Novels, MFA Programs, and Other Troublesome Things

I have been working with two famous and critically respected authors in my MFA program who have been more than enthusiastic about my quirky literary manuscript. One of them said that "it was simply amazing and I need to find an agent immediately and get this thing published!" The other teacher says he has no doubt that this will be on the shelf. Should I mention this in my query letter? I must say that I am not confident about the this book being marketable as it is basically a novella at 40,000 words, although my teacher calls it a novel and it is a bit unusual with regards to language and form. I wrote it because it was what I needed to write and when I began I wasn't thinking about publication although now I am very excited about the prospect! Should I send it out as is or try to make it longer or a bit more traditional?

Addressing the issues one-by-one:

(1) You have two famous and critically-respected authors in your MFA program? Seriously? Are you in school in Iowa?

(2) OK, being serious, having an author's recommendation in your query letter as a sentence or two is almost never bad, provided that author was not self-published, because then it doesn't count. So yes, you should put that in your query letter. Specifically, you should put the good things they said about your manuscript in the query letter, not the fact that they said it should be published.

(3) 40K is a novella. You can send it out, but it will probably get knocked out of the running on that alone. On the other hand, you may get lucky. If you're prepared for a slew of rejections, you can give it a shot. Most published authors have rejections from other manuscripts under their belt before they get an acceptance.

Things I Thought Were Obvious File #127

Be nice to your agent.

Seriously.

My boss acknowledges that a lot of writers, particularly career ones, are inherently weirdos. She doesn't outright say it, but when writers are unreliable or obsessive or can't seem to grasp the world beyond their work, she's not surprised. I'm not surprised; I was a weirdo growing up and I'm a weirdo now. My publication record is just confirmation of my right to be one. That said, it's important to maintain a professional working relationship with the people around you, and in this case, your agent or potential agent.

There's been a few cases over the years I've known her where my boss has declined a potential client, or cut lose a former one, because of their behavior. Mostly the former, but there was even a case where a potential client came in with an offer from a publishing company with a huge advance attached to it. In other words, free money for my boss, whose job becomes to look over the contract and pretty much nothing else, and then receive a significant check for her work. Agents love these clients. That was actually how I got my agent; various agents were considering my work and at the same time I landed an offer from a company after I pitched to the editor at the BEA and I called around to the agents considering me, said I had an offer on the table, and waited for them to call me back. Within the first 24 hours, three did. Another begged for an additional 24 hours to read the manuscript, and a fourth was vacation and still asked about it when they got back 2 weeks later. One person did say "OK, I read it, I'm legitimately not interested" but otherwise I had my pick. It's a pretty awesome position to be in.

Back to my boss. She got this offer, which really a lot of money already on the table, and she was still debating it when I last spoke to her. The author, when she spoke to him, was pushy and demanded things of her like lowering her industry fees (which is not a negotiable topic), made comments critical of her other clients, and didn't get back to her when she emailed him basic questions that would be crucial to the agent/client relationship. It really came down to "Do I really want to work with this guy?" Knowing her, in the long run, the answer will probably be no.

So if you're working with your agent, or trying to get one, be polite. Promptly answer emails if you're available to do so. Don't ignore questions. In short, don't be a douche. We don't like working with them.

For Your Information

If you are, say, an unrepentant child molester serving out his latest jail sentence (this one just for owning a considerable stash of child pornography), and you're pitching a novel, it's best to leave out everything I just said in the query letter except the part about having a novel. Sure, once we get over our revulsion at your page-long, off-topic discussion of how history justifies your obsession with pre-teen boys, we'll find it amusing in an extremely dark way and laugh about it. But then we'll reject you.

I know, we shouldn't judge the author, just the novel, but there are exceptions. After all, if we took you on as a client, we would have to work with you, and if you're given to rants that make us uncomfortable, that's not a relationship we're interested in having.

Follow-up on Previous Post

I'm stuck on the fact that an agent may like the writing and story but pass because of the ending. Isn't that something that can be fixed easily with the writer?

and

If an agent likes an idea well enough to request a full but doesn't like the ending, wouldn't a request to rewrite be called for?

I feel like this is a question I should answer before more people ask it.

