I've been getting a lot of these:
Just out of curosity,
How much do agents (on average) get paid? What's the low and high end?
And here's another:
Once you become an agent, even if you have to give up a part of your income, don't you get a "base salary" and benefits? Wouldn't that be worth holding on for?
So, you know how when you sign with an agent, they find you a publisher, and then take 10-15% of your earnings? That's their paycheck.
Agents don't "work" for anyone but themselves and their clients. There's no one to provide them with a salary or benefits. Their income comes entirely from a small percentage of their clients' total earnings. This means that a year could pass where an agency could make no money whatsover, if none of their older clients have written books that sold that year, or they fail to sell any works from new clients. Most agents are smart enough to make some money every year, but that money could easily be under $4,000.
So how do they stay in business? An agent relies on an author (or preferably a few) that make considerable advances and write books on a regular basis of once every 2-3 years. And when I say "considerable" I mean, "over 100,000 dollars." Remember that the agent gets only 15% of that, tops.
A new fiction author will generally make around 5,000 dollars in an advance and then not earn any royalties. That's $750 for the agent. Now math isn't my strongest suit here, but to be able to earn $30,000 (with no benefits, no overtime, no 401k) the agent would have to take on 40 new authors a year, which is by anyone's reckoning an insane amount of authors. The agent simply wouldn't have the time to edit and sell all those manuscripts.
Most clients of the agent are not significant earners, but a few have to be, or the agency doesn't stay in business. My boss has a few clients who make about $250,000 or $500,000 advances, but those authors don't write a book a year, or even a book every other year. She just hopes one of them will come through, so she can pay her electricity bill.
In answer to the second question, as to why don't I become a salaried agent, it's because the job doesn't exist. If I started out as an agent today, I would have to build up contacts and a client list, and then sell the manuscripts of my clients to editors. It could easily be two years before I see any money at all, and more before I see enough money to constitute a living wage.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Reading Lists and Market Shares
I officially have to stop buying books. Not only is there very little room left in my apartment (we haven't started using them as furniture yet), but I am legitimately behind on my reading.
As I've been told many times by different publishers and market researches, Amazon.com only has about a 17% market share, so publishers tend to ignore the website. I think this number is deceptive. I still do buy books in bricks & mortar stores, but I also write down the titles and authors of books I want that look too expensive and then go buy them online for 10% of the cover price, after shipping. I know I'm the exception to the rule, what with buying an overwhelming majority of my books online and having an Amazon credit card to earn rewards points to continue buying books online, but maybe the industry should take a little note: I buy around 200 books a year. That makes me unusual in a very significant way. Serious readers without a tremendous amount of disposable income now have a serious alternative to libraries - buying used books on the ever-expanding online used book market. Honestly the biggest hurdle to that is the recent postage increase, but it's worth it if the book costs $0.01 and is "used, like new." Used book sales aren't tracked (at least not by anyone I've heard from), and I wonder what Amazon's "market share" would be if they were.
Reading list this week:
- The Mishnah, Seders Kodashim and Tohoroth
- I am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert (gift from dad)
- Sefer Yetzirah, Chapters 1:1 - 1:14
- Samurai by Mitsuo Kure
- The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice (admittedly, couldn't get through it)
- Half of an urban fantasy manuscript I'm reading for a friend
As I've been told many times by different publishers and market researches, Amazon.com only has about a 17% market share, so publishers tend to ignore the website. I think this number is deceptive. I still do buy books in bricks & mortar stores, but I also write down the titles and authors of books I want that look too expensive and then go buy them online for 10% of the cover price, after shipping. I know I'm the exception to the rule, what with buying an overwhelming majority of my books online and having an Amazon credit card to earn rewards points to continue buying books online, but maybe the industry should take a little note: I buy around 200 books a year. That makes me unusual in a very significant way. Serious readers without a tremendous amount of disposable income now have a serious alternative to libraries - buying used books on the ever-expanding online used book market. Honestly the biggest hurdle to that is the recent postage increase, but it's worth it if the book costs $0.01 and is "used, like new." Used book sales aren't tracked (at least not by anyone I've heard from), and I wonder what Amazon's "market share" would be if they were.
Reading list this week:
- The Mishnah, Seders Kodashim and Tohoroth
- I am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert (gift from dad)
- Sefer Yetzirah, Chapters 1:1 - 1:14
- Samurai by Mitsuo Kure
- The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice (admittedly, couldn't get through it)
- Half of an urban fantasy manuscript I'm reading for a friend
Friday, November 02, 2007
The Job Ladder
I was wondering... how much access do you have to clients and publishers, how do you get to know them, and how easy is it for you to move up in your world? In the Hollywood system, assistants are expected to listen in on calls, memorize everyone's phone number, and talk to clients a lot-- this is sort of the "apprenticeship" phase of your career, and while you are getting this education in "who's who and how to please them," you work for $300-500 a week, with the promise that eventually you will be a better-paid agent/manager/producer. Does the lit biz in NY work like this, or do you have to be creative in figuring out how to meet people? And are you paid any better?
If I was working even close to full time, yeah, I guess I would be making about $400 a week. I'm not, though. That's the first misconception. Most assistants are only part-time. I know assistants who work for multiple agents on different days of the week to fill out their schedule (this is an accepted practice).
Beyond the hourly-wage part-time assistant, you generally move up in two ways.
(1) You become a sub-agent to your boss or go to work for another agency as a sub-agent and start representing your own clients. Your boss takes a cut, but you get to use her name and contact sheet and she holds your hand through the process of your first few contracts. More and more people are doing this as agencies proliferate, but in the past, being an agent required years of experience working on the other side, in a publishing house. I could go into long theorizing about why that's changed, but it would be guesses and I can't say if it's better or worse for the industry. It's difficult to make any hard statements about the book industry.
(2) You now have a year's experience and get a job as an editorial assistant (or a publicity assistant, or a production assistant, or whatever - the bottom rung) at a publishing house through the normal methods of calling your contacts and submitting resumes and whatnot. This is what I'll be doing in December, when I graduate from my MFA program. While an agency would be a better working environment for me (setting your own hours) with my chronic illness, I don't want to be an agent. Contracts and sales and pitching books to editors and rights don't interest me. My first boss nailed it on the head when she said I was made for editorial. So, that's where I hope to be, in a few months (hint hint, industry people) - rejecting people from the actual publishing house and not the agency. Or just doing general editorial work. Plus it's a standard paycheck thing, not relying on the success of your author to make any money, which I'm more comfortable with. As much as I enjoy working for an agent, I'm not a saleswoman at heart and I don't think I could do it for a living.
---
On an additional note, many, many people have been emailing me, asking how to get a job like mine. Please refer to my earlier post about it.
If I was working even close to full time, yeah, I guess I would be making about $400 a week. I'm not, though. That's the first misconception. Most assistants are only part-time. I know assistants who work for multiple agents on different days of the week to fill out their schedule (this is an accepted practice).
Beyond the hourly-wage part-time assistant, you generally move up in two ways.
(1) You become a sub-agent to your boss or go to work for another agency as a sub-agent and start representing your own clients. Your boss takes a cut, but you get to use her name and contact sheet and she holds your hand through the process of your first few contracts. More and more people are doing this as agencies proliferate, but in the past, being an agent required years of experience working on the other side, in a publishing house. I could go into long theorizing about why that's changed, but it would be guesses and I can't say if it's better or worse for the industry. It's difficult to make any hard statements about the book industry.
