Questions, Some About Historical Fiction and Dating

I wrote a mystery novel over a decade ago. Had a top agent send it a few places and then give up. I put it aside for a long time and now want to polish it and start querying agents.

I know that people write books about long ago (World War II, the Victorian era, Adam & Eve) but would having a story take place not all that long ago be a deterrent? I mean with scenes where a reader might say "Why didn't he just Google it?" or "Where's his cell phone?" Because a few things about the novel might make it a bit difficult to bring into the 21st century.

Unless, of course, I have to. But the presence of beepers and the novelty of personal computers do play roles in the story. I know that John MacDonald's Travis McGee novels are still on shelves, but people who buy them understand they were written 20 or 30 years ago...

So, if your setting is not contemporary (meaning set about now, i.e. when then novel is published), it's arguably historical fiction. In this case it's a historical mystery, like Ellis Peters wrote, just more by happenstance than by intent. Query away. Don't mention that you wrote it twenty years ago.

i could use an honest opinion: received rejection letter from literary magazine. is this (below) a form letter or at all made-it-past-the-slush-pile personalized?

>
> Dear [my name]:
>
> Thank you for sending us "story title". We really enjoyed this piece, but we didn't feel it was right for [literary magazine].
>
> We hope that you will continue to send us your work.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> The Editors of [literary magazine]

Formalized, though that doesn't tell you how far it got, especially for a literary magazine. Some people still do the formal one even if it was in the final running.

My current WIP is set roughly twenty years ago, and I've been told that this time frame could be problematic when I start shopping the MS. Twenty years isn't far enough in the past to be considered historical, but is much too far back to be contemporary.

The story isn't necessarily tied to that time frame by a major event such as war or disaster, and I originally started writing in the vague and general "present day." But I found the story just seemed to work better when set at the start of the '90s - possibly because that's when I went through experiences similar to those of my characters. So what do you think? Is a story set in the recent past at an automatic disadvantage?

So I'm currently struggling with this, too. I wrote a novel two years ago that was set in 1996 because it follows some historical events that happened in 1996. Various people who read it said that the connections to 1996 were kind of irrelevant and distracting, and I should set it in "now" and make it a generic president and just have the events be the events. However, because of the rate of advancement of technology, the story is definitely dated by 12 years. Only one character has a cellphone, and it almost never has reception and the battery runs out quickly. People have the internet but the way we did in 1996, i.e. they're not using it for communications in a time of major crisis, they're using pay phones and landlines and television. Really it would be a major set of revisions for me, but recently my agent has decided the manuscript is worthwhile in terms of trying to sell it to a publishing house, so she might ask me to go and do that. I'm not looking forward to it, but if it makes the story better, it'll be worth it.

The difference between "historical" and "dated" is a very fine line. If there's no reason for the events to be set in the past, they probably shouldn't be, but changing them is always a pain. On the other hand, if you're brushing off an old piece of work, brush it off properly.

One of the problems is that as we slowly approach the Singularity, technology advances at a rate where an ordinary story can become "dated" by a single reference to any piece of technology. We're willing to give some leeway, but not a lot. If it's set in "now," it should be current when you submit it. If it's loaded with pop-culture references, expect a short shelf-life.

Back-up - I'm up to Christmas Emails!

I have a question for you about writing credits...you said in a previous post to not include writing credits unless they're for something substantial, like a short story published in a reputable magazine. For a while, I've been trying to revise my short stories so that they're ready for publishing, so that I can include the writing credits in a query letter. Honestly, it would be nice to have a short story published, but my passion truly lies with novel writing, so I'd be doing it more as a means to an end. And I also wonder if some of the reputable magazines are looking for writing credits as well, which I of course don't have.

So my question is this: should I even bother getting a short story published, if my main motivation is to have writing credits? Or should I focus more on writing a query letter an agent would have a hard time passing up?

Absolutely focus on writing the query. Even great writing credits will not get you past me if the novel doesn't sound very good, and I'll put it in the maybe pile if it sounds great and has no credits.

For those of us who don’t live in NY or LA and are not in a position to leave a paid job and spend a year doing free labor at a literary agency, can you recommend any way to learn to business of literary agency? Are there no classes, workshops, books, events, external internships….?

If you want to become an agent (which is the reason to learn the business), you basically have to live in NY or LA, or work for an agent who lives in your area for a long time. If you want to learn about publishing in general, there are plenty of on-line, low-residency, and normal graduate-level courses available at universities across the country.

Whatever would I do without you to answer my most burning questions? Here's a new one: I've queried widely regarding my first manuscript for the past few months, gotten a few partial requests and a couple of fulls, too. However, I haven't landed an agent yet. So, in those few months I was querying the first manuscript, I've had a chance to write and polish an entirely new project. I feel much more confident about this one and can't wait to start sending some queries out to see what will happen. My question is, how long should I wait between querying an agent about the first project before sending a query for this new project? It has been a couple of months, but I wasn't sure if that was long enough. Then again, I hate to sit and cool my heels when I feel that this one is polished and ready to go. What's your expert advice?

For an entirely new project? I would wait about a week between submissions. Usually after a week or so we've forgotten your name, if that would even make a difference to us, which it probably wouldn't. We only care about what you're currently submitting.

More from the Backup

About three months ago, an agent's assistant instructed me to send my full in response to a query. I learned that recently the assistant sent emails out to two people whose fulls had been requested after mine. One was a pass, the other was an update letting the writer know the full was still under consideration.

My question is this: What are the possible reasons an agent/assistant gets to manuscripts out of the order in which they were received? I am going nuts because I don't know if this means I should be worried, or request an update, etc.. It's not the time frame that concerns me...I expect to wait. But would you care to speculate about this?

There usually is not an order that we do things in with the mail pile. It's just the pile and we do it. As for fulls, we respond to those (in the rare cases where the agent doesn't respond themselves) basically in the order/priority the agent wants to do it in, which is usually dependent upon their schedule and interest level and a lot of other factors that have nothing to do with the manuscript itself. Agents are only human.

The following questions are all from the same person:

Do query letters work? From your blog comments I have gained new doubts, my previous belief was that you needed to get to someone on the right day, in the right moment, while they're in the right mood, with an interest in exactly what they're thinking about and have them misread what you've written in a favorable way to get any response... besides a rejection slip. Now, you make it sound more implausible for a query to work.

I would say a majority of my boss's current clients were people sending in normal query letters. The rest were query letters with strong referrals from someone my boss knew. So your answer is: yes.

What should a query letter really say to you? I have the books (bought used from half.c--) but you dismiss them. Of course, you probably realize that I'm operating under the delusion that my books are great and if you only heard what they were about you'd love them too.

It should tell me what your book is about and make it sound interesting.

The rule is to only query with a finished work - of fiction - right? I mean, while I spend a year polishing something to where I think it's finished I'm also writing another two or three stories that won't be finished anytime soon. These don't count to you, I know, unless I was established... so a shelf load of stories means what... anything?

Never send in anything that is not complete. Auto-reject.

Are novel posting sites actually of any interest to your profession? I posted a finished novel (I'm not sure about trying to market it as it strikes me as bland, though some friends actually reacted to what was in it... in a positive way) and a work in progress in the belief that those of us on this site would comment, discuss and offer advice about each others work... me, looking for the best in others. Anyway, they also make the claim that agents (they gave a list) peruse this site. Maybe they do if they want a snigger, most of what I read on the site (NovelMaker.c--) was incredible... I was making comments to one book (unfinished) so much that (POSSIBLY) I can no longer make comments to the site... hopefully it's a glitch, I'd hate to think it was personal. Of course, thinking about it, maybe that's what you go through constantly... dealing with so many obvious mistakes or yuck that you can't believe someone would try to pass it off as literature.

I spend absolutely no time on the internet whatsover looking at websites of writers who post their novels, and I spend a LOT of time on the internet. It is a way to workshop, but it is not a way to get found.

