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This is way too funny. Not, perhaps, as funny as people who pick their books based on the color of the covers (”No, I’d NEVER read a pink book!”), but funny nonetheless.
I’ve read neither This Is… nor This Is Not…, but if you saw my TBR stack, you wouldn’t be out buying new books, either. (By the way, Annie, if you’re looking for some good books to read…)
I do not believe that the publishing of any given kind of book prevents the publication of any other kind of book. Rising tide floats all boats. I don’t believe that the publication of any kind of fiction (except perhaps, the kind posing as non-fiction) is “damaging to America.” I think the very idea is laughable, and the people promoting it should be embarrassed to be claiming intellectual high ground.
I haven’t posted on it before, because I didn’t feel as if such nonsense deserved the dignity of a reasoned response. But hey, it’s Banned Books Week, in which we should be speaking out about how no one should have the right to tell anyone else what to read. And an argument that paints women as weak and shallow individuals who need to be kept away from “fluff,” and condemned for reading it should be shown for the offensive and ridiculous statement that it is.
Okay, that’s it. Party on.
(Rant Hat on and buzzing.)
Today, agent Nephele Tempest blogs about following directions on Romancing the Blog. Yesterday, she answered similar questions on the Knight Agency Blog.
And then, the synchronicity of the following quote from a recent Publisher’s Weekly column from a concerned writer:
“For many of us who spend hundreds of dollars on… mailings to agents who most of the time do not even have the courtesy to reply…”
Really? When I queried agents in the fall of 2004, I heard from every single one. Most of them were form rejections, to be sure, but I received a response to every single query that I sent out.
So I am a little skeptical about all the times I see statements on blogs to this effect. “Most agents don’t respond…” I hear it all the time. Either I was extremely and incredibly lucky, and picked the most courteous agents in the business, or it was something else that meant that I got a response (megative though it may be) and all of these blog posters did not.
Could it be that I followed directions? That I sent exactly what the agent asked to be sent, and therefore merited a read in the first place? (Nephele admits to not reading queries that do not conform with her agency’s electronic submission guidelines.) Could it be that I only sent queries to agents who stated they were taking new clients? Could it be that when I sent out the packages, if I was including three chapters off the bat or anything else more than a query letter, I said something to the effect of “as per the guidelines listed for your agency on your website/the RWA website/Jeff Herman’s Guide/whatever, I’ve enclosed…” so that, should it NOT be what the agent wanted , they at least knew that I wasn’t pulling it out of my butt (and they could go correct the info if wrong).
I see blog posters saying that agents should “streamline what they want” because it’s too hard to keep track of what agent wants sample pages and what agent wants a synopsis and blah blah blah. It’s hard? Really? Maybe it’s my background in waitressing, because I think that’s no harder than keeping a list of who is drinking the rum and diet and who wants ginger ale.
I still have my list. It took less than an hour to make a list of twenty agents, their submission guidelines and what they were looking for. It’s not hard at all. It took slightly longer to research each agent and see what kind of things they were selling and to whom. It’s no more difficult to find out what the agent wants sent than to jot down the address to which they want it sent.
Could it be that I didn’t call them, that I didn’t hassle them, and that I didn’t expect them to make an exception for my query, because it was “too hard” to keep all those different agents straight?
Yes, I know that there are some agents who fully admit that they only respond if they are interested. Usually, they admit these things on their submission guidelines. If you want a response, even if it’s negative, then don’t query these people. There are plenty of agents to query if you do want a response. I personally got responses from 22 of them.
Yesterday was sucktastic. It started out bad, then got worse at every turn. I need a little R&R. And to step away from any and all serious topics on the blog. To that end:
Thirteen of My Favorite Television Episodes
(in no particular order)
1. Noel, The West Wing, Season 2. It’s Christmas Time at the White House, but Josh is feeling more PTSD than jolly. Adam Arkin guests.
2. Dopplegangland, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 3. Willow and a newly human Anya tear a hole through to a parallel universe and bring back vamp Willow, who proceeds to wreak havoc… deliciously. Contains one of my favorite Buffy moments: “Dude… check out your girlfriend.” “Get Buffy. Do it now.”
3. A Trip to the Dentist, Veronica Mars, Season 1. Veronica tells us she was raped in the pilot. In this episode, we find out what happened, and we do it Rashomonically. Also one of the coolest denounements I’ve ever seen to a season arc, and both the scene at the Kanes and the scene with Wallace, “So this is why I don’t talk about stuff,” is phenomenal.
4. Leave it to Beaver, Veronica Mars, Season 1. Wow. Wowowowowow. Except for the last scene. HATE how long I had to wait to find out who was at that door!
