More on Writers and Blogs

So tonight I'll be signing off until Tuesday night for the holiday of Shavout, where we study all night long and eat cheesecake and I try to go through Mishnah in its entirety. Don't expect your comments to be approved between tonight and Tuesday night.

Looking for clarification...

I understand that an author's website should never be provided in lieu of a good query--but would it necessarily hurt the author to include it?

I am building a site for my unpub. novel, because I am a designer and it is fun/easy for me. My hope is--if an agent likes my query and wants to see more, they can do so instantly.

But, is it insulting to even mention it when youre using it as a tool totally independent from your already fantastic query? I don't want it to seem like I'm giving the agent a job to do, but I want to give them instant access if they're interested.

You can include your website address under your name and other information. Directing us to the website, however relevant it is to the book, is irritating. In publishing, time = money and because it's in NY, time = not enough money to pay the rent, so the fact that we're taking some to read the letter and whatever else you sent in the envelope means we're spending money that we're not likely to get back (there's about a .05% chance). So cruising author's websites is not something we do and we don't like being asked to do it.

Aren't we seeing more and more fiction writers who do have platforms, and Mark Sarvas now being another? Aren't publishers operating out of fear and greed desperate for any promotional leg up?

Publishers realize that blog does not equal immediate and/or substantial leg up, unless your blog was already insanely popular for other things. People like to cite the very, very rare examples of people who got a book deal because they had a blog, like Diablo Cody, whose screenplay was largely unrelated to her hooker blog and whose column in EW I don't care for on a writing level, but these people are exceptions to the rule. Do not expect to be an exception to the rule.

Women's Fiction and Writing Blogs

So apparently blogger decided not to mail me my new "You have a comment to approve" emails for a few days, and I logged in for something and had 12 comments to approve. Apologies. Continue your conversations.

As to the whole "should writers keep a blog thing" I will make my own comment: I've been slow to update this blog in the last two weeks because I've just been insane with job stuff, graduation ceremony stuff, apartment lease stuff, and finally, writing stuff. The blog is really the last on the list behind "Did I get a chapter done tonight?" I feel that it's important to post regularly but I can't let it consume my writing energy, which foremost goes to my fiction and notes for my non-fiction stuff I'm working on. A lot of writers have blogs for similar reason to why anyone else does - because they want to - but since a blog requires writing, if you only have a certain number of words in you per day, don't spend them recounting the jazz festival you went to last night. Unless you want to.

I've been working on a query letter and having people in a writing forum critique it. One critic told me that chick lit was over, and to make my story look like more than just a romantic comedy. I think that women will always be interested in romance and funny stories. I planned on just calling my story "commercial fiction." What's your take on this?

"Women's fiction" is always a good way to go if the main character is a woman and it's not specifically another genre. A lot of agents like "women's fiction" because women in general are huge readers, in comparison to men and children who aren't being forced by some assignment (Not to insult the male literati here). Plus a lot of agents are women.

Sending Unrequested Fulls

We don't get unrequested fulls that often, and I would say we get them less often than we used to. The reason is obvious: the cost of mail, especially media mail, has gone up considerably. Yet some dorks remain who think sending their entire 600-page manuscript overnight (with return postage) is going to impress us somehow and not be a massive waste of money.

I don't know why this is, but unrequested manuscripts are almost universally awful. It doesn't make any statistical sense, but I can't think of one that I even considered putting in the maybe pile. One arrived today. To cut down on expenses, perhaps, the author printed out the manuscript single-space and in 8-point font, only to up the weight by putting it in a really big, nice binder (which we kept because there was no return postage and she said we could keep it). The writing was terrible - just terrible. You know it's bad when a chapter is 3 paragraphs long and two of those paragraphs are single lines of dialogue.

Maybe it's a jinx or something. I don't know.

Platforms and Blogs for Fiction Writers

What are your thoughts on platforms for fiction writers? I certainly get it for nonfiction writers (whose product isn't really a book but themselves and their ideas) but I'd rather spend my time writing.

Does a fun, amusing blog increase my presence when it comes time to query?

In answer to your questions:

(1) Fiction writers do not need platforms.

