that doesn't use strong language or contain sexual content. But definitely write something new; if your old book has been rejected everywhere that's a good sign that you should move on. The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-49014747667066209852016-06-21T22:13:00.001-04:002016-06-21T22:13:17.715-04:00It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I'm Kind of Grouchy)Welcome back, readers! I decided to make a rare post to promote a fiverr service, only to log in to my old email and discover that Yahoo had decided to stop forwarding my mail about 3 years ago, so I was receiving mail at the Rejecter account and it was just sitting there. Since I used the account so rarely, it passed my notice. For all of you who waited for responses, if your questions are still relevant, I will try to get to them.<br />
<br />
I'm no longer working as a query reader. For years and years I was an assistant to various agencies based on availability and their needs, but that time has passed. I was busy going back to school and my job became increasingly computerized, which really cut down the available working hours. Way back in the day, I had to go into an actual office, open up the office, get the mail from the mail room, open the mail, read the mail, then scribble a reply or stuff the form reply in a return envelope, then send it out again. Sometimes there was fussing over there being no SASE or we would get those tickets from overseas submissions that acted as a coupon for American postage but we still had to go to the post office to mail the letter back. Gmail cut all that down to "look at query letter and hit reject." And then my boss stopped taking new fiction clients altogether because there wasn't enough money in it to justify his time, and that was that. Honestly, I was getting tired of reading mediocre thriller after mediocre thriller, as we seemed to have a glut of those for a while, so it all worked out for the best. And now I'm underemployed like all of my friends who also live in New York, and getting by on royalties from my books, most of which are self-published at this point.<br />
<br />
But enough about me. What about publishing? Well, there's one big secret in publishing today and here it is:<b> No one knows what's going on in publishing.</b><br />
<br />
Sure, within their niche markets people might think they have a handle on it, but then again I see the signs of people shifting around, out of their traditional markets and into new ones, and old school authors don't do that unless they have to. The sci-fi/fantasy market is traditionally stable, but then again Chuck Tingle got nominated for a Hugo and I'm not totally convinced he isn't a sophisticated computer program. The category romance network, the bread-and-butter-but-you-tell-everyone-else-you're-gluten-free backbone of publishing, is being severely undercut by badly-edited fanfiction that's selling for 99c a pop. I got some contract offers to write novellas that I had to turn down because my desire to make a living (hey, work is work) was slightly overwhelmed by my inability to write anything that I knww will feature a naked guy on the cover. I called one series I was almost hired to write for "Werewolves Don't Know Much About Informed Consent."<br />
<br />
On the other hand, some authors are making a bundle. To be clear, for my original three books that were published by a mainstream publisher, I make 3.5% of cover price for digital sales, and 70% for my self-published stuff, so I can <i>afford </i>to make the books cheap and still make the same money. That benefits the reader (who saves money) and the author (who makes the same or more), so it's hard to tell who's losing, but very few people are winning.<br />
<br />
It is truly a period for massive creativity and an expansion of available content. I got a contract with Kindle Worlds to write a survivalist dystopia novella and, in doing market research, discovered an entire thriving sub-genre I didn't know about, where ex-military people explain in novel form why they would definitely survive the apocalypse and also be better than the other survivors. The quality of the content varies from author to author, but they sell to each other and their numbers look good.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, traditional publishing is behaving like you do when your fire alarm goes off in the apartment complex at 4 am, and you know the fire's not in <i>your</i> apartment, and you really don't feel like getting up because it's probably someone's burnt popcorn, so you wait fifteen minutes for the fire trucks to start showing up and decide maybe all those fire safety classes you sat through in grade school meant something, so you put on your winter coat over your pajamas and decide to see if the bagel store next door is open while this all gets sorted out. I know that's oddly specific, but I don't think traditional publishing houses are burning down (metaphorically). I just know there are some contained emergencies.<br />
<br />
I've been to a bunch of conferences now on new media and new models for publishing, and everyone seems to have their own, and boy are they sure excited about it, at least until someone asks the inevitable follow-up question, "And how are the sales?" Because remember, publishing is a business. It employs people, who work for money that they need to purchase goods or services. A publishing house could employ an entire department of professional designers with the appropriate degrees to design all their books, and give them a low-to-medium salary and maybe health and dental, or each author could hit up people on Fiverr and spend $5 to maybe come up with a halfway decent cover in a few days. I pay out $50 a pop to a friend of mine who's a graphic designer to work on each cover, which is based on minimum wage for the hours he's working, plus the fact that we're friends, plus the fact that I do about 50% of the initial design work myself and he puts a professional polish on it. It's not a lot of money but it's what I can afford and I want my friend to get money for his work. <br />
<br />
So while it's fun to be down on traditional publishers in their ivory towers, and watch self-published books take off on Amazon, there's a workforce that's under fire. Most of my friends who worked in publishing either no longer do, now have a second job, or have switched to a different field within publishing as their job transformed. You, the desperate author (because what author isn't desperate? Come on guys) may not see any of this, but it's distressing. And distressed people are less likely to take risks on new books.<br />
<br />
<b>No one knows what's going on in self-publishing, either</b>. Maybe it's that Amazon either launches a new program that no one can see the metrics of yet or it's just changed up something complicated about how discounts work in an affiliate program about once a month, or the collapse of Amazon alternatives, but we're all winging it. People sell their eBooks on the sophisticated algorithm they developed to boost their Kindle sales, involving sacrificial roosters and only selling in the coinage of Cappodia on Fridays for all I know, and by the time you get around to reading it the information is moot. There was always a part of publishing that was magic, in that it didn't adhere to logic or reason, and that's carried right over to the self-publishing crowd. At least there'll always be some markers of stability.<br />
<br />
<b>Things That Have Not Changed in Publishing:</b><br />
1. Hiring a publicist is about are useful as tossing your money into a dark pit in the woods, without the excitement of getting to visit a dark pit in the woods.<br />
2. Too much erotica involves a really hot guy essentially raping a young, inexperienced woman but later she's cool with it, so it's okay. (And women write these things! So there's no excuse!)<br />
3. There is not enough diversity in publishing, a problem I didn't really know existed previously, not because I'm white but because I never know what authors look like. Usually I can't even remember the author's name. But apparently I was wrong; it's a huge problem.<br />
4. Book stores make me excited to be a writer, even if my books aren't always in them.<br />