5. Fear Itself, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4. My first Buffy episode, and still one of my favorites. Odd because part of the reason it works is because they’d spent three seasons building up these characters and their fears, but it also worked for me as an introduction to them. It’s Halloween on campus, which means scary fun in Buffy world.
6. Hush, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4. Now this is good television. Who else can do a (mostly) silent episode? Brilliant!
7. Restless, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 4. Some people thought this an anticlimactic end to the season. I thought it was perfect, and a great example of how dreams can work in fiction. (Oddly, though I maintain that Season 3 was the best season, most of my favorite episodes are from season 4. I think 3 had the best arc, though.)
8. In This White House, The West Wing, Season 2. Leo hires Ainsley Hayes. Has one of the best openings and best closings of a television episode ever.
9. Eye of the Beholder, The Twilight Zone (season unknown). A disfigured woman gets plastic surgery to look like everyone else.
10. Squeeze, The X-Files, Season 1. Creep. Eeee.
11. Piper Maru/Apocrypha, The X-Files, Season 3. I don’t think this is cheating, as it’s really one big episode. A huge chunk of mytharc, too, for a starved audience! And plenty of Alex Krycek, who was always one of my favorite characters.
12. It May Look Like a Walnut, The Dick Van Dyke Show (season unknown). Man, I love this episode. Do you know it was written by Carl Reiner?
13. To Serve Man, The Twilight Zone (season unknown). Corny as all get out, but I love it anyway. Who doesn’t love this episode?
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Note from yesterday’s blog: Nothing in the blog post entitled “pants on fire” is meant sarcastically. Just FYI. Sometimes people can’t tell when I turn it off, and I am capable of humor sans sarcasm.
I have been participating in a lot of conversations about worldbuilding in sff/paranormal stories recently. Some are with people who have invented several worlds or hit bestseller lists with them or have studied them, professionally, under the auspices of grants and such, or taught them, professionally, at writing workshops with names that make eyebrows go up because they are so damn impressive. They have all manner of techniques and rules and guidelines and rants, though none, perhaps, quite as amusing as the friend who said to me, “seven rules and a monster.” Some discussion are with newbies, or even concerned bystanders, like me.
For instance, last night, Sailor Boy and I were watching Return of the Jedi for maybe the hundred and fifty-third time and it suddenly occurred to me, more than two decades since my Star Wars-nuts parents first introduced me to the adventures of the Skywalker clan, that the whole lightning-bolt zappage the Emperor does is kind of out of left field. The other rules surrounding those adept at The Force (telepathy/mind control, television, telekinesis, speed, agility, and light-saber making/wielding), are clearly laid out early in the film, and though they use it in different ways (you never see Obi-Wan strangling someone telekinetically), Darth Vader doesn’t bust out some weird Force ability to show how the Dark Side powers are different. So the hand-zap thing is a bit weird, in that it doesn’t follow the rest of the rules we’ve been understanding about The Force. (And don’t get me started about how it’s all shot to hell in the new films. I think I’ve mentioned before about how SB and I plan to raise our children in a household that believes that there are only three Star Wars films, and they were made in the 70s and 80s.)
It is musings like this that led me to start considering worldbuilding and my views on it. Though I’m not writing fantasy/science fiction/paranormal, I read and watch a great deal of it, which makes me a definite armchair enthusiast. (I am reminded of a recent review that I read of SSG where the reviewer commented on my several LOTR references. What this reviewer didn’t know is that several more Harry Potter references had been winnowed from the draft.) SB has his geek card in order as well. I’m very glad we live in the Age of the Geek, is all I’m saying.
Anyway, I’ve decided that, as with everything else (stop laughing!), I must have very strong opinions about worldbuilding, I’m just not sure of what all of them are. I do know a few of them, however, so I’ll start there, and when I think up more of my rules, I’ll add to them. Think of this, then, as a work in progress. (And keep in mind also, that I am writing this from a diner near my home, as there was a fire in my building this evening and we all got kicked out.)
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #1: There must be rules.
Vampires are allergic to sunlight. People who know how to use The Force can move things with their minds. You can use magic to do anything but bring people back from the dead (this appears to be one of the few rules in the Harry Potter universe). “There can be only one.” I don’t care what the rules are, and I don’t care if the reader knows them all — or any of them. Maybe figuring out the rules is part of the fun of reading. (Wait, I take that back. Tell the reader at least one or more of the rules. Give the poor guy a toehold!) But the writer had better know the rules. Which leads me to…
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #2: Break the rules only at great peril.
