Authorial Beauty Contests

Recently I was asked to give my opinion on this article on authors and beauty. I advise you to read the article and form your opinions before hearing mine.

July 16, 2001 — What if the only way a magazine would run a short story by Eudora Welty was if she agreed to an accompanying photo in which she posed as the protagonist of her story — a "'Sex and the City'–type woman," say, "wearing a bright red spaghetti–strap dress and sandals"?

What if Nadine Gordimer had to agree to a shot where she's wearing a low–cut blouse and "kneeling on crushed velvet"?

What if Philip Roth had to pose "staring blankly while holding a fat pug inside a Bulgarian restaurant"?

No self–respecting editor would propose such insulting childishness, of course, to such esteemed writers.

I don’t know. Is this their first time getting publishing? Now? And they were young and relatively attractive people with no other publishing prospects?

But in a move that's generated considerable comment — the first description above comes from a Washington Post report, the others from the New York Observer — the New Yorker just made three younger writers model those exact poses for its "Debut Fiction" supplement to its annual fiction issue: Jonathan "Bulgarian Restaurant" Safran Foer, Nell "Crushed Velvet" Freudenberger, and Erika "Spaghetti Strap" Krouse. A fourth twentysomething, Gabe Hudson, was made to pretend he was writing at a picnic table beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, with the Manhattan skyline behind him.

It’s not clear here whether the New Yorker gave them an option to say “no” to various aspects of the photography, such as how revealing the clothing was or how ridiculous it made them. As much as I don’t care for the New Yorker, I imagine they would be somewhat willing to deal with my own religious modesty requirements.

"They told me what clothes to bring," said Krouse. "I had to embody the main character, which made me uncomfortable because she's a bitch."

Well, yes, silly, because young writers generally do not know how to dress for a photo shoot unless they happen to work or have worked in fashion or magazines. If the New Yorker called me up and said they wanted to do a photo shoot, my first question would be “What am I supposed to wear?” I’d ask them for details. Maybe a book with colored pictures. Otherwise I might show up dressed in a Snoopy T-shirt because it was the thing not in the laundry basket and a flannel over it because I dress like I’m still 13 and Nirvana is fresh and popular. Generally people do not know how to dress outside their sphere of “what events do I attend that require a certain style of dressing?”

As for her being unwilling to identify with the main character, I have some sympathy for that. Score one for you. Unless you wrote some piece about someone who's your age bracket, has the same job as you once had, and generally looks like you. Then you shouldn't be surprised.

"It's the book jacket principle," New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford told the Observer.

A principle that only applies to young writers, apparently — E. L. Doctorow, also featured in the issue, was not pictured along with his story.

"If anything, [the photos] contribute to the culture of authors being good looking or young in order to receive attention," Don Lee, editor of the literary journal Ploughshares, told the Observer. "That's the aspect I find of it that's a little bit disturbing."

Or, as reporter Linton Weeks put it in the Post, "Looks sell books. It's a closed–doors secret in contemporary American publishing, but the word is leaking out.

My problem with this segment is not that it says that looks sell books and if you’re hot, chances are the publisher will put you on the back cover or even the front cover where they otherwise not have. And young writers are more likely to be hot, because our society tends to favor people between the ages of when you turn legal and 30, so that’s going to skew it.

The problem it isn’t universal, as these people imply. Most writers are only featured on the inside back cover of the book jacket, if at all, because they might not want to be pictured or they might have a disfiguring grape wine stain. And hopefully the authors who are featured are intelligent enough to have their photo done by a professional photographer. I was once reading a Victorian-type fantasy book by a poor fellow, who shall be unnamed because I’m insulting his looks. For the first book, his wife took the photograph in their basement, and let’s just say that it was less than flattering. Also, 300-pound men should not have acne or ponytails. By the third, he’d figured out to have someone else do it, and not in a basement, and maybe he shouldn’t be wearing a T-shirt for it.

Leaking out because, if for no other reason, the rookies in the New Yorker "Debut Fiction Issue" often reap the kind of astonishing rewards that earn headlines. After he had a story — and his photo — in last year's issue, for example, David Schickler signed with the Dial Press for what was reported to be a $500,000 two-book deal. Z.Z. Packer, who also had a story in that issue, sold her story collection to Riverhead for $250,000.

Their writing probably was also probably of some quality, at least by the standards of literary short stories that the New Yorker likes and I hate. And hey, look – a new author just got $500,000 for two books! It CAN happen to you! That’s a success story more than anything else.

But this year's issue generated an even more stunning deal. No sooner had the "Debut Fiction Issue" hit the stands than Nell Freudenberger — you remember, crushed velvet? — found herself in the middle of a "clamor for a collection of her short stories," as Inside magazine put it. She signed with New York's most powerful literary agent, Binky Urban of the ICM agency, and within days, Inside reports, had "received at least one pre–emptive offer of $500,000" for that collection of stories.

I want to highlight this. Amanda “Binky” Urban (and I hope that she wanted that name) is not New York’s most powerful literary agent. Or maybe she is, but probably not. Yes, yes, she’s with ICM, the agency with triple offices in New York, Los Angeles, and London, so Mrs. Freudenberger is definitely in good hands, and Miss Urban has an impressive client list of young authors.

That said, she is not New York’s most powerful literary agent. Or maybe she is. I don’t know. No one knows. How exactly do you rate “most powerful?” Is it the person who does the most deals per year? Or the person who does the least deals for the most money? Or some 60-year-old living entirely off his 15% of the royalties of a deceased author still in copyright, and who only has to take the yearly check and send the other 85% on to the estate of the author to make a living? We don’t know. Agents don’t even try and guess at this, unless it’s at a party and there’s an open bar.