First of all, I slightly oversimplified in my answer. There was probably a massive problem with the ending. My boss, if she likes the manuscript a lot, will devote some time to asking for a rewrite (a major thing to ask of a non-client) and working on those edits (a major thing to do for a non-client) and has lost lots of (wo)man-hours on them. They have still not resulted in taking the client on, because either the writer didn't want to edit or simply couldn't edit, something I'll get to in a second. Some agents are really willing to work on potential manuscripts because they're fairly sure the manuscripts can be fixed and sold, and they're usually right. One of the current bestsellers on some list, I think it's Amazon, was a book that I remember working on for my former boss. It arrived as a really good idea for a book that was mostly done, but had some narrative problems, and 3 years ago I was asked to read it and give my advice. I then went to work for someone else, and though I had my doubts about it, obviously the book was fixed because now I've seen it reviewed across the web and shows up on bestseller lists. I also remember that my former boss really, really loved this book. She didn't just think it was a great manuscript; she had personal attachment to it. Agents don't feel that way about every manuscript. My current boss has two bestsellers on the list, both non-fiction, at the moment, though she's had others since I've been with her, but not things I've worked on for the most part, or saw when they when they arrived as a potential client.

Now, onto the the writers. My former professor once said, "Writing is easy. Editing is hard." It's probably the only thing ever said that I completely agreed with in my MFA program. For most writers, editing is hard. For me, it's particularly unbearable, and as a published author I dread it and fear it and still do a lot of it. First my agent asks for revisions, then the publisher does. Last week I submitted a book to my agent that I've been editing for a year now. It took me a month to write and a year to edit, and it's still not in the best shape it could be, but it may be in the best shape I'm capable of making it. I'm really attached to this project, and I want it to sell and succeed, but in my mind I always imagine a book that's much better than the one on the screen, and despite many rewrites I can't see to get there. I honestly don't know if she'll ask for another revision, which I'll do if she asks, or do some minor touch-ups and send it out and see if it sticks. At this point to her I'm a proven seller, and I've made her some money, so I'm worth the risk, but it still might not sell and won't look good for her or me if it doesn't. It's depressing for writers to not have their books sell, but it's also bad for agents, in terms of their crucial relationships with editors, to keep sending the editors things they won't like.

Endings aren't easily "fixable." For some writers, any revision is impossible. These are writers who either have such a name for themselves that anyone will publish them or they never get published because no one wants to work with them. For other writers, it's simply a matter of ability to craft a story properly, and they don't have it and may not be interested in the implication that they need to acquire it. Other people will never be great writers, and may succeed in one genre and fail in another, which is probably my slate in life, as I can't seem to get published in science fiction but have two other genres under my belt. Agents know all this, and it's hard for them to invest time in someone who, honestly, may or may not be able to produce the work that the agent will then try to sell, and may or may not succeed in doing and only for very little money.

Agents are accused of not nurturing writers, but a lot of agents are very up-front about not being the right person to do this. I was at a WorldCon where an agent gave a panel, and he said outright, "I will not hold your hand. I will not revise your work. I will try to sell work for my clients for the highest amount possible, and then I will make sure the publishing company does all that it can to promote the book. That's what I do. If you don't like it, find another agent."

New Novel, Old Agent

I chalked my first YA novel up to experience but only after I made it to the point that two (out of seven to whom I sent queries) agents asked for the complete manuscript. One of the agents never wrote me after requesting the complete manuscript--I just had to assume she/he was declining, based on no response.

My question: I am now getting ready to query a second YA novel. Can I start at some better place with these two agents--mention that they had expressed some interest in my first? Or do I just start from scratch on their agency web sites, since they didn't like the first enough to sign me? I am especially leery of the one who did not respond, although the correspondence up to the final interaction was cordial and even enthusiastic, and he/she is a reputable agent from a respected agency.

Sure, what the hey. If they liked your work the first time around, mention it but don't bank on it. It might help, it might hurt, but in the large scheme of things, there are so many agents out there that if your book is good, someone will pick it up. Probably.

As to people who get to fulls and don't like them, not responding is rude but sadly not uncommon. My boss requests a lot of fulls but very, very rarely accepts one, especially in fiction and usually, she says, because she really likes the writing or subject (the reason she got past the partial stage) but didn't like the ending. It's surprising hard to bring a book to a good ending. I know I was rejected for many years for "structural problems" and still have that issue with some of my work. So the agent might say, "Hey, this is a person whose writing I liked, but the last novel just didn't work. Maybe experience has gotten them somewhere."

Or they may not remember you at all. There's always that possibility.

