Progress!

Hello after a long hiatus, campers! I trust that you have been keeping up the good work while I have been recovering from my car crash?

No time for a long-winded missive today, I’m afraid, but time enough to spread a bit of most excellent news: after many years of not-very-efficacious technical wrangling, we here at Author! Author! have at long last cracked the recalcitrant nut of restoring years and years of your comments. They shall be magically appearing on an archived post near you as the summer progresses.

How was this minor miracle wrought, you ask? Why, with a bang of the Publication Fairy’s wand, of course.

I am immensely relieved. Your comments and questions over the years not only enriched the Author! Author! community —- they provided the inspiration for some of my best posts. And series!

So please keep those questions coming, folks. As I have pointed out many times before and no doubt shall often again, no one is born knowing how books move from initial concept to bound book. Chances are, if you have wondered about something, others have, too.

As always, keep up the good work!

Sorry if the spam is putting anyone off — here’s how to get around it

My apologies to those of you kind enough to stop by recently — for the last couple of months, this site has been plagued by a highly persistent hacker. As you may have noticed, the top few posts have been displaying languages other than English. At first, simply deleting the posts seemed to do the trick; now, more draconian fixes seem to be required.

In the meantime, the hack does not seem to have affected the archived posts at all. If you click upon one of the months prior to October, 2017 on the list at right, you should be able to scroll to your heart’s content. The same holds true if you click on the headings on the category list.

I shall keep working on the other, of course. Keep up the good work!

Fast & Easy Conversion online

 

Digital documents from PDFs into Word with a few clicks. Our PDF-to-Word Converter has OCR engines, and that means you can convert your scanned PDFs into editable Word files. While you want to make changes to your PDF documents, just visit our free PDF online converter and transform your files to an editable format in seconds. Fortunately, you will make changes to your PDF by directly converting it into a word file using our word to pdf converter online.

To open your PDF file without converting it into a Word document, simply open up the file directly where you stored it (for example, double-click on your PDF file in the Documents folder). You should have usage of Microsoft Word (but you still need to get a file to be Word-formatted), you can convert it using Google Docs as well. In case your file is stored in the cloud, you can click Dropbox or Google Drive icons to import the PDF to convert.

You can also convert PDFs from Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, Gmail, Box, and OneDrive to editable Microsoft Word documents. Fast software and advanced conversion technologies let you turn PDF texts, forms, and tables into editable Word documents.

Once your files are converted to an editable Word documents, you can make necessary changes without having difficulties. The PDF to Docx converter available at DupliChecker givsera you to convert your file into an editable Word document without the hassle.

With the WPS PDF to Word Converter, you can upload batches of files, but your converted files are sent via email, so you will have to supply an email address in order to really get your documents. This free PDF to Word Converter is made for Windows, and it will spare you the issues related to lengthy uploads or download times, which are usually seen with different online tools. With the WPS PDF to Word Converter, you can select pages that you would like to convert, arrange them in any way that you would like, and export a fresh document in a variety of formats, all while keeping the formatting and layout intact.

Not merely is our conversion tool free, online, and available anytime you will need it, but we also let users convert up to 2 extra files monthly, free of charge. There is no need to type out every word yourself; you can translate a whole PDF into Word in just seconds using our PDF-to-Doc Converter. The Best PDF To Word Converter Our PDF Converter is the best option for your file change needs, whether you require to convert your PDF into a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, a PowerPoint, or perhaps a PNG or JPG.

Our online services preserve the formatting of the files you upload, and we deliver quality PDF-to-Word conversions. Once you make changes in your transformed Word file, you can convert it back again to PDF again using our Word to PDF tool and protect it using PDF Locker Tool.

Once you are able to create an SSH tunnel account

 

Your IP will be included with the information for the SSH account. Unlike some other free SSH sites, where you have to make certain you copy down the details (username, password, hostname, IP address, port number, expiration date) somewhere (or on a notebook), servers keep your account details. server is one of the very most powerful tools out there, where you will not have to convert the hostname of any SSH Account into an Ip.

With this website, you will get free ssh ssl with complete access and a faster connection. If you don’t own an SSH Account, create a free SSH account, and you will be taken to a signup page. You can also follow this tutorial to make a FREE Premium account at any SSH site. There are plenty of SSH websites that you can create and set up in your VPN application.

Since creating a secure shell connection requires both client and the server components, you should ensure that they are installed on your local machine and your remote one, respectively. Now that you are able to create a interconnection to your server using Secure Shell, you should take several additional steps to enhance your SSH security. Use various strategies to restricting usage of SSH on your server, or use services that block anyone aiming to use brute force methods to access your server.

For users used to working on graphical desktop environments using virtual network computing (VNC), you can fully encrypt connections using secure shell tunneling. If you’re not by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), connecting over RDP is significantly less secure than using SSH, when you are exposed to the Internet directly. SSH is a secure connection network, and if you work with that network, will produce an option for authenticating a remote user before hooking up to the network. A secure connection on a non-trusted network is made between your SSH client and SSH server.