There was just one seeming hitch: the 26–year–old — who happens to be an "assistant" at the New Yorker itself — hasn't written any other stories. But nobody seemed to care. Publishers continued to make offers for the kind of money that not even the best short story writers — John Updike or Alice Munroe, say — would get for a collection.

That is pretty damning evidence, if she didn’t write any other stories. Nonetheless I will mention that John Updike, one of the best living short story writers in the world, probably did not get $500,000 for his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, Rabbit is Rich. Why not? Because he wrote it in 1981. Maybe today, he gets that kind of advance, even for novels like Terrorist, but certainly not in 1981.

All of which sadly proves what the Washington Post's Weeks says about looks selling books. There was, after all, little else to sell in this instance.

And all of which sounds nuts. Are an author's looks alone worthy of a half-million dollar advance? Do people really buy books — or magazines — because the authors are young and skinny and resemble movie stars?

Well, if it’s more likely to sell, it probably will get a bigger advance. That’s just business sense.

There’s another issue I want to address here, which is that the article’s arguments are against the New Yorker, which is a magazine. It is generally in a magazine’s best interest to have good art and pictures of beautiful people, because people do not like to look at blank pages or pictures of ugly people. (And Newsweek, please, please stop running those ads for donations to the organization to treat cleft pallets. I know it’s a charity, but I need a warning before I see those pictures!) What probably happened here is that the editor, for whatever reason, decided that the “Debut Fiction” issue was going to feature author pictures instead of art, and then someone else said, “And let’s make sure they look decent. Hire a photographer.” If the ensuing brouhaha resulted in some shady book deals and some young authors got rich off poor material, that’s not great, but “authors getting rich” is not a phrase I hear very often.

Well, they may get what they pay for if they do: Schickler's book — named after his New Yorker story, "Kissing in Manhattan" — came out last month and has been getting uniformly dreadful reviews.

This is why I don’t read short story collections by authors with only one publishing credit: They’re usually bad.

But as the Schickler case also shows, people may not be as shallow as this kind of marketing takes them for — his book isn't selling near well enough to make back the phenomenal advance. In fact, according to Inside, the entire Barnes & Noble chain — which includes B & N, B. Dalton, and barnesandnoble.com — has sold only 1,222 copies of his book nationwide.

Of course, there are numerous other bookselling outlets, but B & N is the coutnry's biggest, and those stats may be telling. They may indicate how tired of this kind of marketing people have become, not to mention how devalued the New Yorker's imprimatur has become to savvy readers.

Go readers! Yay! In the end, quality triumphs hotness. Though, some writer got rich. I want to be that rich writer. I want to sell out. Please! I will! Just give me half a million dollars and I’ll do a photo shoot, but I won’t wear something that exposes my shoulders. That’s my line in the sand.

None of which is to say that Freudenberger's book, or Z.Z. Packer's, which isn't out yet, won't be good. And none of which is to say that reading first fictions isn't exciting in itself.

But certainly, this kind of marketing is an indicator of the major shift that has occured in the book business, where just a few short years ago editors still judged books by contents and not covers.

It's also a mark of how far the New Yorker has fallen. The fact that the magazine exploits the younger writers, but doesn't include a photo of Doctorow, speaks clearly to the nature of what's going on, and it's insulting to writers and readers, both.

You don't need a picture to see that.

My argument with this argument is that the shift happened 15 years ago (not three), when Tina Brown was hired as editor of the New Yorker. That’s sort of the benchmark we use for the decline in the short story and literary fiction.

While most of the facts checked out for this article, it's important to view it within context. Yes, some sketchy things happened here, but trust me when I say this is not why your manuscript about a small-town grocery store owner stopping terrorists from blowing up the Vatican didn't get accepted. They are separate issues. Plus, let's give the writers who appear in the debut fiction issue some slack. They probably had to sleep with someone important to get in there, and that's more than I would do.

Nice/Mean Wording

And I'm back. Been busy setting up my new digs, i.e. buying more bookshelves for books. Man do I have a lot of them.

Dear Rejecter:

I mean can we just stop with the "I'm not the best agent for your book" reply? Duh! Of course, you're not the best agent. I know that. You know that. The whole world knows it. How can a profession, or caste, obsessively fixated on crisp, to the point queries even make such a statement, let alone repeat it day after day, week…? Do they ever read their own writing? The best agent is retired or can’t be bothered with me. That’s no secret. I mean what is that response attempting to accomplish? Maybe someone else finds the pain of rejection soothed by those words, but I don’t it. Hopefully, if you agree and publicize the absurdity of this response, we can move forward together.

As Rejectioncollection.com will prove to you, there is no good rejection that satisfies the writer, unless the writer has extremely thick skin or is delusional. It basically goes something like this.

Rejection: "Thanks, not for me."
Author: "What, she couldn't take the time to write more than one line?"

Rejection: "(long and winding things about how the author should try other agencies and there's potential, but it's just not for this agent for some such reason, and good luck!)"
Author: "How long does it take her to say 'no'?"

Rejection: Printed on a half-slip of paper.
Author: "She couldn't afford an entire sheet of paper?"

Rejection: Printed on a normal sheet of high-quality paper.
Author: "For two lines? What a waste of paper. I guess agents don't care about the environment."

Rejection: Photocopied form response.
Author: "How impersonal! Did she even read it or did she just stuff envelopes?"

Rejection: Personal note on original query letter, handwritten.
Author: "What, she couldn't afford the time to type out a whole letter?"

It goes on an on. The point is: We're saying no and you don't like it. All agents try to use different tactics to soften the blow, but none of them work, though intentions are usually good.