Online Publishing

There are a lot of websites like bookrix.com and inkpop.com (run by HarperCollins) that allow you to submit and "publish" your creative work online. Does this count as publishing work?

Only if you get paid. In actual money.

(Some contests require that you only submit unpublished works). Also, do you retain copyright on the stories you submit?

If it is a legitimate, paying online source, they will ask to retain the copyright for a certain amount of time (usually a year or two), after which rights revert back to you. If you don't know their policy, ask.

Does publishing yourself online adversely affect your chances of being published legitimately?

No. But it might not do anything good, either.

An opinion on e-Readers

My boss said something interesting that I think bears repeating. She does not own an e-Reader (I do) and she really feels that publishing companies are shooting themselves in the foot in a variety of ways in getting in these huge, confusing fights with Amazon, Sony, and Google over eBook rights.

Until the technology vastly improves and the price drastically drops, she doesn't see e-Readers as a viable format and therefore a threat to publishing as we know it. Amazon claims to have sold 500,000 Kindles, a very impressive number until you realize there's 308,618,000 people in America, so if my math is correct (which it rarely is, so double-check), only one in every 617 people own one. The main reason, though, is the price tag. The huge purchase of an electronic reader serves as the gateway to eBooks, which then have to be paid for individually - as opposed to people simply buying the book they want. It becomes an entrance fee to books, which previously had none. Are only rich people going to be buying books? Because you have to have a decent income to afford one of these devices (I got mine for my birthday). Do we really want a culture where information is available primarily for the wealthy?

Putting out an e-Edition of the book also messes with sales projections, as a ton of people buy it the day it comes out, and then interest drops tremendously, it drops tremendously in rank, and it's hard for word-of-mouth to build on a book with a small opening. I can't plot out all of the economics here, but it's not a good buying trend.

I've felt for some considerable time that the answer to publishing is libraries. Publishing needs to put huge money into supporting and promoting libraries. You may think that's crazy, as libraries lend books out for free, but where do you think they get those books? Libraries serve as huge buyers for books, and in the case of many academic books are the bulk of sales. So really, if someone could get cracking on making libraries not seem like the most depressing places on earth, that would be great.

Foreign Authors, Local Agents

I'm in the process of finding a suitable agent for my completed novel (and hopefully my future career as a writer). I was wondering how important location is.

My predicament is that I am Norwegian living in Norway, but my novel is written in English (having lived overseas most of my life, this is my preferred language). Finding an agent in Norway is futile (writers go directly to publishers here and there is no real market for Engish books). To complicate matters further, I expect to relocate overseas again within a couple of years (location unknown). My question then is: should I seek representation in the UK (i.e. closer to me at the moment) or USA (where the storyline of this first novel is set)?

Also, is the fact that I am "overseas" a discouraging factor for literary agents when considering to take me on as an client?

No. To be fair, yes, there are a few who will say no on that basis, but I can't think of any agents I know off the top of my head. My boss certainly has a lot of overseas clients. The most important thing is to get across that you are fluent in English, as we get some people who aren't completely fluent and an occasional person who thought running their book through Babelfish would be fine. Then email the agents with your query letter and see what happens. Email agents in both the UK and US to widen your prospects, not because of the location of the novel setting.

Cutting Down a Book

I'm back from what was a ridiculously prolonged illness, not helped by a lot of traveling. Also, I don't get a lot of emails asking questions, or not a lot of emails asking questions I haven't answered already in the blog, so that cuts down on the posts.

I wrote a YA/Paranormal novel, but am having an issue with it's length. I know the accepted length is around 80K-100K words for this genre, but the readers who have read mine say it reads well and should be left in tact. The novel is well over twice the accepted word count, though. Is it in my best interest to cut the book down before I seek an agent or leave it as is, seek an agent now, and work with an editor to scale it back?

So from your email I don't know exactly how long it is, but the general rule is that if you can find things to cut, you should be cutting them, and if you can't find anything to cut, then the novel really is that long and agents will have to deal or you'll have to write another novel. If your YA novel is 200,000 words as it sounds like it is, that's just too long for a first book. Go write another, shorter book while this one is on the shelf. When you're published you can get away with crazier stuff.

Disregard this if you're in India, because from what I've seen the Indian English-language fiction market makes for like, crazy-long novels. Or many books that are one novel because the binding was just getting too big. I remember being in the Delhi airport and deciding, sadly, not to plunk my money down on a historical novel because it was ten books long and I was fairly sure I couldn't obtain the other nine books outside of India. I have enough trouble getting stuff from the UK and Australia.

