I recently sent off a few agent queries for my romance novel that contained the following biographical paragraph:
"[Cut for privacy by the Rejector, but basically she says she was an editorial assistant at a small press and goes into what she did there]."
Now I'm wondering if "vanity press" is really the right term to use in this case. Vanity presses are demonized by bloggers, but the company I worked for was perfectly harmless. We didn't swindle writers. In fact, we didn't accept any outside manuscript submissions at all -- we developed everything in-house with the help of the artist we were devoted to promoting. At the time that I worked there, we understood ourselves to be a vanity press in the most pure sense: a press devoted to one person's vanity.
Would you mind taking a look at [the company's] web site and letting me know what you think? I'm afraid that in misusing a common publishing term, I have shown myself to be an idiot. If [this press] isn't a vanity press, then what is it?
A side issue is whether or not my experience in publishing is even worth mentioning at all. I have no idea, and I'm almost afraid to ask.
So there are two issues I see here:
(1) You are wondering if you worked for a vanity press. Well, you didn't work for Vanity Press, which was actually the name of a major self-publishing company before the word "self-publishing" existed. When I was 14, I submitted a manuscript to them, not knowing any better, and lo-and-behold, they accepted me. I was on top of the world. Then my mom looked at the fine print and said, "I'm not paying for this" and that was the end of that.
The term has come to main places that make you pay up front for copies printed, as opposed to POD presses where there's a more complex financial arrangement that requires only a set-up fee or no set-up fee at all but takes a larger chunk from each copy and prices the copies very high. POD only exists because the technology to print books quickly exists, and it didn't when I was 14.
Looking at the website, I honestly can't tell for sure, but if I had to guess I would err on the side of "oh look, a small press" and not discriminate. A lot of small, specialized presses like this one have different financial structures (for everyone else, this is a press for books about glassmaking).
(2) I think it's OK to mention you worked for a press unless it was one of those huge, corrupt vanity presses or POD scams like PublishAmerica or Authorhouse. Saying you edited for PublishAmerica is like saying "I have NEGATIVE editing experience, less than people who've never edited." We know those houses exist to make a profit and don't edit their work. If you did legitimate work at a legitimate press, don't worry about the structure and mention it.
That said, the paragraph you sent me that you put in your query was fairly long, and I would cut it down to two lines, max. Editorial experience doesn't make you a good writer; it makes you a good editor. Editing is a useful skill for writing, but it's part of the writing tool set, not the whole of it. In other words, your book might still suck even if you were the CEO of Random House after working your way up from the mail room and through every editorial station before moving to executive positions. So give it a line or two because it shows you know how to edit (and would thus be capable of doing so if we asked) and focus on your novel.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Amazon Rankings and Ice Fishing
OK, it's time to get something out in the open.
I've noticed that all the pod-caster novelists and POD-ers have this obsession with Amazon rankings, which I can understand. That's why they all encourage people to buy the book on opening day, so it skyrockets the rankings to the top 10, if even for 1/10 of a second, but still, from then on in the promo materials you can say, "the top 10 Amazon hit..."
But does this really work? Do publishers care about gimmicky marketing tactics like this? Can you show me a case where it backfired?
I have to admit that this approach looks more respectable than begging for some 'agent' who may or may not even respond to you to take 15% of whatever you may or may not make. Seems like the new breed of action adventure authors (and it does seems to be mostly in those genres), are eschewing agents altogether, or at least until the asgents solicit them.
First I will point out that mainstream authors can be as obsessed with their Amazon rankings as POD authors. I know I am, checking it whenever I can while my book is in preorder because I know a spike equals a sale and I get all excited. POD people have even more reason to be obsessed because they are, for the most part, not in stores and rely on Amazon to sell their book.
People used to be more dismissive of Amazon. As of 2007, someone told me all internet sales were only 7% of the book market, not that big. Then in early 2008 I heard 17% from someone else, then 23%. The point is, the internet sales are climbing in proportion to stores going down, and while they won't replace stores, they can no longer be dismissed. So if your book is selling well on Amazon, good for you. Be happy about it. It's no small thing anymore.
As for the rankings system, I've been messing with it a bit myself as of late so I can talk about it a little. There have been waves of people trying to analyze the ranking system and figure out Amazon's algorithm, which is a closely-guarded secret. The reason for the waves is that Amazon occasionally changes the algorithm based on people trying to manipulate it or for it to more efficiently reflect sales. In 2005, someone wrote that she got her book into the Top 25 list by buying a book an hour (it is recalculated every hour for high-ranked books, and mostly once a day for above 100,000 numbered books). I tried that, and it didn't work. She wrote that she only bought one copy because she read somewhere else that for an individual buyer, multiple copies are reduced to one for the purposes of ranking to prevent the manipulation of rank by authors. Come to think of it, I don't know why Amazon would care - they just want to sell books, and they're selling books to you, and they're ranking the books by what's sold, so who buys them shouldn't be a huge issue, be it one person buying 100 or 100 people buying one. On the other hand, 100 people buying one indicates popularity over numbers, so again, it's complicated.
I experimented a little (and got flagged by Amazon, who called me and asked me if I wanted a corporate account, as I seemed to be buying so many books that if I had any intention of actually buying them and not canceling my pre-orders, it would be financially cost-efficient to have a corporate account and not just an Amazon credit card like I do) and here's what I found:
(1) Numbers do matter. Buying 100 copies over buying 1 multiple times over a long period of time will artificially raise your rank faster and higher.
(2) Amazon does calculate the ranks about once an hour, but it puts the calculations in effect on about the 40 minute part of the hour. I don't know when it actually does the calculations, but all I know is that the spike would always be around :35 or :40. Otherwise, my book would just slowly depreciate.
(3) Massive canceling of massive orders will result in the rank going back down (meaning, the ranking system takes cancellations into account and doesn't just track orders. It tracks sales)
(4) It is ridiculously, stupidly hard to get your book above 2000. There are 4 million books listed on Amazon, so that shouldn't be a surprise, but it seems to cap at 2000 for some reason. Despite massive orders in a short span of a few hours, I could not get my rank to reflect that.
(5) Manipulating your rank is probably a little unethical, though it's a victim-less crime.
To answer your questions specifically, I have seen ads for marketing, but and I gave them some thought but decided against them. If you have a ton of friends, you can get them to buy the book all at the same time, but it won't do as much to your rank as the ads promise. Also some people are big on "email blasts" where you email people you barely know or random people you got from a list you paid for to buy your book. Having never bought a book from an email blast (and I get a few of them every couple months at my Rejector email), I cannot say this is an effective measure except if you've written a specific book for a specific community, in which case I would just call that marketing and be done with it.