(2) You now have a year's experience and get a job as an editorial assistant (or a publicity assistant, or a production assistant, or whatever - the bottom rung) at a publishing house through the normal methods of calling your contacts and submitting resumes and whatnot. This is what I'll be doing in December, when I graduate from my MFA program. While an agency would be a better working environment for me (setting your own hours) with my chronic illness, I don't want to be an agent. Contracts and sales and pitching books to editors and rights don't interest me. My first boss nailed it on the head when she said I was made for editorial. So, that's where I hope to be, in a few months (hint hint, industry people) - rejecting people from the actual publishing house and not the agency. Or just doing general editorial work. Plus it's a standard paycheck thing, not relying on the success of your author to make any money, which I'm more comfortable with. As much as I enjoy working for an agent, I'm not a saleswoman at heart and I don't think I could do it for a living.
---
On an additional note, many, many people have been emailing me, asking how to get a job like mine. Please refer to my earlier post about it.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
More on Rejections - Surprise!
Well! I'm less likely to respond to people flaming each other if I don't seem to be the one flamed, but I will answer some questions. Oh, and to clear things up, these segments are from different people's posts.
So Rejecter, if the personalized rejection comes five months after sending a requested partial which in turn came five months after sending a query, do I punch myself in the face or tell the agent's assistant (who, by the way, had no idea what he was talking about with respect to the subject matter - believe me, I know: I've heard from enough agents who DO understand the subject matter)to get F'ed?
You waited five months for a response from a query? Wow. The partial thing is not a surprise to me. Response time on requested material is slow. But if the whole process took 10 months, yeah, that is a little obnoxious, but surely you submitted to a ton of other agencies at the same time, right?
You can tell the assistant to get fucked only on the condition that you supply the money for the prostitute, with the understanding that the assistant might go spend it on a new hard drive instead. Or some DVD box set. Either one.
Here's to the fucking assholes of the world: they'll always be there and so will the professionals who see this whole process as a business.
We do classify our work as "business," at least to the IRS. Then books become a "business expense." Also agents rely on author's proceeds to pay the rent and electricity bill and stuff, so it actually needs to be a profitable business.
The agent in question has a blog where they blabber on about their vacations, and stuff they're doing with their kids and how they've been to this conference and that looking for clients, yet they can't keep their "house" in order with respect to projects they've requested. ... This agent reminds me of a part-time real estate agent - they were that unprofessional.
Not all agents act professionally all the time. Just like anyone in any other business.
I once got a rejection back from an agency on a partial after 3 days. The (requested) partial was 50 pages. No way they read it. And there were no sticky fingermarks, coffee rings, mustard stains or dog-eared pages on the pathetic pristine pages I got back. Nah, they didn't read it.
I would put my money on the idea that they did. We tend to treat submissions fairly professionally, especially if you supplied return postage for the entire submission. I don't smoke, drink coffee, wear lipstick, or dog-ear pages, and my hands are washed on a regular basis, so for the most part the partial looks the same when I'm done with it as when I started, and if it's going back to the author, I generally put it back together and make the neat before it goes in the envelope.
So Rejecter, if the personalized rejection comes five months after sending a requested partial which in turn came five months after sending a query, do I punch myself in the face or tell the agent's assistant (who, by the way, had no idea what he was talking about with respect to the subject matter - believe me, I know: I've heard from enough agents who DO understand the subject matter)to get F'ed?
You waited five months for a response from a query? Wow. The partial thing is not a surprise to me. Response time on requested material is slow. But if the whole process took 10 months, yeah, that is a little obnoxious, but surely you submitted to a ton of other agencies at the same time, right?
You can tell the assistant to get fucked only on the condition that you supply the money for the prostitute, with the understanding that the assistant might go spend it on a new hard drive instead. Or some DVD box set. Either one.
Here's to the fucking assholes of the world: they'll always be there and so will the professionals who see this whole process as a business.
We do classify our work as "business," at least to the IRS. Then books become a "business expense." Also agents rely on author's proceeds to pay the rent and electricity bill and stuff, so it actually needs to be a profitable business.
The agent in question has a blog where they blabber on about their vacations, and stuff they're doing with their kids and how they've been to this conference and that looking for clients, yet they can't keep their "house" in order with respect to projects they've requested. ... This agent reminds me of a part-time real estate agent - they were that unprofessional.
Not all agents act professionally all the time. Just like anyone in any other business.
I once got a rejection back from an agency on a partial after 3 days. The (requested) partial was 50 pages. No way they read it. And there were no sticky fingermarks, coffee rings, mustard stains or dog-eared pages on the pathetic pristine pages I got back. Nah, they didn't read it.
I would put my money on the idea that they did. We tend to treat submissions fairly professionally, especially if you supplied return postage for the entire submission. I don't smoke, drink coffee, wear lipstick, or dog-ear pages, and my hands are washed on a regular basis, so for the most part the partial looks the same when I'm done with it as when I started, and if it's going back to the author, I generally put it back together and make the neat before it goes in the envelope.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Inside the Partials Process
Obviously this is only true at agencies with an assistant, and then only some of them, but at every agency I've worked at, it's gone something like this:
(1) My boss asks me to read a partial she requested because she's especially busy lining up interviews for her bestselling author.
(2) I read the partial. (Obvious)
(3) We have a 2-minute conversation, tops, about the partial. Sometimes it doesn't take two minutes. I once worked at an agency where for the most part, the agent did not personalize the response to partials unless they were very close, but she did have a special form letter response specifically for partials. My current boss responds herself, in her own handwriting (not mine).
Most of the time with partials, I don't say to reject unless it's obviously so horrible that the query was just plain misleading. Partials are something the agent was interested in from the get-go, so I'm not quick to dismiss the work, and if I do, I have to give a reason. (Occasionally "The author can't spell" is enough) Here are some common responses I'll give her:
"I'm not thrilled about it, but to be honest, it's not my type of literature anyway, and there's nothing wrong with it on a sentence level, so you might like it."
"The author has a specific style of prose. You'll decide whether you love it or hate it in two pages."
"It's very similar to a lot of stuff on your list in terms of content, but I don't think it's as good as any of the stuff on your list."
"I can't make heads or tails of it. Was this an e-query you responded to? OK, you look at it then. I have no idea."
"Does this guy know you, or something? Why was this requested?"
"I hate literary fiction, and this is literary fiction, and I actually liked it a little, so that's pretty much a stunning recommendation."
And so on. If it's a reject and she doesn't want to read it herself for time reasons, she asks me specifics about it so she can be more personal in her reply.
(1) My boss asks me to read a partial she requested because she's especially busy lining up interviews for her bestselling author.
(2) I read the partial. (Obvious)
(3) We have a 2-minute conversation, tops, about the partial. Sometimes it doesn't take two minutes. I once worked at an agency where for the most part, the agent did not personalize the response to partials unless they were very close, but she did have a special form letter response specifically for partials. My current boss responds herself, in her own handwriting (not mine).
Most of the time with partials, I don't say to reject unless it's obviously so horrible that the query was just plain misleading. Partials are something the agent was interested in from the get-go, so I'm not quick to dismiss the work, and if I do, I have to give a reason. (Occasionally "The author can't spell" is enough) Here are some common responses I'll give her:
"I'm not thrilled about it, but to be honest, it's not my type of literature anyway, and there's nothing wrong with it on a sentence level, so you might like it."
"The author has a specific style of prose. You'll decide whether you love it or hate it in two pages."
"It's very similar to a lot of stuff on your list in terms of content, but I don't think it's as good as any of the stuff on your list."
"I can't make heads or tails of it. Was this an e-query you responded to? OK, you look at it then. I have no idea."
"Does this guy know you, or something? Why was this requested?"
"I hate literary fiction, and this is literary fiction, and I actually liked it a little, so that's pretty much a stunning recommendation."
And so on. If it's a reject and she doesn't want to read it herself for time reasons, she asks me specifics about it so she can be more personal in her reply.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Personalized Rejections
Dear Rejector,
I read in an agent blog today of a woman who hammered back at the agency with a long tirade of snide comments after receiving a rejection letter. I was horrified at her attitude.