You can also hook up to a remote server through SSH tunnels from a Windows machine using PuTTY. To connect to an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Linux instance using SSH from Windows, complete the steps in Connecting to a Linux instance from Windows using PuTTY.

I would like to add new user accounts that are capable of connecting to my Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Linux (Amazon EC2) instance using SSH. The service account can now manage its SSH keypair, and it can hook up to a selected target instance using SSH. In this tutorial, a service account generates a brand new key match for each and every SSH connection that it creates, but you can adjust that to work on a schedule that best fits your applications needs.

Call the create_ssh_key solution to create a momentary SSH key for the service account this tutorial, and add a public key to the service account with a timer that you can specify. The create_ssh_key method also takes in a expiration value, indicating just how long the open public key remains valid. If your public key SSH file has some other name from that in the sample code, change the name of the file to install the configuration you are currently using.

Use the chmod command to switch the.ssh/authorized_keys files permissions to 600. Changing the data permissions limits reading or writing and then new_user. When connecting to SSH on either server IP, the settings can be changed in server according to which user has been used.

Next, create and commence the application which can SSH in one instance to the other. You use the service account to give your iphone app SSH access, which app will connect in one inposition to a new via SSH. Then, an SSH server connects to the actual application servers — typically, those are either on a single machine, or at the same datacenter, as the SSH server.

Whenever you try to connect to a Windows server, you must supply the username that is valid for the account that you are employing to achieve remote access. Before you are able to use the GitHub CLI to add a SSH key to your account, you must authenticate with the GitHub CLI. Because your source instance is associated with a service account, Cloud Client Libraries for Python are able to use your applications default credentials to authenticate as something account, also to use roles you granted that service account previously. To conclude, if you are hoping to understand how to create a SSH Account, convert the hostname into IP Addresses (optional), and pass the account details into your HTTP User Application, this post is for you.

Premium SSH & VPN accounts with High-quality servers For our Superior SSH accounts, our servers are employing SSDs which should have better performance. We can enhance your data security in your computers while you are accessed on internet, the SSH account is similar to an intermediate of your net connection, the SSH will give you the encryption for any data you read, the new one will send to the other server. SSH also offers a way of protecting the results traffic for virtually every given application using Port Forwarding, essentially tunneling any TCP/IP port through SSH.

In the navigation menu, find the service & tap -> Free SSH Tunnel. Another way to check on whether your OpenSSH server is installed effectively and accepting connections is to try running the command ssh localhost in the Terminal Prompt once again.

Bagaimana Cara Memilih Judi Slot Online?

 

Pikirkan website web kami serupa tempat bagi orang2 yang suka tampil togel. Anda karet pemain memiliki kedudukan utama dalam film kami. Tim abdi hanyalah tindakan pendukung dalam permainan judi togel online. Itu sebabnya kami melaksanakan semuanya untuk Anda. Apa yang abdi lakukan adalah mencoba untuk memenuhi semata permintaan Anda begitu mencoba untuk menjalankan tren lotre diseluruh dunia termasuk vendor lotre online. Ide kami adalah meluluskan Anda informasi sisi termasuk fitur luar biasa, bonus, keandalan dsb.

Informasi di situs kami berasal dari kepandaian kami sendiri beserta permainan tebak poin atu togel khusus dan Agen Pertaruhan Slot atau dari penelitian terperinci abdi. Kami berjanji untuk memberi Anda informasi yang berguna, akurat, dan relevan. Abdi mega fafa di sini untuk membantu Anda pada pencegahan penipuan dan menikmati pengalaman dalam permainan togel Dikau sepenuhnya.

Tetapi kami pula membutuhkan tanggapan Dikau hanya untuk mengasi bahwa kami menerima permintaan Anda. Serupa pemain togel, Dikau dapat mengandalkan abdi untuk membantu Dikau memilih yang terkemuka.

Ada sejumlah besar website web yang menyiapkan kesempatan untuk permainan togel yang cuma dengan sekali klik. Beberapa dari itu sah dan tenang untuk digunakan, akan tetapi beberapa dari mereka adalah fiktif, atau hanya penipuan. Kita mencoba untuk membuatnya lebih mudah untuk menemukan situs web judi togel yang tepat untuk Kamu melalui ulasan meresap kami tentang yang terbaik.

Kami telah merasai situs web togel yang sedang redut sekarang. Situs yang telah kami mainkan dan situs tempat Anda meminta informasi dari kami. Menyunggi penulis kami pula dapat membantu Dikau dengan saran, tata, dan tips tentang cara meningkatkan kesempatan Anda untuk memenangkan togel.

Dibawah ini Telaah dari Agen Pertaruhan Slot Online?

  • Apakah Judi Slot berlisensi

Itu adalah hal pertama yang kami cari ketika menelusuri situs web. Kami membaca vokal kecil untuk Kamu! – Kami meneropong halaman FAQ, pekarangan kebijakan Privasi, pekarangan Syarat dan Komitmen, pada dasarnya taman yang biasanya bukan dibaca oleh pemain.

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Bagaimana kelihatannya sebenarnya bisa dianggap banyak – kalau dibuat terburu-buru sebagai scam atau jika itu nyata.