5. There are too many cookbooks.<br />
<br />
<b>If You Still Want an Agent</b><br />
I've had an agent for years and she's been really handy in getting me contract work. She's actually not my original agent - she retired - but I was handed to someone else in the agency so I'm not completely free-floating, career-wise, even if she doesn't rep everything I write because she's not interested in certain categories. If you want to get traditionally published, you still need an agent (or a relative who works in publishing as a high-level editor who is also a cheap drunk). If you've been self-publishing and you're totally sick of doing all of your own publicity all the time because <i>it's the worst</i>, you could probably use an agent. If you've written a novel about the secrets of the universe as revealed to you by a dove sent by Jesus's brother and you need someone to talk you down before you embarrass yourself in public, you should at least be sending queries to agents so that after the first 40 rejections, you can take a hint.<br />
<br />
Long story not short: I'm now offering a <a href="https://www.fiverr.com/djclawson/review-your-query-letter">query letter review service on Fiverr</a>. It's cheap, it's honest, and if you're going to be sending out to as many agents as possible and you're already investing the time and energy in that, it's worth your time. <a href="https://www.fiverr.com/djclawson/review-your-query-letter">So check it out!</a> (Please!)The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-20660888099191792012-07-19T20:50:00.000-04:002012-07-19T20:51:35.155-04:00Checking In<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<i>The Rejecter,
I've been reading up on your blog all the advice you've dispensed about self-published authors seeking representation- and i'm assuming by the beginning of this sentence you can tell that I am one of them. Why did I self publish when I want now to be published by a big house? Simply because I wanted to, i've always been a go-getting 'do it yourself'er. Now I see the potential my book really has with the right marketing, so here I am.
The issue isn't just in that i'm self published, but in how in the world to even query it. My book is a non-fiction parenting humor book (I don't want to go as far as to say memoir, but it is about my life). What concerns me is that I don't have thousands upon thousands of sales to tout to agents as a strong selling point, but I have received amazing reviews and have a decent platform. That to me speaks volumes, but what about to an agent? Will the sales really hurt me that much? Am I really not to even mention that I have self-published my book without being able to say that i'm a "success"? </i></div>
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
We're getting a lot of self-published pieces at work, and now that self-publishing has some legitimacy to it (I started self-publishing a fiction series when my publisher decided to shut down its fiction unit after the 4th book) this is a question a lot of people are probably wondering about - if you should bring your successful self-published book to an agent, and when should you do it?</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
A lot of people go into self-publishing first now, either because they didn't succeed in getting their book published or because they didn't see a reason, and then they become successful and think, "But what about outside the Kindle/Smashwords market?"</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
When I see a query pitching a self-publishing book, there's two things I consider:</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
(1) How "successful" has it been, really?</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
(2) How much of its audience has this book already eaten?</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Despite how much money Amazon will give you for your self-published book (which is an awesome policy of Amazon's, as is paying on time), you have to be talking thousands to be talking success, because publishers rarely do print runs under several thousand, and they do runs of books they want to sell. So if you're under a thousand, count yourself out. Most agents will say 3000, but this is a magic number the industry came up with years ago and I don't know how much it applies anymore.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The second problem is a larger concern. If your book was going to be lower mid-list and sell 3000 copies, and you've already done it, what's it going to do now? Back when it was nearly impossible for consumers to <i>get</i> self-published books, this wasn't an issue. Now even PODs are reasonably-priced and people can give away their eBook for free, or at the .99c range where people will indiscriminately click "buy." If you've been self-published for a while, you've definitely used up your relatives, friends, livejournal pals, and people you could talk into doing you a favor and reviewing it because you helped them move their couch. This issue is going to make agents a little more hesitant about picking up well-selling fiction. If it's doing fine in its own market - which is now a pretty large market that reaches a lot of people - that might be the shelf-life of the book, and there's no reason to go further.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Also, we don't care about Amazon reviews unless there's tons of them. If you've got 60 Amazon reviews, OK, we're legitimately interested even if some of them were bad. That means you had a lot of readers. Fifteen good reviews means maybe you've had your friends and relatives throw up sock-puppet stuff and then paid a bunch of people on fiverr to do a few more. I'm above paying people for reviews, but it's not like I didn't pressure relatives who already read the book to throw together something for Amazon even though they had never written a review in their life. Everyone does it, which means everyone sort of has to do it, because a book with less than 5 reviews starts looking suspicious. It's a misleading trend but let's all admit that you will do what you have to do, especially if it's your livelihood (I don't make a whole lot reading queries). </div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
And chances are we won't look at your Amazon page unless we're being paid hourly and we already read pretty fast and damnit, rent is expensive and the ConEd bill is always shooting up. And even then, probably not.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
You're in a weird position. Not admitting you've self-published successfully is a big omission at this point, but we also aren't going to be thrilled to hear it. My advice to you, if you've had success in publishing and want to try a different area of publishing with more professionals involved, is unequivocally this: <b>Go write another book</b>. Because if you've only got one book in you, and you've written and published it, don't bother with the tricky world of publishing. But if you've used self-publishing to get off the ground, churn out as much good material as you possibly can that is new and interesting and unseen by the public. And then we may be interested.</div>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-61947427073939963432011-05-24T23:32:00.002-04:002011-05-24T23:55:34.978-04:00BEA 2011 Post<span style="font-family: georgia;">(I'm only "semi" retired)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">My trip to the BEA is over. I generally do everything I need to do in one day, the first day of the floor exhibitions. The BEA is really too exhausting to me to go back. Observations this year:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(1) The digital printing booths were slightly more centralized and slightly less deserted, but they were still pretty deserted because they didn't have cool books to look at and most people don't need to talk to them. Also exactly what each company does is confusing, because their posters just have a bunch of buzz words on them, so you have to ask, "Do you publicity?" or whatever you want and they tell you yes or no. They are very polite, though.