Response to Responses from Previous Response

Okay. Deep breath.

I know my original notion, which is that you shouldn't waste space on the page with non-credential credentials, or that some of them may actually harm you, is against industry wisdom. The normal advice is "list any credentials you may have." However, people have a tendency to take things to extremes, and this results in people listing every paper they ever wrote for school. I think the advice should be coupled with the more reassuring, "It's okay if you don't have any credentials."

Most novel writers don't. Most people in fiction sat down to write a novel, wrote it, and are now submitting it. They don't have "past experience." But they get nervous when they see the "writing credits" option and know they can't do it.

The general rule is that if you're not sure it's a credential or not, include it. It won't hurt you. DON'T scrape the bottom of your autobiographical barrel for something to mention. If you have something that comes to mind, great. If you don't, don't sweat it.

I'm planning on quoting the technology column (which has nothing to do with my novel) with a colleague in my query letters, because we got paid and it's a legitimate newspaper, albeit not one you'll have read if you don't live in New England. I'm *not* planning on quoting the small community newspaper for which I wrote for free for years. The key idea is that agents WILL Google on your writing creds. An agent will pull up my community newspaper columns whether she wants to or not. She will also discover I wasn't lying about the paid technology gig.

Actually, for the most part, we will not use google to search for you or your writing creds unless they're mysterious in some fashion and it's bugging us and it's a slow afternoon. Every once in a while, a guy with a terrible query writes that he wrote for a television series, but doesn't name the series. I'm confused, so I go hit up IMDB and find out he was on the writing staff of some failed cartoon show. You know, the ones that air on Sunday mornings at like 7 am on a station you've never heard of. I'm not going to hold that against him (it's a writing job), but it's still a terrible query. Reject.

I'd really like Rejecter to comment sometime on how her boss deals with PUBLISHERS' standards when it comes to author credentials. My agent and I are striking out on selling my books (fiction and nonfiction) based solely on the fact I don't have an existing "media platform." Apparently, writing well and regularly getting published in major newspapers and magazines does little for your book-deal potential these days when you don't already have your own reality show or brand of perfume, or haven't committed the crime of the century---the kind of creds that most of the big publishers seem to want from any new author they acquire (or else they won't acquire your book).

So I keep hearing this term "media platform" thrown around and I have to say I'm stumped about what it is. I think Miss Snark used to use it, but I've never heard it used by anybody else. All right, I've only worked for a few agents and only worked in an office with half a dozen more, and attended one BEA, and only read so many agent blogs, so I don't know everything. That said, it's very hard for me to give you advice on a concept that may have a different meaning than what I'll guess it means. The terms "media platform" and "platform" don't even appear in my Publication Services Glossary of Publishing Terms.

In answer to your original question, agents pitch books to editors they think will like the material. If the author has been previously published, they'll mention it initially, and where (The editor will want to know what company). There are some genres were the editor will ask about background, like non-fiction that requires heavy research or political commentary that requires some kind of media standing (because the book will sell if the person is a celebrity in that area of commentary). Otherwise, I don't think it comes up, especially not in fiction.

As for why you keep striking out, it could be because your agent is relatively new in the field (2004) with no previous experience in this country. He's gotten to a respectable start in selling commercial non-fiction titles, but it will take him time to build up his contact list with editors.

wanted to clarify the contest thing - i feel like most contests i've seen have some sort of entry fee, even from journals like the georgetown review etc. are those considered scam contests too? i always thought entry fees were just standard, but maybe i just haven't been paying attention.

also, on that subject, aside from the HUGE journals (new yorker, paris review, etc), what are some publications that are more mid-tier but would still be worth mentioning?

I'm gonna say I can't make individual rulings on the contests, so you should probably mention them unless you are SURE you got scammed. I honesty don't know every contest.

Anything mid-tier is worth mentioning, yes.

Response to Previous Post's Responses

Well, I should have seen that one coming. Still, this is way better than when people are mad at me and commenting because of it.

For your information, I will be at the BEA (Book Expo America) over at the Javitz Center tomorrow on a one-day pass. Feel free to go up to women who look under 30 and shout "ARE YOU THE REJECTER!?!?" at the top of your voice. I think that would be a funny way to get kicked out a convention.

What about contests? Are there good/bad writing contests too? Or are all of them bad? I won one where the judge was an extremely well-known publisher in my genre. Should I mention that?

The general rule with contests is that they're bad if you have to pay an entry fee. Those are scam contests. If you've won a non-scam contest, mention it. Also, mention what you just said about the judge (give the name). Dropping names is almost always good.

Hey what about working as an editorial assistant for a college literary journal that is published throughout your state.

Not going to help you. Sorry. We have to recognize the name of the journal. And yes, we're very familiar with journal names.

Quick follow-up regarding unpublished novels: down the road, with an agent, mightn't that be a selling point? I mean, suppose you wrote one, wrote a second, edited the first, wrote another, edited the second, and so on, and at some point polished the first again and sent queries out. Assuming you're a good writer and find an agent, should you mention this? It seems to me that most writers--even good writers--have one book in them, or variations on one book. Having a bunch with long-term work put into them would, I'd think, be a selling point. Or doesn't it matter?

We don't care about the work that didn't sell. We only care about the work you want us to sell. Yes, it is a good idea to write a lot of novels to work on your technique. No, it is not a good idea to mention them. We just hear "I wrote a bunch of unpublishable novels!"

As far as short stories go, should they be relevant to the topic you're querying? Also, articles in magazines relevant to your topic? thanks.

They don't have to be and probably won't be, but if they ARE, you should mention it. As in, "This short story that was published is actually the first chapter in a novel." (Like Ellison's Battle Royal)

I do have questions about some things that I guess would be considered "okayish credits," if you'll allow that term for a moment.

-- An essay / op-ed column published in the daily newspaper of a large U.S. city, though not NY or LA. Include?

No.

-- Other articles / essays published in paying markets?

Not unless they relate to the manuscript in some fashion.

-- Published textbook material that's in use in classrooms?

Yes, but don't make a big deal out of it.

-- Working in the publishing industry? One of the blogging agents advised using this in the bio section, noting that it would convey to the agent that the writer would understand industry terminology, deadlines, the glacial slowness of publishing, etc. Granted, I didn't work in editorial; I did production and design.

Yes.

Rejecter, could you please clarify Bad Credential #3, regarding having the same job as your protagonist? I was uncertain what you meant by a job that isn't hard to research. Also, why should an author not create a protagonist with a similar background?

I'm referring to the Mid-life Crisis Thriller, which usually involves a character who has the same job as the protagonist. It's a sign to us that you might not be that creative. If you have the same job, don't mention it. It's a turn-off.

Here's a question that should be near and dear to your heart: if a writer has experience working in publishing, should that be mentioned?

Yes.

Is that "You sold 3000 self published copies ..." in a year? or ever?

Ever. Self-published novels sell really, really poorly.

What does an MFA give you? (Sorry, I don't even know what an MBA is good for - except 3 letters after your name).

An MFA is a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction, which is a bit like an MA except it's considered a terminal degree (you don't go on to a PhD after that). It serves to qualify people for teaching positions in English and creative writing at the college level, for which you generally need a master's.

How about professional writing in another field, such as technical writing. Does it work for me or against me (or make no difference) if I say something like:

Although this is my first novel, I've been a professional writer and editor for 18 years.

Mention it (it means you know grammar), but don't make a big deal out of it.