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Kita memeriksa bagaimana peringkatnya, ketika domain terdaftar, apakah dilindungi sama penelusuran aman mbah google, perangkat lunak antivirus, dll.

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Itulah jalan terbaik untuk mengamati apa yang salah dan apa yang benar saat permainan judi togel on line.

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Abdi mencoba membaca seluruh pendapat Anda tentang Judi Slot yang tersisa sebagai komentar di web. Pemain lain dapat mencari ilmu dari pengalaman Dikau.

Penguasaan penipuan adalah tumpuan pertama dan tersohor kami. Bahaya tersebar luas di web dan peluang untuk menjadi korban penipuan lain cukup terlihat. Saat itulah kita melangkah. Kami menyampaikan Anda konten yang akurat, relevan, serta diteliti sehingga Kamu dapat membuat dekrit berdasarkan informasi serta tidak pernah terpenjara dalam penipuan. Tim kami menjamin pembaruan terkini dari bermacam-macam Agen Judi Slot online.

Keahlian tim abdi didasarkan pada intensitas timbal balik serta pengalaman bertahun-tahun di bermain game togel online. Kami ingin Anda tetap tenteram! Itu sebabnya abdi menyarankan Anda sering datang ke sini untuk memeriksa susunan Agen Judi Slot yang disetujui dan memilih yang tepat untuk Anda.

Agen togel terpecaya Apa Yang Terbaik untuk Dikau

Agen togel terpecaya Apa Yang Terbaik untuk Dikau

Agen togel terpecaya Apa Yang Terbaik untuk Kamu! Anda ingin mendapatkan karcis dalam permainan betting togel internasional itu, bukan? Kami bukan menyalahkan Anda, seperti kami! Berita baiknya adalah Anda siap dengan mudah berbuat itu tanpa harus melakukan perjalanan internasional. Masukkan kembali paspor Anda ke di laci dan dengarkan.

Agen togel terpecaya memberi Anda alat & kesederhanaan yang Dikau butuhkan untuk membeli tiket lotre di kenyamanan rumah Dikau. Jika Anda sudah biasa terbiasa dengan website web tersebut. Peluang Anda telah melaksanakan riset untuk menabalkan yang terbaik. Kemungkinannya adalah penelitian sudah mengembalikan puluhan website untuk dipilih.

Jadi distributor togel mana yang tepat untuk Dikau? Mungkin sulit untuk menjawab pertanyaan & Anda harus melaksanakan banyak penelitian. Jenis-jenis dalam permainan togel yang tersedia. Opsi pembayaran, opsi penarikan uang, fitur kesentosaan dan bonus semata harus diperiksa. Untungnya, kami telah bisa mempermudah tugas Dikau untuk mengetahui jalan dalam bermain judi togel online.

Alih-alih mencerap beberapa situs web dan membaca seluruh perbandingan agen togel itu. Anda sebaiknya mempertimbangkan untuk mengambil kuis Distributor togel terpecaya. Ini adalah salah wahid alat paling sedang dan paling akurat untuk pemilihan wakil togel terpecaya kawakan.

Tentamen ini berfokus pada sejumlah perilaku dan karakteristik yang dianggap penting oleh orang-orang yang berbeda. Tersebut berfokus pada pertanyaan seperti:

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Berdasarkan wejangan yang Anda berikan dalam kuis sempit ini, kami bakal dapat merekomendasikan agen togel yang memiliki layanan yang akan Anda sukai. Setelah Anda mendapatkan hasil, Anda pula akan diberikan daftar fitur. Karakteristik itu menunjukkan dengan tepat mengapa opsi ini adalah yang tepat untuk Anda.

Apa-apa yang Perlu Dikau Ketahui dalam Bermain Togel Online?

Agen togel terpecaya Terlisensi dan Kesohor

Kami tahu kalau sebagian dari Dikau masih berhati-hati dalam melakukan pembelian online. Percayalah, kami sedang sering mengalami perasaan serupa. Ini ialah alasan utama apa sebab semua agen togel yang termasuk dalam rekomendasi diuji serta memiliki reputasi. Tersebut sudah ada sepanjang bertahun-tahun, mengelola untuk membangun reputasi mereka dengan berfokus di layanan pelanggan kesakinahan atau bintang.

Saat ini, kuis merekomendasikan lima dari banyak agen togel online pada luar sana. Abdi bekerja keras untuk memverifikasi keaslian & keamanan peluang pemesanan tiket tersebut pra membuat keputusan konklusi dan memutuskan apakah akan merekomendasikan. Olehkarena itu kami terus berupaya memberi Anda cenderung kemungkinan untuk dipilih, daftar agen togel yang disetujui akan berpotensi tumbuh di waktu dekat.

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Barangkali itu saja uraian dari artikel abdi mengenai agen togel terpecaya terkemuka untuk Anda seleksi dalam memainkan game tebak angka online. Semoga dengan memilikinya informasi ini kian mudah untuk Dikau memenangkan permainan togel online. Selamat tampil dan semoga sukses!

Kupas Tuntas Sekarang Juga Superioritas Dari Situs magnum slot Terpercaya .