The "I'm not the right agent for this is" response is actually an honest, decent response that probably is true for any number of reasons. Maybe your work is really bad, or maybe it's that the agent doesn't have time for new writers because she's got 2 bestsellers on tour and she would only take on something if she had a lot of time to devote to it (new authors require a lot of hours to edit the manuscript and submit it to publishers, and then do contract revisions). Maybe you've written in a genre she doesn't represent. (I'm using the "she" here despite the plethora of male agents just for consistency's sake)

Chances are it's the last one. My boss doesn't handle most genres of fiction except for her stated specialties, so that narrows down the pile considerably. She does a lot of non-fiction, but not self-help, so that narrows it down even further. Seriously, guys, stick to what genres are listed on AgentQuery.

Cheap Advice to Young Writers

Before we begin, I'd like to comment that I'll be away the 2 weeks. First I plan to attend Pennsic and get run over by a bunch of 300-pound guys dressed as Normans, then I plan to spend a lot of time in bed recovering from said brawl. I have to approve posts, so you might not see your comment come up for a long time, so don't comment after Tuesday morning unless you really have something you want to eventually say.

Dear Rejecter,

I've read some of your blog entries and was especially amused with your response to the pompous 19-year old, who believed she could conquer the world with her writing. As a teenager, I don't believe I am ready to conquer any worlds with my words yet, but I am very interested in taking steps in order to improve my writing. Most of what I have written is academic writing, or, as a guilty pleasure, fanfiction. And, like any other teenager, I have dangerously forayed into the wonderful world of poetry. I understand that the natural tendency of older writers is to dismiss teenage writing, but I still want to pursue writing, even if what I write now is bad. I understand that a few years from now I will look at my writing and slap my forehead, wondering how in the world I was able to write such utter junk.

After reading your blog and learning more about how 95% of submitted writing is automatically rejected, I want to ask this -- what are some things that a young writer can do now to improve their writing, while accepting that their writing may not necessarily be good? I have loved books such as Lolita , for their ability to captivate an audience. I realize that being young, I am likely to "steal" from my influences, borrowing their style. I can't be the next Nabokov, but I would like to learn from someone who has been in the publishing industry, what a young writer can do now to improve their writing and prepare themselves to be in a good position when they wish to submit their manuscripts in the future.

The 95% does not actually represent your chances of being rejected. It just means that 95% percent of our submissions are crap. If you are a great writer, your chances are very good. If you are a bad writer, your chances are very bad. If you were a President, it doesn't matter either way; you're going to get a book deal, no matter how narcissistic or anti-Semitic you are.

You answered the first question yourself, which is why I'm so discouraging to young writers about submitting or mentioning their age in the query. Yes, you will be really, really embarrassed about your old stuff. Generally, writers only get better until they peak, and then they start repeating themselves or just run dry, with a few exceptions. I would cut off submissions at 21. I know that's sort of a randomly-assigned number, but you really do need to have a certain level of adult maturity to write. People can attack me for that statement, but I don't think there's an older, well-published writer out there who wouldn't have a brain aneurysm if someone published the short story he wrote for his high school English class. All right, maybe there's one or two, but seriously.

But you already know that, so let's move on.

It is true that you are very easily influenced when you're young; science has proven that the brain intentionally works that way and that younger people are more capable of learning new things. This is a survival skill. However, that doesn't mean older writers aren't just as easily influenced by their favorites or the novel they read last week. Show of hands - Who here has put down a great novel, or even just a fun one, and said, "Why can't I write like that?" OK, you should all be raising your hands now. I see you in the back there. Raise it!

I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. My writing is an amalgamation of techniques I picked up along the way, consciously or unconsciously. Eventually, with enough practice, you develop your own style, which is what comes naturally to you, and even that can change rapidly. Read whatever you want. Ray Bradbury was once interviewed by The New York Times and when they asked him what he was reading and why recent science fiction wasn't on the list, he famously said, "That would be incest. You don't read in your own field. You read in that field when you're young, so that you can learn. I read Jules Verne, H.G. Wells. When you're older you want to learn from other people." Once you find your genre (if you decide you only like one), you'll either fall into the category of writers who feel like Ray did or the writers who read everything else written in that genre that they can possibly get their hands on.

As for developing your writing, I would say fanfiction is a great way to go. A lot of people knock fanfiction, because yes, there's not a lot to be said in justification of incestuous Weasley slash, but it's just a great place to write. You get a lot of positive feedback, and more importantly, it's an exercise in not writing about yourself, which I hate. Don't write what you know. Writing is about creativity. Fanfiction is like training wheels - you get a setting and a set of characters, and you can do what you whatever you want with them, and people will read your work because they like the characters and they want to see what you did with them. The best fanfiction is by people who come up with something legitimately new and interesting to do with familiar characters without making them unfamiliar. Also, I like fanfiction, so go write some. Just no Weasley slash. Or anything with a character played by Orlando Bloom. And geez, when did real person become socially acceptable again? No. Not cool.

Medical Trends

So according to yesterday's queries, everyone has bipolar disorder. Or, everyone has written a memoir about having it. We've been getting a lot of them since that Newsweek article a few months ago on it.

Diagnostic trends are very interesting. They're not so much trends but further understandings of disease and our limited abilities to categorize them. The patient wants to hear something. A classic case is Crohn's Disease/Ulcerative Colitis. In the ten years since my diagnosis with the former, I've heard dozens of stories of people who've said they were misdiagnosed with one and really had the other and only just found out. There's a doctor on my team who has a theory that UC is actually one of the five subtypes of Crohn's, and you can determine which type you have based on a blood test. I had the blood test, and the numbers came back, and I asked what they meant, to which my doctor replied, "We don't know yet. We'll know in about ten years." It was basically research. This doctor probably isn't wrong, either; he's the guy who invented immuno-suppressant drugs, which were the major way of fighting the disease until Remicade came along in 1998.