Then I remembered a note by me to an agency about a year an a half ago where I frustratingly told them their standard rejection letter seemed very cold.
I have learned so much since then, and now look upon rejection letters as the things they truly are: not personal. It's a business. And a writer trying to sell a manuscript and enter into a business agreement should remember the other party has the right to reject it if it isn't good business for them.
Still, that comment I made might come back to haunt me when I start sending out query letters again. Yes? No? Probably wasn't memorable enough to stand out? Never darken an agent's door again?
To answer the second question first, no, that one agency will probably not remember you unless they rejected your full and you're resubmitting the same manuscript. And even then, it's one agency! There's over a hundred of them.
As to the first question, which was unasked, what is the deal with people complaining about personalized rejections? I mean it's still a rejection, but if you get a personalized rejection, it generally means we cared enough about your work to personalize our rejection. You were close. You were closer than about 95% of the applicants. Slap yourself on the back and then write something just a little bit better.
I read in an agent blog today of a woman who hammered back at the agency with a long tirade of snide comments after receiving a rejection letter. I was horrified at her attitude.
Then I remembered a note by me to an agency about a year an a half ago where I frustratingly told them their standard rejection letter seemed very cold.
I have learned so much since then, and now look upon rejection letters as the things they truly are: not personal. It's a business. And a writer trying to sell a manuscript and enter into a business agreement should remember the other party has the right to reject it if it isn't good business for them.
Still, that comment I made might come back to haunt me when I start sending out query letters again. Yes? No? Probably wasn't memorable enough to stand out? Never darken an agent's door again?
To answer the second question first, no, that one agency will probably not remember you unless they rejected your full and you're resubmitting the same manuscript. And even then, it's one agency! There's over a hundred of them.
As to the first question, which was unasked, what is the deal with people complaining about personalized rejections? I mean it's still a rejection, but if you get a personalized rejection, it generally means we cared enough about your work to personalize our rejection. You were close. You were closer than about 95% of the applicants. Slap yourself on the back and then write something just a little bit better.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
The Literal First Five Pages
Dear Ms. Rejector,
I've seen a lot of agents request the first five pages of a manuscript along with the query letter. This frustrates me a bit, because the prologue to my book is seven pages long, and I think an agent would be more enticed by the whole prologue than just the first five pages. So my options, as I see them, are:
1. Bite the bullet and only send 5 pages
2. Revise my prologue to be 5 pages long
3. Use 11pt font or 1.5 spaced lines to make it 5 pages long and hope the agent doesn't care/notice. Or better yet, if it's an email query, just send the text as part of the email and pretend it's 5 pages.
4. Send all seven pages, but be up front in the query letter ("I've sent you the first seven pages of my novel along with this query..."), and hope I don't get tossed aside for not following the specific instructions
Which of these options seems the most viable? Are any of them
completely idiotic and suicidal?
Actually, you've got a number of options open to you, but please use 12 point font. Our eyes, our eyes!
You can:
(1) Bite the bullet and send the first five pages, because those are also pages the agent will have to eventually like anyway, and if they aren't dramatically different from your general writing style, and your writing is good, that shouldn't be a terrible worry.
(2) Send seven pages. We won't really care if it's actually seven. On the other hand, we might not make it to page 6.
(3) Punch up the first five pages of the prologue.
(4) Send the first five pages of the novel proper, if they're understandable without the prologue. This makes a good deal of sense in many cases, when the prologue is a literary device or an informational device and doesn't actually look a lot like those overworked, perfect pages you mean to be your opening. We won't get mad at you. If you get a request for the actual manuscript afterwards, you might want to say something like, "There is now a prologue" so we don't get all confused. We get a lot of partials, and sometimes we forget who they're from or what they're about during the wait.
Note to all authors: When an agent requests the first five, he/she generally means the first five; this is the only case where he/she doesn't. Don't send the first five of the eighth chapter because you think the writing is the best in the beginning of the eighth chapter. The writing should be great everywhere.
I've seen a lot of agents request the first five pages of a manuscript along with the query letter. This frustrates me a bit, because the prologue to my book is seven pages long, and I think an agent would be more enticed by the whole prologue than just the first five pages. So my options, as I see them, are:
1. Bite the bullet and only send 5 pages
2. Revise my prologue to be 5 pages long
3. Use 11pt font or 1.5 spaced lines to make it 5 pages long and hope the agent doesn't care/notice. Or better yet, if it's an email query, just send the text as part of the email and pretend it's 5 pages.
4. Send all seven pages, but be up front in the query letter ("I've sent you the first seven pages of my novel along with this query..."), and hope I don't get tossed aside for not following the specific instructions
Which of these options seems the most viable? Are any of them
completely idiotic and suicidal?
Actually, you've got a number of options open to you, but please use 12 point font. Our eyes, our eyes!
You can:
(1) Bite the bullet and send the first five pages, because those are also pages the agent will have to eventually like anyway, and if they aren't dramatically different from your general writing style, and your writing is good, that shouldn't be a terrible worry.
(2) Send seven pages. We won't really care if it's actually seven. On the other hand, we might not make it to page 6.
(3) Punch up the first five pages of the prologue.
(4) Send the first five pages of the novel proper, if they're understandable without the prologue. This makes a good deal of sense in many cases, when the prologue is a literary device or an informational device and doesn't actually look a lot like those overworked, perfect pages you mean to be your opening. We won't get mad at you. If you get a request for the actual manuscript afterwards, you might want to say something like, "There is now a prologue" so we don't get all confused. We get a lot of partials, and sometimes we forget who they're from or what they're about during the wait.
Note to all authors: When an agent requests the first five, he/she generally means the first five; this is the only case where he/she doesn't. Don't send the first five of the eighth chapter because you think the writing is the best in the beginning of the eighth chapter. The writing should be great everywhere.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Scams Upon Scams
When you expose a scammer, they don't learn their lesson unless they go to jail. They just find a new way to do it. Agencies that charge fees are now established to be evil thanks to the good people at Preditors and Editors and many other organizations, but that doesn't mean people aren't after your money and will find a way to get it.
Recently my agency received a letter that was a promotional pitch for a service by a company that would provide us with (for a very small fee, or no fee at all; I can't remember) rejection letters, or even stamps with our agency's name so we could just stamp the rejection line onto the author's query letter. It's essentially free paper and ink, but the catch was that all the rejections would include a link to their website, which coaches people on how to write novels (for $$$). Not only was this preposterous (no agency can't afford to type out one form rejection and photocopy it a bajillion times), it was also a scam - not for us, but the people who got rejected. We didn't dignify them with a reply.
Here's another one:
Rejector, I seek your opinion on:
1) having a freelance editor review/edit your book before sending it out to agents (I write non-fiction, so I'm usually in the "proposal" mode)
2) author representatives who "connect you with agents and publishers." (one i just stumbled on: authoronestop.com) isn't it just as effective to do research on your own, and submit to specific agents who represent your genre?
(1) Having a freelance editor review/edit your book is not a bad idea, provided they are legitimate. To an a normal eye, it is very hard to tell if people are legitimate, or if they are, if they're any good. Follow up on their references and see where that leads, first
(2) Instead of playing scam agents themselves, it seems the trend now is to pretend there's some kind of intermediary between you and an agent, like an agent is an intermediary between you and a publisher. Well, there isn't. We don't generally have people sending us stuff on behalf of new writers unless they are (a) our clients and friends or (b) other agents we know and trust and got drunk with at Frankfurt. I've never heard of Author One Stop.com, which is bad enough sign that I would discourage having anything to do with it.