Kupas Tuntas Sekarang Juga Superioritas Dari Situs magnum slot Terpercaya .

Menyelisik sebuah kelebihan daripada situs permainan yang bersifat perjudian memang tidak akan tersedia habisnya. Yang dimana sekarang pula khasiat yang dimiliki sama situs tersebut pusat dibantu oleh / adanya teknologi yang semakin marak hendak kecanggihannya. Jadi tidak heran jika sebuah situs yang menampung permainan judi slot tersebut kini menyebrangi peningkatan yang bertambah terdepan. Dan lagi pula sekarang seakan hendak, kecanggihan teknologi penuh sekali masyarakat yang memanfaatkannya dalam taktik mendapatkan sebuah keuntungan dari permainan judi slot. Dimana waktu ini permainan yang disebutkan telah dapat dimainkan oleh seseorang di sebuah magnum slot menggunakan handphone maupun komputer pangku.

Serta artikel saat ini sesuai dengan judulnya, yang dimana akan mengupas hingga tuntas apa-apa saja yang sebagai kelebihan dari satu buah situs permainan bersifat perjudian tereebut. Yang dimana sekarang lagi banyak masyarakat yang tertarik dan rintang memainkan sebuah sajian slot di web kerprcayaannya. Oleh benih itu, untuk dikau jangan hanya pokok masuk dan bergabung saja pada satu situs yang kalian mengakui tersebut. Karena dikau juga perlu mengerti apa saja kelebihan yang dimiliki sama situs tersebut. Yang mana nantinya anda tidak merasakan sebuah kekecewaaan di tengah pusat permainan berlangsung.

Berikut Dibawah Ini Beberapa Superioritas Situs magnum slot Yang Perlu Dikau Kupas Tuntas

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Mendapatkan sebuah pelajaran atau yang kerap di sebut jackpot pada permainan judi slot ini ialah sebuah keinginan serta tujuan yang dimiliki oleh seseorang. Yang dimana perlu kamu ketahui juga di dalam sebuah Situs magnum slot nomor satu, kini telab keji memberikan sebuah jackpot besar besaran kira anda yang beruntung memenangkan perminaan judi slot tersebut secara skor yang semampai. Tetapi apakah kalau mendapatkan skor nista tidak mendapatkam jackpot?. Hal itu sangat tidak benar, yang dimanan meskipun kamu mendapatkan skor nista atau menengah, dikau masih bisa jadi hadiah dari situs tersebut akibat kelebihan yang diraih. Cuma saja yang yang mana jackpot atau parsel tersebut tidak sejumlah dari pemain yang berhasil menang dengan nilai atau skor tertinggi.

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“Good gravy!” and better responses to “So why isn’t your novel-in-progress published yet?”

While lazily re-reading the letters of Madame de Sévigné, as one so often does at this time of year, I stumbled across a particularly revealing review of a book released several centuries ago. Quoth the great lady:

This Morale of Nicole is admirable, and Cléopatre is going along nicely, but in no hurry; it is for odd moments. Usually, it is reading this that lulls me to sleep — the large print pleases me much more than the style.

That prompted me to cast a hurried eye at the calendar, as you may imagine. “Good gravy!” I exclaimed. “Aspiring writers across this great nation are relatively fresh from sharing Thanksgiving/Christmas/Epiphany/the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day dinner with otherwise charming relatives and friends who would, despite their doubtless admirable qualities,  know literature if it were floating in the cranberry sauce! It’s time to trot out my annual post-holiday balm for the souls of writers passing the mashed potatoes while trying to answer well-meant questions like ‘So you’re a writer? What have you published?’ and ‘What — you’re still working on that novel after all this time?’ Not to mention the ever-popular ‘Oh, you’re writing these days? I’d just assumed you’d given up on that dream.'”

And writers throughout the land groan with recognition. There, there, campers  — I’m sorry that you ventured over the river and through the woods without a few words of advance warning and encouragement.  Let’s work on bandaging those bruised feelings and girding our collective loins for the similar conversations that inevitably greet the aspiring writer.

Yet already, I sense the eyebrows of those new to treading the path literary shoot skyward. “But Anne,” bright-eyed neophytes everywhere murmur, “aren’t you borrowing trouble here? Everyone loves a dreamer, and everyone adores good writing; therefore, it follows as night the day that everyone must be just wild about a good writer’s pursuing the dream of publication. So what makes you think we need a pep talk prior to venturing into the no doubt warm and accepting bosoms of our respective families and/or dining rooms of our invariably supportive friends?”

Experience, mostly. In descending order of probability, a writing blogger, a fellow writer, and an editor provide the three most likely shoulders aspiring writers will dampen with their frustrated tears immediately after the festive eating and good fellowship cease. Heck, just after the first of the year, even relatively well-established authors often beard the heavens with their bootless cries.

“Why,” they demand of the unhearing muses and anybody else who will listen, “can’t Aunt Myra, bless her heart, stop asking me why she regularly sees worse books than yours on the bestseller lists? Why must Cousin Reginald tell me at such length about his co-worker’s experience with self-publishing, as if that were relevant to my more traditional path? And why oh why cannot my beloved fraternal quadruplet Cristobal refrain from accusing me of being lazy because the memoir I agonized over six years ago wasn’t out last June as a beach read?”