Psychiatry has even greater challenges because of so many symptoms that overlap, are inconsistent, and are sometimes incredibly subjective. Two hundred years ago, everything was monomania. Then they added schizophrenia. Then manic depression. Then bipolar disorder. Then they divided bipolar disorder into two types, Type I or II, then debated whether one of the types wasn't just manic depression, because the two major symptoms (mania and depression) were overlapping. Then they started labeling people with various personality disorders, which gave them a much wider range to work with, but didn't really define anything except in certain cases. I have a friend who was diagnosed with "schizoid affective disorder. " I cannot find a single doctor who can effectively tell me what that is. Also, he has symptoms that don't fit into that subtype, and I know he's not under good care, so he may well be misdiagnosed. For a while it didn't matter, because treatment was limited, but now that we not only have SSRIs but know how to use them in combination with newer drugs, it's more and more important to put the right label on the right person.

Anyway, I don't think the little boom of bipolar-based memoirs is due to the Newsweek article entirely, but it helped. There were probably people with memoirs floating around about their illness, and they decided to mention the diagnosis in the query, figuring bipolar disorder is a hotter topic than it was a year ago (which is true). Also, because it's being more commonly diagnosed (to the point where many say it's over-diagnosed), we're just going to see more people who say they have it.

All of this doesn't work for or against the query. When it comes to memoir, it's whether the person has an intriguing story and the ability to communicate in a way that makes people want to read about it is or not is the determining factor. I just thought that was an interesting little note.

Evil Rejector!

Blogger has decided I am not a spammer and should be allowed to post again. Finally, I can promote bulk generic versions of prescription drugs and stock tips on my blog!

Tonight/tomorrow is a fast day, Tisha B'av when the Jews mourn the destruction of our two temples, 2000 years ago about 2500 years ago, respectively. They happened on the same day of the calender (the 9th of Av). It's the same day that the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, and the day that Auschwitz opened. In general, it's a bad day.

I've been exempt from all of the fasts in the Jewish calender for many years. On various occasions doctors have said I was well enough to fast, which generally ended in disaster. Oh, and one time, I got crazy paranoid and started calling my friends and asking if they hated me for some reason. Yeah.

I'm going to work tomorrow, which is not forbidden on Tisha B'Av, but I wouldn't if I was fasting. As I just explained above, I'm not in the right state of mind while fasting, and despite what I usually imply, I actually take people's life's work in the form of a bad manuscript very seriously. I don't do it when I'm not up to it for crazy reasons.

The New York Bias

Jill Elaine Hughes said...

"The Rejecter said...
OK guys, knock it off. There's a MILLION agent websites that will tell you that publishers/agents do not care where the author is from and do not demand, or even recommend, that the author is from NY. "

---True, they SAY this. But it does not reflect who they actually publish. Of all the new memoirs I've read in the past 6 months (I follow the genre closely since I write it myself), 8 out of 10 were by authors who live in NYC. And my own (and my agent's) experience with the NYC publishers definitely shows an anti-Midwest bias. The fact that the publishers who are buying my books (all major pubs) are not headquartered in NYC (two are in the Midwest; one is in London but is a division of Random House nonethelesss) certainly reflects this.

If you were from the Midwest yourself, you'd better appreciate the bias we have aimed at us from the East.

All right, let me give this a shot. Looking at this week's hardcover non-fiction bestseller list and the memoirs or memoir-like material listed:

1. THE LONE SURVIVOR by Marcus Luttrell. (Texas)

5. A LONG WAY GONE, by Ishmael Beah. (Sierre Leone)

7. THE REAGAN DIARIES, by Ronald Reagan. (Illinois)

10. THE BLACK SWAN, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. (Lebanon)

14. I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK, by Nora Ephron. (Brooklyn. Fair enough)

20. SAVE ME FROM MYSELF, by Brian "Head" Welch. (California)

21. MERLE'S DOOR, by Ted Kerasote. (Wyoming)

22. LITTLE HEATHENS, by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. (Iowa)

23. MARLEY & ME, by John Grogan. (Michigan or Florida; I can't tell)

24. DOG DAYS, by Jon Katz. (Upstate New York)

29. INFIDEL, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (Somalia)

The Return Process Further Explained

Let's start by not allowing shops to return unsold books. Perhaps that'll make them stop overordering (which means it stops you overprinting in the first place)

During the program I had the opportunity to speak with two highly distinguished Barnes and Noble buyers, who explained their job and the challenges behind it. 114,000 books a year are published in America, and while these particular buyers dealt only with major companies and not small presses, and dealt only in their individual genres, that still equals dozens of books presented to them a day, on which they must make a very quick decision based on a lot of factors – content, price, author’s previous selling history, topic popularity, etc.

It’s an incredibly difficult job because it involves what amounts to guesswork, but if they guess wrong, they don’t last long as buyers. If they overguess, it means returns, at the expense of B&N, which is responsible for shipping them back to the publisher. If they underguess, it means they have to go back to the publisher and hope the books are ready to go or can be produced quickly enough to replenish their stocks before they lose potential business from customers. Obviously it’s expected that some books are going to become break-out hits and they are going to under-buy and then be ordering tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) more, but those books are extremely rare. Pinpointing the exact number is something the buyer is asked to do, even though it’s really impossible.

Addressing the poster, the shops being able to return unsold books is actually positive to both the store and the publisher, even if it’s a thing as well. The stores have to pay to get rid of them, but they would otherwise have to pay to rid of them as well. The books would go to scrap, and they would have to hire someone to pick them up and deliver them to the city as trash (recycling centers won’t take them). If they return to the publisher, the publisher has at least some hopes of reselling them at cost to the used market and recovering the cost of printing. Also it floods the used market, which means you can buy books for cheap. So, everyone wins/losses when the books go back to the publisher.

It’s a very complicated process, but it’s the best one anyone can think of until P.O.D. technology (as we’ve discussed) replaces printing books.