IF I aquired an agent through some arcane means (totally legal) would said agent be interested in looking through my shelf (list) of stories to give advice... you know, polish this one, finish this one, shelf this one far in the back... that kind of thing? Or is that always up to me?

Generally yes, but not until after the sale of the initial piece.

In my post on your blog I wondered about serial erotica... is there such a thing? It's not something I've yet investigated but I thought you might have a clue... do magazines, online outlets, or something I'm unfamiliar with do stuff like that. I mean, I started it as a character development exercise and it's still growing... I read it and there are parts that keep me inspired about my writing. The way it's going, though, it may devolve into a murder mystery or occult apocalyptic sci fi tale with just enough gratuitous sex to keep it erotica...

There are erotica magazines that I believe do post serial stories. I can't name them off the top of my head. However if you're chiefly writing sci-fi and it just has a lot of sex, it's not erotica. It depends if the central focus is the sex or the sci-fi.

I am actively marketing a sci fi novel, with 2.75 sequels... currently it's at Baen as that is the last publisher to accept unsolicited manuscripts of this genre... at least that I know of... anyway, I say this to let you know I am trying.

Tor also accepts unsoliticed queries. As does DAW. And I would work on not using so many ...s in your sentences.

Twenty-Something Writers

Hello Rejecter,

So tell me, what's it like being a young person in a field where it seems no one is under the age of thirty-five?

By "no one" I mean authors, of course. Aside from that Harvard student who plagiarized her novel and ended up being dropped by her publisher, I haven't heard of any other cases of young adults in America writing books.

Do you think there is a bias against young people? Are publishers or agents particularly worried about things like plagiarism -- especially after the incident I described above? Do you feel that your age was a factor (be it positive or negative) in your own path to publication?

I'm still young and delusional enough to think that my novel is going to sell and do very well. However the only case I can find of someone under the age of twenty-five who had a big hit was Brett Easton Ellis w/ "Less Than Zero" and later "American Psycho."

When I'm published I will be twenty-seven by only a few days. For the record. I wrote it when I was twenty-five.

In an earlier post I discussed writers in high school and gave some controversial advice about them submitting their writing. I didn't say that they shouldn't write - they should - but they're probably not going to have much success in publication and it's probably for the best.

This advice does not apply when people enter adulthood, which is a different age for everyone, but seems to happen between the ages of 18 and 25. When people become an adult they start writing like one (hopefully), and YA even takes some serious sophistication in thought. So why don't see you see more twenty-something writers?

(1) Generally people are not published on the first novel they write. The industry lore is that it's the third book you submit for publication that is the one that gets published. For me it was true, though I would say that was the ... I don't know, 10th manuscript I'd written. Something like that. And this is not including any writing I did in junior high or high school. Except for the occasional literary genius, writing a novel is a bit like driving: it takes some hours behind the wheel before you're good enough for a license.

(2) Many young authors are published, but in the form of short stories. There's probably two main reasons for this. One, a short story simply isn't as long, so you can get more practice in less time, though I could easily argue that a ten-page short story is as hard to perfect as a full-length novel. Two, most writing workshops (especially at the college and graduate level) are geared towards short stories, so that's what people are going to be encouraged to write.

(3) Many novelists do not report their age on the back cover. You usually have to go look it up somewhere, if it is to be found at all. Just because they haven't announced that they're twenty doesn't mean that they aren't.

More Questions from the Email Back-up

Of the queries I’ve sent out, 2 agents requested the full MS and one recently asked for a partial. My question: What is a reasonable or accepted length of time to wait before asking for feedback?

For a full or a partial, it's fair to give them an email after 3 months.

Do agents get turned off if they get queries from other countries? I live in Brazil and I'll be seeking representation at some point. I did live in the US for five years and came back a year ago to Brazil, so I do speak English fluently.

No. In fact, my boss particularly likes foreign writers, because she does a lot of work in foreign rights, and she's very interested in the international situation. In general, agents don't care where the manuscript came from so long as it's written in English.

I read somewhere that a huge novel like Shogun wouldn't even get published today, which I have a hard time believing. Do you think that's true?

No. In general, we give historical fiction and sweeping epics a much larger acceptable word count than we do with a mystery or click-lit, just as historical movies tend to be longer in running time than romantic comedies. It's mainly about the public and their attention span, which is tuned to certain expectations of time/length and it's our business to know them.

In general, it's not wise to go over 200,000 words on your first novel. That's really quite long and it would take us a massive effort to consider it, accept it, edit it, and sell it to a publisher. Then again, there are always exceptions to the rule.

Knocking off questions...

I've got a lot of questions to go through from the backup at my Yahoo account. Here we go!

Hello! I'm curious about P.O.D books, such as from iUniverse or Lulu. If a book does well, are agents usually interested in considering the book for representation in order to submit it to large publishing houses? Best regards.

As POD technology becomes better and easy and cheaper, more people head straight to self-publishing and then submit their manuscript to us, so we see it all the time. Sometimes they send us the whole book.

In general, unless your book has sold over 3000 copies (which means you didn't sell them all to family and friends or by hand at conventions), it doesn't mean much to us that it was previously published. We will review it like we review any other submission - as potential new material to be weighed on its own merit.

Hello Rejecter,
If you could represent a book today that would be your dream-come-true novel, a book that you knew would go to bid with so much excitement that a large print order was initiated, a book that would be sought after by reviewers and written by an author, who was saavy about the promotional end of the business, committed to a writing life; an author who would promote his or her work extensively while working on several additional novels what would that book be? A James Patterson novel? Nicholas Sparks? Jodi Picoult? Or does it no longer exist today in a culture with so many diverse forms of media?

First let me clarify that I'm just an assistant, and don't represent anything myself. I'm not sure what your question is because of how it's worded, but I'm fairly sure that the answer is your guess at the end.

Recently I began a blog about being a waiter, and because I write fiction, I also posted stories on the blog from time to time. I thought it might be a great idea to start a blog that serializes a novel I've written but never worked on getting published. Several readers of my blog advised that if I posted the whole novel, it would be near impossible to then get it traditionally published. Is this true and if so why? I have since published it to a password protected blog that only a handful of people can access. Do I still run the risk of hurting my chances of publication by posting it in this way?

Not really. Chances are no one is going to steal your unpublished novel. Many writers are nervous about this, and go through the trouble of registering the manuscript at the copyright office (which under the new copyright laws, you don't even have to do) and including the form indicating it's registered with their submission, just in case we were thinking of stealing it and publishing it ourselves. Novels are not worth anything until they're published, and it's very difficult to get published. I would not lose any sleep over having your novel on the internet prior to signing a contract with a publishing company. After you sign, if they've bought the digital rights, you have to take it down.

My agent just informed me that he would start querying editors about my novel, but that most wouldn't be looking at new work until the start of the new year. Do you find that's true, too? Also, what kind of query do agents send? Does it include the whole ms... or is it the same as a writer would send an agent? My agent is a junior agent at a small firm and has made just a few non-fiction sales so far. Mine would be his first fiction sale.

(Obviously this question came in a while ago, when I was not getting my mail delivered) First of all, it's fairly standard to not submit new things in December. (The email is dated December 8th) The first three weeks of December are generally spent trying to finish up everything that needs to get finished up before the end of the year, for tax or press deadline purposes. The last week is vacation. Your agent is wise to wait.

As to your second question, it varies from agency to agency, but everyone has their own style of submitting and sometimes will not submit the same way to different editors. Good agents know editors personally, so they go out to lunch and the agent talks up this new manuscript they've got, and the editor says, "Send it over and I'll take a look." Or sometimes agents simply mail out the manuscript to as many editors as they know who they know are looking for your sort of novel, hoping for at least a few hits. It depends on the agent, their connections, and their style. The only thing that matters for you is if they make a sale and for how much money.

My email address died ... three months ago

Normally my Rejector account forwards to my main account so that I don't have to log in to two accounts. I woke up thinking today, "Gee, it's been a long time since I got email as the Rejector," and individually logged into that account, only to discover - to my horror -that there were 669 messages for me.