Vacation and Oh Yeah, the Industry's Collapsing

The title of this post may be exaggerating, but I am going on vacation and disabling comments as a result. I'll be back in mid-January. Here are some random articles on the industry crisis - eBooks are selling and no one knows how to make money off it so they sue Google instead. Google settles, continues doing what they're doing, that Amazon guy gets really rich as people continue to underestimate him. Enough said.

E-Books blah blah blah industry being inane blah blah blah Kindle will eat us all blah blah blah.

E-Books Spark Battle Inside the Publishing Industry

E-Books Beat Regular Books on Xmas

The Impending War Over E-Book Publishing

Book Publishers Go Stupid

I Stand Corrected

My boss has informed me that she really likes getting cards in the mail. My previous boss was the one who didn't care for them. So, take that into account. It couldn't hurt, but again, it's not expected. But it's nice.

Holiday Etiquette

A little review for people who currently have agents:

(1) Holiday card/gifts are by no means expected. They are simply what we like to call in the business "nice." If you are cutting back on things, by all means, skip the agent holiday card.

(2) If you do send a card and are wondering what denomination your agent is, go for a generic "holiday card." If you can't find one, Christmas is fine, unless your agent's name is Hebrewburg and she only represents Jewish fiction. Then Channukah is a pretty good guess. Or their name is Fatima al-Islam, in which case I wonder if they make "You don't have any holidays coming up that I know about because your lunar calender is on a different cycle this year but have a good time!" cards. (Is the Haj over? Does it apply to people not on the Haj itself or just make them feel guilty about not going on it?)

(2) If you are sending a gift, do not send perishables. Your agent may be out of the office and the fruit will rot. It's better not to send food at all, in case your agent is kosher/vegan/halal/Jain.

(3) If your agent has done a lot for you in the past year and/or you have a lot of upcoming projects they will be working hard on and you feel compelled to treat them to a gift, a Barnes & Noble or Amazon gift card is what I go with as a gift-giver myself, as I know my agent will definitely come up with a reason to use that.

How Good is it? Good enough?

Dear Rejecter,

I have sent my novel to thirty agents and publishers and counting, and obviously all have rejected it or I wouldn't be writing to you! A lot of the rejections say the same thing. They compliment me on my writing, tell me the novel is "evocative", "atmospheric" and "page turning", but none of them know who would publish it so they pass on it. The novel is set in the music industry of the US in the 80s and 90s and I am wondering if this is the problem. There don't seem to be many books published using the music business as a setting and I am wondeering if there';s a reason for it.

Any light you can shed on this perplexing topic would be very much appreicated.

I would definitely say that the topic is not the problem. If anything, I'm slightly interested by the idea. And clearly your query letter isn't the problem if they're complimenting you on your writing, which I'm going to take to mean that they asked you for partials and fulls.

My only conclusion that can be drawn without reading the manuscript itself is that it's not quite there. Maybe the plot needs tightening, or has a weird ending. Maybe the writing isn't good enough to hold up the material. A lot of novels don't end well - this is a comment complaint of my boss, who requests a lot of novels and represents very, very few. This doesn't mean happy vs. sad, this means there's something in the last 1/4th of the book that doesn't work, often because the author has trouble with climaxing the story. I'm not saying that's your problem, but there is a problem. If an agent requested a full, and rejected, it is fair to email them to ask them what they didn't like.

Getting a higher degree for the sake of a book

Hello -

I have a question about the kind of experience, academic background, etc. required for book-length nonfiction writing. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on post-apocalyptic literature and recently wrote an article for a popular sci-fi blog on why we like the apocalypse, which got something like 20,000 views and has helped make my blog (which has other nerdy apocalypse stuff) pretty popular. A lot of commenters have been asking for my thesis and encouraging me to publish it, which is flattering, of course, but who wants to read a book by someone who only has a B.A.? As a reader, I would definitely be suspicious of the author's credibility. Obviously, if I went off for 8 years, got a PhD, and came back to the topic, anything I'd write would be much better, but I don't think what I have to say now is valueless, either - I think it's pretty cool, actually, and I know that there are some science-y writers (like Mary Roach) who've successfully built a career without an advanced degree. So my question to you is: would any publisher look twice at a proposal by someone like me who's armed with such a short (but focused) resume?