(2) No, not at all. I don't stop what I'm doing to look at author's websites because they're mentioned in the query. You can mention you have a blog, just like everyone else seems to, but don't direct me to it, or worse, require me to visit it to get an actual summary of your work. Then I will just be angry.

Do They Think I Don't Know They're There?

A long, probably somewhat boring post could be made about the complex and ever-changing relationship of the two major English publishing countries, America and Britain. I wouldn't be particularly qualified to write it, so you don't have to read that post.

I will say this: Publishing has been frustratingly slow on the draw about the internet, but then again so have most other entertainment mediums that pre-date it (music, television, movies, etc). They don't know what people are doing on it; they are kind of afraid to look because there's so much horse porn (I hate visiting bitorrent tracker sites). There seemed to be a genuine "Holy shit!" when Amazon.com nearly doubled its share in the pie chart of book sales, despite its low prices, deals, enticements with other products, and fast shipping. Last year at this time someone was telling me at the publishing institute that internet sales still weren't relevant.

As the world goes global (if that makes any sense - try not to think about it too hard), so do we. Young people aren't just getting their news on the internet, they're getting it from more than one place. My favorite page to visit after Yahoo! mail is Google News, which compiles news based on my keywords (I added sections for Tibet, Israel, and my area code) from nearly every English-speaking online news source in the world. I don't just read the New York Times - I read the Times (UK), The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), Daily Times (Pakistan), The Times of India, The Epoch Times Ireland, and the Hindustani Times. And that's just papers with the word "times" in it. There's also Xinhua, the CCP's official news service, which is an interesting read side-by-side with Western papers on the same events.

Anyway, my long-sought-after point is that I often stumble upon book reviews for books published in the UK, not the US. When Knopf published Pico Iyer's The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama this month, and Bloomsbury did the same in England (with a better cover), the reviews in the UK papers ran side-by-side with another book, Alexander Norman's Holder of the White Lotus: The Lives of the Dalai Lama. For some reason, this book is not available in America and nobody seems to have any plans to make it available anytime in the next 6 months to a year, so I had to buy it through Amazon.co.uk. The book was not cheap - I had to wait for it to be a used copy to even be reasonable - with the exchange rate, but it was apparent that it was the only way I was going to get the book.

This isn't the first time I've resorted to Amazon.co.uk (which for some reason will not honor my Amazon gift card) to get a book that I wouldn't have known about if various internet articles hadn't led me to it. I'm not saying that this is the end of a distinction between British and American publishing as we know it, because it's not, but it's one of those posts that maybe I'll look back on someday and say "I called it" in some fashion.

I like calling things.

Reality Check

So apparently I'm on the Writer's Digest list of Best Websites for 2008. Thanks, Writer's Digest!

I love to read and I love talking to writers (although I'm not a very talented writer myself) but I work in a profession that isn't very creative. Sometimes I imagine quitting my job and trying to work for an agent. Please disabuse me of my daydreams:

1. would I have to go back to college for an English degree? (my undergraduate degree is in communications)
2. is the pay as abysmal as you suggest?
3. do you feel excited looking for new and creative voices or is it drudge work slogging through queries?

Answers:

1. Considering I have a bachelor's and a master's and neither of them are English degrees, I would say no.

2. Sometimes you don't even get paid and they expect you to work for free. And there are people who will do it, too.

3. As I genuinely enjoy reading bad queries, I find my work very enjoyable no matter what is in the envelope.

Administrative Post

1. I do not tolerate comments that attack specific individuals, especially agents and publishers who do not post on this blog in the first place. If you have a specific issue with some agent, publisher, or writer, take it elsewhere. Posts naming names and then bashing them will be deleted or rejected.

2. That said, if you make a crazy, completely anonymous, rambling post, you are opening yourself up and are considered fair game.

Non-Fictional!

Someone yesterday wrote in saying that he had written a "non-fictional novel."

Normally I'm pretty laid back about the whole "fiction novel" business, but this was hilarious.

Interviews and Unloved Manuscripts

Clearly there's a bit of a lag between when I get emails and when I answer them, mainly because this blog only takes priority after I've finished my real work and then my writing work.

Dennis Cass asked me to do a guest Q & A, and I did. The results are here.