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(2) Google Books had a funny sign, like "Check us out!" or "Come and join us!" or something like that, as if we're all afraid of them rather than mad at them for massive copyright infringement. Then I could not actually find the Google Books booth.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(3) I still have no idea why self-published authors buy booths to promote their book. It's got to be a ridiculous amount of money (a badge to get in was something like $400 for authors - my publisher paid my way), like thousands of dollars, and it's not as if publishers are wandering around, looking at booths and saying, "I want that. That thing that no publisher picked up if the author even tried." Seriously, if you are a self-published author and you want to promote your book, save your money and buy a publicity package from Lulu or CreateSpace.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(4) As usual, the only Jewish presses had titles I had never heard of or only heard of via Amazon recommendations, and their books had no Hebrew in them. Serious Judaica (not general Jewish books that are published by imprints) is a specialized market sold to Jews by Jews in Judaica stores, syangogue gift shops, or online. Artscroll has no reason to be at the BEA. Either I'm going to buy the new English translation of the Talmud Yerushalmi or not; no serious promotion is needed there, or needs to be done within the general industry.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(5) That guy who likes burning Qur'ans? He has a publisher, and they had an abandoned booth with a manniquin wearing a burqa. The sign on her chest said, "Hello, my name is Zahra. I have to live in this cage in Afghanistan. Can you ban it in America?" Which, you know, has part of a good cause (international women's rights) mixed with a healthy dose of racism.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(6) Chinese presses are always a little creepy because they're government controlled unless they're outside the mainland, and their material basically says, "Everything is awesome in China. There are definitely no problems you've been reading about in other sources." </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">The Beijing Review</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> magazine was especially bad - nothing but positive articles about how amazingly cool everyone is doing, especially those victims of the Sichuan earthquake who are now totally over it and they love their new housing. Also, definitely nobody was arrested for trying to publish the names of child victims, especially not an important artist. I am not really exaggerating here, just using different language than the magazine used. It's a shame, because there are a lot of good books released by these presses in English, but you have to wade through disquieting stuff. I mean, there are definitely a lot of countries with major human rights problems, but very few of them are at the BEA, on a full-scale offensive of promoting how there are no human rights problems in their countries. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"> (7) I picked up 2 books. One was actually not a giveaway - it was one of the books on display, and I told them it was on my Amazon wishlist for a long time, and they gave me their extra copy, which was very nice. The other was at a press where I'm published and they were doing a signing and I felt compelled to support the author. But my apartment is getting pretty crowded and I really don't need piles of fiction I don't want to read and couldn't sell for serious money even if it's signed.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(8) There's always one Buddhist monk wandering around. This year he was Tibetan (and he was white). Last year, a Japanese nun I think? Or maybe Korean. I don't remember.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(9) Small presses really shine at the BEA. I only say this because from my perspective, the big presses are booths I don't really need to visit, because I know what they do and I know their titles, but the small presses who might actually have decent sales I would never otherwise see. And their representatives have time for you and are as under-dressed as you are. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(10) Did people see that company that reproduces medieval manuscripts using the same materials? That was amazing! I couldn't believe they actually let us flip through their books, which were really creative masterpieces even if they were copies. Must cost a fortune, though. I didn't even ask.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(11) My business card which was a rushed job on ugly paper last night while I was recovering from a sore throat was so bad that people loved it. Someone said, "I think I would end up paying an ad company $200 to come up with this." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(12) If you are going tomorrow, bring a sweater. The exhibition floor is freezing.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-76597231317395711162011-03-30T14:59:00.004-04:002011-04-01T12:19:57.163-04:00Retirement Post<span style="font-family:georgia;">A number of people have emailed me to ask me where I've been, which I think is really sweet, especially when they implied something might have happened to me. The truth is the more obvious: I've been really busy. I have two novels coming out over the next 4 months, both of which had major revisions recently, and I'm working on a proposal for a non-fiction book. I also got another job (two wasn't enough) with another agent, and now have two part-time bosses on top of my writing career. I am proud to say that in the years since founding this blog, I've gone from unpublished writer to someone who supports herself mostly by her writing, albeit not very well. There are only so many words in me a day, and since most of the questions I've gotten are repeats, I don't feel the desperate need to post constantly, or at all. So I'm going into a state of semi-retirement. I'll keep this blog open, as your question has probably been answered already, and I may post from time to time, but otherwise, don't expect a lot from me.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">I will answer a final question which I get constantly:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >"How do publishers feel about eBooks?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">I may not be a publisher except for a small press I ran for two years, but I also work for two agents, have an agent, have worked with three different publishers, and attend conferences on eBooks, so I think I can safely answer the question.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Ready? The answer is: </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >We don't know</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The eBook market (and thanks to adjacency, the self-publishing market) is a constantly-evolving new market based on technology and social media which did not previous exist. It's one where the store, not the publisher, determines the retail price that's listed on the back of a real book. Stores are experimenting with how to price and promote books, publishers are demanding higher prices and percentages and getting ignored, and authors and agents are depending the same from their publishers and similarly getting ignored, because no one knows how it's going to pan out, just that at the moment money is being made and it is going disproportionately to the retailer. Except when the retailer sells at a loss, of course, to undercut other retailers, which Amazon constantly does to make sure people buy the Kindle and not the Nook or the Sony eReader. This is why I have about 200 books on my Kindle and have paid for two of them, and one of them was .99c.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">What we do know is it does not spell the end of print publishing. I have a Kindle, but I do most of my reading on Shabbos, when I can't use electronics, so it's not as helpful as it could be. I also buy a lot of academic books (which are usually not tremendously marked down in their Kindle version if it's even available) on the used market, where things are tremendously cheaper, or at Salvation Army and other shrift shops, where books are like a dollar. So my buying habits have not changed tremendously as a result of owning a Kindle, but this is not true for a lot of Kindle readers.