Excellent questions, all, but ones that can be addressed with a single answer: most non-writers harbor completely unrealistic notions about how and why good books get published. They believe, you see, in the Publishing Fairy, that completely fictional entity assigned by a beneficent universe to carry manuscripts directly from first conception to published volume swiftly, easily, and with no effort required from the writer.

Apart from the sheer act of sitting down and writing the darned thing, of course. But Aunt Myra has always suspected that half the time you claim to be spending sitting in front of your computer, wrestling with the muses, you’re actually on Facebook.

I pity Aunt Myra, Cousin Reginald, and your former womb mate Cristobal, though, truly. As a direct result of their implicit belief in the Publication Fairy and her seldom-seen-in-practice ways, they feel compelled to regard the absolutely normal years their beloved writer has spent struggling to learn the craft, wrenching the soul into written form, finding an agent who resonates with a genuinely original voice and vision, alternately waiting and revising while said agent shops the manuscript to publishers, subsequent waiting and revising while the book is in press, and exhausting marketing process as, well, abnormal.

And that, in case you have spent recent holidays shaking your head in wonder over a turkey leg, is why so many honest-to-goodness nice folks who deeply care about you can sound so incredibly awful when they feel forced to inquire about your writing.  All of those fears about why the Publication Fairy has passed you by — or, at the very least, hasn’t yet taken you by the hand and led you to Oprah, The Late Show, or The New York Times Review of Books, tend to be compressed conversationally at every stage into the same ilk ofquestion: “Why isn’t yourbook published yet?”

They’re trying, in short, to be kind.

That’s not always apparent in the minute, though, is it? Of you’re like the overwhelming majority of writers, you’ve probably tumbled at least once into the bear trap of assuming that it was your fault for talking about your writing at all.  As in ever.

Come on, admit it — you’ve wished in retrospect that you hadn’t brought up your book. How could any sane writer not long for retroactive silence, when, in the course of your detailed account of just how many inches you have gnawed off your fingernails while waiting for that agent who asked for an exclusive to get back to you — it’s been five months! — Grandmamma plucked your sleeve and murmured tenderly, “Honey, why isn’t your novel in the stores? I keep telling my friends that you write” over the pie course?

Didn’t you struggle just a bit to come up with a different answer than you had given her the last four times she’d asked?  Or at least imagine saying a few rather vivid things to her water aerobics group?

If it’s any comfort, that bear trap lurks in the shadows later in the publishing process as well. When you’re six days from a hard deadline to get a revision you think is a bad idea to your publisher, Uncle Clark may well chortle, “Memoir? What on earth do you have to write memoirs about? You’re not exactly Ulysses S. Grant, duckie.”

Bearing in mind that he is fully capable of saying this to you after you have been elected president provides scant comfort, I’m sorry to say.  You might blow off a little steam by pointing out that memoirs has not been habitually used by the pros to describe either memoir or presidential autobiography within your lifetime, and possibly Uncle Clark’s, but his jibe is still likely to worm its way under your skin a trifle.

Or, when you’re over the moon because an agent — a real, live, honest-to-goodness agent! — has agreed to represent your baby, Gertrude-who-doesn’t-have-any-family-locally will boom over her second helpingof glazed carrots, “Oh, congratulations! When’s the book coming out?” Invariably, while you are struggling to explain the vital difference between signing a representation contract and a contract with a publisher, the relative responsible for inviting Gertrude will attempt to change the subject. Perhaps violently.

And every writer currently treading the earth’s crust has encountered some form of Cousin Antoinette’s why-isn’t-he-her-ex-husband-yet’s annual passive-aggressive attempt at hearty encouragement. “Still no agent, eh? I’d always thought that the really good books got snapped up right away. Have you thought at all about self-publishing? A good writer can make a lot of money that way, right?”

Am I correct that you have on occasion kicked yourself for your reaction — or non-reaction — to such outrageous stimuli? I’m sure you’ve told yourself that a sane, confident, unusually secure writer might well have answered: “Why, yes, Roger, I have indeed thought about self-publishing. AsI had last year and the year before, when you had previously proffered this self-evident suggestion. Now shut up, please, and pass the darned yams.”

Or piped merrily, “Well, as the agents like to say, Uncle Clark, it all depends on the writing. So unless you’d like me to embark upon a fifty-two minute explanation of the intrinsic differences between the Ulysses S. Grant-style national-scale autobiography that you probably have in mind and a personal memoir about the adolescence in which you played a minor but memorably disagreeable role — a disquisition with which I would be all too happy to bore the entire table — could I interest you in a third helping of these delightful vermouth-doused string beans?”

Or chirped between courses, “You know, Gertie, that’s a common misconception. If you’d like to learn something about how the publication process actually works, I could refer you to <a href=”https://www.annemini.com”>an excellent blog</a>.”