I confess I have paid a service $3/month to track my sales based on my rank, because I am curious, and also because I think it has access to Bookscan and can actually look up sales once the book goes on sale and tell me how many sold. The rank itself does not totally reflect sales - it reflects your rank relative to the other 4 million books on Amazon, so if other books aren't doing as well, your rank will not depreciate as slowly.
As for the agent thing, that's another discussion entirely, but I think that anyone with more than one book should immediately get an agent even if they already have a book contract. That 15% is well-earned, and I say that not just because I work for an agent but also because I have my own agent for my books, and she is severely underpaid for all the work she does for me in my opinion. If you have one book and have an offer, get an agent. She'll take her 15% percent for looking over the contract, but she's not there for that. She's there to sell your second, third, and fourth books, and so on.
Lastly, some people have begun to mention in query letters that they were "an Amazon bestseller." We don't pay any attention to this. It could mean they manipulated their rank to be a bestseller, and it could mean they were a bestseller in a specific category. I imagine it's not all that hard to be a bestseller in the Books ‹Outdoors & Nature ‹Hunting & Fishing ‹Fishing ‹Ice Fishing category. Or maybe I'm just underestimating the number of books about ice fishing.
I've noticed that all the pod-caster novelists and POD-ers have this obsession with Amazon rankings, which I can understand. That's why they all encourage people to buy the book on opening day, so it skyrockets the rankings to the top 10, if even for 1/10 of a second, but still, from then on in the promo materials you can say, "the top 10 Amazon hit..."
But does this really work? Do publishers care about gimmicky marketing tactics like this? Can you show me a case where it backfired?
I have to admit that this approach looks more respectable than begging for some 'agent' who may or may not even respond to you to take 15% of whatever you may or may not make. Seems like the new breed of action adventure authors (and it does seems to be mostly in those genres), are eschewing agents altogether, or at least until the asgents solicit them.
First I will point out that mainstream authors can be as obsessed with their Amazon rankings as POD authors. I know I am, checking it whenever I can while my book is in preorder because I know a spike equals a sale and I get all excited. POD people have even more reason to be obsessed because they are, for the most part, not in stores and rely on Amazon to sell their book.
People used to be more dismissive of Amazon. As of 2007, someone told me all internet sales were only 7% of the book market, not that big. Then in early 2008 I heard 17% from someone else, then 23%. The point is, the internet sales are climbing in proportion to stores going down, and while they won't replace stores, they can no longer be dismissed. So if your book is selling well on Amazon, good for you. Be happy about it. It's no small thing anymore.
As for the rankings system, I've been messing with it a bit myself as of late so I can talk about it a little. There have been waves of people trying to analyze the ranking system and figure out Amazon's algorithm, which is a closely-guarded secret. The reason for the waves is that Amazon occasionally changes the algorithm based on people trying to manipulate it or for it to more efficiently reflect sales. In 2005, someone wrote that she got her book into the Top 25 list by buying a book an hour (it is recalculated every hour for high-ranked books, and mostly once a day for above 100,000 numbered books). I tried that, and it didn't work. She wrote that she only bought one copy because she read somewhere else that for an individual buyer, multiple copies are reduced to one for the purposes of ranking to prevent the manipulation of rank by authors. Come to think of it, I don't know why Amazon would care - they just want to sell books, and they're selling books to you, and they're ranking the books by what's sold, so who buys them shouldn't be a huge issue, be it one person buying 100 or 100 people buying one. On the other hand, 100 people buying one indicates popularity over numbers, so again, it's complicated.
I experimented a little (and got flagged by Amazon, who called me and asked me if I wanted a corporate account, as I seemed to be buying so many books that if I had any intention of actually buying them and not canceling my pre-orders, it would be financially cost-efficient to have a corporate account and not just an Amazon credit card like I do) and here's what I found:
(1) Numbers do matter. Buying 100 copies over buying 1 multiple times over a long period of time will artificially raise your rank faster and higher.
(2) Amazon does calculate the ranks about once an hour, but it puts the calculations in effect on about the 40 minute part of the hour. I don't know when it actually does the calculations, but all I know is that the spike would always be around :35 or :40. Otherwise, my book would just slowly depreciate.
(3) Massive canceling of massive orders will result in the rank going back down (meaning, the ranking system takes cancellations into account and doesn't just track orders. It tracks sales)
(4) It is ridiculously, stupidly hard to get your book above 2000. There are 4 million books listed on Amazon, so that shouldn't be a surprise, but it seems to cap at 2000 for some reason. Despite massive orders in a short span of a few hours, I could not get my rank to reflect that.
(5) Manipulating your rank is probably a little unethical, though it's a victim-less crime.
To answer your questions specifically, I have seen ads for marketing, but and I gave them some thought but decided against them. If you have a ton of friends, you can get them to buy the book all at the same time, but it won't do as much to your rank as the ads promise. Also some people are big on "email blasts" where you email people you barely know or random people you got from a list you paid for to buy your book. Having never bought a book from an email blast (and I get a few of them every couple months at my Rejector email), I cannot say this is an effective measure except if you've written a specific book for a specific community, in which case I would just call that marketing and be done with it.
I confess I have paid a service $3/month to track my sales based on my rank, because I am curious, and also because I think it has access to Bookscan and can actually look up sales once the book goes on sale and tell me how many sold. The rank itself does not totally reflect sales - it reflects your rank relative to the other 4 million books on Amazon, so if other books aren't doing as well, your rank will not depreciate as slowly.
As for the agent thing, that's another discussion entirely, but I think that anyone with more than one book should immediately get an agent even if they already have a book contract. That 15% is well-earned, and I say that not just because I work for an agent but also because I have my own agent for my books, and she is severely underpaid for all the work she does for me in my opinion. If you have one book and have an offer, get an agent. She'll take her 15% percent for looking over the contract, but she's not there for that. She's there to sell your second, third, and fourth books, and so on.
Lastly, some people have begun to mention in query letters that they were "an Amazon bestseller." We don't pay any attention to this. It could mean they manipulated their rank to be a bestseller, and it could mean they were a bestseller in a specific category. I imagine it's not all that hard to be a bestseller in the Books ‹Outdoors & Nature ‹Hunting & Fishing ‹Fishing ‹Ice Fishing category. Or maybe I'm just underestimating the number of books about ice fishing.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Podcasts
Dear Rejecter,
I know you've posted before your feelings about publishing on demand novels. What is your feeling about novels that the author has decided to self-publish in audio form as a series of podcasts? I'm referring to works available at www.podiobooks.com and author Web sites. A few authors (Scott Sigler and J.C. Hutchins, to name two) have landed publishing deals for their books after they gave them away as free podcasts. In your opinion, does podcasting a work before getting a publisher help or hurt the author's chances of getting published in print? Would you or your boss consider taking on a work with such a history?