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">What does the future hold for publishing? Self-published authors insist they are the future, and that the big houses will be crushed under the weight of the awesomeness that is their 400,000 word fantasy novel that's the 1st in a trilogy that was rejected last year. I can't imagine this is so. The publishing industry provides an essential service to the book industry: it separates the wheat from the chaff, finds good material, pays authors for it, then edits it and produces it in a neat little package for the consumer. Doing this without the help of the publishing industry is actually tremendously time consuming and generally difficult. Sure, sometimes publishers miss big hits (especially since they're currently so unwilling to buy anything), but most times when they reject something, there's a good reason for it. The same goes for agents. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">For all of the doom and gloom, what we're in is a transition period without a clear end in sight, but things will eventually pan out. The industry will look different, and the way money flows will change, but it will be an industry that is at times marginally profitable. The good news is that more people are reading more books, as anyone who drops down enough money for an eReader will tell you. Making books more available at lower prices to people who've dedicated themselves to reading more by plunking down hard-earned cash for a reader can only result in more people reading more in an increasingly literate society, and people will always seek to profit from that. I could imagine a point in the future where the agent/publisher has merged into one stop shop for aspiring authors as software makes it easier and easier to put a book together and promote it, but we're not there yet. Stop holding your breathe. Exhale, and let life resume its natural flow.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">And to all my readers, the aspiring authors, the published authors, and the industry insiders: So long, and thanks for all the support. But not the fish. I hate fish. Gross.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-44693954854060975892010-11-28T18:28:00.003-05:002010-11-28T18:31:39.879-05:00So You Want to Write a Novel<span style="font-family:georgia;">I can't believe I didn't write this myself.</span><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/c9fc-crEFDw?fs=1" width="425" frameborder="0" height="344"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">"How many editors do you think Random House will assign to my novel?"</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Minus 13."</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-77947038758925242212010-11-15T15:02:00.002-05:002010-11-15T15:08:14.506-05:00The Wait<span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Hello Rejecter,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">On average how long does it take for a publishing house to determine a book is to be published or rejected? I have one out to a publisher over a year and no response. I sent a follow up with an additional submission two months ago and still haven’t heard back. Any idea of an average time frame allotted?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let me give a more complete answer than just answering your question about publishers.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(1) Unsolicited manuscript to publisher - This is a long wait. Sometimes a year or more at the worst places. Publishers will post times on their website and then not keep to them, and may not respond at all. Check with the publisher - you can even call and ask how long the response time is, but don't bother them by pitching your novel on the phone. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(2) Unsolicited query to agent - If you're going to hear back at all, the time is 1-2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's by mail. Sometime it can be instantaneous with an e-query, if the agent's assistant is just sitting in front of the computer when it comes in. I only am in the office about once a week (thanks, economy!) so most of the queries get done whatever day I'm in, so some people get instant replies and some people have to wait a few days for e-queries. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(3) Unsolicited manuscript to an agent - Don't do this.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(4) Agent sends the manuscript to a publisher - One to two months. A good agent will pitch the book to a bunch of editors they know, see who's interested, then send the book in and give a "closing date." Then, knowing the industry, they'll bug the editor politely a bunch of times until the closing date, then continuing bugging and the replies will float in over the next few weeks. You're not involved in this part of the process, though a good agent will keep you posted.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-47723969866408280272010-11-01T12:24:00.002-04:002010-11-01T12:28:51.203-04:00Audio Books Follow-up<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">Why do publisher buy audio rights if they find it too expensive to actually have one produced? Wouldn't it be better to not buy the rights and leave it to someone who actually wants to create it, so they can also drive more people to buy the paper version?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">At the contract stage, the publisher might have a decent idea of how much they're going to put into the book (money and time-wise) and how it's going to do, but also they're secretly hoping they're wrong, and the book might become wildly successful - in which case, they're going to want those seemingly-irrelevant rights because they'll be worth a lot of money. This is why it's the publisher's job to hold on to as many rights as possible, and the agent's job to argue the same on your behalf.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-15885734025786644642010-10-27T14:25:00.004-04:002010-10-27T17:33:26.923-04:00Audio Books and Audio Rights<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Dear Rejecter,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >I found your blog via Nathan Bransford's and Eric of Pimp My Novel fame.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >As a yet un-published writer and an entrepeneur considering a small press venture, I found your blogs on money and royalties extremely useful.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Something I did not see addressed, however, was audio books. I have several friends who cannot or have difficulty reading - I myself prefer to listen to a book in the car on a long drive. Unfortunately, not every book published becomes an audio book so I have to assume that there exists audio book making companies and the rights to do produce these are sold separately.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Is this correct or am I making things up? Any information you could share about audio books 'from the inside' would be very much appreciated. I am just beginning my own research now, but your insight would be invaluable.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">When a book and a CD player love each other very much...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Seriously, this is how audio books happen: When you sell a book to a publisher, they will specify what rights they're buying, and the overwhelming majority of the time that will include audio rights, followed by a royalty percentage that's generally higher than royalties on book format. I'm sure they exist, but I've never seen a contract that didn't include audio rights.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">This means it's the publisher's responsibility to find a company that will produce the audio book, if they feel that it would be worth their investment - and for most mid-list authors, it won't be. For those that it will be, major publishers generally have an in-house production group responsible for it, while others might hire out. Someone will be in charge of setting it all up, especially if a celebrity needs to be hired to read it. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The author actually can't make the audio book themselves because they've sold off the right to do it to the publishing company, so if the publishing company decides, "Hey, not worth it," then they're probably right, and also no audio book for that particular book.</span> <span style="font-family:georgia;">If the small press didn't buy audio rights (which is weird, but OK), the author can hire a company to do it and distribute it, but it will be wicked expensive.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">When the Kindle first came out, it had a text-to-speech option, which was quickly disabled because it violated the copyright on audio rights held by publishers (Amazon was doing it without permission). Or maybe it was another e-Reader, but I'm pretty sure it was the Kindle.<br /><br />EDIT: The above paragraph is disputed in comments. Other people are probably right.<br /></span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-28348165308132373982010-09-28T20:23:00.002-04:002010-09-28T20:27:08.289-04:00We're On To You<span style="font-family: georgia; font-style: italic;">(Not posting much recently has been largely due to the Jewish holidays. Longtime readers probably guessed that)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">In your query letter, if you describe a novel with an obvious sci-fi premise, and then write, "But it's not science fiction!" you either don't know what science fiction is or you are deluded into thinking we're really, really dumb.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">And having "Book 1" in the title of your book - not the subtitle but the actual title - is pretty much an instant reject. Or, I've never seen a case where I didn't finish the query and immediately reject it. </span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-63629447993386078262010-08-31T21:53:00.002-04:002010-08-31T22:03:54.833-04:00Follow-Up on Writers Earning Money<span style="font-family: georgia;">I didn't think to include this in the last post, which is OK because it's needlessly complicated, but another way writers make money - sometimes, how they make most of their money - is in foreign rights.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Remember that when a publisher buys your book, they don't buy the physical book. They buy the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">right</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> to </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">copy</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> the material in the book and then resell it. Different companies will ask for different rights, and it's a good agent's job to negotiate what rights you give away in the initial offering and what rights you hold on to.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">For example, a publisher will ask for </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">world rights</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. These are, obviously, the rights to publish anywhere in the world in any language. The publisher has total control over your book. Agents don't like to give this away, or not unless the publisher actually has the ability to publish the book all over the world and is willing to pay a lot of money.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">The stage below that is generally considered to be </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">English-language rights</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. This means everything but translations, so you can still sell to foreign companies that intend to produce your book in another language. It's still a major rights grab, though.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">What an American agent would probably prefer you to sell is </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">North America & UK rights</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. In other words, the English-speaking and easily-shippable world (Australia and India, two big English markets, are far away). So they get the US, Mexico, Canada, and the UK, and possibly Ireland depending on some fine-tuning of the language.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why would you want to keep as many rights as you can? Because if you have a good agent,t hat agent will have contacts with foreign agents around the globe. If the book even moderately successful, the agent will then take the books to the other agents and say, "Shop this in your country." Hopefully, the foreign agent will succeed in selling it to a local press, and there will be another contract for you with another advance (meaning $$$). Then rinse, repeat.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">It is common practice in the publishing industry for agents to take a higher commission on foreign rights sold, say 25% instead of 15%, because they did more work and the foreign agent also has to get their cut. My boss, who does a lot of work in foreign rights, has probably 30 agencies she works with. I'm just guessing about that based on the amount of addresses I've had to write out on customs forms, some of which had characters I've otherwise never had to write (Thai is really hard). Some she hasn't spoken to in years, some she's in constant contact with, but they're all there, and if my boss is lucky she will sell the book an additional 5 times after the initial sale to a US publisher. And that means more money for her - and a lot more money for you.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-57690858506114549762010-08-20T16:24:00.003-04:002010-08-22T19:07:25.205-04:00How Much Does a Writer Make?<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >I have read through several years of your back posts and I have a quick question for you as an assistant agent with inside knowledge and also for you as a published author in your own right.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >You mentioned in a couple of your posts that it is common to see advances for new authors in the 5000-7000 range but I can't find any information about royalties. You do mention in an almost off handed way that each time you sell a book you receive about $1.12. What sort of annual income is typical for a author that publishes one book every other year. I think I could write a book a year if not more but I know the editing and everything else can drag out the process. I have no idea what typical sales for a book are. I understand that it is completely dependent on how well the book is received, I'm just looking for averages here.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Making money is complicated. Let me explain as best I can.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">(1) Advance. This is an advance on future royalties. It is usually lower than it should be. It used to be new authors would make at least $5000-$7000, now it could be lower than that. Publishers don't like to spend. Repeat authors in the same company will make more and more on each advance. Ten years ago, if you were an established fiction author, you would be making around 30K a book in advances, so if you produced a book a year, you were doing well. These numbers are generally not maintained for mid-list or anyone below mid-list.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Non-fiction is an entirely different story. There is a huge range in advances. Most I've seen are above $20K.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">(2) Royalties. The royalty rate for fiction is, at bottom level, 7.5% off LIST price, meaning the price they print on the back of the book, regardless of what the store sells it for. 7.5% is considered the bottom; more reputable places will give 8 or 10%. Then there's something called "escalation" where if your book has sold a certain number of copies (say, 20,000) the royalty rate will rise because at that point the publishers have earned back all the money they spent on producing the book and are willing to give you a little more. A nice escalation is to 20%, or in the case of a ton of books, 30%. Escalation rates vary hugely from company to company and also based on expectations of how much the book will sell. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">From what I've seen, e-book sales have their own rate (which should be higher, like 20%, but publishers are working to keep that down), or they're a higher rate off NET prices, which is a percentage of what the book is actually sold for and what the publisher gets back from the bookstore. Net royalties are usually in the 20-30% range, but I've seen them higher. We expect e-Books to move up and down in terms of royalties as publishers and e-Book sellers figure out what the hell is going on.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">(3) Payment of advance. Payment of advance occurs before the book sells any copies, though sometimes it's split up so the publisher can hold on to their money longer (publishers have a lot of tricks to do this). For a smaller press with a small advance, full payment can be upon signing, meaning a month after you sign the contract and it goes back to the publisher and it goes through accounting, then to your agent, then gets back to you. Some publishers split it to two dates: (1) Signing of the contract and (2) delivery of the completed manuscript to the publisher. Additionally, it can be split up as (1) signing, (2) delivery, and (3) publishing date. If you get a $500,000 advance, your publisher is going to pretty eager to split up payments, because it could be a year to a year and a half between signing the contract and publishing the book.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">(4) Payment of royalties. After you earn out your advance, you will see royalties based on how well your book is doing. If the advance is high, you may not see royalties for years and years and years or never see them at all. The publisher is still required to tell you what you've been selling (a royalty statement) during one of its pay periods. It used to be quarterly, but now some publishers have moved to fall and spring, meaning I'm paid my royalties in November and April. If the number is below a certain amount (say, $50), the publisher may hold onto it until it earns that amount. Publishers don't like writing $4.00 checks. If it's within the first 6 months of publication, the publisher may stipulate that they can hold back 50% of your earnings against returns of the books by stores, which will then subtract from your future earnings, and if there are no returns, they will release your earnings the following year. The following year, they can then take the amount they owed you the previous year that they held against returns and split THAT in half, and hold that half against more returns. In other words, if your book does well, publishers will perpetually owe you money because they will find ways not to pay you.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The only advice I can say when planning a writing career is: don't. I make most of my money from books, but I'm never sure when the next book will sell, the next contract will be signed, and for how much. I don't know my royalty earnings until I earn them. It's like having a job where sometimes you earn lots of money and sometimes you earn none, but most of the time you're lucky to earn just enough to say, "There's no reason to get a real job. I'm building my career." Or that's what I tell my parents.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com60tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-50521288949341126252010-08-04T23:22:00.004-04:002010-08-05T00:11:26.593-04:00Inside Agenting<span style="font-family:georgia;">One reason it's a good idea to belong to the AAR if you're an agent, aside from it being the ultimate stamp of legitimacy, is you get to go to AAR meetings. They're hit-or-miss, but there's usually drinks.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">The last couple have been either about e-Books or social media outlets for authors like Facebook, Foursquare, etc. They basically boil down to this:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Social Media Presenter:</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"> This program is totally awesome and unless your author is a complete shut-in, incapable of communicating with the outside world, they have to have it YESTERDAY. Let's look at some totally cool statistics about user traffic!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Agent:</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"> ... How does this translate into sales?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:georgia;" >Social Media Presenter:</span><span style="font-family:georgia;"> Funny you should ask that! I have no idea! But if your author doesn't do it it's definitely lost sales, right? So they should do it. They should spend way too much time on it, if anything. By the way, as an employee of this company or someone who's hired by authors to do this sort of thing for them, I have no stake whatsover in what I'm talking about!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Man, I have so many authors as friends on my author account on Facebook. They all make irrelevant posts and I tune them out. That's why I rarely post; I don't want to be tuned out. I don't really want to know about their cats or that they like the group "Reading" or that they just got out of a mental institution, which might be why they post "I AM THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR" roughly once every ten minutes, in caps, and sometimes with a long exposition. Dude, I am starting to not believe you are a legitimately published poet who has won many awards.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Authors: If you make a page specifically for your writing and author information, please stop posting meaningless crap I will instinctively tune out. Post about, I don't know, </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >your writing</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">. I must have some interest in it - I friended you. That or we're both on Farmville.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-49043162177812325642010-08-03T16:56:00.005-04:002012-06-20T14:20:44.097-04:00MA Degree Questions<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">Dear Rejecter,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;"> I have been writing novels since I was about seven. I literally think about it all the time. However, try as I might I have never been able to get beyond the 40,000 word mark before losing the plot and momentum of my story and deciding to start something else entirely. I'm a journalist on a big women's glossy in the UK so it's not getting the words down on paper that's the problem, it's rather getting my plot from A to B that stumps me. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">I'm currently looking into doing a part time MA in creative writing in the hope that following a structured course might help me complete a first draft, but it's a lot of money - over £6,000 for two years of study. The course I have in mind gives you the opportunity to showcase your work with literary agents towards the end of the two years. Which sounds great, but I'm unsure as to how much value the course itself would be. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">My first question is aimed at you as a published author yourself, the last two as an assistant to a Literary Agent:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">a) Do you believe there is any value in doing a qualification such as an MA in Creative Writing if you can already write but are struggling with plot?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">b) In your experience, how many published authors have completed these kinds of courses?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">c) How valuable would the contact with literary agents through the course be? Ie would they take you more seriously/ more likely to consider your novel?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia;">Things may be different in the UK, but here are my answers for the US:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia;">a) You get what you put into any creative writing course. Meaning, if you write a lot you'll probably get better. You could also do that without the course, but some people need structure and some people are convinced they need feedback. I got little to no useful feedback in my MFA prgram.