Recently my agency received a letter that was a promotional pitch for a service by a company that would provide us with (for a very small fee, or no fee at all; I can't remember) rejection letters, or even stamps with our agency's name so we could just stamp the rejection line onto the author's query letter. It's essentially free paper and ink, but the catch was that all the rejections would include a link to their website, which coaches people on how to write novels (for $$$). Not only was this preposterous (no agency can't afford to type out one form rejection and photocopy it a bajillion times), it was also a scam - not for us, but the people who got rejected. We didn't dignify them with a reply.
Here's another one:
Rejector, I seek your opinion on:
1) having a freelance editor review/edit your book before sending it out to agents (I write non-fiction, so I'm usually in the "proposal" mode)
2) author representatives who "connect you with agents and publishers." (one i just stumbled on: authoronestop.com) isn't it just as effective to do research on your own, and submit to specific agents who represent your genre?
(1) Having a freelance editor review/edit your book is not a bad idea, provided they are legitimate. To an a normal eye, it is very hard to tell if people are legitimate, or if they are, if they're any good. Follow up on their references and see where that leads, first
(2) Instead of playing scam agents themselves, it seems the trend now is to pretend there's some kind of intermediary between you and an agent, like an agent is an intermediary between you and a publisher. Well, there isn't. We don't generally have people sending us stuff on behalf of new writers unless they are (a) our clients and friends or (b) other agents we know and trust and got drunk with at Frankfurt. I've never heard of Author One Stop.com, which is bad enough sign that I would discourage having anything to do with it.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Book Titles
Dear Ms Rejector
Do you have any insights on book titles, and if they affect the way you respond to a query?
The answer to your second question is no, they do not affect the way we respond to a query. We'll probably only notice the title if it's especially cool. Most of times it's just a regular title or an especially bad one, but that doesn't bother us. The title can be changed throughout most of the book-publication process. I'm not particularly sure if the right title has to go on the contract or if it can be changed later, but I think it can be changed as late as final editorial.
Titles are also deceptively hard to come up with unless you're writing a thriller. We don't expect you to nail it the first time.
Do you have any insights on book titles, and if they affect the way you respond to a query?
The answer to your second question is no, they do not affect the way we respond to a query. We'll probably only notice the title if it's especially cool. Most of times it's just a regular title or an especially bad one, but that doesn't bother us. The title can be changed throughout most of the book-publication process. I'm not particularly sure if the right title has to go on the contract or if it can be changed later, but I think it can be changed as late as final editorial.
Titles are also deceptively hard to come up with unless you're writing a thriller. We don't expect you to nail it the first time.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
E-Books! Did I do this already?
So, two people emailed me with questions about e-Books. Generally I trim long emails, but I'm going into ultra-pruning mode for the sake of time.
You should sell an e-book. Figure a five percent sell-through and 98 percent profit. If you get 500 visits per day and you're making $4.80 per unit, it works out to about $3,600 a month, possibly enough to rent a dumpster behind the Port Authority.
No, I wouldn't. Even if I sold 500 books per day, which bestsellers don't even do, Amazon would take 55% of my profits - or more. I'm not sure what their commission rate is for e-Books. I imagine it's high because they (and B&N.com, to be fair) are the only real vendor.
[Deleted section: This guy likes reading e-Books] Every-now and again though, for the same reasons I went to used bookstores and bought the most random title i could find, I nab stuff that is e-book only. Like before, most of it is pretty horrible and a few of them are worthwhile reads. One in particular was the best read I've had this year(since then its being picked up for print, which makes me very happy). Anyway, my question is this, where in the world are the reviews for this part of the industry?
Don't get me wrong - I'm a technocrat. My teenage years were spent on ultra-slow Prodigy Online and then on slightly faster local network. I shamelessly download an entire TV series that's either too expensive or not available for retail in this country (I like Japanese feudal dramas). That said, I hate reading books online. I'm willing to read fanfic because it's free and I already know the characters, so I'm more likely to like it, but I can't remember the last time I read an e-Book, even for free, that had no relation to some fandom. Why? Because most people feel that reading a book on a computer screen sucks. And most people make up most of the consumer market (though it's all right to feel special).
When hand-held devices that you could actually read on came out, there was a whole lot of press about how it would change publishing industry and we would all be switching to reading off our tiny, poorly-lit Palm Pilot screen like the guys in Prelude to Foundation. Remember when Stephen King did that chapter-by-chapter/pay-as-you-go posting of a novel? Or I took that course on hypertext fiction? (No, you don't because you weren't there. Well, I did. I needed more time to spend with my Playstation so I opted out of another history course.)
Even some ten years later, industry professionals are scratching their heads, trying to make a way to make e-Books profitable. As the person in charge of the digital division at I think it was HarperCollins explained to me this summer, "e-Books and internet files are being published by the major companies, but it's still basically R&D." (research and development) And she was a person willing to read a novel on her little novel-reading device, but she admitted no one understood her, even her co-workers.
As with any new thing that comes along unexpectedly and alternately revolutionizes/threatens your entire industry, it takes time to figure out how it's going to work. With the internet it's especially hard because things are constantly changing, as are the devices we buy to keep us hooked to that digital IV while we're away from the computer. What publishers have discovered, for the most part, is that e-Books are unprofitable. You put it up for $5.95 (dumb companies charge more), Amazon takes half, and then the author gets a cut. Also, people don't buy it, especially if it's a new author and/or it's also available in print form. In the end the result is easily less than $50 a month - for the company.
Not that the industry has given up. They have figured out that it costs almost nothing to create an e-Book other than editorial, especially if you've signed the author for a print run and you're doing the editorial anyway, so they don't really lose money; they just don't make money. The advantage is in time: it takes a book a year, at absolute best, to go to press, between the contract signing and the day the books appear on shelves. e-Books can go up whenever the editorial is done and someone's put some cover art together. Some companies are using the e-Book as a promotional tool while they're waiting for the book to come out, and even then, that's promotion restricted to people who spend a lot of time on Amazon. I do, but a lot of people don't. The point is that it's free promotion, and promotion is rarely free, so that's why you're seeing e-Books.
(Also you're seeing them because some people like them, but those people remain in the minority until our computer screens don't make our eyes want to bleed after a 12-hour session)
You should sell an e-book. Figure a five percent sell-through and 98 percent profit. If you get 500 visits per day and you're making $4.80 per unit, it works out to about $3,600 a month, possibly enough to rent a dumpster behind the Port Authority.
No, I wouldn't. Even if I sold 500 books per day, which bestsellers don't even do, Amazon would take 55% of my profits - or more. I'm not sure what their commission rate is for e-Books. I imagine it's high because they (and B&N.com, to be fair) are the only real vendor.
[Deleted section: This guy likes reading e-Books] Every-now and again though, for the same reasons I went to used bookstores and bought the most random title i could find, I nab stuff that is e-book only. Like before, most of it is pretty horrible and a few of them are worthwhile reads. One in particular was the best read I've had this year(since then its being picked up for print, which makes me very happy). Anyway, my question is this, where in the world are the reviews for this part of the industry?
Don't get me wrong - I'm a technocrat. My teenage years were spent on ultra-slow Prodigy Online and then on slightly faster local network. I shamelessly download an entire TV series that's either too expensive or not available for retail in this country (I like Japanese feudal dramas). That said, I hate reading books online. I'm willing to read fanfic because it's free and I already know the characters, so I'm more likely to like it, but I can't remember the last time I read an e-Book, even for free, that had no relation to some fandom. Why? Because most people feel that reading a book on a computer screen sucks. And most people make up most of the consumer market (though it's all right to feel special).
When hand-held devices that you could actually read on came out, there was a whole lot of press about how it would change publishing industry and we would all be switching to reading off our tiny, poorly-lit Palm Pilot screen like the guys in Prelude to Foundation. Remember when Stephen King did that chapter-by-chapter/pay-as-you-go posting of a novel? Or I took that course on hypertext fiction? (No, you don't because you weren't there. Well, I did. I needed more time to spend with my Playstation so I opted out of another history course.)