While we’re on the topic, let me dispel a myth. Books are not printed at publishing houses. Books are printed by massive printing centers somewhere in the mid-west and then shipped to warehouses of store. Presses are large machines, paper production smells bad, and we’re talking hundreds of thousands of books per month, so the center has to be large. Most mass market books are printed on Indian paper, which is cheaper and of lower quality, and keeps the cover price down on the book, so the paper is flown in from India and set to the printers in the mid-west. Most editors have never been to the place where the books they edit are printed, or if they have, it was once in their lifetime.

The End of the Insanity

My publishing institute course ends tomorrow. I won't say which one it was, but it was in Manhattan and high-profile, so you can make your guesses from there. Now I can get back to what I do best - reject people. I mean, find new talent for the industry. Yeah. That's what I meant. Totally.

I did learn a tremendous amount, some of which I'll be happy to share with you (because it's not physically possible to share it all with you).

1. Editors do edit. In fact, they do a tremendous amount of it. The difference now is that publishing requires them to do their editing alongside acquisitions, pitches to higher management, and some promotion alongside the marketing staff. They're busy people. However, the rumor that they will no longer even look at a manuscript unless it is highly polished and ready for press is not true. Very often in non-fiction (especially memoir) they will get something through an agent that is disorganized but has that spark of brilliance that makes the editor passion enough about it to devote massive time and energy to turning it into a book that makes sense. They are less willing to do this with genre fiction.

2. Publishing is not generally a profitable industry. Yes, most of the titles on the Barnes and Noble shelves are from the big five corporations that have dozens of imprints that used to be independent companies, but just because you hear the words "giant corporation" doesn't mean a tax shelter on an island somewhere to hide the profits from the IRS. Random House recently revealed that most of their line is not profitable. Out of 8, they say, 1 is a bestseller, 1 loses money, and 6 break even or make a small profit (four digits). And this is Random House. Imagine how the small presses that don't have big authors and can't get their books into Barnes and Noble are doing.

3. Most books are mid-list books. Many authors decry being on the mid-list, but it's where most authors are. As you can see from above, most books barely break even. After paying the author an advance, a tremendous amount of money goes into the production of a book, and then the publicity and possibly some marketing, and then the publisher has to sit back and hope to G-d it sells. Almost every major book has returns, too, and I don't mean people returning books to the store, which rarely happens. "Returns" refers to when a big bookseller (B&N, Borders, Books-a-Million) buys 4 thousand copies, sells 3000, returns 1000 to the publisher. Those books usually go to scrap or are resold at cost (1-2 dollars) to the used market. Sometimes they're not resalable because they were damaged in transit, or have stains, or stickers on them, or something like that. Sometimes they're not resalable because hey, they didn't sell the first time. The publishing company expects this and factors it into the equation on the Profits & Losses sheet, along with all the money they have to spend paying to make the book go to print. In our class on P&Ls a guy from Hotlzbrinck came in and showed us a "normal" book for them. It had a solid advance for a first time fiction author ($15,000), sold reasonably well for the run that was done, and after costs, had a $4000 net profit. $4000. Everyone's been paid at the net stage so no one's lost money, but those are not huge profits for a major corporation. It doesn't leave them much room to acquire new material. However, this is a "normal" book. Most books aren't bestsellers - they don't have the audience, they don't get the attention, they aren't good enough to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. At least maybe they'll somehow manage to break even and not ruin the author's career.

4. Numbers 2 and 3 explain why publishing is a low-paying industry, so you have to love books to be involved. The speech we got from most people when discussing their career choices was, "I barely make enough to make ends meet, I work more than 50 hours a week, and I have to worry that every single book I do might be a colossal failure that will ruin my career as an editor, because we have no test markets or focus groups like other consumer market-based industries. That said, I wouldn't want to do anything else in my life." Granted, these were the people who hadn't burned out (the industry has a high burnout rate; it usually occurs in 1-2 years of a new full time employee entering the workforce), but these people care about books. They care about authors. They want to sell these books to as many people as they possibly can and have the books as widely-read as possible. They want to make a mark in literature. They're on your side.

5. P.O.D. is the way of the future, but not in the way that you think. There was a lot of discussion of new technologies which have not changed the industry, but have the potential to do. Audio books ecome more successful as people spend more times in transit with audio devices that can read CDs or collect CD material through a computer, so people aren't hassled by a giant collection of audio tapes. They tried eBooks, only to discover (not very much to their surprise) that people don't actually want to read books on a tiny Palm pilot screen, or an iPod screen, or an iPhone screen. What is attractive about P.O.D. and digital publishing is that it means no returns, something that makes any publisher salivate. However, the idea of waiting 2 weeks for a book (which is about how long it takes at best at the moment) is not attractive to most buyers, and the bookstore experience is still key, but they're getting better at it every day. Eventually we will reach a point where a person can walk into a bookstore, see the 1 copy on the shelf, take it to the desk, and the person behind the desk will pull up the file and print the book out for them in an hour. Does that mean the giant companies won't continue to control the industry? Probably not. The big five are giant because they do their job well and have success in finding good books, packaging them well, and getting them to the right markets. It takes hard work and some talent to do that. Oh, and luck. So, combining all those factors, the self-published author might do well, but he's probably better off if his work is good enough for a company to pay him money to buy it and then market it themselves.

Lying to Agents is NOT All Right

Dear Rejecter,

What if you write a great query letter, but you don't want to sign your real name to it because in the craftless days of your writing career you threw up a zillion sites and there are very bad samples of your writing floating around the web under that name. Is it OK, to use something else and only tell the agent after they read a partial?