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia;">b) Very few. Very to none, really. Unless they went on to teach. Then they needed the degree to do that, but preferably an MFA over an MA.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia;">c) Little to no value.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: georgia;">Also, $11000 (by my guesstimate of the exchange rate) for a two-year degree is insanely cheap by most American standards, unless you are earning a degree online, they are significantly more affordable.<br /><br />Note: I should clarify that if taking a course makes you go from a bad writer to an insanely good writer, it has tremendous value. I've never seen that happen, but that doesn't mean it hasn't.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-88405874069760919072010-07-27T21:51:00.003-04:002010-07-27T21:56:10.895-04:00Rejections!<span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Hello Rejecter,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">I just came across your blog today and found your honesty refreshing. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Speaking of honesty, I'm trying to decipher some agent rejection letters. They say many positive things about the story and writing followed by:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Agent 1: "After long consideration, though, I have to say I am just not enthusiastic enough to offer representation."</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Agent 2: "I'm afraid, however, that I simply didn't fall in love with the work as I would have to, to take on a new project. "</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Agent 3: "Unfortunately, however, I am being extremely careful about taking on new projects, and while I admired this a lot, I fear I didn't feel as enthusiastically about the manuscript as I need to in such a challenging marketplace.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Author friends tell me I should continue to contact agents but I'm wondering if the above replies are code for: "Give up now, you'll never get this book published."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Thoughts?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Flattered but Confused</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Unless the agent mentions specifics about your novel, there is no reason to believe it's anything but a form letter. If you get a reply letter that looks like it might have been photocopied 100 times, it's </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">definitely</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> a form letter.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rejections are really frustrating. I get them now, but mostly from publishing companies, and sometimes they are personalized (depending on how well the agent knows the editor) and sometimes they are not. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">A form letter means the following things:</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(1) Your book is bad.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(2) Your book is good, but not really good </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">enough</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(3) You submitted the book to an agency that doesn't handle that genre.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(4) Your book is too long or too short.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(5) Your book is thinly disguised </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">Twilight</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> fanfic. Hell, some people don't disguise it at all. They understand nothing of copyrights and we don't amazingly compelled to try to explain it to them.</span><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(6) The agent you queried is not taking new clients.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the most part, you're not going to know what it is (unless it's that </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">Twilight</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> fanfic thing). So send to every possible agent, and if they all reject you, take it as a sign that it's time to write a different book.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-84814739494307697812010-07-19T21:54:00.002-04:002010-07-19T22:04:14.806-04:00The Sky Is Falling (No It Isn't)<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">No doubt you're hearing about this from all quarters.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/kindle-sales-outpace-amazons-hardcover-book-sales.ars</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">Does that bring on any changes to your thoughts about ebooks? I'm sure hard covers haven't been a big seller for a long time now. This must be some kind of sign of sea change tho :)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">Have you read a novel on an iphone yet? (I quite enjoy reading in bed w/iphone - great after my wife is asleep. Easy to hold, and no light required :)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">I'm wondering if Agents will become Reviewers - if writers all become self publishers, Agents might be better at playing curator. And Amazon just rakes in the bucks.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">(tho' they've recently become more generous if I hear that right - reduced their cut to 30%)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'll answer your questions in order.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(1) Taking into account that Amazon is an internet (technology-based) bookstore with the largest share in the e-Book market, it's still slightly surprising. Not that surprising, though. Remember to take into account that most people who bothered to buy an expensive Kindle did so because they read a lot - more than the average person, and almost everyone with a Kindle I've spoken to has said the amount of books they buy has gone up considerably since buying the Kindle because it's so easy and cheap to buy. So that's skewing the statistics a little. But yeah, e-Books is a market growing by leaps and bounds while books ... are pretty much still books.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(2) I don't have an iPhone. I'm a writer. I'm poor. I have a much cheaper phone with a much smaller screen and I only read my email on it, and I totally hate reading my email on it. I also have a Sony e-Reader that I never use because I find the screen irritating.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(3) E-Book selling really well to everyone self-publishing is a </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">huge</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> leap. </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">Huge</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. I'm going to guess that most e-Books sold are still published by traditional companies, even if they're small companies. Yes, a lot more people are self-publishing, but it's not necessarily good. Traditional publishing works hard to only publish </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">good</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> books, and if they're not good, to at least edit them well. With very, very few exceptions, almost all of the self-published books we receive as submissions at work or I buy online are terrible in some fashion. It's actually getting frustrating with Amazon, which makes it so easy to not only self-publish but also to hide that you're self-publishing, because I'm running into more and more books that have poor layouts and copy-editing and then I look the company up, find out it's owned by the author, and say, "Oh, it was self-published. That explains it."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">(4) Amazon is probably trying to keep competitive with the other places to buy e-Books.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-54510687404472352222010-07-15T22:12:00.004-04:002010-07-15T22:17:03.683-04:00If You Have An Offer...