Hmm. You know, I've never listened to a podcast. Just never been my thing. My boss has listened to them, when her authors were interviewed and turned it into a podcast, but those were books she already bought.
While I can't directly answer your question with a yes/no, I will say that having your book online is not a writing credential, and that those guys who got deals are probably extreme exceptions to the rules. That and that they also have really good voices and maybe some background in voicework, choral, or radio.
However, it wouldn't HURT your chances of getting into print (though be careful after you sign the contract, because the contract will include audio rights).
I know you've posted before your feelings about publishing on demand novels. What is your feeling about novels that the author has decided to self-publish in audio form as a series of podcasts? I'm referring to works available at www.podiobooks.com and author Web sites. A few authors (Scott Sigler and J.C. Hutchins, to name two) have landed publishing deals for their books after they gave them away as free podcasts. In your opinion, does podcasting a work before getting a publisher help or hurt the author's chances of getting published in print? Would you or your boss consider taking on a work with such a history?
Hmm. You know, I've never listened to a podcast. Just never been my thing. My boss has listened to them, when her authors were interviewed and turned it into a podcast, but those were books she already bought.
While I can't directly answer your question with a yes/no, I will say that having your book online is not a writing credential, and that those guys who got deals are probably extreme exceptions to the rules. That and that they also have really good voices and maybe some background in voicework, choral, or radio.
However, it wouldn't HURT your chances of getting into print (though be careful after you sign the contract, because the contract will include audio rights).
Thursday, July 10, 2008
...Speaking of Academic Protagonists
My boss and I have noticed a wave of queries and partials that mention the words "Dan Brown" at some point. We had a break from them for awhile, but now they seem to be back. I wonder what's up with that. Are all of the people who write academic-based thrillers submitting now because they're on summer break from their university?
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Fiction by Academics
Dear Rejecter,
The ground is thick with rumors that literary agents HATE novels by academics, and automatically throw queries from such creatures in the reject pile. Any wise advice to aspiring novelists inhabiting the ivy-covered groves?
I can't think of why we would have anything against a good novel written by an academic. In fact, if the subject manner is similar to your academic studies, then it's a boost.
It's true that work by academics can naturally be very dry, because that's the way papers and articles are written, and it's the way we're taught to write. I once was graded down on a history paper for being "too exciting" in college, which was part of my decision not to pursue a PhD in history and instead go into writing. However, this is certainly not true of all academics, and many who write well have sold extremely well, as the non-fiction market is very strong.
The ground is thick with rumors that literary agents HATE novels by academics, and automatically throw queries from such creatures in the reject pile. Any wise advice to aspiring novelists inhabiting the ivy-covered groves?
I can't think of why we would have anything against a good novel written by an academic. In fact, if the subject manner is similar to your academic studies, then it's a boost.
It's true that work by academics can naturally be very dry, because that's the way papers and articles are written, and it's the way we're taught to write. I once was graded down on a history paper for being "too exciting" in college, which was part of my decision not to pursue a PhD in history and instead go into writing. However, this is certainly not true of all academics, and many who write well have sold extremely well, as the non-fiction market is very strong.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Blogs and Book Tours
Slow on the posting lately, mainly because I've been caught up in two different writing projects on top of work, and my writing comes before my blogging. So, no apologies.
If you have guest blogged for a well known publisher/ editor/ writing celeb or other notable, is it ok to include that under your writing experience?
...Not really? I would say you're grasping at straws here. Unless it's directly related to the manuscript, don't include it in the query.
On the further subject of blogs, I was compelled to start an author blog by the company publishing my first book (no, I won't tell you where the blog is). So far I've used it to post reviews as they start to come in and really nothing else. The publicity assistant also talked about a "blog tour" as opposed to a book tour, which benefits the company because it doesn't cost money, and benefits the author in that it doesn't take as much time.
This is not to dismiss the traditional book tour, though publishers are increasingly turning against them. The reasons are obvious: they're costly, they're inconvenient, and the book store has to order in the copies themselves sometimes and if they don't sell the bookstore gets mad at the publisher (which is never good for the publisher, which needs the bookstore to buy the books to sell them in the first place). Most of all, unless the author is a celebrity, people don't go to the readings and not only does it not sell books but it can turn into a very depressing experience for the author. Rarely do publishing companies make a huge effort to shield their authors from psychological trauma (especially as mild as facing an uncomfortable amount of empty chairs), so it's nice to hear them being altruistic like that.
In the movie Capote, Truman (Hoffman) gives a reading of his then-unfinished manuscript of In Cold Blood to a packed theater of New York Literati. It does make for a lot of nostalgia, and I just found it funny because he's reading from an unfinished manuscript, and later has problems finishing it, so I thought the reading was a bit premature, even for those days. But anyway, nice scene. Slow movie.
The truth is that the art of the book reading, while not dead, is certainly in some kind of state where IV fluids might be required. The only readings I've ever been to were ones I was dragged to in college or grad school because my professor knew the writer, plus one reading because it was between me and the history section at the Union Square Barnes and Noble and Jimmy Carter was the speaker so the Secret Service guys wouldn't let me through. And I didn't stay for the whole reading. Oh, and once in high school because I had nothing better to do.
It was actually a great presentation. Anne Rice was speaking the following week at the same Borders (I believe The Red Violin was coming out), and this author was a run-of-the-mill fantasy author who had written a Forever Knight franchise novel. For those of you who don't remember or never knew because you have a life, Forever Knight was a show about a vampire who was a cop and the whole show was ruined by its really, really terrible ending. Possibly the worst ending for a series ever if not for Sopranos. Anyway, this author realized there was no reason to talk about the book, as we were either going to buy it because we liked the show and showed up or we were there because that's where all the chairs were, so instead she gave about an hour presentation on the history of the vampire myth, and how it entered pop culture. It was one of the most interesting explanations of how we went from burying comatose people at crossroads to Count von Count. I was so impressed by her sheer historical knowledge that I bought the book to compliment her. I never read it. I don't even really remember why I was there in the first place; maybe we just went to the bookstore to kill time before a movie or something.