Or, while Grandmamma’s mouth is full of pie, observed suavely, “I so appreciate your drumming up future readers for my novel, dearest; I’m sure that will come in very handy down the road. But no, ‘trying just a little harder this year’ won’t necessarily make the difference between hitting the bestseller lists and obscurity. You might want to try telling your friends that even if I landed an agent for my nove within the next few days — even less likely at this time of year than others,by the way, as the publishing world slows to a crawl between Thanksgiving andthe end of the year — it could easily be a year or two before you can realistically urge them to buy my novel. Thanks for your reliable support, though; it means a lot to me.”

Most of us aren’t up to that level of even-tempered and informative riposte, alas. We’re more inclined to get defensive, to tell Dad he doesn’t know whereat he speaks — or to stuff our traitorous mouths with mashed potatoes so we won’t tell Dad he doesn’t know whereat he speaks. In the moment, even the best-intentioned of those questions can soundvery much like an insidious echo of that self-doubting hobgoblin that so loves to lurk in the back of the creative mind.

“If you were truly  talented,”that little beastie loves to murmur in the ear of a writer already feeling discouraged, “an admiring public would already be enjoying your work in droves. And in paperback. Now stop thinking about your book and go score more leftover pie and some coffee; tormenting you is thirsty work.”

Admit it — you’re on a first-name basis with that goblin. It’s been whispering in your ear ever since you began to query. Or submit. Or perhaps as soon as you started to write.

Even so, you’re entitled to be a little startled when Bertie with the pitchfork suddenly begins speaking out of the mouth of that otherwise perfectly pleasant person your brother brought along to dinner because he’s new to town and has nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving. Instead of emptying that conveniently nearby vat of cranberry sauce over his Adonis-like curls, may I suggest trying to be charitable? Your brother’s friend may actually be doing you a favor by verbalizing your lingering doubts, you know.

“Wait — how?” you ask, cranberry-filled vat already aloft.

Well, it’s a heck of a lot easier to argue with a living, breathing person than someone whose base camp is located inside your head. Astonishingly often, an artless question like “Oh, you write? Would I have read any of your work?” from the ignoramus across the table will give voice to a niggling doubt that’s been eating at a talented writer for years.

Or so I surmise, from how frequently writers complain about such questions. “How insensitive can they be?” writers inevitably wail in the wake of holiday gatherings, and who could blame them?   “I swear that I heard ‘So when is your bookcoming out?’ twice as often as ‘Pass the gravy, please.’ Why is it that my kith/kin/the kith and/or kin of some acquaintance kind enough to feed me don’t seem to have the faintest idea of what it means to be a working writer, as opposed to the fantasy kind that writes a book one minute, is instantly and spontaneously solicited by an agent the next, and is chatting on a couch with a late-night TV host immediately thereafter? Why is publication — and wildly successful publication at that — so frequently regarded as the only measure of writing talent?”

The short answer to that extraordinarily well-justified cri de coeur is an unfortunately cruel one: because that’s how society at large judges writing. I’m relatively certain,though, that the question-asking gravy-eschewers who drove the writers mentioned above to distraction (and, quite possibly, drove them home afterward) did not intend to be cruel. They’re just echoing a common misunderstanding of how books do and don’t get published.

Which brings us once again to our old pal, the Publication Fairy. Her pixie dust can blind even the most sensible bystander to the writing process. Not only does popular belief hold that the only good book is a published book — a proposition that would make anyone who actually handles manuscripts for a living positively gasp with laughter –but also that if a writer were actually gifted, publication would be both swift and inevitable, following with little or no authorial struggle hard upon typing THE END on a first draft. Commercial success arrives invariably for great books, too, because unless the author happens to be a celebrity in another field, the only possible difference between a book that lands the author on the bestseller lists and one that languishes unpurchased on a shelf is the quality of the writing, right? Because no one ever buys a book without reading it first.

Are you guffawing yet? More importantly, is Bertie the Hobgoblin? Trust me, anyone who works with manuscripts for a living would be rolling on the shag carpet by now.

Yet I sense that you’re not laughing. You’re not even smiling. In fact, if you’re honest about it, you and Bertie may have been nodding silently while reading through that list of risible untruths about publishing.

Because this is such a frequent source of self-doubt, let’s tease out the logic a little. If we accept all of the suppositions as accurate, there are only two conceivable reasons that a manuscript could possibly not already be published: it’s not yet completed (in which case the writer is lazy, right?) or it simply isn’t any good (and thus does not deserve to be published). That means, invariably, that a writer complaining about how hard the road is must either need a kick in the rump or gentle dissuasion from pursuing a dream that can’t possibly come true.

Fortunately for dinner-table harmony, most nice folks aren’t up to providing either to a relative they see only once or twice a year. (Although your Aunt Gloria is always up for a little rump-kicking, I hear.)  Accordingly, they figure, the only generous response to a writer who has been at it a while, yet does not have a book out, must be to avert one’s eyes and make vaguely encouraging noises.

Or to change the subject altogether. Really, it isn’t your sister’s coworker’s fault that your mother told him to sit next to the writer in the family. Why, the coworker thinks, rub salt in the already-wounded ego of some poor soul writhing under a first query rejection, and who therefore clearly has no talent for writing?