Even some ten years later, industry professionals are scratching their heads, trying to make a way to make e-Books profitable. As the person in charge of the digital division at I think it was HarperCollins explained to me this summer, "e-Books and internet files are being published by the major companies, but it's still basically R&D." (research and development) And she was a person willing to read a novel on her little novel-reading device, but she admitted no one understood her, even her co-workers.
As with any new thing that comes along unexpectedly and alternately revolutionizes/threatens your entire industry, it takes time to figure out how it's going to work. With the internet it's especially hard because things are constantly changing, as are the devices we buy to keep us hooked to that digital IV while we're away from the computer. What publishers have discovered, for the most part, is that e-Books are unprofitable. You put it up for $5.95 (dumb companies charge more), Amazon takes half, and then the author gets a cut. Also, people don't buy it, especially if it's a new author and/or it's also available in print form. In the end the result is easily less than $50 a month - for the company.
Not that the industry has given up. They have figured out that it costs almost nothing to create an e-Book other than editorial, especially if you've signed the author for a print run and you're doing the editorial anyway, so they don't really lose money; they just don't make money. The advantage is in time: it takes a book a year, at absolute best, to go to press, between the contract signing and the day the books appear on shelves. e-Books can go up whenever the editorial is done and someone's put some cover art together. Some companies are using the e-Book as a promotional tool while they're waiting for the book to come out, and even then, that's promotion restricted to people who spend a lot of time on Amazon. I do, but a lot of people don't. The point is that it's free promotion, and promotion is rarely free, so that's why you're seeing e-Books.
(Also you're seeing them because some people like them, but those people remain in the minority until our computer screens don't make our eyes want to bleed after a 12-hour session)
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Rejection Timeline
Hi Rejecter-
Here's my question: sometimes query replies (in my case rejections so far) come like lightening, and other times it takes several weeks. What I guess I'm wondering is, if it a case of "the longer it's out, the better your chances are" because it's actually being considered, or does the fact that the query is still out just mean it's in a pile somewhere? Is this a total toss-up or is there a "usually" answer?
There are very few hard truths in this industry, and this is definitely an area in which a million things could be going on in the other side. I can tell you this:
(1) The "pile" (referring to the snail mail pile) stacks up based on how often the agent checks it, or if the assistant is in charge of that and if so, how often they come in. Sometimes I only come in once a week and do the whole pile. I used to work three days a week, so the pile didn't build up as much, except over the weekend. We do not go through it in any kind of order based on how much you spent on postage, so don't waste your money. What I do - and it's not always done this way - is go through the whole thing to make sure nothing's a bill or a royalty check or a bank statement, then stack it back up from largest to smallest envelope because it stacks better on the table. Then I do the whole stack.
(2) It's true that we reject instantaneously while we might take more time to think about a maybe query, but this by no means universally true. Generally I make a pile of maybes, and my boss looks at them, picks up the one she likes, and sets them aside. Then when she gets a chance, she emails the person. It's probably within the day because she's polite, but that's not true of everyone. They might let it sit on their shelf for a couple weeks (even a letter) if they are extremely busy. Agenting stuff like contract negotiations, publisher-set submission deadlines of final manuscripts, proof approval, and any kind of conference to get ready for (like the BEA or Frankfurt) are really more demanding and is what the agent does all day. In fact, hope that they do, because it means they're working hard for their clients, and if you become one, you'll want the same treatment.
(3) Partials and fulls can take a long time. This is true. I have had agents get back to me really quickly, generally with a rejection. Or if it's a partial, the agent can take a quick look and say, "Eh... I'm not sure. Need to see the whole thing" and request a full very quickly as well. If you have a full or a partial and it's been 6 months, give them an email. If something comes up, like an offer from that publishing house you sent into a year ago, call them and tell them. They will drop everything and read the manuscript. If they don't, they're definitely not the right agent for you.
(4) Some agents do not feel the need to respond to email queries if it's a rejection. I think this is rude and I'm glad my boss takes the time to reply to her emails, but that's the way some people feel. It's slowly changing as e-queries become more common, but some agents still just ignore it if they don't like it. The paper query with the SASE is a little harder to toss in the trash. There's some guilt factor there.
Beyond that, I can't say. Every agent works differently, and they work differently from week to week depending on what's going on that week. If they're busy badgering an author to get the final manuscript copy into the publisher by the deadline because it's tomorrow, then they won't be reading partials.
Here's my question: sometimes query replies (in my case rejections so far) come like lightening, and other times it takes several weeks. What I guess I'm wondering is, if it a case of "the longer it's out, the better your chances are" because it's actually being considered, or does the fact that the query is still out just mean it's in a pile somewhere? Is this a total toss-up or is there a "usually" answer?
There are very few hard truths in this industry, and this is definitely an area in which a million things could be going on in the other side. I can tell you this:
(1) The "pile" (referring to the snail mail pile) stacks up based on how often the agent checks it, or if the assistant is in charge of that and if so, how often they come in. Sometimes I only come in once a week and do the whole pile. I used to work three days a week, so the pile didn't build up as much, except over the weekend. We do not go through it in any kind of order based on how much you spent on postage, so don't waste your money. What I do - and it's not always done this way - is go through the whole thing to make sure nothing's a bill or a royalty check or a bank statement, then stack it back up from largest to smallest envelope because it stacks better on the table. Then I do the whole stack.
(2) It's true that we reject instantaneously while we might take more time to think about a maybe query, but this by no means universally true. Generally I make a pile of maybes, and my boss looks at them, picks up the one she likes, and sets them aside. Then when she gets a chance, she emails the person. It's probably within the day because she's polite, but that's not true of everyone. They might let it sit on their shelf for a couple weeks (even a letter) if they are extremely busy. Agenting stuff like contract negotiations, publisher-set submission deadlines of final manuscripts, proof approval, and any kind of conference to get ready for (like the BEA or Frankfurt) are really more demanding and is what the agent does all day. In fact, hope that they do, because it means they're working hard for their clients, and if you become one, you'll want the same treatment.
(3) Partials and fulls can take a long time. This is true. I have had agents get back to me really quickly, generally with a rejection. Or if it's a partial, the agent can take a quick look and say, "Eh... I'm not sure. Need to see the whole thing" and request a full very quickly as well. If you have a full or a partial and it's been 6 months, give them an email. If something comes up, like an offer from that publishing house you sent into a year ago, call them and tell them. They will drop everything and read the manuscript. If they don't, they're definitely not the right agent for you.
(4) Some agents do not feel the need to respond to email queries if it's a rejection. I think this is rude and I'm glad my boss takes the time to reply to her emails, but that's the way some people feel. It's slowly changing as e-queries become more common, but some agents still just ignore it if they don't like it. The paper query with the SASE is a little harder to toss in the trash. There's some guilt factor there.
Beyond that, I can't say. Every agent works differently, and they work differently from week to week depending on what's going on that week. If they're busy badgering an author to get the final manuscript copy into the publisher by the deadline because it's tomorrow, then they won't be reading partials.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Covers!
I haven't posted much from a combination Jewish internet-less holidays/illness, but that'll be over in a week (the holiday part and hopefully the other part). Please know that if you post a comment past 6:15 pm EST tonight, it might not be approved until Saturday night.
Every once in a while, we get someone who's made their own cover. Either they've self-published already and are sending a copy or a copy of the cover, or they just designed a cover for what they hope will be their published novel. Let me say this: We love it. Why? Because they're so hilariously bad that we get a chuckle before moving on to the query, which is the only thing that concerns us anyway.