The point is, if you're a first-time author, or even just an author who is not a former President, you're probably not going to draw a crowd. I like George R. Martin but it doesn't mean I necessarily want to listen to him read a Sansa chapter. People go for autographs, but the modern autograph market has kinda bottomed out thanks to eBay. So, not going on a book tour is probably not just the publicity market being cheap (though they are undoubtedly doing that) but saving you from hassle and time that you could be spending writing your next book.
If you have guest blogged for a well known publisher/ editor/ writing celeb or other notable, is it ok to include that under your writing experience?
...Not really? I would say you're grasping at straws here. Unless it's directly related to the manuscript, don't include it in the query.
On the further subject of blogs, I was compelled to start an author blog by the company publishing my first book (no, I won't tell you where the blog is). So far I've used it to post reviews as they start to come in and really nothing else. The publicity assistant also talked about a "blog tour" as opposed to a book tour, which benefits the company because it doesn't cost money, and benefits the author in that it doesn't take as much time.
This is not to dismiss the traditional book tour, though publishers are increasingly turning against them. The reasons are obvious: they're costly, they're inconvenient, and the book store has to order in the copies themselves sometimes and if they don't sell the bookstore gets mad at the publisher (which is never good for the publisher, which needs the bookstore to buy the books to sell them in the first place). Most of all, unless the author is a celebrity, people don't go to the readings and not only does it not sell books but it can turn into a very depressing experience for the author. Rarely do publishing companies make a huge effort to shield their authors from psychological trauma (especially as mild as facing an uncomfortable amount of empty chairs), so it's nice to hear them being altruistic like that.
In the movie Capote, Truman (Hoffman) gives a reading of his then-unfinished manuscript of In Cold Blood to a packed theater of New York Literati. It does make for a lot of nostalgia, and I just found it funny because he's reading from an unfinished manuscript, and later has problems finishing it, so I thought the reading was a bit premature, even for those days. But anyway, nice scene. Slow movie.
The truth is that the art of the book reading, while not dead, is certainly in some kind of state where IV fluids might be required. The only readings I've ever been to were ones I was dragged to in college or grad school because my professor knew the writer, plus one reading because it was between me and the history section at the Union Square Barnes and Noble and Jimmy Carter was the speaker so the Secret Service guys wouldn't let me through. And I didn't stay for the whole reading. Oh, and once in high school because I had nothing better to do.
It was actually a great presentation. Anne Rice was speaking the following week at the same Borders (I believe The Red Violin was coming out), and this author was a run-of-the-mill fantasy author who had written a Forever Knight franchise novel. For those of you who don't remember or never knew because you have a life, Forever Knight was a show about a vampire who was a cop and the whole show was ruined by its really, really terrible ending. Possibly the worst ending for a series ever if not for Sopranos. Anyway, this author realized there was no reason to talk about the book, as we were either going to buy it because we liked the show and showed up or we were there because that's where all the chairs were, so instead she gave about an hour presentation on the history of the vampire myth, and how it entered pop culture. It was one of the most interesting explanations of how we went from burying comatose people at crossroads to Count von Count. I was so impressed by her sheer historical knowledge that I bought the book to compliment her. I never read it. I don't even really remember why I was there in the first place; maybe we just went to the bookstore to kill time before a movie or something.
The point is, if you're a first-time author, or even just an author who is not a former President, you're probably not going to draw a crowd. I like George R. Martin but it doesn't mean I necessarily want to listen to him read a Sansa chapter. People go for autographs, but the modern autograph market has kinda bottomed out thanks to eBay. So, not going on a book tour is probably not just the publicity market being cheap (though they are undoubtedly doing that) but saving you from hassle and time that you could be spending writing your next book.
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Grumpy Dragon vs. The Rejecter
I finished my first novel over a year ago. I've spent time sending queries to agents with no result. By chance last week, a friend of a friend, referred me to a small, brand new publisher, who wants to read my book. My question is, do you think going with a small, new publisher is a good idea?
Before I address the name she actually sent me, which is kind of hilarious, I will address the question at hand.
So I work for an agent, which means by all rights I should say no immediately. Agents don't like small presses. Their advances are minuscule or non-existent, and their profits are in the crazy land of "don't check the mail for a check anytime soon." Agents don't make money because authors don't make money. Also your book doesn't get a lot of distribution, meaning it has next to no chance of earning back the non-advance on royalties or becoming a bestseller. Ultimately, it's better for your career and your wallet to be with a major press.
On the other hand, maybe what you've written is very experimental, or isn't so great, or is great in a way no one can appreciate (meaning it's very experimental), or you just want to get published, damnit, and you don't want to self-publish. And small presses are legitimate courses to take at this point if you've failed to get an agent. It will count on your publication record more than a POD book. It's not the best of stepping stones but it is one.
Now the press she mentioned was The Grumpy Dragon, which has a worse page layout than the small press I started last year to republish one book, which means the layout is really, really terrible because I started the bar pretty low. I'm not great at .html at like, advanced levels. G-d, I think I even used the same color for the background. Still, I didn't have an MS Paint logo, and I had frames, so I'm up on these people in the realm of creating web pages meant for 1998. They also have an amusing "Where does the money go?" .pdf, which is more basic than anything needs to be. My first "this is sketchy, even for a small press" alarm that hadn't gone off based on the web page design went off in their royalty section. The royalties are way too high. From the looks of it, they seem to be about 35% but vary based on the sale price, which they shouldn't.
The way it works in a major publisher, your royalty rate is a set figure (usually between 7.5-10%) based on a set retail price. Whatever price they choose to set the actual price of the book at - whether it's in the discount bin or it's in pre-order or they're spending $4000 a week to put copies on the front tables at Barnes & Noble - your royalties per book remain the same. The time your royalties change, which will be carefully stipulated in the contract, is when the book starts selling in higher numbers, at which point there will be what's called an "escalation." That means the company has made back it's initial investment and at some pre-set number, usually 10 or 20 thousand copies or so, the royalty rate will jump from 10% to 20%. Other editions - audio, digital, etc - will have different rates entirely.
Without looking at my contract, I'm gonna estimate that for the first 30,000 copies of my book (if it were to ever sell that much) I'll make about $1 a book after I earn back my advance. I think my escalation was at 30k; not 100% sure, just remember it was bad because the press was an independent (but huge) publisher and cried poverty despite all those nice articles in PW about how well they're doing.
ANYWAY. The last, and more terrifying alarm was that there's one book out by the company and it's out through Lulu. Meaning, they didn't actually publish it. They might have looked it over and edited it (I suspect they did), but they didn't publish it. The real work of putting together a bound book and distributing it was done by another company, so going through Grumpy Dragon means you really should have just done it yourself and gone through Lulu yourself unless you are really a horrible editor and want Grumpy Dragon to edit you. Hopefully they won't do your cover art in MS Paint.