Chuckling yet? You should be. While it is of course conceivable that any of the reasons above could be stifling the publication chances of any particular manuscript to which a hopeful writermight refer after a relative she sees only once a year claps her heartily on the back and bellows, “How’s the writing coming, Violet?” yet again, the very notion that writing success should be measured — or could beadequately measured — solely by whether the mythical Publication Fairy has yet whacked it with her Print-and-Bind-It-Now wand would cause the pros to choke with mirth.

So would the length of that last sentence, come to think ofit. Ol’ Henry James must surely be beaming down at me from the literary heavens over that one. Unless he’s still lingering over the pecan pie with Madame de Sévigné, Noël Coward, and Euripides. (They’re always the last to leave the table.)

Again, though, my finely-tuned antennae tell me that some of you are not in fact choking with mirth. “But Anne,” frustrated writers everywhere point out, “although naturally, I know from reading this blog HOW THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY WORKS — AND DOESN’T section of the category list, listening carefully to what agents say they want, and observation of the career trajectories of both my writer friends and established authors alike, that many an excellent manuscript languishes for years without being picked up, part of me really, really, REALLY wants to believe that’s not actually the case. Or at least that it will not be in my case.”

See what I mean about the holidays’ capacity for causing those internalized pernicious assumptions to leap out of the mind and demand to be fed? Let’s listen for a bit longer; perhaps we can learn something more.  Let’s get it all out on the table.

“If the literary universe is fair,” writers and their pet hobgoblins typically reason…

(That thunder you hear in the heavens is every agent, editor, and book promoter who has ever lived snorting with hilarity.)

“…a good manuscript should always find a home. If that’s true, perhaps my kith and kinare right that if I were really talented, the only thing I would ever have to say at Thanksgiving is that my book is already out and where I would like them to buy it.”

Actually, in that instance, you would be fending off injured cries of “Where is my free copy?” But we’ll talk about that later. Your hobgoblins were saying?

“Since it’s an agent’s job to find exciting new talent,” Bernie et al. continue, “and my query — not my manuscript– has been rejected by four agents and I’ve never heard back from the fifth who asked to see the first 30 pages, there’s really no point in continuing to try to find an agent for this book. They all share the same tastes, and anyway, they’d probably only want me to change things in my manuscript. Maybe Roger is right to urge me to self-publish. But then all of the costs and pressuresof promotion would fall on me, and…”

“Wait just a book-signing minute!” another group of not-yet-completely-frustrated writers and their hobgoblins interrupt us. “What do you mean,many an excellent manuscript languishes for years without being picked up? How is that possible? Isn’t it the publishing industry’s job — and its sole job — to identify and promote writing talent? And doesn’t that mean that any truly talented writer will be so identified and promoted, if only he is brave enough to send out wor kpersistently, until he finds the right agent for it?”

“Whoa!” still a third demographic and its internal demons shout en masse. “Send out work persistently? Rejected by four agents — and not heard back from a fifth? I thought that if a writer was genuinely gifted, any good agent would snatch up her manuscript. So why would any excellent writer need to query more than one or two times?”

Do you hear yourselves, people? You’re invoking the Publishing Fairy. Are you absolutely certain you want to do that?

It’s a dangerous practice for a writer, you know. The Publication Fairy’s long, shallow shadow can render seeing one’s own publication chances decrease over time. Following her siren song can lead a writer to believe, for instance, that the goal of querying is to land just any agent, rather than one who already has the connections to sell a particular book. Or that it would be a dandy idea to sending out a barrage of queries to the fifty agents a search engine spit out, or even to every agent in the country, without checking first to see if any of them represent a your kind of book. Or — you might want to put down your fork, the better to digest this one, my dear — to give up after just a few rejections.

Because if that writer were actually talented, how he went about approaching agents wouldn’t matter, would it? The Publishing Fairy would see to it that nothing but the quality of the writing would be assessed — and thus it follows like drowsiness after consuming vast quantities of turkey that if a writer gets rejected, ever, the manuscript must not be well-written. You might as well give up after the first rejection. Or before taking a chance on a query.

Why shouldn’t you, when by prevailing logic, it’s hardly necessary for the writer to expend any effort at all, beyond writing a initial draft of the book? Those whom the Publishing Fairy bops in the noggin need merely toss off a first draft –because the honestly gifted writer never needs to revise anything, right? — then wait mere instants until an agent is miraculously wafted to her doorstep.

Possibly accompanied by Mary Poppins, if the wind is right.

Ah, it’s a pretty fantasy, isn’t it? The agent reads the entire book in a single sitting — or, better still, extrapolates the entire book from a swift glance at a query — and shouts in ecstasy, “This is the book for which I have been waiting for my entire professional career!” A book contract follows instantaneously, promising publication within a week. By the end of a couple of months at the very latest, the really talented writer will be happily ensconced on a well-lit couch in a television studio, chatting with a talk show host about her book, pretending to be modest.

“It has been a life-changing struggle,” the writersays brightly, courageously restraining happy tears, “but I felt I had to write this book. As Maya Angelou says, ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.'”