Here's how I look at a query in terms of higher education credentials:

(1) Fiction - no credentials needed if book is good

(2) Memoir, "learn from experience"-type non-fiction - no credentials needed if book is good, but probably shouldn't come out of nowhere (i.e. you should have some real-world credentials of some kind, even if they're not academic)

(3) An academic book - requires some credentials. These are not necessarily "PhD in your area." You don't need a PhD in international relations to write about international relations; you need some experience in the IR field, maybe a posting or a job or field work combined with publications in journals. If you're writing about an area of medicine and it's not your medical memoirs, you should have some kind of medical credentials, preferably an MD in your field, but we do get a lot of submissions by social workers, nurses, and medical professionals who did not attend a full course of medical school. In other words, if it's a highly technical book, you need some excuse to have the authority to write it.

If your thesis is good, and you felt compelled to turn it into a book, I would look at it if the query letter was good. I'm not clear on your field here, but I'm not even sure you can major in the apocalypse, much less get a PhD in it, but I guess my answer is yes, I would look at your query and not toss it because you don't have a master's.

One area where people generally do not have academic credentials is historical fiction. I have a BA in history but decided not to pursue a masters or PhD because of the nature of academia. Though many writers have some sort of "background" like the one I've described, the majority of their material is derived from private research, scouring libraries and interviewing experts, not sitting in a PhD program preparing a thesis that by definition has to be as boring as possible (I was once graded down for my paper being "too dramatic). If it sounds like they know what they're talking about, I don't look for historical fiction authors' credentials at all.

Yes, yes, I know you mean Twilight

Also, I am deeply sorry, I feel as though I am pestering you, yet, since you are an agent...what do you see in this paranormal trend for young adult novels? That is the manuscript I have been sending out since April.

I would think it would be easier now, considering the fame of a certain book. Yet, almost all the rejections are automatic. I know, certain agents have their areas, but even to agents who have represented young adult/paranormal, I received form rejections. (And I am not even writing about vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or faeries!)

Do you think that agents automatically reject these queries because they hate the trend?

Just to clear things up, I'm an agent's assistant, not an agent. I don't represent any clients or make any deals.

As to the paranormal YA trend, it's still going strong. I'm sure there's people who are sick of it, but I wouldn't reject a good query because of a trend being overdone. A good book is a good book. What we do know is that publishers are still buying paranormal YA and adult, which is what we really care about, because it's the job of an agent to sell a book to a publisher. It's the job of a good agent to know which editors are particularly interested and/or don't have too many vampire/zombie books on their list already to justify another buy and then to get cozy with those editors. But that's on our end; your job is to write a great book.

I was at an AAR meeting last week to discuss the convention at Frankfurt, which for financial reasons a lot of people who normally attend didn't attend this year. In discussing what people were buying, two things were agreed upon as being hot:
- paranormal romance
- Scandinavian literature

I don't know the reason for the second one.

Google Books Ducks Copyright Law, Sort of

I thought this was an interesting article. It reminds me of a case I once heard about from a copyright lawyer:

A publishing company decided to republish a book that was on their backlist. The original contract of course stipulated that the author had to be paid royalties, something they hadn't had to worry about for some time because the book wasn't in print. Most contracts say that if the book goes out of print for a certain amount of time (usually 5-10 years), the rights revert entirely to the author and the author can republish the book with a new company if he/she chooses to, or can negotiate a new contract with the old company if it wants to keep the rights to the book. In this case I don't remember if the publishing company still had partial rights or not; the point was they wanted to publish the book and they had to alert the author.

The problem was they couldn't find him.

The author had vanished without a trace, leaving no living relatives in charge of an estate that would manage the book rights. Living relatives can only get book rights if the will stipulates it; in this case the author had no will and couldn't even be proven to be dead. The publishing company hired the contract lawyer, who went to the judge with all of the documentation. The judge ruled that they had to do a certain amount of regular attempts to find the author - hiring private investigators, posting in newspapers, etc - and if nothing came up, they could republish the book without the author's permission. If, however, the author then reappeared or the author was proven dead and a will surfaced granting rights to living relatives, the publisher would then have to pay back-royalties to the author/author's estate.