(This little tangent was for the general public, not the person with the question, who had a legitimate question and yes, it can be a difficult decision)
Before I address the name she actually sent me, which is kind of hilarious, I will address the question at hand.
So I work for an agent, which means by all rights I should say no immediately. Agents don't like small presses. Their advances are minuscule or non-existent, and their profits are in the crazy land of "don't check the mail for a check anytime soon." Agents don't make money because authors don't make money. Also your book doesn't get a lot of distribution, meaning it has next to no chance of earning back the non-advance on royalties or becoming a bestseller. Ultimately, it's better for your career and your wallet to be with a major press.
On the other hand, maybe what you've written is very experimental, or isn't so great, or is great in a way no one can appreciate (meaning it's very experimental), or you just want to get published, damnit, and you don't want to self-publish. And small presses are legitimate courses to take at this point if you've failed to get an agent. It will count on your publication record more than a POD book. It's not the best of stepping stones but it is one.
Now the press she mentioned was The Grumpy Dragon, which has a worse page layout than the small press I started last year to republish one book, which means the layout is really, really terrible because I started the bar pretty low. I'm not great at .html at like, advanced levels. G-d, I think I even used the same color for the background. Still, I didn't have an MS Paint logo, and I had frames, so I'm up on these people in the realm of creating web pages meant for 1998. They also have an amusing "Where does the money go?" .pdf, which is more basic than anything needs to be. My first "this is sketchy, even for a small press" alarm that hadn't gone off based on the web page design went off in their royalty section. The royalties are way too high. From the looks of it, they seem to be about 35% but vary based on the sale price, which they shouldn't.
The way it works in a major publisher, your royalty rate is a set figure (usually between 7.5-10%) based on a set retail price. Whatever price they choose to set the actual price of the book at - whether it's in the discount bin or it's in pre-order or they're spending $4000 a week to put copies on the front tables at Barnes & Noble - your royalties per book remain the same. The time your royalties change, which will be carefully stipulated in the contract, is when the book starts selling in higher numbers, at which point there will be what's called an "escalation." That means the company has made back it's initial investment and at some pre-set number, usually 10 or 20 thousand copies or so, the royalty rate will jump from 10% to 20%. Other editions - audio, digital, etc - will have different rates entirely.
Without looking at my contract, I'm gonna estimate that for the first 30,000 copies of my book (if it were to ever sell that much) I'll make about $1 a book after I earn back my advance. I think my escalation was at 30k; not 100% sure, just remember it was bad because the press was an independent (but huge) publisher and cried poverty despite all those nice articles in PW about how well they're doing.
ANYWAY. The last, and more terrifying alarm was that there's one book out by the company and it's out through Lulu. Meaning, they didn't actually publish it. They might have looked it over and edited it (I suspect they did), but they didn't publish it. The real work of putting together a bound book and distributing it was done by another company, so going through Grumpy Dragon means you really should have just done it yourself and gone through Lulu yourself unless you are really a horrible editor and want Grumpy Dragon to edit you. Hopefully they won't do your cover art in MS Paint.
(This little tangent was for the general public, not the person with the question, who had a legitimate question and yes, it can be a difficult decision)
Sunday, June 08, 2008
More on Writers and Blogs
So tonight I'll be signing off until Tuesday night for the holiday of Shavout, where we study all night long and eat cheesecake and I try to go through Mishnah in its entirety. Don't expect your comments to be approved between tonight and Tuesday night.
Looking for clarification...
I understand that an author's website should never be provided in lieu of a good query--but would it necessarily hurt the author to include it?
I am building a site for my unpub. novel, because I am a designer and it is fun/easy for me. My hope is--if an agent likes my query and wants to see more, they can do so instantly.
But, is it insulting to even mention it when youre using it as a tool totally independent from your already fantastic query? I don't want it to seem like I'm giving the agent a job to do, but I want to give them instant access if they're interested.
You can include your website address under your name and other information. Directing us to the website, however relevant it is to the book, is irritating. In publishing, time = money and because it's in NY, time = not enough money to pay the rent, so the fact that we're taking some to read the letter and whatever else you sent in the envelope means we're spending money that we're not likely to get back (there's about a .05% chance). So cruising author's websites is not something we do and we don't like being asked to do it.
Aren't we seeing more and more fiction writers who do have platforms, and Mark Sarvas now being another? Aren't publishers operating out of fear and greed desperate for any promotional leg up?
Publishers realize that blog does not equal immediate and/or substantial leg up, unless your blog was already insanely popular for other things. People like to cite the very, very rare examples of people who got a book deal because they had a blog, like Diablo Cody, whose screenplay was largely unrelated to her hooker blog and whose column in EW I don't care for on a writing level, but these people are exceptions to the rule. Do not expect to be an exception to the rule.
Looking for clarification...
I understand that an author's website should never be provided in lieu of a good query--but would it necessarily hurt the author to include it?
I am building a site for my unpub. novel, because I am a designer and it is fun/easy for me. My hope is--if an agent likes my query and wants to see more, they can do so instantly.
But, is it insulting to even mention it when youre using it as a tool totally independent from your already fantastic query? I don't want it to seem like I'm giving the agent a job to do, but I want to give them instant access if they're interested.
You can include your website address under your name and other information. Directing us to the website, however relevant it is to the book, is irritating. In publishing, time = money and because it's in NY, time = not enough money to pay the rent, so the fact that we're taking some to read the letter and whatever else you sent in the envelope means we're spending money that we're not likely to get back (there's about a .05% chance). So cruising author's websites is not something we do and we don't like being asked to do it.
Aren't we seeing more and more fiction writers who do have platforms, and Mark Sarvas now being another? Aren't publishers operating out of fear and greed desperate for any promotional leg up?
Publishers realize that blog does not equal immediate and/or substantial leg up, unless your blog was already insanely popular for other things. People like to cite the very, very rare examples of people who got a book deal because they had a blog, like Diablo Cody, whose screenplay was largely unrelated to her hooker blog and whose column in EW I don't care for on a writing level, but these people are exceptions to the rule. Do not expect to be an exception to the rule.
Friday, June 06, 2008
Women's Fiction and Writing Blogs
So apparently blogger decided not to mail me my new "You have a comment to approve" emails for a few days, and I logged in for something and had 12 comments to approve. Apologies. Continue your conversations.