If you break the rules, you’d better prepare us, and you’d even more better have a damn good reason. If your rule is that your characters can enter a computer game and have all kinds of neato special abilities but never break all the rules of the game, then you need to follow that rule — unless your characters spend half their time rhapsodizing about a promised messiah who will be known by his ability to break all the rules. If you do that, the audience will be waiting with bated breath to see if that Neo kid starts breaking rules that the “story rules” say he shouldn’t. (Actually, in this case, I guess you could say that the existence of The One is more like another rule.) If your rule is that in every generation, there is only one vampire slayer and another vampire slayer isn’t called unless the first one dies, then if you want another vampire slayer, you’d better kill the first one, and if you want a whole army of vampire slayers, then you’d better spend quite a while explaining how you are going to accomplish that without some kind of Flatliners set-up going on with Buffy and Faith. If you start breaking the rules willy nilly, at will and without a good reason (like the whole plot of the book depends on it), or without preparing the reader for the break, you’re going to lose us, and we’re going to decide that you don’t have any rules after all. And what is rule #1?
Diana’s Personal Worldbuilding Rule #3: There must be a reason.
This one covers a lot of ground. In fact, I’d combine it with the one above, since a lot of that has to do with the whole “must be a reason to break the rules” thing, but that one also has the preparation element, and the “what happens if you don’t” issue, so let’s move on. There must be a reason for the otherworldly elements in your world, if only because you must have a reason to mention every thing you mention. There has to be a reason you made them vampires. If not, why aren’t they just men, or elves, or ageless liver-eating mutants who live in air ducts? If there’s a magic wishing well on the princess’s property, she’d better, at some point, do something more than draw water from it. This is not unlike my favorite advice from Chekov about the gun on the wall. There HAS to be a reason. There has to be a reason that you made the choice you did. Sometime in the future, I will be discussing this in great detail. And there must be a reason that your magical element has the rules it does. It doesn’t have to be a good reason. Maybe the vampires in your book are not allergic to garlic, but you wrote that in because you really like the idea of Dracula working in a pizza parlor and taking a nip of the guests who’ve had too much chianti, which, naturally, wouldn’t be possible if they couldn’t deal with garlic. In the movie The Lost Boys, there’s a rule that says there are “half-vampires” who have all the qualities of vampires but don’t become full-fledged until they kill someone, and can be turned back if you find the head vampire and kill him. This is a weird and unusual vampire rule (though not entirely unlike Mina Harker’s experiences in Dracula, where she is freed from her trance only after the death of Dracula), but is very important to the plot, since the main character is one of these half-vamps, and so is his sexy girlfriend.
That’s all I can think of right now, but I’m sure I’ll come up with more.
On Thursday, I got my editorial revisions for SSG2 (title redacted, ’cause I’m tricky like that). In a stunning coincidence, it’s exactly the same length as the letter my editor sent for SSG. It’s also a thing of beauty, and a joy for-evah! My editor, whom I love and adore and rarely, if ever, want to smack (except for that note about page 159), is quite the talented creature. Cute, too. And she shines a flashlight onto all the edges of my manuscript that are sticking up and looking rough and patchy. I’ve been smoothing out and sewing up for a couple of days now, which is right around the time when I’ve done all the ‘easy’ stuff and am trying to procrastinate my way out of the hard stuff.
And for that, I blog. I was thinking today, as I perused my gorgeous editorial letter (which I cherish and revere), that I’ve been doing more coloring since becoming a writer than I have since kindergarten. First, there’s my whole color-coded plot board. And then there’s the editorial letter (of which I am quite smitten), which I have attacked with a set of multi-colored highlighters. I have this whole highlighting code worked out that would probably scare you all. I wanted to take a picture of my editorial letter (which I respect and admire) all marked up, but I can’t figure out a way to do so in which I’d preserve the marking and color style but obscure the letters. And the letters must remain obscured. Spoilage, you know.
Anyhow, now you all think I’m an anal freakazoid. I’m really not. I’m actually a slob. But I’ve found that it helps when it comes to revising to break the editorial letter (which I appreciate and esteem) down into lists of easy stuff to do, hard stuff to do, and stuff you don’t want to do and are going to argue about with your editor, no matter how cute and smart and wonderful she is. Plus, doing all the easy stuff first makes you think you’ve made real progress, and if there’s hard stuff coming, at least it’s reduced to a page or two of hard stuff, rather than 10 pages of all kinds of stuff.
And of course, “easy” is relative. So far from this editorial letter (which I tolerate and obey), I’ve made a few plot-sweeping structural changes with relative ease, whereas I’ve been messing around for three days on a line that should take about two seconds to fix, but requires some delicacy. You see, the character is lying. Now, when you are writing first person POV, and another character is lying, but your POV character doesn’t know it, it’s a little tricky to get that across. Especially since, in this case, the lie is about ten times as believable as the truth. Especially since, in this case, even the liar isn’t fully aware of the lie. Denial, baby. Ain’t just a river in Egypt.