Apparently Yahoo!Plus didn't auto-renew the forwarding at the end of the year, i.e. late October. So you may get a really, really, really delayed response to your email. Sorry.

Salt, Granulated

Every once in a while I do a search for people who mention this blog, to see if I'm being praised or criticized, or if there's an issue I want to address. Every single time, the same few websites pop up that take a stance against something I said, either because it was wrong or because they have a different opinion. With all the scammers out there on the internet, trying to make a buck off unpublished writers, people tend to stay away from anything they hear something bad about.

Let me establish right now: I don't know everything. Nobody knows everything, certainly not about book publishing, which is a confusing enough industry as it is. Anyone who tells you they know everything is full of shit.

In fact, there's little I can say other than anecdotal tangents that could not be argued against. If you're reading this blog trying to get an opinion of the industry, don't only read this blog. Read other agent blogs, editor blogs, and blogs of published writers. When you see a consensus, it's probably true.

These things, however, in the specific area of literary agency submissions, are facts:

(1) You should always include a SASE unless the agent says to do otherwise.

(2) If you have an email address, include it in your query letter in case your SASE gets lost, never made it into your envelope, gets destroyed by the postal service, or is sealed by moisture because your mail was delivered in the rain. We would prefer to have some way of contacting you that isn't the phone. In fact, we need it.

(3) At some point in your query letter, you should mention your manuscript and tell us what it is about.

Everything else is opinion. Maybe it's a well-formed opinion based on experience, but it's still an opinion. Most of the time.

Short Stories as First Chapters

Two PSAs:
- If you want me to answer your question and you're fairly sure it hasn't been answered in archives, email it instead of putting it in the comments, as I'm less likely to miss it.

- This is off-topic, but if you live in New York City and you get in a cab with a TV screen, shut off the volume. It's an inaccurate weather forecast and local fluff news anyway, and they only do three or four editions of it in a 24-hour period, so the cabby has probably heard it 10 times before you got in. I asked a cabbie today and yes, it's driving him mad. Do cabby a favor and talk on your cell phone instead. At least that's new material.

So, I have a book finished, and the first chapter would make a great short story. If I submit it to you, should I tell you that I'm also shopping around the first chapter, or should I hold off until you've had a chance to look at it?

So while it is kind of neat to have had the first chapter published as a short story and it builds your writing resume, there are legal issues here. When the magazine purchases your story for print, they buy the copyright for a stipulated period, usually a year. That means that we can't sell your novel if it contains the short story to a publishing house without some difficulty because there's a copyright on part of the novel and you'll have to wait for the contract to expire and the rights to publish the short story/chapter to revert back to you.

It is possible to get the first chapter published as a short story when the novel is sold and coming out; some people do this for publicity reasons, but the publishing company is involved or at least aware of it and not bothered by it. So I would say: Don't shop the short story and the novel at the same time at all, much less mention it to an agent.

Kindle: The Update

So yesterday I made a fool of myself, but so did most of the other people in the room, so I feel justified.

I attended an AAR panel, similar to the one in November, except this one was from non-traditional publishers and other technology companies. Google Books was there (not all of it, just a guy), playwright company was there, some people in audio books, and a representative of for the Kindle devision of Amazon.

Now keep in mind that most people have not seen the Kindle. It's only available online, and Amazon doesn't have stores to host demos. I had not seen it, nor had most of the agents in the room, so of course we all swarmed this guy with questions about it as we made an all-out mob trying to get a chance to hold it in our hands while the cash bar was still open.

The big seller of eBooks (versus my cheaper tablet PC) is their eInk technology. It uses a different screen than an LCD screen. It has no back light and it's much easier on the eyes. I asked the Amazon representative if eInk could be ported to a normal computer, and he said it was hardware, not software - hence, the pricetag, because you need to buy the device (or another e-Reader like the Sony or the iLiad) to have the technology.

I was wrong about a few things. Technically, you do have unlimited storage, if you buy memory cards. He gave the example of a customer who'd already bought 500 books on his Kindle. He did not address customer concerns (like out-of-range wireless issues, or the cost of Kindle books, though I admit I think their prices are not outrageous compared to what they could be). Nonetheless, like any piece of technology, we wanted to hold it, play with it, see how it worked. Our collective inner-geek emerged.

Five minutes later, I calmed down and my opinion on the advise is only slightly raised. It's still too expensive and too reliant on wireless. No, it will not replace books (he didn't think that, either). Does the eInk technology have potential? Yes. Could I see myself buying one if the price were much lower and the technology a bit more advanced? Yes. But for that moment, I wanted one.

This is why I don't go to tech demos very often.

E-Readers, Part Deux

So I decided to put my money where my mouth is and get some kind of e-Reader before going on vacation. I started scoping them out, and wasn't particularly impressed.

The Kindle ($400) - holds 40 books, but only in Amazon's Kindle format unless you hack it. Connects to some internet but not in remote areas. Black-and-white monitor. 10 ounces. About 1-3 gigs of storage.

The Sony E-Reader ($300) - holds 160 books. Reads more formats. No wireless. Black-and-white monitor. 9 ounces. Can hold up to 10 gigs of storage with extra devices.

iLiad ($700) - from iRex Technologies. Don't know about books but reads tons of forms and has unlimited memory, so I'm assuming, a lot. Wireless WiFi active. Black-and-white monitor (more shades than other two). 13 ounces. 158 MB memory, but has USB port, so unlimited memory with flash cards.

So I got to thinking - why the hell am I shelling out hundreds of dollars for a machine that can do less than my iPod? And I mean much less. The iPod has an LCD computer screen with full color, 20 gigs of hard drive space, and can play movies. The technology exists to create an e-Reader that can hold most of the world's literature and have a color screen the size of any of their screens, so why the hell isn't anyone making one?

I decided instead to buy a refurbished Fujitsu Tablet PC, which cost me $160 (after shipping). And it's a freakin' computer. It has a full-color screen the size of of any of the e-Reader screens, it has 6 gigs of memory and a USB flash drive (which means it has unlimited memory, especially when you buy one of those 16 gig flash drives). It runs Windows 2000. It plays movies and reads every type of file that a book would be in. It connects to the internet and you can even remove the wireless card and replace it with a better one. I installed Microsoft Office and a video player so I could watch movies stored on my flash drive and do some writing. The only downside is its weight (2.5 pounds), but I think it was worth it to go on vacation with 1653 books. Most were downloaded public domain freebies from Google Books or current books I got through file sharing.

And in the end? ...Uh, I didn't use it. Well I did, to be honest, but to watch episodes of Family Guy I'd downloaded. Nothing against the machine, but I brought along a few real books, and my hand just went straight for them instead. If I'd been there longer and run out of things to read, it would have been a different story, and on the machine would have went.

Also, it's good for referencing things. The end result is that I'm happy with it even if I rarely used it for book files because just carrying a library around is cool, but I would never buy a standard official "e-Reader" - not until they start being honest and sell the ones they produce now for what they're worth, which I'd say, technology-wise, is under $40.

Blog Powers Activate!

The blog is comment-enabled again, as I am back. Comments about my dad being part of a corrupt system will be deleted. Turns out he had to go; he has to have 50 hours of meeting credits a year because the government feels that doctors need continuing education about new treatments. He paid for everything but his own flight. Oh, and this dinner, but it wasn't very good.

Comments on the e-Book experience later.

Friendly Skies and Skin Cancer

Since apparently you can only learn about skin cancer in a place where you're most likely to get it, my dad has a dermatology meeting in St. Thomas. I once asked my dad if there's direct connection between his not paying for his hotel stay while doing a drug study and the fact that my Zofran costs $39 a pill, and he said "Absolutely not" with a straight face. He's not lying; he's just delusional.

The rest of the family does have to pay, but the point of this little ramble is that I'm going to be away from now until Sunday, so I'm turning off the comments because I won't be around to approve them. When I get back we can discuss my test drive of my e-Reader (actually a refurbished Fujitsu tablet PC). Cheers!