No, you do not get to design your own cover. I remember long before I worked in publishing and was submitting manuscripts (none of which were accepted), and I had wild dreams of designing my own cover. I even went into Photoshop, but at the time I wasn't very good at it and didn't come up with anything. I thought I could do a better job than those awful people who make covers using stock images (i.e. public domain) and something to make the author's name look shiny. Well, I was wrong. Unless the author has a master's in artistic design, with a speciality in commercial design for the book market, the cover will suck. So hard.
Oh man do I love them. There's the memoir covers made using a personal picture with the title written over it using Microsoft Paint. There's the self-drawn fantasy covers with the woman with impossibly large breasts standing beside the hero. There's the person who thinks a photograph of an empty building would look nice as long as they went a little nuts with the bevel/emboss function of Photoshop. And, last but not least, the person who pasted some photographs and newspaper clippings and drawings to a piece of paper and did a color photocopy, so it looks like some kind of collage.
Yes, you can not like professionally-done book covers. Many authors and readers don't. But you probably couldn't do better.
Every once in a while, we get someone who's made their own cover. Either they've self-published already and are sending a copy or a copy of the cover, or they just designed a cover for what they hope will be their published novel. Let me say this: We love it. Why? Because they're so hilariously bad that we get a chuckle before moving on to the query, which is the only thing that concerns us anyway.
No, you do not get to design your own cover. I remember long before I worked in publishing and was submitting manuscripts (none of which were accepted), and I had wild dreams of designing my own cover. I even went into Photoshop, but at the time I wasn't very good at it and didn't come up with anything. I thought I could do a better job than those awful people who make covers using stock images (i.e. public domain) and something to make the author's name look shiny. Well, I was wrong. Unless the author has a master's in artistic design, with a speciality in commercial design for the book market, the cover will suck. So hard.
Oh man do I love them. There's the memoir covers made using a personal picture with the title written over it using Microsoft Paint. There's the self-drawn fantasy covers with the woman with impossibly large breasts standing beside the hero. There's the person who thinks a photograph of an empty building would look nice as long as they went a little nuts with the bevel/emboss function of Photoshop. And, last but not least, the person who pasted some photographs and newspaper clippings and drawings to a piece of paper and did a color photocopy, so it looks like some kind of collage.
Yes, you can not like professionally-done book covers. Many authors and readers don't. But you probably couldn't do better.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
The Joy of Low Advances
For those of you who don't know Anon 7:55, check out the replies in the previous post. As he actually asked a valid question, I'll answer it here.
Unpleasant Anonymous Poster said...
I concede. As far as it is possible to discern talent by prejudice alone, your book has every possibility of success. Although, I have a few more questions, just to show I'm not affected by the fact that everybody has turned against me. (They always do that, so I'm used to it. I actually think it makes a man stronger to have lots of enemies and no friends.)
This may just be my interpretation of it, but generally having lots of enemies and no friends means that you have poor social skills, not any particular kind of character-related strength. It's a negative thing.
Why would you accept such a small advance, even for genre fiction? Back to the subject of self-respect: If it's that good, then it deserves more money. At least the same amount as the average book of its category. And in response to all my enemies, I apologize for expecting more from you, The Rejecter. Are you just hoping it will earn out the advance? And if it sells only a few thousand copies, will you be disappointed? Are you taking commercial success into consideration? If you're so good, you should want to make all kinds of money, so you can write another one, where you won't be distracted by any preoccupation.
Why did I accept such a low advance? Aren't my years of patience and time and money spent honing my craft worth some kind of reward, preferably in the form of a pool filled with dollar coins that you can swim in like Scrooge McDuck? I deserve compensation for the hours I spent at the computer when I could have been out drinking and partying and being a normal, functioning member of society and not a shut-in.
Fortunately I paid enough attention during the first submission attempts to learn that that wasn't going to happen. The market is hard on new fiction writers; you're lucky to get in at all. I got an offer, I got an agent - I had it all. Except money, but that seems to concern my agent more than me. Sure, I could have taken that risk and walked away from the initial offer to hunt for a higher one at other companies, but had that attempt failed, I would be back to square one. And you know what? Square one sucks. I want to be published.
That said, there was a more practical reason to accepting a low advance. If you're offered a good one, man, reach for that star. But you probably won't be offered a good one, and if you're hopig to be a career writer like me, that might not be a bad thing.
For those unfamiliar with the term, an "advance" is what it is - an "advance" on future predicted royalties you will be earning from the book. The good news is that even if the book doesn't sell enough copies to earn that amount of money back for the company, you get to keep the advance money. The bad news is that the company does detract your first royalties and keeps them until you "earn out your advance" and go into royalty territory. The company has seen its investment returned, and you get paychecks again.
"Earning out" is an important thing to do if you have the intention of trying to sell future books to that company or other companies, because they will look at your sales record and see not only how many copies sold but how much money the book actually made for the company. If I had a half-million dollar advance, man had my book better be a bestseller, or I'll have a poor record as an overpaid author. Considering I've written something that is a niche genre, that's unlikely.
With a low advance, I'm more likely to see royalties because there isn't that much to earn back. When I go in with the second novel, they're more likely to buy it - and for a decent amount of money. Hopefully.
This is a practical concern. If you don't make enough money, you can't afford to spend all your time focused on developing your talent, getting better, which is all any serious artist cares about. Genius is eternal patience. You need unlimited free time to have eternal patience.
Are you writing from some kind of alternate dimension where eating, sleeping, earning money, and the normal spectrum of human activities don't consume most of your time, and you find yourself sacrificing your free time for just a few hours of writing a day? If so, where is this dimension and is there a bus from the NYC Port Authority that goes there?
Unpleasant Anonymous Poster said...
I concede. As far as it is possible to discern talent by prejudice alone, your book has every possibility of success. Although, I have a few more questions, just to show I'm not affected by the fact that everybody has turned against me. (They always do that, so I'm used to it. I actually think it makes a man stronger to have lots of enemies and no friends.)
This may just be my interpretation of it, but generally having lots of enemies and no friends means that you have poor social skills, not any particular kind of character-related strength. It's a negative thing.
Why would you accept such a small advance, even for genre fiction? Back to the subject of self-respect: If it's that good, then it deserves more money. At least the same amount as the average book of its category. And in response to all my enemies, I apologize for expecting more from you, The Rejecter. Are you just hoping it will earn out the advance? And if it sells only a few thousand copies, will you be disappointed? Are you taking commercial success into consideration? If you're so good, you should want to make all kinds of money, so you can write another one, where you won't be distracted by any preoccupation.
Why did I accept such a low advance? Aren't my years of patience and time and money spent honing my craft worth some kind of reward, preferably in the form of a pool filled with dollar coins that you can swim in like Scrooge McDuck? I deserve compensation for the hours I spent at the computer when I could have been out drinking and partying and being a normal, functioning member of society and not a shut-in.
Fortunately I paid enough attention during the first submission attempts to learn that that wasn't going to happen. The market is hard on new fiction writers; you're lucky to get in at all. I got an offer, I got an agent - I had it all. Except money, but that seems to concern my agent more than me. Sure, I could have taken that risk and walked away from the initial offer to hunt for a higher one at other companies, but had that attempt failed, I would be back to square one. And you know what? Square one sucks. I want to be published.
That said, there was a more practical reason to accepting a low advance. If you're offered a good one, man, reach for that star. But you probably won't be offered a good one, and if you're hopig to be a career writer like me, that might not be a bad thing.
For those unfamiliar with the term, an "advance" is what it is - an "advance" on future predicted royalties you will be earning from the book. The good news is that even if the book doesn't sell enough copies to earn that amount of money back for the company, you get to keep the advance money. The bad news is that the company does detract your first royalties and keeps them until you "earn out your advance" and go into royalty territory. The company has seen its investment returned, and you get paychecks again.