But a lot of characters lie to Amy in this book. And a lot of lies that were told in the last book are now revealed for the lies they were. So being able to suss out the lies is pretty important. In general, it’s made me think about what the choice to write in first POV means. I think 1st person POV creates a layer of trust in the reader that may not be there in third person. You readers of romance know what I’m talking about. It’s the whole, “Oh, he’s the most infuriating man, she thought. She wouldn’t marry him if he was the last man on earth!” kind of thing. I feel like you wave her off in third, but if, if first person, she says that some guy bugs the crap outta her, you’re going to believe her. And if she doesn’t act suspicious about someone’s behavior, then that behavior may not be viewed as suspicious. (This is why unreliable narrators are so difficult to write well.)
There are certain tricks that directors use to signal a lying character. Not meeting eyes, halting speech, emphatic repetition… all of these are usually a huge red flag to the viewer that the person is lying. The same could be said for the reader. However, if the person is relating the event says, “She wouldn’t meet my eyes,” and that person is as with it as Amy, she probably knows just as well as the reader that the person is lying. So, in order to get it across to the reader but not the POV character, you have to mask it. If the liar becomes suddenly very busy with tying their shoe or something, then the reader can be all, “oh, they’re refusing to look at Amy,” while Amy can be spending her time wondering why they didn’t just double-knot their laces.
And, with any luck, the truth will get across. The original draft had the halting in it, but that apparently was not enough to signal the lie lie lie. Possibly because the character was out of breath and it came across as panting. I may have this character’s jeans spontaneously combust. That ought to do it, don’t you think?
This insight into a writer’s editorial process was brought to you by the letters K and B and the number 13.
Today, I celebrate Banned Books Week over at Romancing the Blog. Go; visit.
I’d also like to canvas for recommendations of category romances. A friend is looking to expand her horizons and learn more about the form and the opportunities it provides for story. (Yes, it was one of those “…awful Harlequins…” “What do you mean? There are plenty of good ones…” “Really? Tell me more!” conversations.)
So, dig through your keeper stack, bring out your favorite category romances*, and tell us all about them** in the comments section***.
* Category romance novels: (sometimes called series romance novels) the short paperback romance novels published by Harlequin/Silhouette (and, at other times, Bantam Loveswept, Zebra Bouquet, and others) that are published as part of a specific, clearly delineated line. They are usually shorter and cheaper than “single title” romances. A certain number of books are published in each category every month, and have a limited shelf life before being replaced by next month’s category offerings. Most category lines have specific guidelines as to setting, characterization, type of conflict, level of sensuality, etc.
** Much as I’d love to hear about your fave Danielle Steele novel or the latest offering from Christine Feehan, I’m really looking here for CATEGORY ROMANCE recommendations only. How can you tell if it’s a category romance? The covers are mostly all one color and look a hell of a lot like the covers of at least three other books that month (as well as like the books every month), they have a number on the spine, and they are published under a program with a name like the following: Harlequin Romance, Harlequin Presents, Harlequin Intrigue, Harlequin Superromance, Harlequin American, Harlequin Temptation, Harlequin Blaze, Harlequin Duets, Harlequin Flipside; or Silhouette Special Edition, Silhouette Intimate Moments, Silhouette Yours Truly, Silhouette Romance, Silhouette Desire; or Mills & Boone Modern, Traditional, Sexy, Extra; etc. featured very prominently on the cover — often more prominently than the name of the book.
*** If it’s a BANNED category romance, then it’s especially welcome. 
Paraphrased from a question:
I could *never* work with something as structured as your plotting board. I’m not that logical a person, I guess… Your description of how each scene should touch on several plot points… was so super-organized it freaked me out. I mean, when I write, I just write. I don’t think specifically about ‘does this scene incorporate plot line a, b, & c?’ …Made me feel like an unorganized loser who would never get published b/c I don’t have some magic system for organizing my book before I write.
Organization works for me because my brain is very analytical and a big fan of structure. I’m pretty sure it comes from my years studying Literature in college. In my classes, not only did I spend a lot of time dissecting narratives in an effort to divine the method by which the author had achieved his (and, much more rarely, HER) end, but I also spent a lot of time writing papers where I had to very carefully map out what arguments I was making and how they were being made. Ever since I turned my focus from literary analysis to literary creation, I’ve been drawn to methods that have the same focus on structure and analysis. I’m a big fan of a lot of screenwriting tips, since they, much moreso than novel-writing, it seems, like to focus on structure. I’ve written before about how much I like the four-act storytelling structure. One of my top five pieces of writing advice is Chekov’s gun (”If there’s a gun on the wall in the first act, it must go off by the third,”) and its logical converse of if you’re gonna have that gun go off in the third act, you’d better have put it on the wall right up front.