As to the whole "should writers keep a blog thing" I will make my own comment: I've been slow to update this blog in the last two weeks because I've just been insane with job stuff, graduation ceremony stuff, apartment lease stuff, and finally, writing stuff. The blog is really the last on the list behind "Did I get a chapter done tonight?" I feel that it's important to post regularly but I can't let it consume my writing energy, which foremost goes to my fiction and notes for my non-fiction stuff I'm working on. A lot of writers have blogs for similar reason to why anyone else does - because they want to - but since a blog requires writing, if you only have a certain number of words in you per day, don't spend them recounting the jazz festival you went to last night. Unless you want to.
I've been working on a query letter and having people in a writing forum critique it. One critic told me that chick lit was over, and to make my story look like more than just a romantic comedy. I think that women will always be interested in romance and funny stories. I planned on just calling my story "commercial fiction." What's your take on this?
"Women's fiction" is always a good way to go if the main character is a woman and it's not specifically another genre. A lot of agents like "women's fiction" because women in general are huge readers, in comparison to men and children who aren't being forced by some assignment (Not to insult the male literati here). Plus a lot of agents are women.
As to the whole "should writers keep a blog thing" I will make my own comment: I've been slow to update this blog in the last two weeks because I've just been insane with job stuff, graduation ceremony stuff, apartment lease stuff, and finally, writing stuff. The blog is really the last on the list behind "Did I get a chapter done tonight?" I feel that it's important to post regularly but I can't let it consume my writing energy, which foremost goes to my fiction and notes for my non-fiction stuff I'm working on. A lot of writers have blogs for similar reason to why anyone else does - because they want to - but since a blog requires writing, if you only have a certain number of words in you per day, don't spend them recounting the jazz festival you went to last night. Unless you want to.
I've been working on a query letter and having people in a writing forum critique it. One critic told me that chick lit was over, and to make my story look like more than just a romantic comedy. I think that women will always be interested in romance and funny stories. I planned on just calling my story "commercial fiction." What's your take on this?
"Women's fiction" is always a good way to go if the main character is a woman and it's not specifically another genre. A lot of agents like "women's fiction" because women in general are huge readers, in comparison to men and children who aren't being forced by some assignment (Not to insult the male literati here). Plus a lot of agents are women.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Sending Unrequested Fulls
We don't get unrequested fulls that often, and I would say we get them less often than we used to. The reason is obvious: the cost of mail, especially media mail, has gone up considerably. Yet some dorks remain who think sending their entire 600-page manuscript overnight (with return postage) is going to impress us somehow and not be a massive waste of money.
I don't know why this is, but unrequested manuscripts are almost universally awful. It doesn't make any statistical sense, but I can't think of one that I even considered putting in the maybe pile. One arrived today. To cut down on expenses, perhaps, the author printed out the manuscript single-space and in 8-point font, only to up the weight by putting it in a really big, nice binder (which we kept because there was no return postage and she said we could keep it). The writing was terrible - just terrible. You know it's bad when a chapter is 3 paragraphs long and two of those paragraphs are single lines of dialogue.
Maybe it's a jinx or something. I don't know.
I don't know why this is, but unrequested manuscripts are almost universally awful. It doesn't make any statistical sense, but I can't think of one that I even considered putting in the maybe pile. One arrived today. To cut down on expenses, perhaps, the author printed out the manuscript single-space and in 8-point font, only to up the weight by putting it in a really big, nice binder (which we kept because there was no return postage and she said we could keep it). The writing was terrible - just terrible. You know it's bad when a chapter is 3 paragraphs long and two of those paragraphs are single lines of dialogue.
Maybe it's a jinx or something. I don't know.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Platforms and Blogs for Fiction Writers
What are your thoughts on platforms for fiction writers? I certainly get it for nonfiction writers (whose product isn't really a book but themselves and their ideas) but I'd rather spend my time writing.
Does a fun, amusing blog increase my presence when it comes time to query?
In answer to your questions:
(1) Fiction writers do not need platforms.
(2) No, not at all. I don't stop what I'm doing to look at author's websites because they're mentioned in the query. You can mention you have a blog, just like everyone else seems to, but don't direct me to it, or worse, require me to visit it to get an actual summary of your work. Then I will just be angry.
Does a fun, amusing blog increase my presence when it comes time to query?
In answer to your questions:
(1) Fiction writers do not need platforms.
(2) No, not at all. I don't stop what I'm doing to look at author's websites because they're mentioned in the query. You can mention you have a blog, just like everyone else seems to, but don't direct me to it, or worse, require me to visit it to get an actual summary of your work. Then I will just be angry.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Do They Think I Don't Know They're There?
A long, probably somewhat boring post could be made about the complex and ever-changing relationship of the two major English publishing countries, America and Britain. I wouldn't be particularly qualified to write it, so you don't have to read that post.
I will say this: Publishing has been frustratingly slow on the draw about the internet, but then again so have most other entertainment mediums that pre-date it (music, television, movies, etc). They don't know what people are doing on it; they are kind of afraid to look because there's so much horse porn (I hate visiting bitorrent tracker sites). There seemed to be a genuine "Holy shit!" when Amazon.com nearly doubled its share in the pie chart of book sales, despite its low prices, deals, enticements with other products, and fast shipping. Last year at this time someone was telling me at the publishing institute that internet sales still weren't relevant.
As the world goes global (if that makes any sense - try not to think about it too hard), so do we. Young people aren't just getting their news on the internet, they're getting it from more than one place. My favorite page to visit after Yahoo! mail is Google News, which compiles news based on my keywords (I added sections for Tibet, Israel, and my area code) from nearly every English-speaking online news source in the world. I don't just read the New York Times - I read the Times (UK), The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), Daily Times (Pakistan), The Times of India, The Epoch Times Ireland, and the Hindustani Times. And that's just papers with the word "times" in it. There's also Xinhua, the CCP's official news service, which is an interesting read side-by-side with Western papers on the same events.
Anyway, my long-sought-after point is that I often stumble upon book reviews for books published in the UK, not the US. When Knopf published Pico Iyer's The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama this month, and Bloomsbury did the same in England (with a better cover), the reviews in the UK papers ran side-by-side with another book, Alexander Norman's Holder of the White Lotus: The Lives of the Dalai Lama. For some reason, this book is not available in America and nobody seems to have any plans to make it available anytime in the next 6 months to a year, so I had to buy it through Amazon.co.uk. The book was not cheap - I had to wait for it to be a used copy to even be reasonable - with the exchange rate, but it was apparent that it was the only way I was going to get the book.