"Earning out" is an important thing to do if you have the intention of trying to sell future books to that company or other companies, because they will look at your sales record and see not only how many copies sold but how much money the book actually made for the company. If I had a half-million dollar advance, man had my book better be a bestseller, or I'll have a poor record as an overpaid author. Considering I've written something that is a niche genre, that's unlikely.
With a low advance, I'm more likely to see royalties because there isn't that much to earn back. When I go in with the second novel, they're more likely to buy it - and for a decent amount of money. Hopefully.
This is a practical concern. If you don't make enough money, you can't afford to spend all your time focused on developing your talent, getting better, which is all any serious artist cares about. Genius is eternal patience. You need unlimited free time to have eternal patience.
Are you writing from some kind of alternate dimension where eating, sleeping, earning money, and the normal spectrum of human activities don't consume most of your time, and you find yourself sacrificing your free time for just a few hours of writing a day? If so, where is this dimension and is there a bus from the NYC Port Authority that goes there?
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Who's On Your Side?
But one question--is a publisher LIKELY to pull something like that if it jeopardizes their relationship with an author? Or does it all depend on just who that author is?
Yes. No. Maybe.
This summer at the publishing institute I got to hear from a lot of editors. Most of my contact, aside from at the BEA, has been with agents. Sometimes they're on the same side of the field, sometimes they're not. Sometimes it seems like one's on your side and the other isn't, but you may be wrong. Or it may not matter. I'm being very helpful, am I?
Everyone involved in the publishing process obviously has a vested interest in having the author succeed. They also have a vested interest in making sure that they are compensated for their time and avoid any legal issues while doing so. So everyone is sort of working together but sort of not. I got a first-hand taste of this this summer, when I was offered a book contract by an editor and ran off to find an agent. It was a long and complex process that I don't want to get into because it involves specific people, but the point is, suddenly after many years of rejection, the spotlight was on me and my commercially viable manuscript. I didn't mention it at the time on the blog because I was having the argument with Jill about her book contract, and I was sure it would just confuse the issue, which was unrelated. But anyway, yes, G-d willing, I am going to be published sometime in late 2008.
Despite having worked for an agent and taken an publishing course, picking an agent was a maddening process. The editor didn't want me to get an agent. Some editors simply don't like working with agents; they feel they drive up the price. They don't like the middleman. (These editors accept unsolicited manuscripts) On the other hand the advance was very low even for genre fiction, and the agent wanted to threaten to walk away and take a chance with other publishers, while I wanted to take the offer on the table (with some re-negotiations and revisions that I needed an agent to do) because damnit, I wanted to be published, and I knew a lot about the publishing company and I knew they would do a good job and probably eventually pick up the whole series. I called around to former bosses and co-workers and they all gave me different advice, and really wondered what the hell I was doing, and then wondered, "Wait, I work in publishing. How do I not know what I'm doing?" A lot of guessing and going with gut feelings was involved.
Currently we're in contract revisions similar to the one in my previous post. A lot of people who knew me asked me why in the world was I looking for an agent who would just take a cut of my pay when I knew all about the job and already had a book deal. Couldn't I do it myself? I decided to let someone else do the nitty-gritty of the contract, which turned out to be a big deal, which is why I'm relieved and heavy on the "you need an agent" recommendation for most authors.
That doesn't mean that the publisher was trying to "screw me." The publisher presented a contract that would give me an advance and future royalties if I earn out my advance, and they would get a lot of rights. It wasn't bad; I just knew I could do better.
Take the example of the previous post to this one. The publisher has a valid reason for not wanting to have to contact the author prior to revisions. Revisions are expensive, so chances are they would be minor anyway, and what the publisher is trying to avoid is a situation in which the author disappears (dies, moves to another country, etc) and the publisher is unable to contact them to inform them of revisions, so they're not able to republish. The publisher could very well have had every intention of informing the author prior to publication with the old wording, but wanted to safeguard themselves against extreme cases that could become a legal mess. Or, maybe they just really didn't want to be hassled and were being sort of sneaky.
No one's really evil, but no one really wants to be hassled when they're trying to do their work. Agents don't want to be hassled by their clients when they're in a waiting period and can't do anything for them anyway, publishers don't want to be hassled by agents demanding every last word be changed in some way, and nobody wants to hassle the author too much if they're an earner because they might jump ship with the next book and/or fire their agent.
So, it's one of these. (waves hands up and down like a measuring scale)
Yes. No. Maybe.
This summer at the publishing institute I got to hear from a lot of editors. Most of my contact, aside from at the BEA, has been with agents. Sometimes they're on the same side of the field, sometimes they're not. Sometimes it seems like one's on your side and the other isn't, but you may be wrong. Or it may not matter. I'm being very helpful, am I?
Everyone involved in the publishing process obviously has a vested interest in having the author succeed. They also have a vested interest in making sure that they are compensated for their time and avoid any legal issues while doing so. So everyone is sort of working together but sort of not. I got a first-hand taste of this this summer, when I was offered a book contract by an editor and ran off to find an agent. It was a long and complex process that I don't want to get into because it involves specific people, but the point is, suddenly after many years of rejection, the spotlight was on me and my commercially viable manuscript. I didn't mention it at the time on the blog because I was having the argument with Jill about her book contract, and I was sure it would just confuse the issue, which was unrelated. But anyway, yes, G-d willing, I am going to be published sometime in late 2008.
Despite having worked for an agent and taken an publishing course, picking an agent was a maddening process. The editor didn't want me to get an agent. Some editors simply don't like working with agents; they feel they drive up the price. They don't like the middleman. (These editors accept unsolicited manuscripts) On the other hand the advance was very low even for genre fiction, and the agent wanted to threaten to walk away and take a chance with other publishers, while I wanted to take the offer on the table (with some re-negotiations and revisions that I needed an agent to do) because damnit, I wanted to be published, and I knew a lot about the publishing company and I knew they would do a good job and probably eventually pick up the whole series. I called around to former bosses and co-workers and they all gave me different advice, and really wondered what the hell I was doing, and then wondered, "Wait, I work in publishing. How do I not know what I'm doing?" A lot of guessing and going with gut feelings was involved.
Currently we're in contract revisions similar to the one in my previous post. A lot of people who knew me asked me why in the world was I looking for an agent who would just take a cut of my pay when I knew all about the job and already had a book deal. Couldn't I do it myself? I decided to let someone else do the nitty-gritty of the contract, which turned out to be a big deal, which is why I'm relieved and heavy on the "you need an agent" recommendation for most authors.
That doesn't mean that the publisher was trying to "screw me." The publisher presented a contract that would give me an advance and future royalties if I earn out my advance, and they would get a lot of rights. It wasn't bad; I just knew I could do better.
Take the example of the previous post to this one. The publisher has a valid reason for not wanting to have to contact the author prior to revisions. Revisions are expensive, so chances are they would be minor anyway, and what the publisher is trying to avoid is a situation in which the author disappears (dies, moves to another country, etc) and the publisher is unable to contact them to inform them of revisions, so they're not able to republish. The publisher could very well have had every intention of informing the author prior to publication with the old wording, but wanted to safeguard themselves against extreme cases that could become a legal mess. Or, maybe they just really didn't want to be hassled and were being sort of sneaky.
No one's really evil, but no one really wants to be hassled when they're trying to do their work. Agents don't want to be hassled by their clients when they're in a waiting period and can't do anything for them anyway, publishers don't want to be hassled by agents demanding every last word be changed in some way, and nobody wants to hassle the author too much if they're an earner because they might jump ship with the next book and/or fire their agent.
So, it's one of these. (waves hands up and down like a measuring scale)
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Why You Need An Agent
I'm logging off for Rosh Hoshanah/Shabbos, so your comments won't be moderated for a while, unless I get someone to moderate them for me while I'm gone (Don't offer; I would have someone I know do it). Before I go, this story.