There's no reason to do this. First of all, we only use a search engine if we're checking up on some weird or suspicious credential. Second, even if we did in theory actually find your writing and look at it, if it was totally different from your query, we would assume it was either another person or some old, unpolished work. Heck, I've got fanfic from when I was 15 still up on a website somewhere. If a older, bad version of your manuscript is online, do try and take it down, but you're probably worrying over nothing.

You should ALWAYS sign your real name in a query letter unless you have valid legal or political reasons not to do so.

Update on the Simon & Schuster Issue

Last Thursday I had the opportunity to speak to someone from Simon & Schuster, and asked his side of the story on the issue discussed in the previous post, about their contract revision.

His argument was that the writer's business is to write and the publishing company's business was to make sure that writer got published and got the money from their writing, and that was what they did, to put it simply, and wanted to continue to be able to do (Most publishing companies do stay in business because of their backlist).

The main group that raised issue with S&S was the Author's Guild, which he said was heavily associated with agents as much as actual writers. Eventually they did reach an agreement, which led to a re-revision of the contract, which said that if S&S was failing to make a certain amount of money for an author by publishing their book per year, the rights would then revert back to the author. It was a high amount for author royalties, too, something over a thousand dollars (which, by the way, the majority of authors will not see in a year). In other words, if Simon & Schuster fails to do its job in selling the book, the author can get out of contract and seek publication elsewhere.

The issue remains complicated, but there are two sides to every story, and that was one of them.

The Exaggerated Reporting of Print's Death

So I've been in this publishing program for three weeks and change, and we're finally done with the magazine section (yay!) and on to books. Report: Print is not dead. Or, that's what practically every speaker said, apparently trying to answer some unasked question. It's like my dog is sitting there on the bed next to me and someone comes up and says, "Your dog isn't dead."

"Uhm, thanks, I know that from the fact that he's breathing?"

Stan Lee said something in an interview for the history channel during their history of comics segment about how reading something on a screen will never be as pleasant as holding it your hands, which is why comics will always exist. I don't doubt he's right; the manner in which they're delivered will be different.

I grew up with the internet. I was on it when I was thirteen, stupidly giving my name and address out to all takers who were interested in the same cartoon shows as me on Prodigy's bulletin boards until a nice man from the FBI called my mom and said maybe I shouldn't be doing that (true story). However, despite the many, many hours I spend reading things online - even novel-length fanfic that is sometimes better than novels I've recently read - it hasn't stopped me from buying books and subscribing to magazines. I read 2-4 books a week and subscribe to about 6 magazines, 3 of them weeklies (I'm a fast reader). I suppose I could be downloading illegal .pdfs and printing them out, but the cost of paper and ink is high and the product unwieldly in comparison to a bound book. However, I don't imagine that it's going to be that way, which is why the industry's response has been stunningly pathetic.

Print magazines seemed to have discovered the internet about yesterday. Several editor-in-chiefs came to speak to us and showed us their websites, which were relatively new (1-2 years) and largely just the content of their magazine with some video clips, and man were they nervous about the fact that all of these other magazines seemed to be doing a better job than them. And yes, a successful magazine website has a major effect on the magazine's health, it turns out. How are these people genuinely surprised by that?

More interesting to me, aside from the hilarity value, is the alarming change Simon & Schuster made to its boilerplate book contracts. As this was back in May, it's been much-talked about elsewhere, so I won't go into it in technical detail, but apparently it involves them retaining at least digital rights to your book forever. People have theorized as to why they did this, but as a technocrat I find the explanation pretty basic. Right now we have the technology to print on demand - meaning someone can take a .pdf of a book, put it into a computer, and a big printer will pop out a book a few hours later or whatever. It's costly and large - you know, like computers used to be. It's not impossible to imagine that we're only 10 or 20 years away from small, retail-priced printers that you can put on your shelf next to your scanner and your external hard drive. It'll come with glue cartridges and ink cartridges and you'll have to buy cover and inside-weight paper. You'll hit "print" on your file and about an hour later, an honest-to-goodness bound book will pop out. Books will live on, but the format in which they're delivered will be entirely different, and probably just as pirated as music is today. Publishers will deal.

If I was a betting woman, I'd be willing to put money on the idea that Simon & Schuster was thinking along similar lines, which means that they need those digital rights to your book, because in the future, all they may have to sell is digital files. They just want to get it in the boilerplate now, so it becomes standard and non-negotiable while it's still unprofitable, so when it is profitable, no one thinks twice. It's about the only clever response I've seen non-digital media form to the threat of the internet. That said, it's also pretty evil, so someone tell me when they reverse that, because I'm not signing any contracts with them until they do.

Posting Query Letters

I am curious, what are the legal implications of publicly publishing their query (aside from publicly carping about it)?

Is there no sort of client-vendor confidentiality agreement (spoken or unspoken)?

Well, in strictly general terms, [but not necessarily legal] you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want on the internet (aside from child porn) as long as your ISP backs you up or your ISP is based in a country that makes it very hard to legally pursue, like China or Russia. Child porn is the only thing Interpol really clamps down on internationally. If I posted your query letter here, since I'm anonymous, your main legal recourse would be to ask blogger to take it down, and blogger would probably not care enough to make me do it. If I wasn't anonymous, you could report me to the AAR or the BBB, or various other guilds, but it wouldn't come to anything.

That said, I'm not going to post any query letters. I mean, aside from that spamming anonymous jackass. Yes, it is an unspoken non-client/agent agreement, because we're nice, and don't generally like to piss off writers. Actually, most of us like writers, as they are the thing that makes our business exist and we base our careers on making the good ones into stars because we love literature. It's why we're in the exciting, low-paying world of publishing.

My general policy is not to post people's email addresses or even letters in entirety unless it's a question they obviously mean for the blog and I want to answer it on the blog. That's just common courtesy.

Spamming Agents = Bad

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

FAO Publishers & Literary Agents - I have a fully completed and critiqued non-fiction manuscript together with graphically designed cards available for publishing.