Your Bad Credential #1: lots of very competitive, "real" journals, don't pay. Anything. Or they pay you in a free subscription or a few contributor copies, or a token fee that--unless your story maybe is very short--will not amount to 3 cents per word. They also don't usually pay per word, but that's a whole other thing. Zoetrope or Paris Review, maybe they pay a lot. Agni, which I think is quite 'respected', pays $10 per printed page. Doesn't come out to 3 cents per word. One Story pays $100, regardless of length, and they tend to go for longer stories... and blah blah blah, I'm probably taking your comment too seriously or literally, aren't I? :oP

Taking it too literally. What I meant was, it should be a pro market, not your high school newsletter. Pro-markets generally pay, though this is not universally true.

Hmm. I've been on the fence about my one credential. I'm a staff writer for a website that does science/history articles. The negative side is that no, I'm not paid any appreciable amount. The plus side is that over this last year we've averaged more than 100,000 unique hits a day with some days topping 2.5 million.

To mention or not to mention...

Only mention if it directly pertains to the manuscript.

Not exactly a 'credential,' but would mention that I'm 17 years old be a good platform for someone writing YA fantasy?

I definitely think it creates strong marketing potential, the whole 'teen writing for teens' thing, but I'm interested if you think so too.

Oh, for the love of G-d, do not mention you are 17 years old. Feel free to submit, but don't mention you're under 20. Just keep that under wraps until we've fallen in love with your manuscript, at which point, we won't care.

I have to take issue with the comment about newspaper jobs. I worked at a mid-sized daily newspaper for seven years, so I know the crap you're talking about that can come out of those smaller papers. But you know what? These people are writing for a living. Most have a basic understanding of grammar, mechanics, spelling, etc. (I have firsthand knowledge that this isn't always the case, unfortunately). Working at a newspaper--no matter its size-- demands organization, time management, and respect for deadlines. I've always thought those would be good qualities an agent would like to see in an author.

An agent is looking for an author who has a manuscript that they love and can sell to a major publishing company. That is the ONLY real credential. Also, preferably, the author should not be a jerk.

Well, great. Being a former technical writer, having a BA in English and getting some "articles" in my published in my local newspaper ... was all I had to go on.

It doesn't matter. If you have a great manuscript, you don't need credentials. You'll be fine.

You mentioned writing for textbooks. I wrote a number of scripts for what then were VHS supplements for a series of reading textbooks from a top publisher. Is that worth mentioning?

Uh....not until it's the same subject as the manuscript.

I'm not an agent, but when I hear that an unpublished author has X novels in the trunk, it doesn't make me think, "That's dedication!" It makes me think, "...and not a one of them was good enough to sell?" It's like advertising your failures. Some agents, like Termagant 2's, might like to hear how many novels you have in the trunk, but I suspect others would be put off by it.

I just want to quote Issendai here because I totally agree with the above statement. Actually, most of the people in the previous post who've responded to other people's questions have given the same advice I would give.

Credentials

Dear Rejector,

I understand the importance of following standard formating while writing a query. The problem is, I am a new writer with not much of a biography that would sway the interest of an agent (no literary accomplishments already published). Would it be better to concentrate on the work and let it sell the query? Can't an agent always call or email for more information on the writer later? Or would this be a bad move?

No. You do not need any credentials in the query letter. You only need a good novel. (If you have no published material, just don't mention anything. We'll figure it out, but it's less annoying that someone saying 'I'm an unpublished author)

I've been meaning to talk about credentials for a long time, so let's get down to it.

Every query letter advice site says to list any credentials you may have that would qualify you as a series writer. Problem is most first-time novelists (meaning, this is the first novel they're trying to get published, or the first novel that is good enough to be published) don't have any creditials. They didn't take an MFA program, they didn't publish a bunch of short stories because they don't write short stories, and they haven't written for textbooks. They've just got a novel. That's good, because it's all we really want. The advice, however, often leaves writers scrapping the bottom of the barrel for anything to put down. Good credentials help you (a little). Bad credentials are annoying and just show us you've read some query-letter-writing websites and are desperate to throw something in. We don't care. We just care about your novel.

GOOD CREDENTIALS

1. You have had short stories (any amount) published in a pro-market magazine, meaning they paid you more than .3c a word.

2. You have written one or multiple non-fiction books that were published, whether they have anything to do with your novel or they don't.

3. Your manuscript is about something that was in the national news (and not just the metro section for one day) and you were involved in it.
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4. You have a serious academic background (masters/PhD but from something more elite than an online masters program) in the topics the novel focuses on. If you've written historical fiction this is a big deal.

5. You have been previous published as a novelist by either a major publisher, a small press, or have sold more than 3000 copies of your self-published novel.

6. You've taken an MFA program. (Okay, we're on the fence about that, but you should mention it)

BAD CREDENTIALS

1. You have had one short story published in a non-paying literary journal we've never heard of.

2. You've had 31 short stories published in the same non-paying literary journal we've never heard of (this happened once).

3. You have the same job as the protagonist and it's not a job that would be hard to research, like being a flight attendent or an RV salesman.

4. You write for a local small-town newspaper. We will assume this means you wrote one editorial about how you saw rotten meat in the supermarket or the synagogue construction is making too much noise, because that's what most of these small-town newspapers are about.

5. You say you submitted previous novels, but they were rejected. Some people are even dumb enough to include the rejection letter because it has a few lines of praise between the "we won't want this and won't pay you any money for it because it's bad." Sometimes they highlight the generic praise part so we won't miss it. Look, it's false praise. We know because we give out a lot of it in some attempt to be nice to people.

6. You've written 10 unpublished novels and they're sitting on your shelf.

7. You have a BA in English. Most career writers went for a BA in English or history. I was history.

I hope this clears that up.

YA and Dragons

Hey, Rejector.

Just spent three hours reading all of our blog posts (every. single. one.) I do have a question relating to trends/cliches. The YA fantasy market seems to be jam-packed nowadays, especially the dragon theme. Would an agent find it too risky to launch another book into this cooling market? is there even ROOM? (i've tried to give my manuscript a creative twist. I don't know if that will even work anymore). Should I just trust my story and go with it anyway? Thanks!

There's room for anything that's really good.

It's true everyone's been going "YA YA YA!!!" for a while now and we're seeing the results, but as it's a semi-independent market, not a trend in a genre, it will not "go away." It's like saying, "Is there room for more mysteries?" or "Are they going to keep making thrillers?" Of course they will. Genres have their own markets and as long as those markets continue to exist, we'll need books to fill them.

That said, enough with the dragons. Unless it's really good.

The Strange Case of "The Historian"

This weekend I picked up “The Historian” (Elizabeth Kostova’s mammoth debut magnum opus) and I wonder…since it clocked in at about 241k words…how the hell did something like this get published?!?! Don’t you literary agencies have an unwritten screed somewhere that no debut novel may be more than 100k unless it’s *really really* good and said wannabe novelist has first sacrificed a Muggle on the altar of JK Rowling? (Whose first Harry Potter book was considered quite long for the young’uns, and we hadn’t seen nuthin’ yet). I haven’t read the Kostova’s yet but obviously it’s at the top of my reading pile.

Do you have the inside scoop on whether whether Ms. Kostova bribed, threatened, wheedled, cajoled, slept with or otherwise followed a plan outside the customary novel submission process with her agent? And what did her agent think about trying to sell a mammoth tome like that by an unknown, untried novelist? Don’t editors involuntarily hurl up their last three meals if a debut novel ms comes to more than 120k? Were souls sold to a certain collector of errant same? Was the agent sleeping with the editor while Ms. Kostova was sleeping with her agent?

All right, I’m being a little silly here but…*this is supposed to be outside the realm of possibility!!!* Then again, the Red Sox finally won the Pennant so I guess *nothing* is impossible in this ol’ world…;)

Please, please enlighten us curious masses. I know I’m not the only one who wonders. ;)

So, [edit] The Historian is exceptionally long and actually is 241,021 words [/edit] Unlike Harry Potter, the publishing company doesn't make the page count longer by putting in big letters and a lot of white space (at least not in my hardcover copy).