So my boss was on the phone the other day because she wanted another contract revision. In this case it was one word that she wanted inserted.
The original contract language said something like, "If revisions are made by the Publisher to the Work for a new edition, the Publisher must consult the Author."
She wanted it changed to, "If revisions are made by the Publisher to the Work for a new edition, the Publisher must first consult the Author."
Otherwise, the language is murky enough that technically revisions could be made, the second edition could be published, and THEN the author would be informed. In the original wording, no time frame is given to "consult."
I never would have thought of that.
So my boss was on the phone the other day because she wanted another contract revision. In this case it was one word that she wanted inserted.
The original contract language said something like, "If revisions are made by the Publisher to the Work for a new edition, the Publisher must consult the Author."
She wanted it changed to, "If revisions are made by the Publisher to the Work for a new edition, the Publisher must first consult the Author."
Otherwise, the language is murky enough that technically revisions could be made, the second edition could be published, and THEN the author would be informed. In the original wording, no time frame is given to "consult."
I never would have thought of that.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Querying Agents in Same Agency
Dear Rejecter:
From what I've read, it's okay (and recommended) to query several agents at once. However, what about querying agents within the same literary agency? I have a friend who assists two agents at a very well-known agency and if I should query the two agents for whom she works in the future, would that be frowned upon? (I am speaking generally as I know my friend's opinion.) How much do agents within an agency "gossip" about us unpublished writers? Would they pass on a query sent to everyone in the house (even though several of them represent my genre)?
It is considered fair to query different agents in the same house, but space it out over a few weeks, because it might be the same assistant reading (or at least sorting) the mail, and when a bunch of letters with the same handwriting come in on the same day it looks tacky.
From what I've read, it's okay (and recommended) to query several agents at once. However, what about querying agents within the same literary agency? I have a friend who assists two agents at a very well-known agency and if I should query the two agents for whom she works in the future, would that be frowned upon? (I am speaking generally as I know my friend's opinion.) How much do agents within an agency "gossip" about us unpublished writers? Would they pass on a query sent to everyone in the house (even though several of them represent my genre)?
It is considered fair to query different agents in the same house, but space it out over a few weeks, because it might be the same assistant reading (or at least sorting) the mail, and when a bunch of letters with the same handwriting come in on the same day it looks tacky.
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Anyone Want to Help?
Dear Rejecter:
I have a friend who is a professional book reviewer (www.bookwormsez.com) read by millions through the U.S. and Canada. She's promised to blurb my book when it's published. Is this something I should mention in a query letter?
I'm very skeptical of people I've never heard of. After all, there are a lot of places that basically just give everything a thumbs-up because a publishing company pays them to. Anyone heard of this person?
PS: Why have all the best bloggers in the publishing industry cut so far back on their blogging?
We're busy/on vacation.
I have a friend who is a professional book reviewer (www.bookwormsez.com) read by millions through the U.S. and Canada. She's promised to blurb my book when it's published. Is this something I should mention in a query letter?
I'm very skeptical of people I've never heard of. After all, there are a lot of places that basically just give everything a thumbs-up because a publishing company pays them to. Anyone heard of this person?
PS: Why have all the best bloggers in the publishing industry cut so far back on their blogging?
We're busy/on vacation.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Revisions Without A Contract
Hi there. I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I'll get straight to the point. An executive editor at a major publishing company requested my manuscript. During the process of waiting, her editorial assistant was kind enough to tell me the executive editor loved the book and that she was just as adamant about working with me as I am with her. Her editorial assistant even asked me to critique a piece of her work, which I did.
The editor sent me a list of revisions she would like to see, which don't seem impossible to make, but my question is whether or not it's a good idea to make revisions to a manuscript that hasn't been accepted or rejected.
I've been in this situation a couple times with agents and been burned a couple times, so I'll give you my advice.
From your description, she seems pretty interested. Also if she recommends revisions and is very specific about them and they seem sensible to you, you should probably be making them anyway. That said, she hasn't made you an offer yet, so don't be surprised if you turn around and she says no after you did the revisions. On the other hand, you come out with a better manuscript for other editors based on what was probably good feedback, so it's not necessary win-win (i.e. this might not immediately result in a publishing deal) but I would make the revisions and resubmit.
The editor sent me a list of revisions she would like to see, which don't seem impossible to make, but my question is whether or not it's a good idea to make revisions to a manuscript that hasn't been accepted or rejected.
I've been in this situation a couple times with agents and been burned a couple times, so I'll give you my advice.
From your description, she seems pretty interested. Also if she recommends revisions and is very specific about them and they seem sensible to you, you should probably be making them anyway. That said, she hasn't made you an offer yet, so don't be surprised if you turn around and she says no after you did the revisions. On the other hand, you come out with a better manuscript for other editors based on what was probably good feedback, so it's not necessary win-win (i.e. this might not immediately result in a publishing deal) but I would make the revisions and resubmit.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Bad Sign: Genres I've Never Heard of
What are your thoughts on stories using anthropomorphic fantasy? Is this a sub-genre all by itself and is it popular enough to be marketable?
Anything that is good enough can be marketable. That said, it is not to me knowledge an official sub-genre, so you shouldn't say that's your genre in your query.
What is an official sub-genre? It gets a bit hard to tell. Genres are actually pretty much determined these days by in what section the bookstores places them, and a lot of things get lumped together. Why some things are in sci-fi/fantasy and some things are in fiction & literature (i.e. general fiction) are a mystery to me, but that's why I'm not a Barnes and Noble buyer. As for sub-genres, they're only really relevant in certain cases particular to the genre, and generally they're not worth thinking about in the query because we can probably figure out the sub-genre from the summary. If it's about elves in New York, it's urban fantasy. If it's about a small-town amateur detective who solves crimes, it's a cozy. If it's a fictionalized account of the last days of General Custer, it's historical fiction. You don't really need to tell us that; we know the business, plus we think it's hilarious (in a bad way for you) when you get your sub-genre wrong, or list multiple genres in the hopes that you will convince us that it will be a crossover hit. (Man, I've done that. I was such a dork)
A good way to tell if your genre is "popular" is to go to a large bookstore and see how many titles on the shelves would fall in the same category as your work. I'm guessing in this case it would be very few, and I'm even counting the Dragons of Pern stuff.
Anything that is good enough can be marketable. That said, it is not to me knowledge an official sub-genre, so you shouldn't say that's your genre in your query.
What is an official sub-genre? It gets a bit hard to tell. Genres are actually pretty much determined these days by in what section the bookstores places them, and a lot of things get lumped together. Why some things are in sci-fi/fantasy and some things are in fiction & literature (i.e. general fiction) are a mystery to me, but that's why I'm not a Barnes and Noble buyer. As for sub-genres, they're only really relevant in certain cases particular to the genre, and generally they're not worth thinking about in the query because we can probably figure out the sub-genre from the summary. If it's about elves in New York, it's urban fantasy. If it's about a small-town amateur detective who solves crimes, it's a cozy. If it's a fictionalized account of the last days of General Custer, it's historical fiction. You don't really need to tell us that; we know the business, plus we think it's hilarious (in a bad way for you) when you get your sub-genre wrong, or list multiple genres in the hopes that you will convince us that it will be a crossover hit. (Man, I've done that. I was such a dork)
A good way to tell if your genre is "popular" is to go to a large bookstore and see how many titles on the shelves would fall in the same category as your work. I'm guessing in this case it would be very few, and I'm even counting the Dragons of Pern stuff.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Things That Make Me Laugh #2
The funniest book title I've ever read in a query was "The Mask of Nudity."
The book was about an unrelated subject, as far as I could tell.
The book was about an unrelated subject, as far as I could tell.
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