I thought this was a very interesting case. A week after I heard him speak, I got my first offer from a publisher. It's been a few years now and I have two books published and a couple in the can. On the way home from shul on Yom Kippur my family happened to walk home with our lawyer/accountant, and I mentioned to him that I should write a will soon because I now have a literary estate that will last for 70 years after my death. It might be a minuscule or nonexistent estate, but it will be there. In fact it will probably be longer than 70 years, as they keep extending that number whenever Mickey Mouse is about to go into public domain, and books I publish in the future may fall into a later time-period extension.

I'm actually against the extension of copyright laws to the point that it has now reached for the written word. Works in the public domain are more published and better-read as a result, and if an estate is large then children are likely to squabble over it, sometimes preventing a book from being republished long enough for it to disappear entirely. Do my potential, currently non-existent heirs need to benefit that badly? If I were to live another forty years, which is extremely possible, my current books won't go into public domain until 2119. Does that sound ridiculous to anyone else?

A rare reason to make a call

Dear Rejecter,
I moved this past summer. Before I moved overseas, I sent a query to an agency that doesn't have a website or e-mail address. My relatives in the US informed me that the said agency replied asking for a full. I sent the full from my current country of residence in September. (The letter for the full came in July). My question is, should I call the agency to know the status of my manuscript? I know this is a no-no, but I did not send the package as certified because it was going to a PO Box, and for the past month, many letters have gone missing in the post offices around here.

I really want to make sure that they received the manuscript since they are the only agency to ask for a full. Thank you in advance.

The agency has no email whatsover? Check that it's a legitimate agency at Preditors and Editors, do a web search again for the email, and if you find nothing, I think you're justified in making a call. On the phone, be brief. Just ask them if they received it and if they have an email address, not whether they've read it or not (they probably haven't).

Non-Platform Fiction

I'm a completely non angsty person, so feel free to punch as hard as you want on this one.

I know that most non-fiction depends on a great platform; either you are famous already or you are writing about something insanely compelling(you accidentally spent a magical summer with chairman mao.). With that said, and while I acknowledge that this is a completely logical and fair way to do business, is there any space for someone with an interesting non-fiction concept, written with humor and wit?

I'm talking about something without historic signifigance or tear-jerking poignancy, but still a concept which an average person might find interesting and amusing. I'm purposely leaving out my concept for two reasons: you don't want to waste your time reading it, and I want more of a general industry answer than a specific acceptance or rejection of my ideas.

David Sedaris makes a pretty good living talking about wacky neighbors and childhood memories, which would make a terrible platform if you pitched it like that, but he's actually really funny and, I think, deserving of his bestseller status. At least for When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

In short: My answer is yes.

I Should Finally Say Something on E-Books

Since I got a Sony e-Reader for my birthday, my parents have been utterly dedicated to cutting out clippings from newspapers about e-books and either mailing them to me or leaving them on my desk when I come home for some family event. When I came home last night I was met with about 7 clippings, and there was a front page article in today's New York Times that was already highlighted for me before I came down for breakfast. They all pretty much say the same thing, which is that e-books are new and awesome and libraries are using them to reach digital readers and Sony and Amazon are lowering their prices to battle for the market in e-readers (finally). A lot of the articles have noted that people can't get library books or Google books on the Kindle, which is exclusive to Amazon and the reason I got a Sony. Very few articles have much to say about the publishing industry other than this must be good somehow, because all things internet are good until they're bad and destroy industries (music and, slowly but surely, movies).

I would have reported on my e-Reader early but honestly, I don't use it that much. I own a lot of books. Way too many books. I have too much to read in book format at the moment, and I haven't been on any vacations where carrying 503 books around in one slender case in my backpack would have been helpful. That's how many books I have on my e-Reader, by the way - 503. How much did I pay for them? $0. I read a lot of public domain books - classics, translations of classics where the translation is in public domain, and non-fiction books that were written earlier than 1932. Google Books could literally provide me with millions of these if I could afford that many memory cards. Oh, and that's just if I stay legal, and don't take advantage of the fact that people have been massively digitizing their private collections (mostly sci-fi) for years and posting them as torrents. So far I've had no reason not to stay legal, but to be honest, sooner or later some book is going to come along and it's going to be overly expensive and a used copy isn't going to be available, the library copies are not going to be available, and because I hate the author or something I'm going to download it to read it.