There is some story behind The Historian that I don't happen to know off the top of my head. Elizabeth Kostova graduated with a middle-range MFA degree (in terms of prestige) from the University of Michigan. She won an award there but most MFA programs have elaborate award programs so that they can say their students have won awards. But with a 2 million dollar advance, there is some story there that I don't know. I remember reading about it in Newsweek. It may have been that the book was just considered that good.

There are two major genres for which we allow a higher word count: historical fiction and high fantasy. This is because traditionally high word count books of these types have done well commercially. They're generally involved and generation-spanning or extremely descriptive. They're not a like a mystery novel, which the reader might be inclined to just keep reading until the ending to find out the end, so the reader will be annoyed if this means staying up for three days. Mysteries and category romance are shorter. High fantasy is usually unbearably long or broken up into many books.

It is true that we get a little leery over 120,000, just because we know it's going to have that going against it when we go to sell it to a house. Also, it's going to be annoying to ship around and handle and copy-edit, because it's just going to be so large. That said, I've put many a 150k'er into the maybe pile because I thought it sounded good. Maybe one or two 200k's in my time. There was a 412,000 one, some old west saga, and we had to pass. But I don't see a reason to give up hope if you're a little over the number and you're in historical or fantasy. And remember: It's easier to trim than to pad. (Well, it's better for the story. Padding a story is something that you do because you have to and it always shows)

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

This is the last question I'm going to answer before Shavous. Your comments may not get approved until Thursday night, when I come back online from the holiday, unless I get someone to do them while I'm gone. Just so you know.

Dear Ms. Rejecter,

I've been reassured at every turn that agents are bombarded with queries. Help me with the math. How many agents are there in New York City? Can we pick a safe number? Let's say 250-- who say they'll take a look at fiction queries. (Queries for fiction, not fictional queries, of which I'm sure you get a few.) If all 250 are receiving between two and three hundred queries a week-- Miss Rejecter-- that's up to seven hundred and fifty queries a week being mailed to 10010. You'd think the post office would be mad. I bet that's what the rate increase is all about, now that I think about it.

And on to the question: Who is writing all these books? I've finished two manuscripts (oh, 100 rejections on #1 and headed toward 50 on #2) and let me tell you, it didn't happen overnight. Are we to assume that seven hundred and fifty people a week finish and polish a manuscript? Do those people have day jobs? Car pool? Spa appointments? If it's fair game to query the agents over and over and over again? If you ask me, that has to be it. You're getting the same song, different verse, queries. You'd have to be. Don't you find that a little irritating? Maybe some people love those little rejection postcards. I know I don't. I sent a query last week, well, several, to an agent who had posted on her web site, "No news means I don't want your manuscript. I don't send out rejections." I like her.

Thanks,
Wanna-be (agented)

Let's put this into perspective. There are thousands upon thousands of businesses in Manhattan alone, many of which produce mass volumes of mail. I don't know any postal statistics, but I'm going to guess that we don't really show up on anybody's radar, and are not responsible for the postal increase. As a mailman explained in another comment, the main reasons for the price jump on stamps is the rising price of gas (necessary to drive those letters/packages around) and the rise in minimum wage, leading to a general increase in ages. Based on inflation, you can expect stamps to go up. A lot of people are mad that it was not announced very far ahead like it usually is, and a lot of us who ship books for a living are VERY mad that a lot of services (like international parcel post) were eliminated. Media mail, the main way to get books around the United States, went up by I think around 30 cents. That's huge. That's not two cents. It's 30. I had to raise all my shipping prices, as did Amazon, and everybody else who mails books, and we're all pissed. Some people over at the postal service have responded, "Well, we have so much competition now from other services like UPS and Fedex." Yeah, that's great. You know, when you have competition from another business, you're supposed to lower your prices, not raise them.

Okay, now that I'm done with the rant about the surprise raise in prices that dramatically affected my business, onto your actual question.

Who is writing all these books? Well, as the U.S. population currently clocks in at 301,902,252 people, I can safely say the answer is: Enough. There are enough people who find the time, however they can, because it's something they want to do and they make time for it.

Crossing Over (Into Fiction)

Dear Ms. Rejecter,

I just launched my writing career recently, and I’ve had a lot of success. I’ve had two education books published, and I have six non-fiction children’s books coming out by year’s end. I have the prospect of several more non-fiction books on the horizon. So, of course, I’m not satisfied. I want to write fiction, which has always been my first love.

My question is, just how much leverage will my non-fiction success buy me in trying to get an agent for my young adult novel? Am I likely to be pigeon-holed as a non-fiction author? Or will previous publishing credits make agents more likely to take me seriously?

We do see a lot of people who have written non-fiction books for either a textbook or academic market and now want to cross over into fiction. It's not uncommon and it's not bad. It shows you can write. Usually it's not a huge help because these authors are authors of extremely technical texts within their field (medicine, corporate management, computer coding) and now they've written a thriller with lesbian detectives. Okay, there's only one detective, and she's a lesbian, but she has a girlfriend and therefore there's sure to be some hot monkey lesbian sex. And the author is a guy. (In other words, some people can talk all they want about how to organize a flowcart but probably shouldn't try their hand at a novel)

In your case, your background is a huge support to your presentation of a children's novel. It still has to be a good book, but if I were a children's book agent, I would definitely ask to see it.

How to Become an Internet Laughingstock

Normally I wouldn't do this, but someone emailed this to me in a mass email and it wound up in my bulk mailbox, which is where it belonged, along with all the Anatrim stuff. Anything that yahoo mail can already figure out is crap is fair game in my book.

Author seeks Publisher - Publishers & Literary Agents Please Read

Please only reply to the email links in the text below.

I am a published writer, having written non-fiction and fiction for an array of magazines. I have written for many business publications, PR editorials and features for a wide range of websites worldwide.

I find it unfortunate that none of these magazines seem to have names.

I now have my first fully completed and critiqued non-fiction manuscript available for publishing.

Nothing makes me jump out of my chair like the idea of a "first manuscript." Look, if it is your first, don't mention it.

For more information, please read this email

I thought that was pretty much what I was doing.

or email me at [email deleted] to request the synopsis, some sample chapters and the promotional website.

Discover the Revolutionary New Way to Heal Yourself!

I smell an auto-reject. Okay, because he emailed me at Rejector, it's an auto-reject anyway, but if this was submitted to my boss properly in letter form, this is where I would only continue reading for my own amusement. What is it? Does it involve crystals? A poor understanding of any major religion's mysticism? Eating only beets and then measuring your stool? Coffee enemas? Tantric sex? Eating dirt? Positive attitude? Embracing Christ?

This book and card set will help you to discover a new way to heal yourself. It is a unique, revolutionary, easy to use system; this set has also been designed to show you a clear and simple way by which you can remove past and present health issues aiding the healing of yourself from within.

Each set of cards has been ingeniously and carefully structured allowing the user to discover which mental, emotional and physical impediment prevents their progress forward in life.

DAMNIT! Tarot cards again. Look, there's no real myticism behind a medieval CCG. (Collective Card Game). That's right, that's what Tarot was - the Middle Age's version of Magic: The Gathering. Go read a book if you don't believe me.

This book teaches a revolutionary new way to heal yourself easily today!

My Critique company commented:

This is an amazing manuscript. Many, many readers will benefit from this material. Thank you for writing this manuscript. This will be a huge success! I do wish you luck with this endeavor. However, you will not need luck. You have an awesome manuscript, and a special gift with words.

He owns the company? I guess that doesn't make him very subjective.