Dear Rejecter,

I was wondering whether you know how I can get my hands on unloved (rejected) manuscripts? The ones without a loving home etc.

On principle we toss them. Sometimes we recycle and sometimes we don't (if the recycle bin is unavailable or I'm making the decision, because I don't recycle). While the paper belongs to us, we don't have legal ownership of the words ON the paper. The author holds the copyright - the right to copy and/or reproduce them. That puts "sending other people's rejected manuscripts around" into somewhat dubious legal/moral territory.

Mystery Genres

Dearest Rejecter,

I am writing a series of what might be called "ultra cozy" mysteries. My stories don't involve murder. I think there is plenty of evil that men can do in addition to homicide, and I think a lot of that evil doing can drive stories that can be compelling and satisfying.

But I don't quite know how to pitch them. I'm afraid that if I say they are in the mystery genre, most agents and editors will have the standard preconception that there "must" be a murder or the story isn't worthy. Is there a genre title for what I am writing?

Yes. Thriller. Sorry, but now you are obligated to thrill. Or suspense. No, wait, I think suspense is the one where the protagonist is in danger, while thriller implies that other people are in danger, but not necessarily the protagonist. I always get these mixed up.

The long answer is that it kinda depends what the crime is. If your protagonist investigates international intrigue, you're writing a political thriller. If your protagonist is investigating a religious conspiracy, you're just writing a thriller that has an angle. If your protagonist is investigating the proper use of pre-existing water maintenance regulation, you'd better throw some lesbian rape in there, because otherwise it's probably going to be pretty boring. And you'd better be a woman too, because then it makes it a feminist piece.

"Mysteries" are generally to classify books about murder, or at least the implication of murder. Why that is, I'm not sure entirely; it's just now the industry developed. Either way, feel free to query agents who deal in crime, thrillers, suspense, and mysteries. Depending on what the crime actually is will narrow it down a bit for them in the query.

For more on your question, there's a discussion here.

Stupid Things This One Guy Did

Today we got a query on colored paper from someone who had some program to reverse his text. In other words, to read the query, I had to go to the mirror above the sink in the bathroom and hold it up.

Not only that, at no point did he really mention what his book was about. He mainly focused on the fact that his writing credentials were having lost a contest to host SNL in some "anyone can host" contest NBC ran in 1977. Yes, that's right, he lost the contest. Oh, and he has a novel, or something, but he didn't mention what is was about and I was already pretty annoyed, so I don't think it mattered.

Look, don't send us text that is unreadable unless we figure out how to do something to it. I didn't think I would have to say that, but apparently I do.

Age and Gender

Blog Readers: More on my blog in general in the comments section.

Ms. Rejector,

I am a sixteen year old female author. I have one full length novel (unpublished), under my belt, as well as one half of another one. My question is, respectfully, do age and gender play a major part when a manuscript is being taken into consideration by a publisher? I know it ultimately boils down to the quality of the work as to whether or not it is picked up, but in those first stages of consideration, is my age working against me?

Gender does not work against you unless you are a male writing a story about lesbians. That is the once case where it works against you.

Age does. Don't mention your age if you are below 21 years old. It's not lying; it's just not something you should mention before they see your novel and love it.

And the hits keep coming. Hits of awesomeness.

This is a continuation of the material I quoted in this post. He/she also references some replies, so read the comments. Not that it helps.

P.S. No offense meant to Peter. Sorry, but I'm just quoting the material.

That's right, Deb. You can make 4000 queries over the course of a couple years and that's what I did.
No hyperbole. Prob'ly more. It's easy to do with the internet, one single query at a time, wait awhile, requery some.

Advice: take the time to at least put the agent's name on your form queries. And yes you too can do 4000 if you like. And get just ONE snot-nosed reply, such as from Peter Rubie. Or this asshole "leesmiley."

Yes, you bet, none of the 1999 people rejected have gotten anywhere -- so far. Anyway, it's most probable. It's easy enough to take a representative sample, and easier to check who's made deals with whom, and so on. Then search your own computer records with a search to see if anybody who queried you has made a deal.

That's right, read each individual paragraph for its own. This is internet. You've got to speed up your own comprehensions, people. If you can't, join "leesmiley" and get nowhere, forever.