For more information, please read this email or email me at writer_seeks_publisher@lycos.com to request the synopsis, some sample chapters, the card graphics and the promotional website.

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

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

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

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

Dear Writer-Seeks-Publisher,

I thought publically posting and making fun of your spam email on my website would clue you in the first time, but apparently it didn't. Fortunately you have magic cards to heal yourself from the emotional trauma when you don't get published because you pisssed off potential agents and publishers by randomly spamming their emailboxes instead of submitting your idea in the proper format, which can be found on the very page from which you got my email address.

Also, your game of randomly shooting off emails when you don't get the desired response might result in said target to respond negatively by posting your message in full on her website because she has a migraine and doesn't want to deal with you anymore.

Thanks!
The Rejector

"Thinking Too Far Ahead" Syndrome

ok, maybe this isn't the best place to post this. But it's the most current. From an agent's (or assistant's) point of view, what is your opinion on pen names? When are they appropriate, and when are they a nuisance? I know there's lots of pen name advice out there, but it's all from writers without pen names. What are your and/or your boss's feelings?

I have gotten this question a number of times and I will emerge from my stupor of the school group assignment due tomorrow to do it. For those of you who are familiar with my tone, you might have guessed that the Rejector is not a team player. It's not bad; it's just my personality type. I am pretty sure that the rest of my group thinks I am the laziest, most irritating, most argumentative person on the planet, which is the way I come off when I work in a group. Really I'm not. I just don't like non-hierarchical social groups (especially of women) that have been assigned tasks. It's much for efficient to have a hierarchy.

ANYWAY, on to our topic.

First of all, pseudonyms are a case of “thinking too far ahead” syndrome, along with sending in your cover ideas and your pre-written book jacket (as if you’ll be handling either of those two things and not the publishing company). Pseudonyms don’t come up into discussion until either late with your agent before he/she sends it out, or after the contract with the publishing company is signed.

When you’re a writer, there’s a temptation to use a pseudonym. It seems cool. You can name yourself whatever you want (like “Max Power”) and you’re all secretive, as if you’ll be an angry old J.D. Salinger, chasing reporters off your lawn with a rake unless you used a pseudonym. Well, let me dispel a myth: That’s probably not going to happen.

Pseudonyms are bad for logistical reasons. They complicate book signings, contracts, royalties, a lot of other paperwork, and your fan base when they try to write in. Yes, the publishing company will know your real name (they need it to write those checks), but various departments in the company could easily become confused, especially with a new assistant handling the mail.

Originally, pseudonyms (or just not naming the author) were used by women writers, people with politically-dangerous ideas, and people who wanted to assign their text to the authorship to an older (and more prestigious) author. Many people tried to pass off their plays as written by Shakespeare. The Zohar was not written by 2nd-century Rabbi Simeon Bar Yochai; it was written by the 13th century Jewish Kabbalist who “discovered” it (you can tell because he was Spanish and some Spanish words appear in the text).

Totally, in a free, largely egalitarian society (at least on the writing end), it’s not necessary.

Pseudonyms are usually suggested by the publishing company for one of the following purposes:

(1) You have a name that is awkward, like Dan Hitler, Or Olaf Cisnădioara.

(2) You have the same name as another published author. Even if your genre is totally different, you’ll get into shelving and search engine issues. You may be asked to make a minor change. As interesting example in film, Michael J. Fox does not have a real middle name. When he registered with the Actor’s Guild, they said he could not register his name because there was already a Michael Fox, so he added the “J.” It does not stand for anything.

(3) You are writing erotica and do not want to embarrass yourself or doom your non-erotica career (see Anne Rice, who used a pseudonym for her smut)

(4) You have a legitimate reason to stay anonymous. You were a private assassin, you were a member of the early Bill Clinton Presidential campaign, you were an O.J. Juror (whoops!). Usually this apples to people with something political to say or a sketchy background.

(5) You are an established writer in one genre and you want to move to another one. This is done by recommendation by the company, again for shelving and search engine confusion reasons. Readers who only read mystery novels may be stupid enough to pick up your space opera novel, even with the guy shooting a laser gun on the cover, and not realize it’s not going to be a mystery.

Occasionally the company will suggest that you change your last name so that you are shelved near someone who is more famous and writes similar things to you. There’s a reason that most of the people who write sequels to Jane Austen novels have A and B last names. Those aren’t their real last names, for the most part. They’re looking for that key shelf placement in the “Fiction and Literature” section of Barnes and Noble.

Other cases of “thinking too far ahead” syndrome in queries – suggesting what shows you want to go on (Oprah. It’s always Oprah), how you want to market it, whether it should be hard or soft-back (another decision you don’t make).

Apparently She's Serious.

Funny story with this one. When I got this email, I thought he/she was pulling my leg, so I actually emailed back and asked, "Are you serious?" and he/she said they were. Unfortunately he/she also asked me to be kind, so I will be.

The Rejecter,

I'd like your advice, and as a favor, please give me your advice with the understanding that I am a very good writer, capable of conquering the world with my words. I have nothing to show for myself except an insightful manuscript, freakishly well-written, with such exquisite craftsmanship you wouldn't see outside the boarders of eighteenth century Europe, though is it possible for me to get published in The New Yorker? I'm nineteen years old, and, I think this is relevant, very good-looking. (I don't know if I should say that on my cover letter.) Is the slushpile a meritocracy, is what I'm asking. Assuming I am the most talented writer in the world, what then should I do?

Okay. I need a second to breathe here.

....AND I'm done. All right. All right. I'm up to this. Something positive.