For more information, please email me at [email deleted] to request the synopsis, some sample chapters and the promotional website.

If don't want to receive email from us, we apologise for any inconvenience caused and ask that you simply email [email deleted] putting remove as the subject. If you are sending from another email address, please include the email address that you want removed.

As I never signed up for your list anyway, I deeply suspect whether I get future emails from you will not involve any actions on my part. I think making fun of you at length in a blog will be much more effective.

Stupid Things People Do #2

Some people like to put their business card in their submission, especially if they bother to submit a whole binder or something. It's not necessary, but it helps us find their email if they forgot the SASE or we actually want to request material.

That said, I would like to put all of the people who have titled themselves "wordsmith" in a spaceship and send it to a planet with no atmosphere. That planet would then be renamed "planet of the dorks."

Not Actually a Dumb Question

Dear Rejecter,
I have what I now am thinking is the dumbest question in the world. I mean, I should know this but I honestly don't. And the question is... am I supposed to be using indentions for each new paragraph in my query letter? In my novel? I don't want to look like I don't know what I'm doing, but I don't know if indentions are just something they teach you back in elementary school (like putting two spaces after a period) or if they are actually supposed to be used.
- A Reader

In your query letter, it doesn't matter, as long as you put a space between paragraphs so we know where they end. In your manuscripts, use indents, and no spaces between paragraphs, like a normal book (except that it's double-spaced).

How using indents or spaces between paragraphs will make you look like you don't know basic grammar, so stay away from doing that.

I honestly don't know where this double-spacing business started, but I'm not a huge fan. NO ONE DO THIS, but I find 1.5 perfectly acceptable. When you figure the cost of paper, the cost of ink (especially if you don't have a laser printer), and now these increased shipping costs for weight, huge manuscripts are generally bad, in my opinion as a writer and as an assistant. We're not a huge fan of the 800-page unsolicited manuscripts. It's bad enough that they're unsolicited, but I'm not much of a weight lifter as it is.

These kinds of posts are why I'm anonymous

I'd like to know how anyone can get a book published without an agent. I've been doing this (trying to, that is) for more than 30 years and I don't know of ANY publisher who will read an unsolicited manuscript. The field, as I see it, is set up like this: a publisher doesn't want you unless you're represented by an agent, who doesn't want you unless you have literally knocked their socks off with the query letter to end all query letters, and if the query letter doesn't turn their crank, you're stuck out in the cold. You may have the next Catcher in the Rye resting comfortably in your filing cabinet for the rest of your life, but unless you nail the publishing world with that perfect query letter, you're just another rank amateur no one cares about.
Did I get it right?

Well, yes, except for most of what you said, which was technically incorrect. First of all, my boss often does not wear socks with her sandals like I do. Second, I'm not sure what a crank has to do with being cold, but if we're supposed to have one of those crank things in the office, I should put in a complaint with the guys we rent from. I will say that it is very cold in our offices and I'm often wearing my coat in the summer, but they can't do anything about it because it's central air.

Now that I'm done being a smartass, I will say that any amount of research will inform you that may publishers DO take unsolicited manuscripts, and some of them even accept and publish them! Who knew! Publishers include Tor, Sourcebooks, Baen Books, Ace Books, Daw Books, several divisions of Harlequin Enterprises, and basically every small/independent press known to man.

Though specifically sci-fi/fantasy oriented, a great place to look up publishers and magazines that take unsolicited material is Ralan.com.

Literary Fiction, Short Stories, and Getting Published

Many people have questioned how it's possible for the next generation of great literary masters to get published, what with people like me rejecting everything that comes in the mail. The answer (or one possible answer) is that generally literary fiction operates in a slightly different way than genre fiction does. Genre fiction, if well-written, can generally be sold to a major publishing house by a first-time novelist without any background. Not so with literary fiction.

Almost all of modern day literary fiction authors get started with short stories, and I don't mean the one or two you managed to get published in an online zine that paid you $5. These are generally people who get published in huge magazines like Atlantic Monthly or The Michigan Quarterly Review or even The New Yorker. And they don't just do it once. They've got a good 6 or 7 stories published before they sit down to write the novel.

Said novel is very appealing to us because those are some serious writing credits. The novel is good, so it's published, and to some critical acclaim, or makes some money, or quite possibly both (but not necessarily). At this point, the agent turns to the novelist and says, "What else do you have?"

"Well, I've got these short stories that I can now republish because the rights have expired with the magazines."

"Uh, there's only like 6 of them. Throw in a bunch of unpublished ones and something you've written recently and we'll put it out as a collection."

If you ask any agent, they will generally say they don't take short story collections. What they mean is, "We don't take short story collections from people who haven't had at least half of those stories published in major literary avenues," which rules out almost every applicant. Most short story collections by novelists are the bunch they got published, a few that they didn't, and maybe one or two that were thrown together to fill out the book. The publisher might even pull some strings and get one of the new stories published in The New Yorker at the same time the short story collection comes out to push the book. The collection feeds on the fame of the novel, and the literary novelist gets some more writing credits and some time to write the second novel. Or they might stay in short stories if they can't think up a new novel but have a few short ideas floating around their head, and keep publishing anthologies until they have enough to make up a "greatest hits" collection.

Can you see how the success of one thing kinda feeds off the other? People pick up books by names they recognize. It might help to have an "author of the acclaimed New Yorker piece..." sticker on the cover. Next time you're in a book store, pick up a short story collection and see how many pieces were previously published and where they were published.

You don't have to write short stories to get into literary fiction, but it helps.

Postage Alert

For those of you unaware, there's a rate hike starting May 14th on stamps from 39 to 41 cents. If you think this is unfair, you can go to usps.com and be told in very complicated language to "eat it." Apparently some aspects of the rate hike are still under negotiation, such as the proposed plan to throw out all the reasonable options for international shipping and just make everything really fast but really expensive and not give anyone any options to save money by waiting.

Remember to address your SASEs and apply the right postage. Some agents give leeway (especially to stuff that's been sitting on their desks for months because they were busy with managing their new bestseller) and put on the extra 2 cents themselves. Sometimes the post office just ignores it. Some agents reject by email.

Nobody's happy on this end, either. We do a lot of shipping ourselves - mainly contracts and books, often overseas. I don't know if the government cut their budget or what, but they'd better have a damn good reason for this.

Edit: See the comments for a mailman's damn good reason for this.

Yeah, Yeah, We Don't Like Literary Fiction

Dear Rejecter,

I am dying to know:
If "Gravity's Rainbow" landed on your desk, what would you make of it? I ask because, as far as literary fiction is concerned, experimentation is often a big part of enduring literature. How open are agencies to experimental work? Do they give it a close look over, or would this type of writing be an auto-reject. How would "The Recognitions," "Infinite Jest," "Ulysses" etc. fare coming from an unknown?

Thanks.

They would get rejected, by not by everybody. I don't care much for literary fiction, but I like to think that I know when a paragraph is just written well, or turns the craft of reading up on its head (as Pychon is known for doing, often contradicting himself, speaking to his readers, or doing historical fiction with known inaccuracies). Against the Day is hard. You have to think. And then when you're done thinking, you've accomplished something (hopefully). Perhaps my favorite piece of literary fiction is As I Lay Dying, but the only reason is because I was forced to read it line-by-line in high school and try to interpret it as I went.

Writing at the highest level has the trick of writing both appealing prose and putting substance behind it. In our hectice lives, we might not have the time I had to start pulling apart Faulkner's paragraphs and seeing how they were tragic and comic at the same time. We might just say, "No one will read this. Reject." Or the author might not know how to write a good query letter and might not send a sample page or two with it, so we'll never read them at all.