Oh. Sorry, at least two snot-noses here. Andrew Wheeler, genius.

Out of time. Work to do.

One of My Rare Encouraging Posts

Dear Rejecter,

I am a young writer who actually isn't that naive or arrogant enough to think that my writing deserves publishing (but I can dream right?), however, I at least think everyone is entitled to a response. My young adult novel has gotten to the full stage with five - count them - five different agents. After at least six months for each, the agents have not replied to my check-up e-mails or phone call. One agent said they were still reviewing, but that was two months ago (after the six months). Do I have the right to be frustrated, or should I be happy that someone even might be considering my work? Or maybe the silence of the five is a consensus of suckage toward my writing? What kind of message does it send when you take the time to write a novel, edit it, send it out, get requested, and then hear nothing?

You mean all five agents not only have kept you on hold for 6 months, but also don't answer phone calls or emails? Wow. They're jerks. I would be frustrated. Ignore any exclusives you may have given and start querying other people.

Publishing is frustrating - to writers, to agents, to editors, to the guy who has to design the cover that nobody ends up being happy with - we're all very frustrated. All the time. There's a high burn-out rate in this industry. On the other hand, we occasionally get to make dreams come true, which is pretty cool.

Your manuscript is obviously of some potential for so many agents to have considered it; start querying again and hang in there.

Graphic Novels and Responses

Dear Rejecter:

My question is about the follow-up procedure on the query letters that seem to disappear into the abyss with neither rejection or request for partials/fulls.

I've cast a fairly small net at this point (only eight queries sent) as I researched potential agencies pretty thoroughly in search of agents that might be a fit both for my current fiction novel and also for me in general, since I'm also a graphic novelist (writer/artist) which seems to be a very niche market.

I have had a fairly positive response from those eight queries - two requests for partials; one request for a full; and one flat out rejection. Of the four queries that have had no response, three agencies list on both their website and in my silly little "book about agents" that they respond to queries in a certain amount of time regardless of rejection or acceptance, yet some of these are months beyond those rough dates without a word.

So do I write them off and move on, or requery?

I'll start off by saying that the graphic novel market is a niche market despite its tremendous growth, and I don't know any agents who specialize in it, or even really know if anyone does. I'm fairly sure that if you were a client to an agent and he/she sold work for you, and you approached them about a graphic novel, they would at least make some calls and point you in the direction of getting that published. That's what sub-agents, foreign agents, and whoever else is in the agent's Blackberry are for.

As to the queries that got no response, move on. They got no response. They're rejections. Agent websites are not necessarily accurate to that day, month, or even year. I would exhaust all other avenues before re-querying, and from your high response rate, it seems like you won't need to.

...I'm at a loss.

Anonymous said...

I'm a literary agent who's been on both sides of the desk. After about 4000 rejections for my own MS I got a job with a reputable agency, 30 years in biz.

In 4000 e-mail queries, I found a single snotty agent. He's opened himself to humiliation one day, as this kind of hilarity can make valuable copy.

This is no 9-to-fiver. One is up 'til the wee hours looking for quality work. In 2000 queries I found a single potential -- who didn't even follow submission rules. This first-timer is now getting thumbs-up from several "Big Guys." That's good writin'.

This is what puts food on our tables. Nobody I've rejected has got anywhere so far. We all keep watch to see how right or wrong we are.

Writers who have time for bitterness can't be very certain of themselves.

We get TONS of proposals from self-healed or been healed of something; a client's associate, incidentally, is going on Oprah for that.

My friends who have overcome worse hardships may never be heard from.

There's no pathology in turning down uninspiring queries. Many sound fraudulent. Let's get "obnoxious:" many were just too dumb to stay out of trouble. People that dumb may think they deserve a book contract and TV accolades, but their peers don't buy books anyhow.

This is a response in my "You Are Not Special" post.

Someone please explain it to me.

P.S. There are not 4000 literary agents in the United States. Maybe in the world. Maybe. And that's including assistants. And the cleaning lady who works in the agency building.

Children's Books and Agents

I’ve done many searches looking for a statistic or at least a better understanding of why some houses do not respond to agented submissions. I read on one editor’s blog that he doesn’t even look at a MS until the agent nudges him. Is this common practice?