There are some kinks to the e-Reader. The version I have seems to drain its battery if you don't use it for awhile, so when you turn it on after a couple weeks it barely has enough life left start up. Sony's having some software problems with the book version of iTunes, and the books won't sync properly to my computer and I have a lot of doubles on my memory card. Books scanned by Google instead of being designed for the reader can be hard to read, as in the text will be small and up in the corner of the screen if it's a .pdf or if it's an .epub, not all of the text will translate. The software that translates it will pick up some old fonts as different letters and some dirt on the ancient pages of a library book as marks so the text you're reading is only 95% there and your mind has to make some jumps. And frankly, I'm not as impressed with the e-Ink technology as I first was. It looks a lot like text, but the screen is still glass/plastic and therefore there's a glare from bright lights or sunlight. It's obviously not a book. Still, 503 free books on a single device? I'm going for it.

This device will not destroy publishing, but it will reshape the industry as we know it.

The biggest issue I see here is the market for classics. Publishers make huge amounts of money on public domain books, and once the e-Reader becomes advanced enough to feel more like a book (like they finally decide to put in a second G-ddamn screen so you can open it like a book) and becomes cheap enough, the market for classics and other public domain works will fall out. Not entirely, but it will take a large hit. Some imprints dedicated to these books will fold. Also once publishers digitize more of their own books, more will be leaked (I've never heard of drm technology stopping anyone) and you'll be able to download thousands of current books with torrents or whatever the next generation of downloading software is. Current publishing (new books) will take a hit. Textbook publishers, who have been screwing over students for years by publishing a new edition of everything every year to make sure nobody just hands over their old copy to a new student, will insist that schools only have licensed copies of their e-versions, and charge a lot for the licenses. Like, thousands of dollars, like Adobe does for photoshop. After many years of enjoying the program, I actually went to buy photoshop in gratitude, only to discover it was a thousand dollars. How the hell was I supposed to buy that? How was anyone who does photoshopping for fun?

In the end, the book market will survive because its essential medium is not something that cannot be digitized, unlike music, tv, and movies. It's paper. In your hand. But man, will it take a hit. And from the looks of all of these articles, nobody's ready for it.

(PS I'm out a lot this weekend so on top of Shabbos, most comments won't be approved until Sunday because I won't be around to approve them. But by all means, leave them for approval)

Misleading Demographics

Dear Rejector,
I have written a memoir about my experiences as a military brat living overseas (Vietnam). I've been sending out query letters and receiving mostly rejections (got one request for a MS from BIG NY AGENCY -- they passed), but I haven't been including any demographic info about my primary target audience: the approximately ten million former US military brats living around the US and world today.

These brats (sometimes called Third Culture Kids) form a large, but mostly invisible sub-culture that has gotten little attention in the literary world. It seems like every week there's a new book about heroin addicts and child abuse victims. I know that I would love to read about the experiences of other military brats, but the shelves at B+N never have such books.

Question: Should I include this demographic info in my query? It seems to me, that if an agents is looking for something to sell, it might be good to make them aware of the huge, mostly untapped market for this type of memoir. On the other hand, I don't want to oversell the MS.

If even one half of one percent (or so) of the former military brats still living wanted to read this particular book, the sales would be in the 40-60,000 range. Does that make sense to you?

A lot of people like to put demographic information in their queries even when they don't belong there. In one case, someone had written about driving around in his RV and said that all 3.4 million (or whatever the number is) RV owners would obviously want to buy his book and that's why it would be a bestseller. That's something not to put in your query. That's something that's so funny that I might mention it two years later in a blog post.

In your case I would say giving a statistic isn't bad. Statistics are good if they're not well-known; I didn't know how many army brats there were before you told me despite knowing a couple. Other cases include rare diseases and other things we might have heard of but not know a lot about. However, it deserves a line and nothing else. It's not a selling point so much as useful information for us.

The reason it's not a selling point is that we know that 40,000 army brats aren't going to buy your book. The truth is some people don't like reading about things they already know; it's a turn-off. I don't care for reading about Crohn's Disease. Someone's saga of doctor visits and bowel resections and screaming, "$39 a pill for Zofran?!?" isn't news to me. People for the most part read books because the things contained in them are new and interesting. In the case of non-fiction it's usually because the topics are things they want to know more about. True, some army brats would probably buy your book, but not a whole lot. We wouldn't lean on that demographic for sales. We would lean on a demographic of people who want to know more about army brats, and off the top of my head I have no idea what that demographic would be.

The story sells your book, not the demographic. Exceptions are made for doctors writing books for patients and the like.

Also, Zofran is worth every penny.