Literary fiction is very, very hard to break into, so generally agents don't make a lot of money on the first sale, so they're not entirely interested (especially if the text is above them - who wants to try to edit Joyce?) in this person as a client. That's the harsh business angle look at it.

I wouldn't say I wouldn't reject Pychon if I saw him labeled as someone else, but he would be noticable above all of the thrillers that start with the protagonist waking up too early in the morning and then complaining about it.

Annoying Clients: Don't Be One.

We writers have websites, blogs, and message boards that warn us about the scam lit agents, for example, "Writer Beware". Do agents have the same sorts of blogs and message boards about some of the unpleasant writers who query them? Sort of "Agents Beware"?


We're browsing the same internet as you are, so no. The answer is no. Plus, it would be sort of rude of us to start branding people over the internet, if not downright immoral. No one's trying to scam us - it's not as if they don't have a manuscript when they say they do and then ask us to buy it sight-unseen (and we don't buy manuscripts anyway). As for query letters that are just plain obnoxious or annoying, those are instant rejects. End of story. Occasionally, in a shared office situation, one assistant will turn to the other and say, "Did you see this?" if everyone obviously got the same letter in the same mail bag that day. "Oh yeah, that was terrible." Laugh, move on.

There are annoying writers out there, but they're not scam artists, and sometimes, they're well-intentioned. If they're not clients and they're already acting annoying (calling a lot to check on their manuscript, etc), they don't become clients. There are essentially three kinds of clients that are annoying.

1. The bestseller who thinks too much of himself. This guy will call us to complain about how he didn't like the fruit on his party platter at the post-signing launch dinner for his third book. There's not much we can do, but this guy is usually the one who is responsible for 99% of the agent's income for the year, so we put up with him.

2. The client who doesn't know how to edit. Speaking for a moment as a writer myself, editing is really, really, really hard, so I don't blame anyone for this, but it often gets to the point of severe frustration. If this is the client's first book, we probably accepted the manuscript because we loved it but said, "It has a few flaws; do you agree to do some editing?" and the writer of course says yes, because they want to be a client. So we send them a list of issues - opener is slow, this thing doesn't make sense, character's name is spelled inconsistently, etc - and they do a host of things. They don't respond. They do respond, but change nothing. They respond and change everything, so that the manuscript looks nothing like the one we liked. Editing is tricky. You can do too much. If we get too frustrated, we may end up telling the would-be client we just can't sell their manuscript, because they can't seem to get it into enough shape to be sell-able (we leave out that last part). We've lost a lot of time, and time is money, so it's a bad situation all around.

There's also the real client, the one who's already sold a book with us, and the second or third book has serious problems that the first book didn't have. The first book they worked on for years; the second they wrote in about 6 months, and you can see the results. Said client doesn't understand why suddenly we're so critical of their work, and has the same editorial problems that writers go through. Solving problems in stories is hard, especially when the problems are structure-related or involve a major alteration of character or plot. Some writers aren't up to the task. They had one book in them, and we sold it already.

3. The client who doesn't understand deadlines. It may seem like we live in a nebulous world where we take our time getting back to you, but that's because we're rushing to meet real deadlines, ones set by publishers and editors by way of contract. We need those revisions, and we need them now. No, seriously, Penguin Putnam will not be happy if it's not on their desks by 9 am on Monday morning. They might even not pay you because of a breach of contract. Get out of that fucking restaurant, go home, finish your revisions, and send us a copy. What? You hand-wrote them?!? All right, overnight them. Yes, from England. Well, I don't care, find a post office that's open; maybe you shouldn't have put this off for 6 months! Or something like that. It's very stressful when it happens, usually because big money is involved. And there's no website to warn us about that.

That Second-Book Clause

Remember, DVC wasn't Brown's first book using church/church history. Angels & Demons came before. And that wasn't really huge until after DVC, And it was published by a different publisher. How does this work? Wouldn't the Angels & Demons guys want to keep the second book?

If you don't include a guide to dating for women that he wrote under the name Danielle Brown, then DVC was actually Dan Brown's fourth book, after Digital Fortress (1998), Angels and Demons (2000), and Deception Point (2001). None of them did particularly well.

Generally when a writer skips from publishing house to publishing house, it means that their books are not consistently selling or that the newer piece was not as good as the previous one, at least in the eyes of the publishing house. In other words, they decided not to take advantage of their second-book clause, which is a standard clause in the boilerplate publishing contract for any company. It usually goes something like this:

Option. The Author grants Publishing House the exclusive option to acquire the same rights as have been granted in this Agreement to the next full-length work to be written by the Author. Publishing House will be entitled to a period of sixty (60) days after submission of a proposal and sample chapters for the next work in which to make an offer for that work, during which time the Author agrees not to solicit any third-party offers, directly or indirectily. If Publishing House wishes to acquire the next work, the Author and Publishing House will attempt to reach an agreement as to terms during a reasonable period of exclusive negotiations. If they cannot reach an agreement, the Author shall be free to Submit the next work elsewhere, but the Author may not accept an offer from any other publisher on terms equal to or less favorable than those offered by Publishing House.

This means, essentially, that the publishing house has dibs on your next book, but if they don't want it, they don't have to make an offer. If they make an offer and you don't accept it, and you shop it around and no one makes a better offer, then you can't accept a lower offer at another house and you have to go with the original offer at the original house. This protects them from having you jump ship and protects you from having to turn down better offers at other houses because the offer at your house was too low. Generally contracts read like this; they're meant to protect both the interests of the author and of the company, sometimes leaning to one side and sometimes to the other, which is why agents like to negotiate clauses. Most of the time this is not one of those clauses.

Dan Brown's last book before DVC was Deception Point, which was published by Pocket Books, like his previous book, Angels and Demons. For whatever reason, Pocket Books took a look at DVC and said "enough with this guy already" and let him make offers elsewhere. He got a contract with Doubleday, and he took it. I'm going to guess it wasn't much, but he certainly made it up in royalties. Pocket Books has retained the rights to Angels and Demons, and reissued it in 2006, but have also sold the rights to other companies for whatever complex reasons they would have to do that. Man, are those guys kicking themselves.

How a Trend is Born

I wish there were a central location where agents and editors could post what they've been seeing too much of. If there's a run on drug books/mysteries where Jesus's clone did it/fantasies where farm boys get blipped through portals in search of magical jewels, it would be great to know about it. It would also be entertaining, because so few of the topics agents complain about are obvious to those of us who don't see the slush.

It would be cool, but it would be for amusement purposes only.

All of you unpublished writers out there, here's a message from me: Don't follow a trend or even ignore a trend. Don't think about trends. Just write the novel you've always wanted to write. Then when that gets rejected, write the novel it turns out you really wanted to write. Rinse, repeat unti; you actually get published, and then say, "Thank G-d that original novel didn't get published! That was crap."

I'll turn this into a larger discussion of trends. In this case I'll be using The Da Vinci Code, not because I have some obsession with it but because it's really the most massive example I could use, as opposed to all the little ones you might not have heard about.

When I was in college (fall 1999- spring 2003), there was a huge trend on an academia level of studying early Christianity - the gospels themselves and the people who wrote them (the gospel was probably written over 20 years after Jesus died), and the generation or two that followed immediately afterwards. There a bunch of feminist professors who were interested in women in the early church and writing about the role of women and how Paul was against women taking leadership roles in the church. The early Celtic Church, where women could be priests, had also been a hot academic topic for several years. People were publishing their materials on university presses, which is what professors do, and they would immediately go out of print, which is what happens unless there's some real non-academia interest in the topic. (Also, a lot of professors can only write papers, and their books are just long papers. This is one of the many reasons I didn't go for a PhD in history)

I have a sneaking suspicion that Dan Brown got some of his ideas from this particular academic trend, and then was inspired to make it a series of novels about early Christianity, and one of them was The Da Vinci Code, and as we all know, it became the biggest non-Harry Potter publishing phenomenon in decades. This lead to the knock-offs and academic books that followed, both of which I will discuss.