I write children’s’ fiction, and out of 7 agented subs this past year, I’ve only received two positive rejections. The rest are all no shows (these are major houses, too). I’m trying to figure out if this ‘if we’re not interested, you won’t hear from us’ is a common thing now, even with an agent, or if my agent is not being aggressive enough with follow up (which I suspect is true). I’d really appreciate it if you could address this on your blog. Thanks so much for your insight.

So I'm not sure the statistics in children's fiction (particularly middle grades and below), but yes, most houses have a blanket policy of no un-agented material. See more about it in this post. There are, however, a lot of smaller publishing houses for children's books that take un-agented submissions.

EDIT: (OK, this is the third time I'm typing this out because blogger keeps losing my work) Sometimes agents take on work that they cant sell, either because they're not good enough or the book isn't as good as they thought it was. Also, markets can dry up and contacts can quit or get fired. Give your agent time to exhaust every possible avenue. When he/she does, it's time to write another book and/or find a new agent.

You Are Not Special or Inspiring

I would say that about 30% of our submissions are medical memoirs. Occasionally they're by doctors who want to bring someone to the public's attention, sometimes someone has a crazy medical theory, but for the most part they're people who have had or have some disease, disorder, or syndrome and have chosen to write about about it. That's all well and good, and inspiring stories about illness are important or whatever, but there are two aspects of it that particularly annoy me.

(1) The ones concerning psychiatric problems, unlike cancer or a disease, tend to fall in line with whatever is a trendy diagnosis in the medical world. Right now we're seeing a lot of bipolar memoirs, far more than we normally see. In fact it's gotten to the point where if I read a CNN health blurb about some disorder, I expect to see more queries about it in the next couple months. The article was written in response to a trend in diagnostics, which means more people were being diagnosed with that particular illness, which means more people who are writing their memoirs are going to say they have that illness.

I've singled out mental illnesses here for a reason: they adhere more to trends because the diagnostic procedures are constantly in flux. Unlike cancer, which is always cancer, mental health issues are simply harder to pin down. Many psychologists and psychiatrists think some of the less obvious categories (obvious categories being narcolepsy and pyromania) are not worth diagnosing. They would rather treat the patient by their symptoms and use therapy to get to the root of the symptoms than label it, but the labels serve a purpose. The patient wants the comfort of knowing their problem has a name, which gives it a legitimacy it might not have had before, and the doctor needs some guidelines on treatment methods, so names are assigned to a collection of symptoms which really appear in a lot of different disorders. Periods of mania followed by periods of depression might label a person manic depressive, but then bipolar disorder came along and some people felt it was separate, and then they classed it into type 1 and type 2, and then added a bunch of supplemental classes, and now after DSM-IV some people argue that manic depression might just be a sub-type of bipolar disorder. (This happens in other areas of medicine. One of my doctors feels strongly that Ulcerative Colitis, long believed to be unrelated to Crohn's Disease, is actually one of 5 subtypes of Crohn's Disease)

The results are good: Doctors learn more about the differences in subtypes and therefore how to treat them. However, it also means I'll see a huge increase of queries of people who for years have struggled with whatever depression and mania is currently being called. In our office we don't have a blanket policy about rejecting disease stories - in fact, many are requested - but we are used to seeing a direct response to medical trends in people's memoirs, which means the memoirs reflect not so much their personal struggle (which could be interesting) as what's popular in medicine (less interesting/relevant).

(2) Almost everyone feels compelled to add the line, "I hope to inspire/educate other people with this disease/disorder/syndrome." Altruistic or narcissistic? You decide. It's probably a bit of both. Not to knock on people with serious mental illness (having been misdiagnosed with a number of them myself by well-meaning doctors), but being sick is not the only requirement for writing a memoir about it. You also have to be a good writer and there has to be a reason why your story is something people would want to read. My boss does request a lot of these, which results in a high number of rejected partials, as it becomes plain within a chapter that the author has nothing special to contribute and is merely going through the chronological history of her doctor's visits and making mundane observations about the waiting room in hopes of making it seem real.