The Deal with Deals for a Series

Anyone who uses a tiny envelope as an SASE for a normal-sized query letter already has a mark against them when I open up their query. It's not fair, but I'm declaring it. I hate stationary envelopes. Hate them, hate them, hate them. Anyway...

Did you sell the series as as series? Or did you sell the first one as a standalone, with hopes that it would sell well enough to get the subsequent volumes picked up as well? I keep reading conflicting advice about whether to tell an agent that your book is the first of a series or not.

I sold it as a stand-alone first book even though both editor and agent knew very well I had a series that was mostly written. Remember that this was a case where the editor made the offer first (she took unsolicited submissions) and then I got myself an agent. She discussed (briefly) a multi-book deal but dropped the subject when I said I had an agent, knowing that the agent probably wouldn't go for it.

First of all, once you have an agent, tell them everything. Well, not what you had for breakfast, or what you think of their new skirt, but the point is, holding back from your agent will only hurt you, not help you.

Second, multi-book deals are a complicated thing and they're pretty rare except in certain genres, or if the author is already fairly established. That's probably why I've never personally seen the contract for one. Also, there has to be serious money on the table for a multi-book deal to happen, because if the first book takes off, you've just lost possible high advances for the rest of the books. It also doesn't guarantee that the publishing house won't drag its heels on publishing the books, especially if the first one doesn't do well, or break the contract altogether.

Further complicating it is if it's a series or not. Some well-known authors (well-known in that they sell a lot of books) get deals where they promise to write a few books in a certain genre for a certain amount of money over a certain period of time. The books are usually only connected by genre. Then there's books that are actually a series, meaning one follows the other, with the ultimate intention (most of the time) of ending. Publishers like series a lot because each time a new book comes out, there's be some buying up by new fans of the older books, and they make a considerable portion of their money from their backlist. On the other hand, they're slow to commit to the first one, especially if it doesn't stand-alone (meaning, it requires the other books for the series to end, so they have to buy the whole trilogy and whatnot). They're trying to forecast the market and not lose money, like any company that wants to stay in business, but any browsing through the sci-fi/fantasy section will tell you that publishers love series for that genre. (Romance and thriller, not so much. Certainly not thriller, but sometimes you can get a "series" of romances that are different characters but the same setting)

backlist - earlier books that are still in print because they're still selling. Backlist books are more likely to have earned back their advance and are now just making more money each printing, as all of the work (except for printing the books and shipping them) is done.

frontlist - books currently being published and promoted by the company.

The Authorial Slump

Have you ever taken on a writer that had a great first novel but went down hill from there? I'm only curious because I keep reading most authors never sell their first work because they get better at the craft the more they work. I'm just curious if you have ever come across the opposite of that. Thank you for doing this. It's a huge help.

Let me clarify as to how I understood your comment: The author has a first book, but the second tanks, is hard to sell, or we can't sell at all.

We see this all the time with fiction authors. It occurs in film as well, where it's called the "sophomore slump." Directors have been planning a film their whole lives, they make it, it works, and then they have to come up with a film in a much shorter span of time and they don't have it in them.

In fiction it's not always a question of time (since we can't make our authors writer) but ideas. Some people only have one good book in them. It's not a bad thing - most people have no good books in them. They had an idea, a story they wanted to tell (similar to their own or their own with some window dressings) and they told it. Now what?

Generally the author will get a second chance and make it to the third book, unless the second is really terrible. The second-book clause will kick in, and the publishing company will think the second book is worth a chance because it will ride on the name of the author, which is now an established name. It does, to some extent, but people notice it's not quite as good. Then we get the third manuscript in, and it's become even more obvious that the author has really mined his/her brain for ideas and come up dry. They have another story, but it's got very similar themes and the same general message, only it's less interesting. Or it's a departure from form in an attempt to escape that, and it's terrible. We try to revise it, we shop it, and generally advise the author to take the highest amount offered, which is far lower than the previous books. Sometimes we end up selling it to a small press simply because it's been rejected everywhere else, or have an honest session with the author and tell them to try again.

(Note: This does not refer to books that are part of a series. Once a series gets going, the books get bought in bunches or generally just get bought as long as they look basically the same because there's an established storyline and fan base. This has resulted in a lot of bad books being published, but I'm for it because I have a series, and the first book sold. If it does well, the second will be picked up. If I make it to the third, I might be in the clear for all 10, even the ones that are weaker than others)

ZZZZZZZZ...

That's what I wish I was doing, actually. Stupid, stupid insomnia.

So things have been a bit slow at the office. That's not a huge surprise but it doesn't make for a lot of posts. The slowest times of the year for queries are, predictably, mid-December to mid-January, and the month of August. You know, when you (the writer) are on vacation or getting ready for vacation and the last thing on your mind is the query letter or finishing up the novel so you can write the query letter. While this shouldn't technically affect the response, I would submit during these periods, because chances are the mail piles are a little light and the agent isn't overwhelmed and the assistant has shorter hours.

No, the publishing industry is not asleep. Most of us are in the office, and some of us are even in the office on the actual holidays. The industry goes through cycles that adhere to the natural rhythm of the seasons. Also, we're all dreading doing our taxes and cursing ourselves for not implementing that better filing system of receipts that we promised ourselves we would do last year, just like everyone else.

So, questions? Haven't gotten a lot in the emailbox recently. Can't be that I've done them all.

The Meaning of Life

Over the years I have opened many, many query letters from people who have found the meaning of life, or the one true answer, or however you want to put it. I think Christmas brought out the crazies, because literally 3/4's of today's queries were what I just said. Let me now impart to you the secret to ultimate happiness:

(1) Find G-d.
(2) Do good stuff.
(3) Don't do bad stuff.
(4) Appreciate the things you have, even if one of them is cancer or something.

Oh wait, that's the message of every single religion ever. My bad. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Short Stories and Credentials

Dear Rejecter:
I've been following your blog for some time as part of my attempt to create the perfect query letter - I want to do this before the manuscript is finished so I won't be tempted to send out a hurried query letter. Do you read science fiction? The reason I ask is because I'm wondering which short story venues, apart from magazines that contribute to SFWA eligibility, would impress you favorably if you saw them on a cover letter. Are you familiar with any magazines so pathetic the title would be a negative?

I do read science fiction. When I do read fiction, it's generally sci-fi/fantasy or historical fiction, unless something else has been recommended to me.

Your question addresses a larger issue, which is credentials. Yes, publications in important literary journals and sci-fi magazines (in this case) are very impressive to us. Your college's literary mag, not so much.

With that said, novel writers out there: Don't stress over short stories if you're not a short story writer. Some people aren't. If you are, by nature, a novelist, then you might burn a lot of time and frustration trying to get some short story that you threw together for the query letter published. The magazines/journals we care about have very, very high standards and way too many submissions to publish everything they would even want to publish.

I made my own foray into trying to get short stories published when trying to sell my second manuscript, which never sold. Eventually I got some short story into an online mag that paid me $5.00, but really, it was an excruciating process. I rarely write short stories and when I do, they're not my best work. All of the different magazines have their own standards and processes and then there's the waiting, waiting, waiting. If you have strong short stories it's worth it, but if it's just eating time that could be spent on another novel, it's not.

A Post With My Writer's Hat On

This week my book went to copy-editing, which is essentially the last stage of editorial. Generally editorial works like this, after you signed the contract, but in this case it started before we actually signed the contract because it got held up for a ton of reasons.

1. I, according to the contract, give them a polished copy of the manuscript.

2. The editor suggests revisions and you do them, or the editor likes it the way it is and says "I'm sending it to copy-editing."

3. You panic on a level on which you've never panicked before, knowing that once it goes to copy-editing, no major revisions (addition or removal of scenes, etc) can be done, and this is you presenting yourself to the world even if the novel has nothing to do with you, so G-ddamn it, it had better be perfect, because those Amazon commentators are going to find something wrong and you're going to look like an idiot, you just know it.