(1) The fiction knock-offs of The Da Vinci Code were not written, for the most part, by first-time writers. They were written by established writers - part of some agent's or publishing house's "stable" - who were either inspired by the success (and saw little dollar signs in their eyelids) or told by the publishing company to go "write a book about that." Generally the negotiations go like this:

Publishing House: "Do you want to write a The Da Vinci Code knock-off?"
Established Author: "How much will you pay?"
Publishing House: "A lot."
Established Author: "When do you want it? Friday's bad for me."

There are also book packaging companies, which you've never heard of because they don't advertise to the public, who are put in charge of packaging a novel that resembles whatever the publishing house wants it to resemble. They'll get some writers to work with them and do that. It's all in-house.

(2) History books that deal with the same (or similar) subject that said novel discusses. These books are the type that appear in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble. They're not original. Chances are they're a republished version of some academic text on the subject that was published by a university press in 1971 and went out of print in 1972 and now is impossible to get. Barnes and Noble's publishing house (same name) bought the rights, which were quickly sold because the author realized their book would never see the light of day again otherwise, and then repackaged and republished the book.

The other option is that a publishing house wants to put out a history book that is accessible enough for people to read about the trendy topic, so they approach some established historical author or professor in that field of research and say, "Hey, do you want to write a book?" Then they get the book packaging company in to make sure it's readable (Remember: Most history professors can't write) and put it out as quickly as possible.

And that's where books come from.

Midlife Thriller Crisis

There are various types of writers to whom I’m willing to randomly assign categories to, though I won’t list them all here. There’s the child prodigy, who was writing short stories about cats when she was in 4th grade, and writing fanfic will all the names changed when she was in 11th grade, and probably got suckered into some MFA program after college, but will probably give up at some point if she ever comes to the realization that her dream is not commercially viable. (Future me) There’s the prisoner, who’s doing significant time. Thanks to some well-meaning creative writing instructor (probably a failed writer herself) sent by the state, he starts to write and writes whatever type of novel he’s been reading from the prison library or an account that more than loosely resembles his own life of crime. The list goes on and on.

I believe strongly that there is the occasional person who can write solely thanks to raw talent, so no matter what category you might hail from, you might have written a great novel, even a masterpiece. But that’s another story.

There’s a particular type of writer that we probably see the most of, and rarely ever accept. It’s what I’ll call the “midlife crisis writer.” This person has done the normal thing and has a job that pays money but generally doesn’t make a mark on society in any way. Now they’re forty or fifty, and instead of buying themselves a new car or having plastic surgery, they decided to write a novel. Novels last forever, don’t they? They touch millions of people! (And even appropriately!)

If said writer decides to move into fiction and not autobiography or some thing about how their cat taught them everything they know, this writer will probably move into the thriller, suspense, or mystery genre. This is because it’s what they’re probably reading and because those are genres that look deceptively easy to write. You have your basic plot elements at work: Open with a guy being chased by a killer and then killed. Move into Chapter 1, a domestic scene, until the protagonist (who usually has a similar job to the author’s) gets tied to the killed person in some way and decides to solve the crime or gets thrown into some conspiracy because of a package of information sent to them by the dead person. Throw in some attempts on protagonist’s life, maybe a love triangle, and end somewhere dramatic or symbolic (a church, a graveyard, or the original murder site) with the protagonist facing off against the killer. The protagonist wins but probably gets shot. End with a wrap-up three months later and try to end on a mysterious letter or the announcement that someone’s pregnant. There, done.

Recognize anything? We get tons of these. The only thing that ever changes is the thing driving the plot. For several, unbearable years it was some church secret about Jesus, thanks to The Da Vinci Code, but that died down when the movie came out and everyone realized how much the book sucked when they saw it on screen. Then we saw a lot of Templar stuff because novels/histories about the Templars (based on their mention in The Da Vinci Code) were selling. Now we’re back to the more standard international crime/mafia/drugs/nuclear threat thing, or if the author is the doctor, it involves a disease in some way.

For some reason the current trend is drugs. All drugs. Everyone’s smuggling drugs or killing people over smuggled drugs. Maybe they’ll connect it to terrorism (another big seller) by making it Afghan hash, which supports al-Qaeda. What’s the deal, guys? I haven’t really seen drugs in the news much except crystal meth epidemics, but those don’t involve smuggling. They involve making me sign my name and address when I’m buying one box of Sudafed. What’s up?

Bad Books vs. Bad Books

After careful observation of the phenomenon, I'm pretty sure that what's going on is that publishers have developed a canny method for distinguishing bad books that make them money from bad books that lose lots of money.

I like to think that we can tell. I mean, there is the guiding principle that we also have to like the book, which wins out far more than you think. Many, many times I've said to various bosses, "Well, it's the kind of book that isn't very good, but will probably sell a million copies" and then they've said to reject it. When agents get behind bad projects, it generally isn't intentional. But if it's bad AND it won't make money - that we can smell from a mile away.

"I've discovered the secret to the universe and it's this weird idea about body energy!"
"You can lose weight if you cut back on your calories and exercise."
"My grandfather was full of old man wisdom and I'd like to spend a book talking about it."
"This gripping epic of a Civil War-era family spans the final decades of the 19th century and ends with the First World War."
"I wrote this book with the help of G-d. No, I mean literally."
"The real gospel was hidden away by the Templars for some reason I never properly establish, but in it contains the true message of Christianity, which is that the church sucks."
"The story of my cat's battle with cancer will be an inspiration to millions!"

...Yeah. Sometimes my job isn't very hard.

So, You Want My Job, Huh?

One of the questions I get most frequently is how a person acquires my job - i.e. how do they enter entry-level publishing. (The other question is why do bad books get published, and nobody can answer that to everyone's satisfaction, so I've stopped trying)

The answer is: Craig's list NYC. Job search: Writing/Editing.

No, seriously, that's where all the listings are, aside from the NY Times, and this day and age, by the time the ad goes out, the position might be filled. Check on Saturdays and Sundays, too. My first job was posted on a Saturday night, and I answered within an hour, and got a call on Monday morning. She said she had 100 applicants within a day for a job that paid $10 an hour.

Serious work - full-time work at a publishing house as an editorial assistant, with health and dental benefits - usually requires either an "in" (your uncle works there) or a year's experience. Many people get started as unpaid interns at publishing houses and literary agencies. Some houses even have programs in the summer that offer college credit. The programs work both ways - the company gets free workers and the workers get work experience and a reference or two.

That said, it is not actually necessary to be an intern before you become a paid worker. I came into the industry with no experience working in it and no references. I just killed in the interview. Here are some tips:

(1) Know what a query letter is and how to tell between a good one and a bad one. Subscribe to Publisher's Lunch (in case that comes up in conversation). Read the bad queries people are posting on Writers.net and people's comments on them. Read agent blogs. The key moment of my first interview, where my boss obviously decided then and there not to bother with the rest of the pile of people, was when she showed me query letters and had me analyze them on the spot, and I was able to say things like, "He's comparing himself to Dan Brown - bad. He's listing being a member of the Romance Writer Association [or whatever it's called] as a credit, but anyone can be a member of that. That's not a real credit. And nothing strikes me as interesting in the hook." Etc etc.

(2) If asked what you read, list as many things as you can. Don't be afraid to list your guilty pleasures (mine was "Entertainment Weekly"). Have a good joke ready about why your favorite book is your favorite book. Try not to sound like an English major when talking about literature.