<span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Question:</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >I'm in process of sending queries out both to agents and publishers (the few that still take unrepresented queries).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Let's say there is an offer on the table from a publisher, but I want an agent to handle it. I would imagine there would be some urgency about getting a deal sealed (of course, I have no idea, this is just how I dream it). I have heard that an author with a deal already in the works has a much better chance of getting an agent's attention. If that were to happen, would I still go through the regular query process? Just change my hook to "I have an offer from Insertnamehere publishing house"? Even so, would it be so sure of a thing (of course, provided that the agent represented similar work -- I do do my homework and don't just spam queries)?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >If you answer this question, great. If you don't, it's all good. It's sort of a random question and really, just me procrastinating from editing for a contest.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I got my agent this way. I had partials and fulls out when I got the offer from the publisher. Two situations here:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">(1) If you don't have anything currently sitting at an agency, including a query, query them by email or mail but put that offer information </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:georgia;" >at the top</span><span style="font-family:georgia;">. Include your phone number and email.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">(2) If you have things at agencies, even queries, email or call (seriously, call) the agencies and tell them, "Hey, you're looking at something. There's an offer on the table. Here's my number." Then wait for the calls. Most of them will not have read your query/partial/full and beg for 24-48 hours to read it before getting back to you. Enjoy the attention while you can, because it's rare in publishing.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-82160462672055721272010-07-01T19:11:00.002-04:002010-07-01T19:14:17.126-04:00For Your Information, Again<span style="font-family: georgia;">If you've self-published several terrible books in what's probably a mystery/adventure/YA series, complete with your self-drawn cover, it's really only necessary to send </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">one</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> unsolicited book with your query, not all 3 plus some soundtracks you've composed. Be assured that if our socks were knocked off by the first poorly-edited book with its hilariously bad cover art, we would request the rest. Until then, save on postage.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'm always in favor of people saving on postage, and yet ...</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-2457686306875641762010-06-29T15:18:00.002-04:002010-06-29T15:23:25.748-04:00Money for Reviews<span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Dear Rejecter,</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Having recently completed my YA novel and believing it to be original, inventive, yadda yadda, I'll be sending my query letters out to potential agents soon. My question to you is: We Book's Page to Fame, good idea or not?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">https://www.webook.com/poll/raters.aspx</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">The premise: for $9.95 a writer puts up the first page of their novel. It's then anonymously rated by other writers participating in the program. If the page is rated highly enough, it passes to the next level where the next few pages are put up and rated, and so on. At each level, the novel page or pages will be rated by at least one literary agent, and, if the novel "wins," the writer will receive exposure, potential offers of representation and whatever other good things may follow.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Good idea or not?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">In general, I am against authors spending money. Aside from that whole "money flows to the author" principle, we live in an age where pretty much everything that a potential author could possibly want is online and free. Sure, if you want to develop your craft, it might not be a bad idea to take a course or buy a book on craft that's well-reviewed, and a grammar book wouldn't hurt, but really, save your money. Even if you get published, the money won't be rolling in anyway. $9.95 will probably cover all of the stamps for your queries and SASEs and partials if the agencies don't accept email queries, but especially when you send a requested manuscript.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">As to the program itself, I've never heard of it, so that may say something about the exposure you'll be getting. Agents don't regularly kill time on the web looking at the work of unpublished authors. As for feedback, is it from </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: georgia;">other</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> unpublished authors? How good is that, anyway?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">If anyone knows more about the program, post it in the comments.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-65614459424117708632010-06-27T01:18:00.003-04:002010-06-27T01:24:11.892-04:00Revising Your Word Count<span style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic;">What if you rejected for no other reason than a too-low 50k word count?(though -oops-the author-doesn't know for sure it was this, God forbid an agent give feedback) would a revised 70k get the auto-dump as well?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">There's a short answer to this, but I felt it deserved some discussion anyway.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">At my agency, 50K will make me suspicious but I will not immediately throw it out, even though maybe I should. It depends on the genre; my boss is a little looser about word count. I know of at least two other agencies that absolutely would throw out a 50K novel, so maybe it's not a great thing to be pitching.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">On the other hand, padding your novel doesn't make it good. It probably makes it bad (or worse).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">There was a case a few weeks ago where someone sent in a query saying she had revised her novel to our specifications and now would we please look at it? As best as we can figure, she had originally sent a query (a partial or full we would have remembered) that one of us rejected, but written "too short" on the side or as a PS. Some agencies do this sometimes, if the writer needs a leg up, but in this case it came to bite us in the tuchus, which it usually does. She assumed this wasn't the only problem with the novel and spent a ton of time revising it, then resent the query. Rejected again - it was still a bad novel idea. I guess our (I don't know if my boss or I did it) helpfulness was misleading, making her think she had a chance if she added 20K of blather, or simply lied about the word count and hoped we really, really loved the partial. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">I really hope, as a person, that she hadn't pinned her hopes on us. As I writer, I know she probably did. </span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35623128.post-78443034491856439672010-06-20T20:29:00.001-04:002010-06-20T20:50:07.007-04:00For Your Information<span style="font-family: georgia;">My boss requested I make the following post:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you send a query, don't send the same (or similar) one three months later. We will totally know you did it and just reject you again. My boss is sick of them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thank you.</span>The Rejecterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09087643296072075641noreply@blogger.com16