Which is a long and rather unfortunately pretentious way of saying that it works for me.
And because I love structure, and because I like playing with structure, I’m super-chuffed when people notice, as in this Romance Divas review: “This is a very smart story. I don’t mean in the sense that it’s written with thirteen syllable words hardly anyone understands, but the story is exceptionally well-structured.”
Woo hoo! Okay, moving on before I get unbearable…
Other people are more organic. I have a very good friend whose book is out next month, Jana De Leon, who says that if she knew “who dunnit” before she wrote, then how could it be suspenseful for the audience? That would drive *me* crazy. But we both publish. I think Nora Roberts makes it up as she goes along, too. You can’t get a much better advocate for flying into the mist than that.
I would never tell anyone how they should write a book. there are as many ways as there are books. I can only talk about how I write a book, and if someone is having a problem, suggesting options that I know have worked for me. The way Jana writes her books scares the crap out of me, but I can’t argue with the results. And when I was first starting out, I tried several different methods to make sure that what I thought was working for me was indeed working. If I tried writing it without planning it out in advance, I stalled pretty quickly.
People who don’t plan stuff out in advance are often called “pantsters” because they are writing by the seat of their pants. (I really hate that term, by the way.) Pantsters have told me that if they plot in advance, they feel like the book has already been written and they can’t get excited about writing it. This doesn’t happen for me at all! While I’m writing, I find myself getting more and more excited about hte groundwork I’m laying for future scenes. And when I finally reach the payoff, the big reveal, the big love scene, the big chase scene, the big climax, I’m so pumped because I’ve been waiting for it to happen for however many pages!
I have no idea what correlation this preference has with personality types. For instance, Jana and I are very similar in a lot of other ways, have a lot of the same approaches to the industry side of the business (this is why we are friends), and I think she is, in general, more analytical than me. Certainly, her day job involves a hell of a lot more math and logic! But we write our stories completely differently. Which is why I can say without any reservation that I don’t think the writing method matters. If you’re having trouble, try something different, by all means. But don’t think that you’re ever a “loser” becuase you approach storytelling differently than another writer.
I find that the plotting board helps me in revision. It especially helped when I was wriitng romance and could color code the scene according to whose POV we were in. I would notice that I’d spend a hundred of pages in one POV and knew I had to go back and switch it up. (In passing, it’s one of the things I really like now about writing in one POV.)
Regarding the “several plot points per scene” — I don’t really think about it when writing the scene, but when I’m plotting, and when I’m revising, I definitely do. In the early stages of my writing career, I spoke to a lot of people who would talk about cutting numerous pointless scenes from their manuscript, which surprised me. I try not to write those scenes to start with. Having plotted the book out in advance, I usually know before writing them that they aren’t going to work. But braiding plot elements came organically to me. I think a lot of writers come to the craft with certain things we natively understand and can do well, and certain things we’ve got to learn from scratch, and a big challenge is understanding that some people are going to be naturally brilliant at something we have a hard time with and vice versa.
So someone else could be naturally brilliant at laying the groundwork for gun use, and when they get to that third act, they’ll find that lo, there was the gun on the wall the whole time! Me, I gotta plan that shit out in advance. And sometimes, I have to go back and revise and make sure it was there. The few times when something like that comes together during the process of writing it usually shocks the hell out of me. It happened a couple of times during the writing of SSG2 — which is getting closer to having a title — and every time, it was like my subconscious had engineered some parallel (because it always comes down to structure) or narrative flourish to fit in with a motif without me even realizing it ws going to be there. It was fun.
Still, I could never write a whole book like that.
Short question, long answer today:
Do you have any advice on the best way for an unpubbed to market their work?
Writer’s lore is filled with stories about sneaky tips and tricks that led to huge books deals. The writer who hooked up with her agent when she served him coffee at Starbucks. The writer who landed a book deal as a result of sitting next to an editor on a plane. The one who dressed up like a duck and went to BEA. The one who was a popular fan-fiction writer and landed a three book deal. They’re all incredibly sexy-sounding and they make good stories, much like the “cute meet” makes a good story in a romantic comedy movie.
But most people don’t meet their partners when they trip into them on the streets of Paris or because they heard them lamenting about their lost wives on the radio and tracked them down like appalling blonde stalkers, or even because they bet their co-workers they could make a woman fall in love with them in ten days while the partner’s coworkers bet her that she couldn’t drive a man away in that amount of time… no. Most people meet their partners at school, or at work, or at a church singles mixer, or are introduced by a mutual friend. It’s the same thing for book marketing. The best way is the most common.
You send a query to an agent. You send the book requested from the query. You accept an offer of representation, and then you wait.