4. The editor eventually pries the manuscript out of your hands, assures you that it's fine, and sends it to copy-editing.

5. Months later, it comes back with some minor (grammatical) revisions, you get a final pass at it, and it goes to press. Changes at this point are only cosmetic.

Last week I was not a sane person, and worried about this scene that I didn't do and that scene that I did do and was I really satisfied with it and G-ddamn this thing had better be perfect and so on. Granted, I am very, very grateful to be this far along and having my lifelong dream fulfilled and whatnot, but DAMN, this sort of thing will keep you up at night.

The Kindle

So Amazon.com's pushing their Kindle e-reader on us pretty hard, as anyone who regularly visits the site in the past few weeks has noticed. Now normally I associate "kindle" with some flammable pieces of garbage you use to start a fire, which seems to be the consensus about the device in general, only it costs more and is hard to burn.

To be fair, I have never seen a Kindle in real life or used it myself, so I'm not the most well-versed of judges here. The Amazon reviewers gave it a "mediocre" rating, which is I suppose not as bad as it could be, but in principle I never buy a new piece of technology/software first off the line. I wait until the second edition at least, when they've fixed all the bugs from the first edition and there's been a price drop. I also am not a fan of e-readers, as I do a lot of my reading on Shabbos, when electronic devices are forbidden because the rabbis who decreed that didn't have a Playstation (or that's my feeling on the matter).

I have to say, for a device that seems overpriced and ridden with obvious difficulties which would bother me as a customer (like not working in rural areas, or not reading .pdf files), they are pushing the hell out of it, and I have to admire them for that. Suddenly my account has a "Kindle orders" page (empty) and every book's profile makes sure to let publishers know they can have it in a Kindle edition. With all the timidity and confusion about the e-book market, they are going headfirst into it with the determination to at least attempt to temporarily corner the market. With all that effort, you'd think they would have designed a better reader, but they were probably rushing it a bit.

This all amuses me more than it annoys me because about a month ago, I may (or may not, future employers) have been at an AAR meeting with the heads of the big 6 publishing houses for a panel on digital publishing. In short:

CEOs: OH NOES, THE INTERNET HAS PUBLISHABLE WORDS AND NO ONE TOLD US!
Agents: Can our authors have 50% royalties on eBooks?
CEOs: No.

All of the major publishing houses are currently throwing millions of dollars into research and development for the digital revolution they know is coming, but can't predict the outcome of, since a book is not the same as a song or a movie. Fair enough. That didn't stop them from saying some things that I, as a Technocrat, was utterly baffled by.

"No, we don't see a reason why the author royalty rate should be significantly higher on an eBook than on the print version."

"I think eBooks should be priced at the same retail price as regular books, because it's essentially the same thing."

"Though it hasn't worked for the record or movie industry, we should definitely put a lot of money into investing in DRM technology."

(in response to a question about file sharing) "Why would someone do that?"

Amazon, as a website run by people who work on computers all day, is obviously ahead of the curve on this one, though for some reason one of the publishers felt that Amazon was no longer worth talking about because their book sale profits were on a downward slope, in a study that failed to take the blossoming used book market into account, from which Amazon reaps huge commission fees.

Amazon also thought of a way around file sharing, at least until someone cares enough about a Kindle to hack it, which is that the Kindle editions are in Kindle files that are sent straight to your Kindle reader, and you never really own them, and they don't go on your computer and you can't send them to other Kindle machines. Oh, and you can't upload non-Kindle files to the Kindle reader. I have good faith that my friends will hack the device sooner or later (if they haven't already) and find a way to get .pdf files on it, or they'll just buy a better eBook reader that actually lets them do that and lets them store more than 40 books at a time. (40? 40? Are fucking kidding me?)

Will Kindle dominate/topple publishing as we know it? No. Will a future, better device succeed where the Kindle will ultimately fail? No. Someday, I may buy a cheap e-reader, load my library into it, and use it for reference purposes while writing, but otherwise, it's books for me. Cheap, used books available on Amazon.

More Genre Guessing

Dear Rejecter,

You know how certain autobiographies go from interesting personal incidents to relevant social analysis(essay form) and back to more personal incidents? Would this format, if executed well, be out of line in a novel(with a fictional character instead of myself)? Because I've found that didacticism in the story incidents themselves (almost) always drag things down, but being straightforward about "this is what happened and this is what I think," if well written, could really work. Also, if you think this could work, would an editor pick it up? And to what area of publishing would you direct queries- and how would you label such a work? Is it inherently literary because of the analysis, even if the writing is plain? Should I call it anything other than a novel(in spite of the fact that that term is quite broad and welcoming thanks to the experimental fiction movement)?

A novel is a work of fiction. If you've written a series of essays based on your beliefs and personal life experiences, but changed the names, it's not fiction unless you change the facts.

The real question here seems to be whether it's "memoir" or a book of essays on social analysis. Novels - and even memoirs - are generally not written as a series of essays, but the real issue here is what point you're trying to get across. Do you want to tell a life story because it's interesting, or are you using life anecdotes to give social commentary? It sounds like the latter.

Your genre is: not relevant to your query. Just say it's a bunch of essays and that should be pretty clear. The agent will request it or not request it based on their interest in your subject matter, not how you label it.

The Tale of the Demon Stapler

So apparently I am not the smartest person in the world. By that I mean, if I were the smartest person in the world, I certainly would not hold the stapler with my two forefingers in the exact places the staple comes out while trying to fix it. Then I would punch holes in my fingers, but I wouldn't be stupid enough to do that.

Theoretically.

If this makes any writers feel better, my boss's first concern upon learning that I'd pierced my hands was that I might get blood on the contracts, and I should move away. The second was, you know, that I'd pierced my hands.

The comments are being approved a little slowly because blogger has decided that those emails alerting me to new comments are better as a concept than as a reality. If you don't see your comment up immediately or even for a day or two, don't repost it. It's just in the pile to be approved. I do generally approve comments unless they contain anti-semitic rants or suggest things about my sexual proclivity. I would like to lay down a general rule here about plugging your blog.

Writers who plug your blog: Don't do it. First of all, I know you're doing it so that I (or other industry people who read this blog) might wander their, discover your genius, and email you with a 5-figure offer based on the novel excerpt you have up. Or worse, you're plugging your self-published book that needs sales beyond your friends and family. Well, we all know what you're doing, so stop it. Second, it looks really tacky.

If are logged in and clicking on your name leads to your own blog, I have no problem with that. If you want to post a link to your blog because it has something relevant to do with the current conversation, I have no problem with that. If you repeatedly keep adding your blog URL to the end of every comment you make, I will give you a warning, and then start rejecting your comments.

And now: pain medicine!

EDIT: If blogger insists on adding the URL for you, it's OK.

I Venture Away From My Computer

Today I went to a small press/independent press book fair. It's been a good six months since the Book Expo of America, so I guess I'd forgotten that most small presses that rent booths at book fairs seem to be lower quality fantasy, erotica, Christian fantasy, or erotic Christian fantasy. There were some Marxist and/or conspiracy nut presses, legitimate translation presses, and the few remaining children's books not produced by Scholastic. Personally, I think if South Park took an entire episode to make fun of your conspiracy theory, you should probably call it a day.

But seriously - small presses are important. Yes, Barnes & Noble has made sure that their hopes of widespread distribution will be squished like that weirdo bug near my bathtub drain, but the internet has made it so that if they manage to correctly title the books, they might be found by a search engine and actually bought. I did recognize some titles, but only from Amazon browsing. I am a small press. I published a book last year using Lightning Source that was a public domain work and made a few thousand bucks by doing my own distribution. In 2008 I'll do it again with another book that hasn't seen the light of day in 100 years. It's a labor of love, not a career.