This isn't the first time I've resorted to Amazon.co.uk (which for some reason will not honor my Amazon gift card) to get a book that I wouldn't have known about if various internet articles hadn't led me to it. I'm not saying that this is the end of a distinction between British and American publishing as we know it, because it's not, but it's one of those posts that maybe I'll look back on someday and say "I called it" in some fashion.
I like calling things.
I will say this: Publishing has been frustratingly slow on the draw about the internet, but then again so have most other entertainment mediums that pre-date it (music, television, movies, etc). They don't know what people are doing on it; they are kind of afraid to look because there's so much horse porn (I hate visiting bitorrent tracker sites). There seemed to be a genuine "Holy shit!" when Amazon.com nearly doubled its share in the pie chart of book sales, despite its low prices, deals, enticements with other products, and fast shipping. Last year at this time someone was telling me at the publishing institute that internet sales still weren't relevant.
As the world goes global (if that makes any sense - try not to think about it too hard), so do we. Young people aren't just getting their news on the internet, they're getting it from more than one place. My favorite page to visit after Yahoo! mail is Google News, which compiles news based on my keywords (I added sections for Tibet, Israel, and my area code) from nearly every English-speaking online news source in the world. I don't just read the New York Times - I read the Times (UK), The Sunday Times (Sri Lanka), Daily Times (Pakistan), The Times of India, The Epoch Times Ireland, and the Hindustani Times. And that's just papers with the word "times" in it. There's also Xinhua, the CCP's official news service, which is an interesting read side-by-side with Western papers on the same events.
Anyway, my long-sought-after point is that I often stumble upon book reviews for books published in the UK, not the US. When Knopf published Pico Iyer's The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama this month, and Bloomsbury did the same in England (with a better cover), the reviews in the UK papers ran side-by-side with another book, Alexander Norman's Holder of the White Lotus: The Lives of the Dalai Lama. For some reason, this book is not available in America and nobody seems to have any plans to make it available anytime in the next 6 months to a year, so I had to buy it through Amazon.co.uk. The book was not cheap - I had to wait for it to be a used copy to even be reasonable - with the exchange rate, but it was apparent that it was the only way I was going to get the book.
This isn't the first time I've resorted to Amazon.co.uk (which for some reason will not honor my Amazon gift card) to get a book that I wouldn't have known about if various internet articles hadn't led me to it. I'm not saying that this is the end of a distinction between British and American publishing as we know it, because it's not, but it's one of those posts that maybe I'll look back on someday and say "I called it" in some fashion.
I like calling things.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Reality Check
So apparently I'm on the Writer's Digest list of Best Websites for 2008. Thanks, Writer's Digest!
I love to read and I love talking to writers (although I'm not a very talented writer myself) but I work in a profession that isn't very creative. Sometimes I imagine quitting my job and trying to work for an agent. Please disabuse me of my daydreams:
1. would I have to go back to college for an English degree? (my undergraduate degree is in communications)
2. is the pay as abysmal as you suggest?
3. do you feel excited looking for new and creative voices or is it drudge work slogging through queries?
Answers:
1. Considering I have a bachelor's and a master's and neither of them are English degrees, I would say no.
2. Sometimes you don't even get paid and they expect you to work for free. And there are people who will do it, too.
3. As I genuinely enjoy reading bad queries, I find my work very enjoyable no matter what is in the envelope.
I love to read and I love talking to writers (although I'm not a very talented writer myself) but I work in a profession that isn't very creative. Sometimes I imagine quitting my job and trying to work for an agent. Please disabuse me of my daydreams:
1. would I have to go back to college for an English degree? (my undergraduate degree is in communications)
2. is the pay as abysmal as you suggest?
3. do you feel excited looking for new and creative voices or is it drudge work slogging through queries?
Answers:
1. Considering I have a bachelor's and a master's and neither of them are English degrees, I would say no.
2. Sometimes you don't even get paid and they expect you to work for free. And there are people who will do it, too.
3. As I genuinely enjoy reading bad queries, I find my work very enjoyable no matter what is in the envelope.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Administrative Post
1. I do not tolerate comments that attack specific individuals, especially agents and publishers who do not post on this blog in the first place. If you have a specific issue with some agent, publisher, or writer, take it elsewhere. Posts naming names and then bashing them will be deleted or rejected.
2. That said, if you make a crazy, completely anonymous, rambling post, you are opening yourself up and are considered fair game.
2. That said, if you make a crazy, completely anonymous, rambling post, you are opening yourself up and are considered fair game.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Non-Fictional!
Someone yesterday wrote in saying that he had written a "non-fictional novel."
Normally I'm pretty laid back about the whole "fiction novel" business, but this was hilarious.
Normally I'm pretty laid back about the whole "fiction novel" business, but this was hilarious.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Interviews and Unloved Manuscripts
Clearly there's a bit of a lag between when I get emails and when I answer them, mainly because this blog only takes priority after I've finished my real work and then my writing work.
Dennis Cass asked me to do a guest Q & A, and I did. The results are here.
Dear Rejecter,
I was wondering whether you know how I can get my hands on unloved (rejected) manuscripts? The ones without a loving home etc.
On principle we toss them. Sometimes we recycle and sometimes we don't (if the recycle bin is unavailable or I'm making the decision, because I don't recycle). While the paper belongs to us, we don't have legal ownership of the words ON the paper. The author holds the copyright - the right to copy and/or reproduce them. That puts "sending other people's rejected manuscripts around" into somewhat dubious legal/moral territory.
Dennis Cass asked me to do a guest Q & A, and I did. The results are here.
Dear Rejecter,
I was wondering whether you know how I can get my hands on unloved (rejected) manuscripts? The ones without a loving home etc.
On principle we toss them. Sometimes we recycle and sometimes we don't (if the recycle bin is unavailable or I'm making the decision, because I don't recycle). While the paper belongs to us, we don't have legal ownership of the words ON the paper. The author holds the copyright - the right to copy and/or reproduce them. That puts "sending other people's rejected manuscripts around" into somewhat dubious legal/moral territory.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Mystery Genres
Dearest Rejecter,
I am writing a series of what might be called "ultra cozy" mysteries. My stories don't involve murder. I think there is plenty of evil that men can do in addition to homicide, and I think a lot of that evil doing can drive stories that can be compelling and satisfying.
But I don't quite know how to pitch them. I'm afraid that if I say they are in the mystery genre, most agents and editors will have the standard preconception that there "must" be a murder or the story isn't worthy. Is there a genre title for what I am writing?
Yes. Thriller. Sorry, but now you are obligated to thrill. Or suspense. No, wait, I think suspense is the one where the protagonist is in danger, while thriller implies that other people are in danger, but not necessarily the protagonist. I always get these mixed up.