Despite all the sexy-sounding extras in my sale story (i.e., Marley pitching it at a conference, the auction, etc.) I actually sold my book in the most conventional way. I sent a query, the agent requested the book. She read it, offered representation, sent it out to publishers, and sold it to one. The rest of that stuff is superfluous.
So, how to market your work:
Step 1: Write a really good book. Revise it until it’s even better. (This is the hardest step.)
Step 2: Research agents. Make a list of books you like like yours that have been published recently and find out who the agents are. It’s important that they’ve been published recently. Otherwise those agents may be dead or have moved on to other fields. There are many ways to find out who the agents are. Sometimes, in the acknowledgements, it says something like, “and to my agent, Soand So, my eternal thanks…” Other times, on the author’s website it says, “for rights information, contact…” Other times, on the publishers website, it says the same thing. If all else fails, google the author’s name and ‘agent’ or ‘represented by’ and you might get lucky.
Step 2b: Get a list of agents. They’ve got books about these, and websites that list good agents, like agentquery.com and Preditors and Editors. Most of these lists say what each agent is looking for, and sometimes they even list who the agent’s clients are. Don’t stop there! Cross reference these lists with more information about agencies that represent work like yours. Most agents have websites (not all though, and that’s cool, too). Go to the website and look at what they’ve been selling recently. You want to see a bunch of recent sales to publishers you’ve heard of. (Keep in mind that some publishers have imprints that you may never have heard of. For instance, Razorbill is a relatively new YA imprint at huge publisher Penguin Putnam. If you haven’t heard of the imprint, google it.)
Step 2c: Another way to see what these agents have been selling recently is to go to a place called Publisher’s Marketplace. A lot of agents list their deals there. It costs 20 bucks a month to be a member at Publisher’s Marketplace, but for free, once a week they’ll send you a sample of the sales listed. Every sale says who the writer was, a short blurb about the genre and topic of the book, what editor/house bought it, what agent sold it, and often, a ballpark estimate of how much they sold it for. Even if you only join for one month, it’s the best 20 bucks you’ll spend. I advocate joining PM before dropping 20 bucks on a print book about agents, even. because if you are a member, you can search the deal database. If you’re writing romance, you can search under “genre: romance” and you’ll see every single deal reported in the market. You can instantly see who is selling and buying what. You can see that an agent like Roberta Brown tends to sell a lot of erotic romance and an agent like Jenny Bent tends to sell a lot of women’s fiction and so on. You can search under agnet’s names and see what they’ve sold. You can search under a publisher’s name and see what they’ve bought. The list goes on and on. I really love Publisher’s Marketplace. (Caveat: Many agents do not post their deals there, and some agents who do don’t post all their deals. So that’s why you should research in several places.)
Step 2d: What you are looking for in an agent at the query level: A person who has recently sold books like yours (i.e., in your general genre), by several authors to a variety of established, royalty-paying publishers. Bonus points for agents who have clients in a variety of levels in their career (debut authors, midlisters, bestsellers). But that’s not necessary. Some agents are big gun agents and work with established stars. Some are just starting out and so are their clients. Both are legitimate. Beware of agents who only have one sold client. Beware of agents who only sell to one publisher. Be especially wary of agents who have no information to be found anywhere (and remember you’re looking very hard in a bunch of places and googling your heart out) about books they’ve sold, or do not mention them on their website. I have yet to hear any legitimate reason for an agent keeping the names of projects she has sold a secret. Legitimate agents have no qualms crowing about their clients’ successes.
Step 3: Now that you have lots of information about agents, make a list of about 10-20 of them that you think you’d like, and query them. Make sure that you are querying them according to their guidelines, even if they each have different guidelines. Their guidelines are usually available on their website, and if they don’t have a website, use the guidelines listed with their address and listing in the book or on a website like agentquery.com. Some agents like e-queries. Others don’t. Some like to see the first three chapters right off the bat. Some want sample pages. Some will let you query other agents at the agency at the same time and some hate that. DO EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. Don’t debate it. Don’t send them something else and tell them they are better off for that. Why would you want to start out your relationship with a fight?
Step 3b: Tips for a good query:
1. Let them know you’ve done your research. Not by saying “I’ve done my research” but by saying something like, “I know you represent Gena Showalter’s paranormal romances and I thought my paranormal romance novel would be a good fit on your list.” There are lots of variations on this. If they have a client whose books you love, say so. they like hearing that. It signals that you two have similar taste. They, too, love their clients’ work.
2. Say the name of your book, its ballpark length (rounded to 5,000 words) and its genre. By genre, I mean is it a romance, or a YA, or a science fiction, or a literary novel, or a satire, or an inspirational historical romance? And yes, I know that not all of these are “genres.” Semantics.