Unlike the BEA, which charges a steep admission fee and makes you have to come up with some industry job on their form to be admitted, this one was open to the public, which meant to say the talks were geared towards unpublished writers. As an unpublished writer myself (the book's in development but it's not on shelves), I've tried to stay away from writer's conferences, because I find the information provided in them to be misleadingly optimistic and the air of desperation to be stifling. The speaker on how to query agents, who shall go unnamed, was not only there, but hocking her own book on the subject, which made me glad I wasn't her client. She did give good advice. It was obvious advice, but you gotta start somewhere. I was actually sort of surprised that I agreed with most of it, because it is true that agents have differing opinions.

The really sad part was, of course, the writer's questions. It takes something to stand up to a crowd of desperate people longing for that one nod of approval from an agent or that one call from a publisher that changes their lives, much less tell them the truth, so she softened her answers to the point where they became totally useless answers that didn't address the main problem, which was that the author was a pretentious asshole or has written a book that no one would ever want to read. (How did I know? Oh, trust me, you know. If they say they're too unconventional and fantastic for normal publishing and that's why 70 agents rejected them, you know)

I don't have a huge fear of public speaking, but I tend to be much nicer in person, which I think would eliminate my ability to say anything useful. Yes, there are people who just need to be pointed in the right direction, or assured that no, the agent will not get pissed if they send 52 pages instead of 50 because that's when the chapter ends, and no, we don't throw out an entire query letter because of one typo, and yes, if you have written an excellent book, our job is not to crush your hopes and dreams. It is to fulfill them. The bad news is that most people haven't written a good book.

She did draw the line at endorsing self-publishing. That was for the next speaker to do.

Junior Agents and You

I've got a burning question. I'm in the querying process, and there are several junior agents that I'm interested in querying, but -- how much clout do they really have? My work is genre, and I'm afraid if I go with a younger agent who's actively building his or her client list, I'll end up being published by one of those houses that just tosses a million books out there and sees if any stick. I know I don't want an uber agent -- my friend had good ole Binky Urban and fired her after her initial book and 7 years of writers block and no attention. But I'm afraid I'll be part of someone's learning curve. This especially pertains to agents who have only worked as agents, and not on the editorial side. How do they build contacts with editors? Won't it just be the cold query process all over again?

First of all, all agents have a learning curve, because the market and even the industry is always changing in massively unpredictable ways. Until an agent lands an ultra-mega-huge score (something Salinger-esque) that will probably be paying them money when they're in a nursing home, their career is always in flux. A couple dry years and they're putting out for that third mortgage and hoping to G-d that their big clients write something new.

Junior agents, sub-agents, associate agents - whatever you want to call them - are new, but they're not on their own. They belong to a bigger agency for a reason: the head of the agency will help them along and nourish their career (and take a cut for her hard work).

My agent has no particular label to her title, but she is a new agent who is part of a larger, very established agency, and I don't lose any sleep about how many years she's been in the business.

Widely Querying

Here’s my question: My number one first pick for an agent requested a partial after I pitched to her at a conference. I have sent the partial and not heard anything, which is totally fine and expected (it’s only been two days). Should I go ahead and start querying the other agents on my list? I know that a partial does not get the same consideration as a full, but I don’t want to jump the gun. She expressed excitement about my work and we had a really great meeting.

Unless she asked for an exclusive and you gave it to her, feel free to query as widely as you like.

Rethinking "Genre"

As my previous post inevitably dissolves into another literary fiction vs. genre fiction debate, in which the literary fiction people get on their high horses and the genre people collect paychecks, consider this:

Genre in its purest form exists for a singular purpose: To help you find the books you want to read. "Genre" is a classification system used by libraries and bookstores to herd people towards the type of literature they are looking for at the moment. Now the categories are more narrowly defined, but it wasn't always this way.

In Western Europe during the Middle Ages, what books were being produced were largely religious in nature. Books were monstrously expensive to produce. Most of our fiction from that period is some author's hand at recording oral traditions (which is why a lot of this literature seems to look the same). The non-monastic book production industry relied on noble patronage, and undoubtedly the noble would specify what kind of book they wanted before the first page was properly stretched out from bleached calf skin. After all, if you're spending a small fortune to have something made for you, and then wait years for it to be finished, you're going to be rather specific about what you want the final product to look like. While devotional books were popular (like a Book of Hours), those who could afford to be patrons of the arts also preferred tales of suspense, romance, and adventure.

With the invention of the printing press and the dramatic reduction in the cost of paper, it became affordable for authors to dream of creating a book on their own and just hoping it would sell, though they probably had an audience in mind. There still was no formalized system of dividing books by type of story, simply because there weren't 3-story bookstores to wander around. You had access to the books that were available in your area, or maybe you could get something popular on loan from a circulating library (a popular source of book distribution in Britain in the 1700's-1800's). A reader probably could generally find out what the book was about by asking the store owner or the librarian.

The dividing of books into specific genres is a commercial instinct. Growing up, my local library had three sections: Adult, Children's, and Video Tapes. It was a fairly small library, but I remember being frustrated by it once I moved out of the children's section, because the adult section seemed to mush everything together and the librarian was less interested in pointing me in the right direction and more interested in running the children's programs.

Bookstores operate on the basic principle that you, the reader, probably like only certain times of fiction, and if you just happen to be browsing, it will be easier for you to find new authors if they're in the same section with the authors you're familiar with because they write the same type of book. This rigid classification system has changed not only the way books are sold, but how they are developed, and how they are viewed.

Barnes and Noble has a "Fiction and Literature" section, because it sounds better than "General Fiction," but I deeply suspect that a lot of authors who are in there are in there because they were published before categorization was so strict. Today, Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man might wind up in memoir even though it is about a fictional character who happens to heavily resemble the author. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice might show up either in women's fiction or even in romance, depending on the store's decision. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein would undoubtedly be buried in the sci-fi/fantasy section. Shakespeare, a playwright, would be in that tiny section for plays. Imagine Sei Shōnagon's The Pillow Book being mislabeled and winding up in the erotica section. And so on.

One could make the argument that while our modern sensibilities think this is cheapening the way we treat the classics, genre labeling is what it is - a method of enabling the reader for find the type of book they like and other books that might be like it. Since all books need to find a reader, all books belong to some genre, however hard it may be to define - but that's probably because no one's tried to define them yet.

Why Do People Love My MFA Discussions?

Dear Rejecter,

Alas, I have a dilemma I'd like to share. I'm currently studying public relations and creative writing at the University of Miami. To make a long story short, my writing professors hate commercial fiction, love literary fiction, and I have no idea why. I never thought it was a crime to try and be an entertaining writer. In fact, if studying PR has taught me anything, it's that you better be entertaining and likable as much as you possibly can. And yet, my instructor (who actually wrote a novel herself) seems to think that prose and language trumps all.

Is this pretty much commonplace within academia? Your experience in the MFA program seems to confirm my suspicions, and yet your day-to-day descriptions of your job paint a very different picture. Correct me if I'm wrong, but an easy-to-read commercial novel is more likely to get published than a literary novel, right? So why on earth do professors keep shoving literary fiction down our throats?

It certainly doesn't appear to be helping anybody; in fact I think it's actually irresponsible in a way. If it comes down to it, who would be more attractive to an agent and/or publisher: the kid with a business background who writes supernatural thrillers (read: me) or the kid with the traditional MFA training who writes about... whatever it is literary novelists write about? As of right now I'm taking what my professor says with a grain of salt. I know that might sound arrogant, but every bone in my body is telling me to keep going on my own track -- finish my novel, finish my degree in PR, and use the business acumen I've developed to help me land a deal.

Thoughts? Comments?

Many, many great literary masterpieces have come from writers who took MFA programs. Like ... all right, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Or at all. In fact, after 2 1/2 years in an MFA program, I've only read one piece by a fellow writer that was potentially publishable or even likable, but this is probably an anomaly. Some of the teachers were published once, like in 1976 and never went into a second printing and I've never heard of their work, but that's probably also an anomaly. Oh, and that was also true of the MFA program professors who taught my undergraduate writing programs at Brown, but again: anomaly. Every single encounter I've had with college or graduate level writing has to be one long line of coincidences that all the people I encountered wrote incomprehensible things or boring, pretentious, and plot-less stories. Man, imagine the odds of that?