I have a personal beef with this, and I admit it outright. When I got sick ten years ago, a ton of people either recommended books to me or gave me books about either my disease or a more general book that was meant to be inspiring. I have a shelf full of them. It's never really stopped. Everyone from the person in the seat in front of me at synagogue to my hairstylist reads some book about illness, thinks of me, and then makes sure I hear about it at length while they're cutting my hair or running into me at the bagel line at kiddish. The more annoying people give me a copy, and then even check back two weeks later to see if I've read it, which means I have to read it or lie about reading it. I did read some of them, and the experience was mainly negative. Either I found them depressing, uninteresting, or irrelevant. In a few cases the author was clearly deranged. Some guy apparently cured his Crohn's by eating dirt, but if you read his story carefully, you'll notice that his doctors were just doing a terrible job and had he been seeing someone decent, he would have gotten treatment that definitely would have prevented him from being 80 pounds underweight (it's called intravenous feeding, dork).

All of these people are well-meaning, and have no idea how little interest I have in whatever book they think will inspire me. When I want to read about Crohn's, I go get a book and read it. Otherwise, I mainly listen to my doctor and have him explain things in detail, and that's enough for me. Beyond that, I have a life to live.

Over the years, many, many people have told me to write a book about my experiences, another line that pops up a lot in these queries. The response I give is always the same: "I don't think anyone would want to read it." Nothing about my personal medical history is particularly instructive or inspiring. I may feel differently in the future, but this is the way I've felt for awhile, and it's unlikely to change very soon. Just because something was traumatic doesn't mean people want to hear about it. There still has to be a basic story, even in a memoir, to entice people. It doesn't have to adhere to the basic conflict/action/resolution structure of a novel, especially with a chronic illness to which there is no resolution, but it has to tell the reader something other than "I was sick and here's what happened."

Also, change the names of your doctors or get their permission to use them. They wouldn't write a book about you and name names; you probably shouldn't do the same.

Stupid Things People Do #I don't know

So you submitted to editors and agencies, and were rejected. They wrote a personalized rejection, though, praising certain elements of your book but deciding at the end it's "just not right for them." Well, good for you. You were close.

That said, do not, under any circumstances, include a rejection letter from another agent or a publishing house in your query letter to an agent. It doesn't help if you underline and/or highlight the line of praise; it's still a rejection and you definitely shouldn't be showing it to us. The time to mention what publishing houses rejected you (so that we don't resubmit) is AFTER we've taken you on as a client, and not before.

I don't know why people do this, but they do.

I'll be offline until Monday night for Passover, so don't expect a lot of comments to be approved between tonight and then unless I get a friend to do it for me. Enjoy, and Chag Sameach!

Pitching at Conferences

Hello! I have an odd question, but in your infinite wisdom and experience I’m sure you’ll have an excellent answer. I was at a regional romance writer’s conference where I was one of the finalists in a big contest. As a conference attendee I got one pitch session, with Deirdre Knight – and that one went really well. As a finalist I got another pitch session – with a different agent. It was a group pitch and I just was not pitching well for some reason. After my pitch, Agent B said, “well, it doesn’t really sound interesting, but send me a partial anyway.”

I was humiliated, of course. Out of seven people she only asked for mine and one other person – other people she either referred to other agents or flat out said “not for me.” This was in late September. I have not sent her the partial, but I’m now thinking I have nothing to lose. Here’s my question: Do I mention in my cover letter that she hated it but wanted to see it anyway? J I could make it funny, but would it be better to lie and hope she doesn’t remember me and only remembers requesting the partial? Such a tricky kind of situation.

You shouldn't feel humiliated. She wouldn't have asked for it if there wasn't legitimate interest; she may just have been tired, or cranky, or in a bad mood, or simply thought your presentation was lacking but she was willing to see if it looked different in paper. Don't mention that she hated it, just that she requested it.

A lot is made in books of the agent pitch at conferences and I'm sure a few sales have come from it, but it's not the main way to approach an agent. Many writers are not good at describing their books (myself included) in person and we're aware of that; the agents who go to these conferences choose to do so because they don't find them as unbearable as I would. If you're not a good speaker, send a query. If you ARE a good speaker and good presenter, go to conferences and pitch away.