3. Say what your book is about. And by that I mean say who your protagonist is, what kind of situation she’s in, why this is a problem, and what she has to do to get out of it/fix it/save the world/fall in love… whatever. Read a lot of back covers on books. They do this very well.
Step 4: When your query results in a request for the manuscript, SEND IT IN. A lot of people forget this step. When it results in a rejection, don’t argue with them about it. Write something else. If your query only results in rejections (and you’ve asked around, and the query isn’t the problem), skip to Step 7.
Step 5: When you receive an offer of representation, research the agent even more. This is the time to worry about all that little niggly stuff that wasn’t important during the query process. Talk to the agent’s clients. Ask around in your writing groups. Talk to the agent about her process, about her ideas for you and your book. Look at the contract. And what’s more, talk to them about YOUR ideas, your needs, what you’re looking for. Some people look for different things. Some people want agents who work with the clients to get a proposal ready. Others just want the agent to sell the book and leave the editing to the editors. Be open-minded, but don’t be a pushover. You may find that, after talking and researching, that the person isn’t a good fit for you after all. You may learn a lot from their response to your questions. Don’t feel bad about turning down an offer if you’re getting a bad vibe. A bad agent is worse than no agent. I know this is a lot easier to say than to do, but it’s still the truth.
Step 6: Let your agent send the book out. Some agents keep you very updated on the process. Others give you occasional updates if you ask. This is an example of the kind of thing you want to talk about before agreeing to representation. Everyone has different needs and everyone works differently. I have a friend who asks her agent not to tell her about rejections, only about offers. I’m too much of a control freak to do soemthing like that, but you see how everyone works differently?
Step 7: Write another book. Writing another book is a good idea because that way, if you don’t get anywhere with the first book, you can always start sending the new one out. If someone rejects your book, but asks to see something else you’ve written, you’ll have it! If someone does want to buy your book, then you’ll have something else to send them and maybe get a two-book deal! Go, you!
Step 8: (If you have an agent, you may want to discuss this step with them in advance and see what they think about it.) Enter writing contests, go to conferences, and pitch your work to editors whenever you have an opportunity. Conferences are a good chance to meet other writers and editors, hear about opportunities that you or your agent may not be aware of (say, a certain publisher is opening a brand new imprint and is looking for books just like yours!) Contests can also be a great opportunity to get your work in front of editors or even get a book contract (as with the American Title or Malice Domestic contest). A contest like the RWA Golden Heart contest is very prestitigous, and having the words Golden Heart finalist in your pitch material will generate excitement about your book. Most agents are cool with their clients entering the Golden Heart, even if some ask their clients to stay away from other contests because they don’t want to “muddy the waters” at the place they are submitting to. But keep in mind that entering contests is NOT submitting your manuscript. Winning contests is NOT publishing your book (unless, as mentioned above, it’s the American Title or somesuch). Do not let contest entering distract you from writing and submitting your book. Do not worry so much about making your book fit contest guidelines that you only polish the first chapter or three chapters and let the rest of the your book languish. But there are many examples of books sales through contest wins, so it’s not to be dismissed.
Step X: If all else fails, and you can’t get an agent with your books, query editors directly. Going into the “slush pile” is a longshot goal in getting your book published (longer than with contests or conference pitches to the editor) but it does happen. Sometimes agents are stupid and only editors can see the brilliance. I only recommend going this route after you have exhausted your agent search, however, becuase if you do the editors first, and THEN get an agent, then the agent will have no place to send your book, because it will already have been rejected everywhere.
And that’s it.
Of course there are lots of other ways to market your book. The whole contest/meeting them at Starbucks/duck out fit at BEA thing. Of course. But you asked about the best way. And that’s what I think the best way is…
Today’s question:
I was reading your most recent blog post, and the last line caught my attention.
“if you want to be really safe, keep that stuff off the internet.”
(In short, what Paperback Writer is suggesting in the above-referenced blog post is a challenge to writers everywhere to put up an original story in ebook form for free download.)
I think it’s a great idea. Like PBW, I think that writing is the best advertisement for your writing. I know some people who “blog” in character to go along with their books, which is a similar construct. This challenge of PBWs is a marketing suggestion. People will read your free story/novella what have you, and then go buy your book. Her novella, it seems, will be set in the Darkyn vampire series she’s been publishing with NAL. I read the Darkyn books, so I’d like to read another story set in that universe. I don’t see a downside to this challenge at all. Free reading from great authors, and a fun marketing opportunity for the writers!