Or it could be the other thing you mentioned, that MFA programs suck. Tough call there.

Reply cards

Dear Rejecter:

I'm about to start sending query letters out and found examples of good and bad query letters on the underdown web site. One of the good examples mentioned "I have enclosed a reply card for your convenience." I've never heard of reply cards. What comes to mind is a postcard-like thing, self-addressed and stamped, with something like this:

Dear [Author]: we have read your manuscript and

___ you are a god. Please send us your MS immediately. P.S. We want to have your baby.

___ it might be right for somebody but please god, not us.

___ never submit anything else to us. The Hazmat teams totally trashed the place.

___ please settle a bet: which end of the pig did you pull your MS out of?

___ we have turned it over to the FBI, kiddie porn division.


But seriously: are these common in publishing? Can you buy them at stationery stores or should I make them up myself? Do I just leave them blank and let the agent supply the rejection text? Should I include only the positive response ("Please send us a copy of your MS.") or some negative ones too? Most importantly, are they a good idea or will they be seen in some mystical, inaccessible-to-industry-outsiders way as "unprofessional" (even without the humour)?

So I'm going to go neutral on this one. Comment cards don't generally annoy us, but sometimes they do, but not in a major way. And yes, we do get them from time to time.

Some agencies like to put a form rejection in the return envelope, and are annoyed when one isn't provided and they have to write their rejection instead (some people literally send a blank, SAS postcard). Some people don't find the humor funny (it usually isn't). On the other hand, yes, it is wicked convenient.

What is annoying is when an author provides various check marks, and somewhat literally, none of them offer us a rejection option. Then I have to write in a little "__x__ Thank you, but not for us" thingy. Don't be a dork.

Bad Manners

I've been querying for my first agent. Some queries went out a few months ago with requests for the full but no response otherwise. Some queries went out a week ago with almost instant requests for fulls. And then phenomenal turnaround times in reading the MS.

Great feedback, some rejections and one accepted offer of representation later, I emailed everyone who still had a partial or full manuscript to update them on my new agented status.

I got an email back from an agent who was holding on to the full the longest stating they had spent the day reading my manuscript and deserved to respond to the offer. Bad manners, they said. But there was no exclusivity attached.

Is it bad manners? Have I gone against established protocol? I should be happy to have jumped this hurdle and focus on revisions and preparing my manuscript for the next step. But that response really took me by surprise and made me question how I've gone about the process. How should I proceed during the next stage of writing life without making another stupid mistake? Many thanks for your insight.

If it makes you feel any better, I made many similar mistakes when I got my own agent this summer, despite my years of working in the business. It's a very tricky thing because some understandings are unwritten, and I honestly don't know how agents expect us to know them if they never talk about them.

In general, people who get an offer from an agent usually call up the other agents who were considering a partial or a full and ask them if they also want to offer representation, because authors like to keep their options open and are not necessarily sure that the agent that responded is the one they want. When I got my book offer, I called every agent who had a partial or full and told them I had a book offer, and would they like to consider my work more seriously? Most responded within 24 hours, some begging for more time. Then it became difficult to choose, and I wasn't quite sure how to go about doing it. It's not easy for anyone.

I don't think what you did was bad manners. Some authors do jump on the first (or second) offer, and leave other agents in the dust, because that was the agent they wanted in the first place. In fact, it was very polite (and correct) of you to inform the others that you now had an agent and they should remove you from their consideration pile. If they expected more from you, they should have told you so, or demanded an exclusive. I would mark that agency off your list for down the road; it doesn't seem like they're right for you, anyway.

Things That Make Me Laugh #3

In a query, someone described his novel as having "more irony than shootin' irons."

Does anyone want to explain to me what that means?

Agent Salaries

I've been getting a lot of these:

Just out of curosity,

How much do agents (on average) get paid? What's the low and high end?

And here's another:

Once you become an agent, even if you have to give up a part of your income, don't you get a "base salary" and benefits? Wouldn't that be worth holding on for?


So, you know how when you sign with an agent, they find you a publisher, and then take 10-15% of your earnings? That's their paycheck.

Agents don't "work" for anyone but themselves and their clients. There's no one to provide them with a salary or benefits. Their income comes entirely from a small percentage of their clients' total earnings. This means that a year could pass where an agency could make no money whatsover, if none of their older clients have written books that sold that year, or they fail to sell any works from new clients. Most agents are smart enough to make some money every year, but that money could easily be under $4,000.

So how do they stay in business? An agent relies on an author (or preferably a few) that make considerable advances and write books on a regular basis of once every 2-3 years. And when I say "considerable" I mean, "over 100,000 dollars." Remember that the agent gets only 15% of that, tops.

A new fiction author will generally make around 5,000 dollars in an advance and then not earn any royalties. That's $750 for the agent. Now math isn't my strongest suit here, but to be able to earn $30,000 (with no benefits, no overtime, no 401k) the agent would have to take on 40 new authors a year, which is by anyone's reckoning an insane amount of authors. The agent simply wouldn't have the time to edit and sell all those manuscripts.

Most clients of the agent are not significant earners, but a few have to be, or the agency doesn't stay in business. My boss has a few clients who make about $250,000 or $500,000 advances, but those authors don't write a book a year, or even a book every other year. She just hopes one of them will come through, so she can pay her electricity bill.

In answer to the second question, as to why don't I become a salaried agent, it's because the job doesn't exist. If I started out as an agent today, I would have to build up contacts and a client list, and then sell the manuscripts of my clients to editors. It could easily be two years before I see any money at all, and more before I see enough money to constitute a living wage.

Reading Lists and Market Shares

I officially have to stop buying books. Not only is there very little room left in my apartment (we haven't started using them as furniture yet), but I am legitimately behind on my reading.

As I've been told many times by different publishers and market researches, Amazon.com only has about a 17% market share, so publishers tend to ignore the website. I think this number is deceptive. I still do buy books in bricks & mortar stores, but I also write down the titles and authors of books I want that look too expensive and then go buy them online for 10% of the cover price, after shipping. I know I'm the exception to the rule, what with buying an overwhelming majority of my books online and having an Amazon credit card to earn rewards points to continue buying books online, but maybe the industry should take a little note: I buy around 200 books a year. That makes me unusual in a very significant way. Serious readers without a tremendous amount of disposable income now have a serious alternative to libraries - buying used books on the ever-expanding online used book market. Honestly the biggest hurdle to that is the recent postage increase, but it's worth it if the book costs $0.01 and is "used, like new." Used book sales aren't tracked (at least not by anyone I've heard from), and I wonder what Amazon's "market share" would be if they were.

Reading list this week:

- The Mishnah, Seders Kodashim and Tohoroth
- I am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert (gift from dad)
- Sefer Yetzirah, Chapters 1:1 - 1:14
- Samurai by Mitsuo Kure
- The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice (admittedly, couldn't get through it)
- Half of an urban fantasy manuscript I'm reading for a friend

The Job Ladder

I was wondering... how much access do you have to clients and publishers, how do you get to know them, and how easy is it for you to move up in your world? In the Hollywood system, assistants are expected to listen in on calls, memorize everyone's phone number, and talk to clients a lot-- this is sort of the "apprenticeship" phase of your career, and while you are getting this education in "who's who and how to please them," you work for $300-500 a week, with the promise that eventually you will be a better-paid agent/manager/producer. Does the lit biz in NY work like this, or do you have to be creative in figuring out how to meet people? And are you paid any better?

If I was working even close to full time, yeah, I guess I would be making about $400 a week. I'm not, though. That's the first misconception. Most assistants are only part-time. I know assistants who work for multiple agents on different days of the week to fill out their schedule (this is an accepted practice).

Beyond the hourly-wage part-time assistant, you generally move up in two ways.