1. For your information and everyone else's, you are not going to be published in the New Yorker unless you know someone who works in the fiction section of the New Yorker or your agent does or your publisher does. Most of the pieces that are placed in the New Yorker are either by established short fiction writers that have already won a ton of international awards and/or are getting published to promote the short story collection that's coming out at the same time, and the publishing house pulled some strings to get the story in.

2. I know you are the greatest writer in the world, but that said, you might want to do a little double-check on your grammar before sending an email to someone who would catch things like comma splices.

3. For your information and again for everyone else's, it does not matter how attractive you are. In fact, most fiction authors are not very attractive, especially in fantasy. After all, writing is not usually paired with exercising. It's a very stationary activity. Also, fantasy authors usually own a a lot of cats and have a beard.

4. I'm not saying people aren't published at 19, but it's rare. Generally writers who have been writing all their lives reach some level of maturity in their 20's, and are embarrassed about anything they wrote before. Yes, yes, the Eragon guy was 17 or whatever. You know what? Eragon sucked. There, I said it.

5. I don't know what this business about 18th-century Europe is, but actually, a lot of great literature has been written either after the 1700s or outside Europe. In the "outside Europe" category, you have the Popol Vul, the writings of Virgil, the writings of Plato and Socrates, The Tale of Genji, and Homer's Greek epics, to name a few. In the "post-1700's" category I would put pretty much everything that's been written in English except Chaucer and Shakespeare. Austen, Dickens, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, ... If you don't recognize all those titles, you have a lot of reading ahead of you.

So You're An Erotica Writer (Hi, Anne Rice!)

So, again, posts are slow and I'm just personally responding instead of posting because it's faster. And could that person who emailed me about wanting to share summer publishing experiences re-email me? I think I accidentally deleted it in a haze and I did mean to respond.

Hello Rejecter,

Suppose you are trying to get an agent or publisher interested in a literary fiction novel. You haven't any previous credits along those lines, but you have written (under a pseudonym) erotica. I don't mean on fly-by-night websites or in books that are delivered in a plain brown envelope, but in major magazines you would find in a good magazine shop or in anthologies you would find in major bookstore chains. Would this help even if your literary fiction novel isn't erotic? Or would such a background be the kiss of death?

Absolutely not. Literary agents and other people in the publishing world have a general respect for all types of writing that is quality, and don't have any qualms about erotica existing, even if they don't read it themselves. And it's not all Harlequin romance stuff either. There is now a healthy amount of independent presses who publish quality erotica, either for general interest or gay/lesbian. The target audience is almost exclusively women or gay men, mainly the former. Studies have shown that women in general don't like visual pornography and prefer it in prose form, which is why Playgirl failed. But let me stop talking about what we were learning in the magazine class I'm in and get back on topic.

Mention your serious publications. The only time I would leave them out is if you are submitting to an agent who mainly handles religious fiction and non-fiction. That might upset some sensibilities, but most agents do not fall into this category.

This is a very important post.

Question: Is is worthwhile responding with a short 'thank you' even when an agent passes? It seems like good manners, but knowing how full an agent's inbox might be with more pressing stuff, I wonder whether its worth it. Is sending that gesture of civility likely to be remembered? Will it just make them annoyed at more stuff in their inbox?

Thanks in advance for your opinion.

The answer to your question is: No. Do not send us a thank you note if we have rejected you. We won't really be mad at you, but we will be annoyed at more stuff for us to deal with, especially if everyone started doing it.

I'll make a larger point clear here and try to dispel a rumor. Back when I was hanging out at Writer.net and trying to perfect my own query letter about 4 years ago, there was a going rumor that you should send a thank-you card or note or whatever because agents log in the name and title of your novel in their massive agency database. Also, if you try to resubmit with a better query, you should change the title so that when we go to our database, it doesn't show up as already submitted.

We don't have a database.

I have never worked for an agent or known an agent who kept track of rejections, even of partials or fulls. It would be a massive effort and a complete waste of time. Publishing companies have the time and money to do that sometimes. I know that DAW does keep rejections on file because I got rejected by the rejection was lost in the mail and I called them to check on it and they looked it up. Agents do not do this.

I don't remember names. I don't remember the names of my friends or outer family members. I don't remember the names of teachers I've had recently or even current professors. Even if I want to remember your name, I will probably fail horribly. And I'm not much better with titles, because titles are pretty generic most of the time. But I am really, really awful with names. I will open 50 envelopes, read fifty query letters, reject all but three, and not remember anything except the plotlines of some of them. I tend to have a good memory for plotlines, but not names and dates. I'm worst than most people in this particular category of being a human being, but it doesn't affect my work. It just serves to make a lot of family functions very awkward.

Many people write their questions anonymously, or make comments anonymously, in some kind of fear that I will see their query at some point and reject them because of something they said a year before. This is not true. I will not remember, even if by some cosmic karma they do end up hitting my agency and I open the envelope. So, have no fear.

The Walking Dead

I'm busy trying to kill time while my $%^@! yahoo mail decides to work before I leave for the day, so I'll just post.

I haven't been around much (as in, posting) in the last week because I foolishly started this summer publishing program in New York and apparently the damn thing is about 12 hours a day and all about magazines for the first three weeks. I won't say which one (there's half a dozen) because I don't want to either promote it or put it down, but you can drop me a line if you're in one.

Posts will be coming kinda slow is what I'm saying.

Also, you may notice that the grammar isn't necessary terrific in this blog. It's not because I don't know grammer (I do) but more because I'm writing the way I'm generally speaking for effect. This is acceptable in fiction from first person point-of-view and in dialogue.

Response to Responses from Previous Response

Okay. Deep breath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anything mid-tier is worth mentioning, yes.

Response to Previous Post's Responses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No.

-- Other articles / essays published in paying markets?

Not unless they relate to the manuscript in some fashion.

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To mention or not to mention...

Only mention if it directly pertains to the manuscript.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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