The long answer is that it kinda depends what the crime is. If your protagonist investigates international intrigue, you're writing a political thriller. If your protagonist is investigating a religious conspiracy, you're just writing a thriller that has an angle. If your protagonist is investigating the proper use of pre-existing water maintenance regulation, you'd better throw some lesbian rape in there, because otherwise it's probably going to be pretty boring. And you'd better be a woman too, because then it makes it a feminist piece.
"Mysteries" are generally to classify books about murder, or at least the implication of murder. Why that is, I'm not sure entirely; it's just now the industry developed. Either way, feel free to query agents who deal in crime, thrillers, suspense, and mysteries. Depending on what the crime actually is will narrow it down a bit for them in the query.
For more on your question, there's a discussion here.
I am writing a series of what might be called "ultra cozy" mysteries. My stories don't involve murder. I think there is plenty of evil that men can do in addition to homicide, and I think a lot of that evil doing can drive stories that can be compelling and satisfying.
But I don't quite know how to pitch them. I'm afraid that if I say they are in the mystery genre, most agents and editors will have the standard preconception that there "must" be a murder or the story isn't worthy. Is there a genre title for what I am writing?
Yes. Thriller. Sorry, but now you are obligated to thrill. Or suspense. No, wait, I think suspense is the one where the protagonist is in danger, while thriller implies that other people are in danger, but not necessarily the protagonist. I always get these mixed up.
The long answer is that it kinda depends what the crime is. If your protagonist investigates international intrigue, you're writing a political thriller. If your protagonist is investigating a religious conspiracy, you're just writing a thriller that has an angle. If your protagonist is investigating the proper use of pre-existing water maintenance regulation, you'd better throw some lesbian rape in there, because otherwise it's probably going to be pretty boring. And you'd better be a woman too, because then it makes it a feminist piece.
"Mysteries" are generally to classify books about murder, or at least the implication of murder. Why that is, I'm not sure entirely; it's just now the industry developed. Either way, feel free to query agents who deal in crime, thrillers, suspense, and mysteries. Depending on what the crime actually is will narrow it down a bit for them in the query.
For more on your question, there's a discussion here.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Stupid Things This One Guy Did
Today we got a query on colored paper from someone who had some program to reverse his text. In other words, to read the query, I had to go to the mirror above the sink in the bathroom and hold it up.
Not only that, at no point did he really mention what his book was about. He mainly focused on the fact that his writing credentials were having lost a contest to host SNL in some "anyone can host" contest NBC ran in 1977. Yes, that's right, he lost the contest. Oh, and he has a novel, or something, but he didn't mention what is was about and I was already pretty annoyed, so I don't think it mattered.
Look, don't send us text that is unreadable unless we figure out how to do something to it. I didn't think I would have to say that, but apparently I do.
Not only that, at no point did he really mention what his book was about. He mainly focused on the fact that his writing credentials were having lost a contest to host SNL in some "anyone can host" contest NBC ran in 1977. Yes, that's right, he lost the contest. Oh, and he has a novel, or something, but he didn't mention what is was about and I was already pretty annoyed, so I don't think it mattered.
Look, don't send us text that is unreadable unless we figure out how to do something to it. I didn't think I would have to say that, but apparently I do.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Age and Gender
Blog Readers: More on my blog in general in the comments section.
Ms. Rejector,
I am a sixteen year old female author. I have one full length novel (unpublished), under my belt, as well as one half of another one. My question is, respectfully, do age and gender play a major part when a manuscript is being taken into consideration by a publisher? I know it ultimately boils down to the quality of the work as to whether or not it is picked up, but in those first stages of consideration, is my age working against me?
Gender does not work against you unless you are a male writing a story about lesbians. That is the once case where it works against you.
Age does. Don't mention your age if you are below 21 years old. It's not lying; it's just not something you should mention before they see your novel and love it.
Ms. Rejector,
I am a sixteen year old female author. I have one full length novel (unpublished), under my belt, as well as one half of another one. My question is, respectfully, do age and gender play a major part when a manuscript is being taken into consideration by a publisher? I know it ultimately boils down to the quality of the work as to whether or not it is picked up, but in those first stages of consideration, is my age working against me?
Gender does not work against you unless you are a male writing a story about lesbians. That is the once case where it works against you.
Age does. Don't mention your age if you are below 21 years old. It's not lying; it's just not something you should mention before they see your novel and love it.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
And the hits keep coming. Hits of awesomeness.
This is a continuation of the material I quoted in this post. He/she also references some replies, so read the comments. Not that it helps.
P.S. No offense meant to Peter. Sorry, but I'm just quoting the material.
That's right, Deb. You can make 4000 queries over the course of a couple years and that's what I did.
No hyperbole. Prob'ly more. It's easy to do with the internet, one single query at a time, wait awhile, requery some.
Advice: take the time to at least put the agent's name on your form queries. And yes you too can do 4000 if you like. And get just ONE snot-nosed reply, such as from Peter Rubie. Or this asshole "leesmiley."
Yes, you bet, none of the 1999 people rejected have gotten anywhere -- so far. Anyway, it's most probable. It's easy enough to take a representative sample, and easier to check who's made deals with whom, and so on. Then search your own computer records with a search to see if anybody who queried you has made a deal.
That's right, read each individual paragraph for its own. This is internet. You've got to speed up your own comprehensions, people. If you can't, join "leesmiley" and get nowhere, forever.
Oh. Sorry, at least two snot-noses here. Andrew Wheeler, genius.
Out of time. Work to do.
P.S. No offense meant to Peter. Sorry, but I'm just quoting the material.
That's right, Deb. You can make 4000 queries over the course of a couple years and that's what I did.
No hyperbole. Prob'ly more. It's easy to do with the internet, one single query at a time, wait awhile, requery some.
Advice: take the time to at least put the agent's name on your form queries. And yes you too can do 4000 if you like. And get just ONE snot-nosed reply, such as from Peter Rubie. Or this asshole "leesmiley."
Yes, you bet, none of the 1999 people rejected have gotten anywhere -- so far. Anyway, it's most probable. It's easy enough to take a representative sample, and easier to check who's made deals with whom, and so on. Then search your own computer records with a search to see if anybody who queried you has made a deal.
That's right, read each individual paragraph for its own. This is internet. You've got to speed up your own comprehensions, people. If you can't, join "leesmiley" and get nowhere, forever.
Oh. Sorry, at least two snot-noses here. Andrew Wheeler, genius.
Out of time. Work to do.
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