(3) If you're a writer and you're going into publishing, don't deny it, but have an explanation as to why you're not going into publishing just to get "in's" for your writing career. I legitimately went into publishing because I love reading and I love helping writers succeed. My own writing career is separate. It does, however, mean I've been in writer's communities and workshops and I'm familiar with what they're doing. That's not a bad thing.

(4) If you're applying to an agency, familiarize yourself with the client list of the agency if it's available. Read the summaries and reviews of the books on Amazon.com so you can at least said, "I've read reviews."

(5) Smile! Unless you have exceptionally bad teeth.

Good luck!

Response Time, Yet Again

The Rejector's been a bit busy as of late. If you are ever are considering converting to Judaism, make sure to ask about Passover/Pesach in great detail. Don't let the rabbi leave out the part about how much work it takes to clean your whole house out and cook for special week when you can't eat normal food. Yeah.

Miss Rejector,

Without knowing I queried what turned out to be an agent assistant at a very prestigious agency and she asked me to email my entire novel. Would it be safe to say she is eyeing my book for one of the agents she works under? I don't think she has any clients, and has been at this large agency less than four months. I would guess you must have to put in at least a year or so before you can rep clients, right?

There is no standard for when assistant agents who are taking on clients are different from regular agents. The line is very wavy and not really relevant to you at all. All you need is a person who is going to take your manusript, edit it, care about it, promote it, sell it, and make sure the publishing house sells it. Whether they have "senior" or "assistant" in front of their agent title is irrelevant.

And as far as how assistants work, I would think you guys especially want to keep your to-do pile in check. From what I've read it seems you and your boss reject quickly, but I've heard many response horror stories. In my case the assistant has had my ms for over two months and just responded to my "checking-in" email to say stay patient and that she will get through it asap. For all I know she might not of read a single page. But overall, assistants are probably more on the ball, right?

A good assistant who has been hire to do the mail will do first-level rejections basically same-day, though same-day may be "the one day a week the assistant comes in." Either way, rejection is fast. Acceptance is slow. Three chapters doesn't take long to read. I can read a stack of partials in less than an hour. Then a full - even if I read it fast, that doesn't help because the agent has to read it and make the final, crucial business decision to put their time and money behind the project. That's a major decision and is made carefully. So there's really no way for me to answer your question, except to say, assistants are paid hourly, so we are expected to get the job done.

In Which People Do More Dumb Things

Everyone once in a while some new stupid idea comes along that we legitimately have never seen before. It's a new and fun occurrence - the first time.

Opening some guy's unsolicited three chapters (not the end of the world), I read the query, which began with, "I had the pleasure of meeting you at the _____ Conference." In fact, it was the same conference name that had been written on the envelope, which I had ignored.

Now having just completed going over all of my boss' expenses for the last year to enter them for tax purposes, I think I can safely say what business-related trips she has taken, because she kept the receipts. I turned to her and said, "Did you attend ____ Conference?"

"Oh, no. I was on the list, but I cancelled way in advance."

Clearly the guy had just gone down the list of names of all of the agents supposedly attending the conference and hit them all up with queries, hoping it would be an "in." Well, it is an "in" even if we don't remember you, provided we did actually attend the conference and did actually meet a ton of people we wouldn't remember. So, be more careful like that, or end up looking like a jackass.

And Grammar Just Gets Harder and Harder

I was recently killing time in a Barnes and Noble and decided to make my regular stop at the publishing/writing section, to rifle through the offerings. I rarely buy at full price, but I only need a few pages of the book to tell if it's worth buying, and then I'll go and buy it used online.

For once I found a more recent grammar book that I would actually recommend: Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print--and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh. Aside from being useful by listing common mistakes instead of going into complex rules of grammar first and hoping you get the rest (that's E.B. White's job), it discusses how grammar is actually a very malleable and the normal method of establishing a change in rules has been utterly destroyed by the internet. For example, high-school student became high school student (an exception to the general rule about multiple-word adjectives) a long time ago, while e-mail became email basically overnight. This of course makes the entry-level copyeditor's job go from hard to nearly impossible, and don't get Mr. Walsh started on the difference between copy-editor and copyeditor.

That doesn't mean it's a free-for-all and you can just go and do whatever you want, but it means that if you find something in a book that you think is wrong, you may be wrong yourself. Many people have criticized my blog for being spelled incorrectly. Is someone who rejects things a rejecter or a rejector? Answer: It's both. Both are acceptable official spellings.

What else did I read this week? (What's a low-level publishing assistant reading?)

The Lais of Marie de France
Japan Made Easy: All You Need to Know to Enjoy Japan
Rome and Vatican (travel/photography book)
Printing Press: Ideas into Type
Kabuki: Design Aesthetics (Okay, I didn't read it. I don't know Japanese. I looked at the pictures)
Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland

(I'm not planning on going anywhere. Most of these books were research)

Selling Literary Fiction

Dear Ms. Rejecter,

You must help me, for I am incredibly saddened after reading over your archives, notably the Wed. October 11, 2006 entry concerning "literary fiction," which you call "unpublishable."

If I had to classify my work, it would certainly fall into the category of "literary fiction." I do not write Fantasy or Sci-Fi or Romance or Dan Brown-style commercial novels. I want to write literature; and I say that without a pretentious bone in my body.

For example, the novel I'm working on now is set in the Arab world and follows the relationships between multiple families just before the country's revolution, touching on political and religious themes. It is highly influenced by "Anna Karenina" - at least in my own mind. Can this type of literary fiction be published?

If not, how is it that people like DeLillo, Pynchon, Roth, Morrison, Updike, etc. - all contemporary authors whose work is by and large considered "literature" as opposed to commercial fiction - being published? How do Jonathan Franzen and others make it happen?

This is the part where I backpedal and try to explain the huge generalizations I usually make in an attempt to answer unanswerable questions. I've contradicted myself probably half a dozen times by now (Uh, please don't go actually counting...). Nonetheless I will foolishly attempt to answer your question.

As your last paragraph seems to imply, we'll go with the basic assumption that there is a clear definition between "commercial" fiction (here, meaning genre fiction) and "literature" that will be read and discussed and analyzed by lit majors for generations to come. I'll be honest when I say I don't think anyone in higher education will be pulling apart the symbolism in the Dragonlance novels, so you have a point there, but that line is really not terribly clear. People cross it all the time.

The direct answer to your question is not that "literary fiction" or "literature" is unpublishable. It clearly is. You just named six authors who publish what is considered "literary fiction" by people who make these considerations and who have been rather successful financially in the past two years. It doesn't mean all those novels are great - some of them were really riding on the author's reputation for sales more than their particular quality - but they were high lit and they sold, even if they might have had rambling and confusing contemporary/weirdo non-contemporary plotlines or no plotlines at all.

That said, great literature is very, very hard to write. It's even harder to publish. For all they're worth, the Dragonlance novels have a built-in set of readers who are going to buy the next book. A new author does not and is going to rely on the publishing company's faith in him/her and put a lot of money behind publicity to even get it noticed. And of the ones that do get noticed, they're usually noticed because they're so high quality that they win Pulitzers (Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections lost to Empire Falls by a couple votes. I know this because I know someone who was on the Pulitzer committee that year. It was in the final round).

Taste aside, these people are good. These people are, arguably, the best writers in our generation in terms of "high literature." Not necessarily in terms of plot, structure, comprehensibility, or reader enjoyment, but they are what "the literary world" deems as the best of the best. And they're the only literary fiction writers you've heard of.

That's how hard it is to make it in literary fiction. Good luck.