(1) You become a sub-agent to your boss or go to work for another agency as a sub-agent and start representing your own clients. Your boss takes a cut, but you get to use her name and contact sheet and she holds your hand through the process of your first few contracts. More and more people are doing this as agencies proliferate, but in the past, being an agent required years of experience working on the other side, in a publishing house. I could go into long theorizing about why that's changed, but it would be guesses and I can't say if it's better or worse for the industry. It's difficult to make any hard statements about the book industry.

(2) You now have a year's experience and get a job as an editorial assistant (or a publicity assistant, or a production assistant, or whatever - the bottom rung) at a publishing house through the normal methods of calling your contacts and submitting resumes and whatnot. This is what I'll be doing in December, when I graduate from my MFA program. While an agency would be a better working environment for me (setting your own hours) with my chronic illness, I don't want to be an agent. Contracts and sales and pitching books to editors and rights don't interest me. My first boss nailed it on the head when she said I was made for editorial. So, that's where I hope to be, in a few months (hint hint, industry people) - rejecting people from the actual publishing house and not the agency. Or just doing general editorial work. Plus it's a standard paycheck thing, not relying on the success of your author to make any money, which I'm more comfortable with. As much as I enjoy working for an agent, I'm not a saleswoman at heart and I don't think I could do it for a living.

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On an additional note, many, many people have been emailing me, asking how to get a job like mine. Please refer to my earlier post about it.

More on Rejections - Surprise!

Well! I'm less likely to respond to people flaming each other if I don't seem to be the one flamed, but I will answer some questions. Oh, and to clear things up, these segments are from different people's posts.

So Rejecter, if the personalized rejection comes five months after sending a requested partial which in turn came five months after sending a query, do I punch myself in the face or tell the agent's assistant (who, by the way, had no idea what he was talking about with respect to the subject matter - believe me, I know: I've heard from enough agents who DO understand the subject matter)to get F'ed?

You waited five months for a response from a query? Wow. The partial thing is not a surprise to me. Response time on requested material is slow. But if the whole process took 10 months, yeah, that is a little obnoxious, but surely you submitted to a ton of other agencies at the same time, right?

You can tell the assistant to get fucked only on the condition that you supply the money for the prostitute, with the understanding that the assistant might go spend it on a new hard drive instead. Or some DVD box set. Either one.

Here's to the fucking assholes of the world: they'll always be there and so will the professionals who see this whole process as a business.

We do classify our work as "business," at least to the IRS. Then books become a "business expense." Also agents rely on author's proceeds to pay the rent and electricity bill and stuff, so it actually needs to be a profitable business.

The agent in question has a blog where they blabber on about their vacations, and stuff they're doing with their kids and how they've been to this conference and that looking for clients, yet they can't keep their "house" in order with respect to projects they've requested. ... This agent reminds me of a part-time real estate agent - they were that unprofessional.

Not all agents act professionally all the time. Just like anyone in any other business.

I once got a rejection back from an agency on a partial after 3 days. The (requested) partial was 50 pages. No way they read it. And there were no sticky fingermarks, coffee rings, mustard stains or dog-eared pages on the pathetic pristine pages I got back. Nah, they didn't read it.

I would put my money on the idea that they did. We tend to treat submissions fairly professionally, especially if you supplied return postage for the entire submission. I don't smoke, drink coffee, wear lipstick, or dog-ear pages, and my hands are washed on a regular basis, so for the most part the partial looks the same when I'm done with it as when I started, and if it's going back to the author, I generally put it back together and make the neat before it goes in the envelope.

Inside the Partials Process

Obviously this is only true at agencies with an assistant, and then only some of them, but at every agency I've worked at, it's gone something like this:

(1) My boss asks me to read a partial she requested because she's especially busy lining up interviews for her bestselling author.

(2) I read the partial. (Obvious)

(3) We have a 2-minute conversation, tops, about the partial. Sometimes it doesn't take two minutes. I once worked at an agency where for the most part, the agent did not personalize the response to partials unless they were very close, but she did have a special form letter response specifically for partials. My current boss responds herself, in her own handwriting (not mine).

Most of the time with partials, I don't say to reject unless it's obviously so horrible that the query was just plain misleading. Partials are something the agent was interested in from the get-go, so I'm not quick to dismiss the work, and if I do, I have to give a reason. (Occasionally "The author can't spell" is enough) Here are some common responses I'll give her:

"I'm not thrilled about it, but to be honest, it's not my type of literature anyway, and there's nothing wrong with it on a sentence level, so you might like it."

"The author has a specific style of prose. You'll decide whether you love it or hate it in two pages."

"It's very similar to a lot of stuff on your list in terms of content, but I don't think it's as good as any of the stuff on your list."

"I can't make heads or tails of it. Was this an e-query you responded to? OK, you look at it then. I have no idea."

"Does this guy know you, or something? Why was this requested?"

"I hate literary fiction, and this is literary fiction, and I actually liked it a little, so that's pretty much a stunning recommendation."

And so on. If it's a reject and she doesn't want to read it herself for time reasons, she asks me specifics about it so she can be more personal in her reply.

Personalized Rejections

Dear Rejector,

I read in an agent blog today of a woman who hammered back at the agency with a long tirade of snide comments after receiving a rejection letter. I was horrified at her attitude.

Then I remembered a note by me to an agency about a year an a half ago where I frustratingly told them their standard rejection letter seemed very cold.

I have learned so much since then, and now look upon rejection letters as the things they truly are: not personal. It's a business. And a writer trying to sell a manuscript and enter into a business agreement should remember the other party has the right to reject it if it isn't good business for them.

Still, that comment I made might come back to haunt me when I start sending out query letters again. Yes? No? Probably wasn't memorable enough to stand out? Never darken an agent's door again?

To answer the second question first, no, that one agency will probably not remember you unless they rejected your full and you're resubmitting the same manuscript. And even then, it's one agency! There's over a hundred of them.

As to the first question, which was unasked, what is the deal with people complaining about personalized rejections? I mean it's still a rejection, but if you get a personalized rejection, it generally means we cared enough about your work to personalize our rejection. You were close. You were closer than about 95% of the applicants. Slap yourself on the back and then write something just a little bit better.

The Literal First Five Pages

Dear Ms. Rejector,

I've seen a lot of agents request the first five pages of a manuscript along with the query letter. This frustrates me a bit, because the prologue to my book is seven pages long, and I think an agent would be more enticed by the whole prologue than just the first five pages. So my options, as I see them, are:

1. Bite the bullet and only send 5 pages
2. Revise my prologue to be 5 pages long
3. Use 11pt font or 1.5 spaced lines to make it 5 pages long and hope the agent doesn't care/notice. Or better yet, if it's an email query, just send the text as part of the email and pretend it's 5 pages.
4. Send all seven pages, but be up front in the query letter ("I've sent you the first seven pages of my novel along with this query..."), and hope I don't get tossed aside for not following the specific instructions

Which of these options seems the most viable? Are any of them
completely idiotic and suicidal?

Actually, you've got a number of options open to you, but please use 12 point font. Our eyes, our eyes!

You can:

(1) Bite the bullet and send the first five pages, because those are also pages the agent will have to eventually like anyway, and if they aren't dramatically different from your general writing style, and your writing is good, that shouldn't be a terrible worry.

(2) Send seven pages. We won't really care if it's actually seven. On the other hand, we might not make it to page 6.

(3) Punch up the first five pages of the prologue.

(4) Send the first five pages of the novel proper, if they're understandable without the prologue. This makes a good deal of sense in many cases, when the prologue is a literary device or an informational device and doesn't actually look a lot like those overworked, perfect pages you mean to be your opening. We won't get mad at you. If you get a request for the actual manuscript afterwards, you might want to say something like, "There is now a prologue" so we don't get all confused. We get a lot of partials, and sometimes we forget who they're from or what they're about during the wait.

Note to all authors: When an agent requests the first five, he/she generally means the first five; this is the only case where he/she doesn't. Don't send the first five of the eighth chapter because you think the writing is the best in the beginning of the eighth chapter. The writing should be great everywhere.