A few months ago, when I ran the Great Blog Voice Experiment (see right), a lot of the comments showed that people were excited to read the participants’ books. They were providing free content to the blog for the purposes of the experiment, but it helped get some buzz started about how wonderful these writers are (click on the GBVE links on the right to check out some of their stories). I think this will have a similar effect. Perhaps, any GBVE participants who were talking about expanding the snippets they wrote for the GBVE will do so as part of PBW’s challenge.
When I said “keep that stuff off the internet,” I was talking about writers who blog at length about their uncontracted ideas. Call me superstitious, but I don’t do it. I’ve spoken before about the “dark room” where it’s just me and my idea and no one gets their fingers into it until it’s been developed? Well, there’s a period beyond that, that we can think of as “backstage” where my crew can hear all about it (friends, agents, industry necessaries), but I’m not exactly opening the curtain while they are still buildign the set and working out choreography.
I have no problem with saying, “Here I am posting a free story I’ve written for my blog called Aloisius Tumble, the Most Celebrated Muffin Maker in all The Galaxy.” I am more circumspect about posting, “so I’ve got this idea I’m batting around about this guy… a baker, I think. Probably a futuristic. Haven’t been a lot of science fiction set in the world of the culinary arts. Got to put together a proposal though. Probably have him fall in love with some scrappy ship captain. I wonder what my agent will think…”
To me it’s the difference between Aloisius putting out a little tray with muffin crumbles and toothpicks and letting all the customers have a sample of muffin before purchase, and Aloisius letting any alien in the system (even the ones who might be opening their own pastry shop on the next moon over) come on back to his kitchen and watch him peeling Venutian puce berries and creaming butter.
 Those of you who have been waiting to grab a copy of Confessions of a Super Mom until it was available in paperback are in luck, because it’s out!
“Forget the laundry, forget the dishes. Escape into the world of Super Mom for a few hours…you’ll be glad you did. Melanie Lynne Hauser’s quirky characters sparkle brightly as a newly Swiffered floor, and her writing shines like freshly polished glass.”
-Meg Cabot
“Like its title character, this debut novel has a secret identity…it’s unexpectedly poignant and packs an emotional punch despite the cheery veneer… at the heart of this story is a narrative about a lonely, wronged woman who just wants to do right by her children and stand up to an uncontrollable world. Hauser slips in soliloquies on motherhood and womanhood that, though brief, are moving, showing us Birdie Lee’s heart and in that, the wishes and dreams of super moms everywhere. “
- Publishers Weekly
Birdie Lee is an average hard-working single mother of two teenagers, PTA lackey, and mild-mannered grocery clerk at the local Marvel Fine Foods and Beverages. One morning, while getting ready for work, Birdie is sidetracked by a stubborn Stain of Unusual Origin on her bathroom floor. Unable to let the stain get the best of her, she tries to annihilate it with every household product she can find - to no avail. Angry, hot, light-headed (and forgetting to turn on the exhaust fan), she makes one final desperate attempt to eradicate this vile, dastardly stain: she loads her Swiffer Wet Jet with every household cleanser she owns, aims, and fires…passes out.
When she awakes, life, as she knew it, will never be the same again. Suddenly endowed with super powers, Birdie - aka Super Mom - must learn to use the powers to save her town from an evil villian, while juggling teenagers, a smug ex-husband, a troubled friendship and the possibility of a second chance at love. Will she manage it? Will she battle the evil villian with one hand and patch up her teenaged daughter’s broken heart with the other? And most importantly - will she ever manage to fight crime while wearing high heels? Read CONFESSIONS OF SUPER MOM to find out!
 Melanie Lynne Hauser is a woman with an awesome sense of humor. Come on… how many people do you know who would pose for this publicity photo?
Her book has been optioned for a movie, and is soon to be followed up by the sequel, Super Mom Saves the World.
And if you haven’t been won over yet, try this irresistable first-page test:
Every superhero has an origin.
That’s what Martin says, and since he’s thirteen, short for his age, and somewhat of a geek, I’m tempted to believe him.
OK, so here goes-for the first time I am about to reveal…
The Origin of Super Mom. (That’s me.)
To tell the truth, it’s a little embarrassing. I wasn’t put into a rocket and sent to Earth by my parents just as my home planet exploded. I wasn’t given a special ring by visiting aliens. I wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider.
No, it wasn’t anything nearly so glamorous; my beginnings are quite humble. I was merely the innocent victim of a Horrible Swiffer Accident.
It all began on a bright, sunny Tuesday morning. Right away you can tell that this doesn’t fit in with other superhero origins, or so Martin says. Most origin stories take place at night, usually in a laboratory or a dark alley. And nearly all are accompanied by really dramatic thunderstorms.
But no. My story, my origin, began on a weekday morning during a commercial break for the Today show. On the floor. Of my bathroom.
If you’re a sucker for a good superhero yarn, this is the book for you…
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