I Heart New York

Rejecter,

I love your blog and spent most of this morning going through the archives. Your sense of humor had me literally, not figuratively, laughing out loud. (Invisible gorillas on a plane sent me on a laughing jag that had me crying.) After reading through several posts and responses and such, I'm struck by the following question:

Is it possible that New Yorkers are the wrong people to be deciding what America likes to read? Is it concievable that they are perhaps a bit to jaded/cynical/angry (you know, New Yorkerish) to make the necessary decisions regarding the value of literature?

I ask this as someone who understands that to live there and thrive you need an ego the size of John Edwards' mansion. Since I have a comparable ego and I'm sometimes reminded, usually by my wife, that I'm not as clever as I think I am, I feel fully qualified to ask this question and the response would fascinate me.

Hey, that's mean! Let me get out my stabbing knife. I'll cut you, man. I'll cut you.

But seriously, instead of quoting what I heard on the subway last week, let me actually answer your question. With a couple notations:

(1) Not all literary agents live and operate in New York. Many live in LA, and work mainly in film rights. Instead of being cynical and jaded I guess you can assume they are more phony and have better tans. Whatever you want to think. And there some legitimate agents who live in other states, because most of agency work is done over mail/fax/phone anyway, but these are usually people who know people in New York because they worked there at some point. It's a very "you have to know someone to get somewhere" industry (for those who work in it, not the writers), so being in New York is kinda crucial.

(2) Most literary agents were not born and raised in New York and do not, in fact, live there. They may have moved to New York in search of a career in publishing because it's rather necessary to do that, and once they made enough money, they bought a house in New Jersey and now they commute. For tax purposes, a lot of agencies and a couple publishing houses are based in places just outside of New York (like Bayonne or Lyndhurst), because taxes in New York State are really high.

(3) Not all New Yorkers are mean. That said, don't pick a fight with anyone on the 1 line between 96th Street and 137th. Seriously.

All joking and non-joking aside, if I wanted to be psychological about it, I would say that we seem jaded and cynical because the industry makes us that way. We happen to operate in an industry based on crushing people's hopes and dreams most of the time and then finding a few people who are actually great writers. We then champion those writers, and hopefully only half of them are crushed by some executive higher up on the line than we are. While not as bad as being that guy who stands outside the Spring store and hands out flyers all day to people who don't want his flyers, publishing is definitely a job that can get you down. Even when you find something great, odds are against it that it will succeed at all, much less to the extent that you want it to. It has to sell to a good company, get all the right attention, get good reviews, make a couple lists, and sell a lot of copies. Then, hopefully, the writer actually has enough talent for another book. (Some writers legitimately only have one book in them, especially if they're writing a memoir)

We operate this way because it's the only way to operate. I reject people because they're bad writers, or at the very least, are good writers with a bad book idea. But it's not quite the same as someone who works for Nabisco and is in charge of deciding which new chip line will make it out next quarter. No one is emotionally invested in those chips. Writers, on the other hand, have poured their hearts and souls into their work. It's their baby, and we're killing it.

Sometimes we get letters from homeless people who have returns as post office boxes. We get letters from dying people who just want their story told. We get letters from paraplegic veterans. We get letters about SIDS. And if the material is good, we accept, but it rarely is. Once I asked my first boss about a homeless person's sci-fi novel, which sounded really bad. I felt really bad about rejecting him. She only shrugged and said, "I give to charities for the homeless. If his book is bad, we can't sell it."

Harsh? Yes. Realistic? Yes. The way the world turns? Yes. I don't think they would do it any differently in another city, because accepting bad writing would be a bad economic decision and the agency would go under if we couldn't sell our clients' manuscripts.

As for whether the New York crowd is qualified to make decisions, well, it's not actually that hard to tell bad writing from good writing. We get our skills from experience and reading a lot. None of that has anything to do with where the office is located.

Form Letter Codes

Rejecter,

I recently recieved a form letter rejection from a fiction magazine. The editor had circled the stock phrases, "does not meet our current needs" and "please submit to us in the future." The editor also underlined the word "current." Does this represent a legitimate interest in my work on the part of the editor or should I just assume that a form letter of any kind is a flat out rejection?

Congratulations: You will never know the answer to this question. Assume it's a form letter.

I've been told there's actually a code to Fantasy & Science Fiction, the magazine that everyone submits to and no one gets accepted, but they get a really really fast reply (and by snail mail! So it took effort). There are different form letters they use, and the different ones indicate how far they got in your piece before they decided to reject it. I have a number of rejections from them, and they all have different wordings - "I didn't feel it was right for me" or "This doesn't meet our needs" and apparently there's a way to interpret these if you're a Fantasy & Science Fiction insider. If anyone wants to pitch in and tell us the code, I think everyone here would benefit. Everyone in science fiction submits a short story to F&SF. I've never met a single person who's read the magazine, but that's not the point here.

Adjectives and How I Hate Them

Dear Rejecter,

I'm wondering what genre to label my novel-mainstream/contemporary or the little checkbox on many agents' lists, "Offbeat/quirky." Now, I don't think "offbeat" is officially a genre, but if that's what my novel best fits into, should I call it that anyway? When the agent's reader encounters the surreal elements of my novel a mainstream/contemporary" tag is going to seem clueless, I fear. I am also trying, in my desperation, to avoid comparing my work to great works, because I know how often agents roll their eyes at every writer who thinks they're "the next great X." However, if I use a sparing simile here and there- I'm thinking of comparing the surreal effects as comparable to David Lynch, but with the black humor of Dr. Strangelove- might my query not get tossed? My friends tell me it's a strong novel, it's just very surreal. Is there any way to sell that today? What do you recommend for writers that have an odd but strong novel? How does one sell strange?

Must resist urge to say something mean.
Must resist urge to say something mean.
Deep breath....

...If you novel has strange things happen in it, that should be obvious from the summary in the first part of the query. We don't like people using adjectives to describe their novel - we like people who describe their novel and then happen to mention its genre, and "quirky" is not a genre. What's your novel about? Insane commanders ordering their men to drop nuclear weapons on an unsuspecting populace? A backwards-talking dwarf? If you mention that yeah, there is a backwards-talking dwarf in your story (and he's the killer! haha!), we will be able to figure out "Hey, this is pretty strange" and then decide if it meets our tastes based on that and a host of other reasons, like the quality of your writing in the query letter and/or the partial.

Do not use words to describe your novel - and this goes for everyone - that are not words used by bookstores to define genre so that they can put it on the correct shelf. If you don't know and the genre isn't obvious, that means it's probably just fiction and would go in that "fiction and literature" section. We can tell from the summary. Don't label it as "great" or "funny" or "strange" or "the next bestseller." And I don't know why everyone's memoirs about how they were brutally raped by their fathers involves "a touch of humor" and I refuse to believe it until I see it, and I usually don't want to see it. Everyone, stop saying your novel is humorous if it so obviously isn't because you just said it was about how your wife died of cancer. That's not funny. You have to be a pretty brilliant humorist to make that funny.

Sorry, poster - that last bit didn't involve you so much, but we're seeing a lot of those these days. Everybody's writing dark comedy, but every "dark comedy" manuscript I've seen isn't very funny.

Oooo! Mysterious Disk!

One of the newer trends has been for people to supple CDs with their query letters, or in the most extreme cases, just the CD. Let me explain to you how bad an idea this is: This is a really bad idea. Not only do we need like to have to do extra work, there is nothing I, as a person, like doing more than putting a mysterious disk I got in the mail from a total stranger into my beloved laptop.

Now I've heard sarcasm is hard to detect on the internet, so let me be clear: That last line was sarcastic. It's like attachments, which any agent website will tell you not to send, but so much worse. At least with attachments we can scan them for viruses.

And while we're on the subject: If you send an SASE for the return of your CD, make sure your CD fits in the envelope.