You would be astonished at the ubiquity this narrative of authorial achievement enjoys amongst aspiring writers. They may not all believe it intellectually — they may have come to understand, for example, that since no agent in the world represents every conceivable type of book, it’s a waste of time to query an agent who does not habitually handle books in one’s chosen book category. At a gut level, however, every rejection feels like just more evidence of being ignored by the Publication Fairy.

Which must mean that the manuscript isn’t nearly as good as you’d thought, right? Why else would an agent — any agent — who has not seen so much as a word of it not respond to a query? The Publication Fairy must have tipped her off that something wasn’t quite as it should be.

Otherwise, where’s Mary Poppins? Aunt Myra may have a point.

‘Fess up — you’ve thought this at time or two. Practically every aspiring writer who did not have the foresight to become a celebrity (who enjoy a completely different path to publication) before attempting to get published entertains such doubts in the dead of night, or at any rate in the throes of being questioned by those with whom one is sharing a gravy boat for the evening. If the road to publication is hard, long, and winding, it must mean something, mustn’t it?

Why, yes: it could mean that the book category in which one happens to be writing is not selling very well right now, for one thing. Good agents are frequently reluctant to pick up even superlative manuscripts they don’t believe they could sell in the current market. It could also signify that the agents one has been approaching do not have a solid track record of selling similar books, or that for querying purposes, one has assigned one’s book to an inappropriate category.

Any of these can result in knee-jerk rejection. Even if a manuscript is a perfect fit and everyone at the agency adores the writing, the literary marketplace has contracted to such an extent in recent years that few agents can afford to take on as many truly talented new clients as they would like.

But those are not the justifications likely to pacify Bernie the Hobgoblin. Nor are they prone to convince Uncle Clark, or make Grandmamma happy, or to awe Roger into the supportive acceptance you would prefer he evince until Cousin Antoinette finally gives him the heave-ho. If only there were some short, pithy quip you could trot outat such instants, if not to cajole these excellent souls into active support, at least to stop them from skewering you when you’re feeling vulnerable.

I cannot give you that magical statement, unfortunately. All I can offer youis the truth: offhand, I can think of approximately no well-established authors for whom the Publishing Fairy fantasy we’ve been discussing represents a real-life career trajectory.

Sorry, Dad — that’s just not how books get published. More pie?

The popular conception of how publishing works is, not to put too fine a point on it, composed largely of magical thinking.  All of us would like to believe that if a manuscript is a masterpiece, there’s no chance that it would go unpublished. We cling to the comforting concept that ultimately, the generous literary gods will reach down to nudge brilliant writing from the slush pile (which no longer exists) to the top of the acceptance heap.

We believe, in short, in the Publication Fairy. That’s understandable in a writer: those of us in cahoots with the muses would prefer not to think that they were in the habit of tricking us with false hope. An intriguing belief, given that even a passing acquaintance with literary history would lead one to suspect that the ladies in question do occasionally get a kick out of snatching recognition from someone they have blessed with undoubted talent.

Edgar Allan Poe didn’t exactly die a happy man, people. Oscar Wilde was known to have run into a barrier or two. Louisa May Alcott toiled to churn out potboilers and war anecdotes to pay the coal bill for years before turning to YA, and the primary reason that we know the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley is that his wife happened to be a major novelist and the daughter of two major novelists; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was arguably the greatest literary publicist of all time.

And the first novel Jane Austen sold to a publisher? It didn’t come out until after her death.

The muses donate their favors whimsically.  I ask you, though, through the lens of that historical perspective: is it really soon enough to judge your writing solely by its immediate commercial prospects? Is it ever?

To non-writers, these perfectly reasonable questions can appear downright delusional, or at the very least confusing. They have no experience having their passions bandied about by the muses, you see. To be fair, you cannot expect otherwise from an upstanding citizen whose idea of Hell consists of a demon’s forcing him into an uncomfortable desk chair in front of a seriously outdated computer and howling, “You must write a book!”

So we are left to ask ourselves: what can such a sterling soul possibly gain by believing that, unlike in literally every other human endeavor, excellence in writing is invariably rewarded? Even those who strenuously avoid bookstores often cling to the myth of the Publication Fairy with a tenacity that makes Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy turn chartreuse with envy.  If only adults believed in them with such fervor!

If you doubt the strength of the Publication Fairy’s sway, try talking about your writing over a holiday dinner to a group of non-writers who haven’t asked about it. “So when is your book coming out?” that-cousin-whose-relationship-to-you-has-never-been-clear will inquire. “And would you mind passing that mysterious grey substance with which your roommate chose to trouble our family meal?”

“What do you mean, you haven’t finished writing that book yet?” Great-Aunt Mavis chimes in, helping herself to sweet potatoes. “You talked about writing it before Travis here was born, and now he’s on the football squad.”

“Are you still doing that?” Grandpa demands incredulously. “I thought you’d given up when you couldn’t sell your first book. Or is this still the first book?”

Your brother’s wife might attempt to be a bit more tactful; Colleen always tries, doesn’t she? “Oh, querying sounds just awful.  Do you really want to put yourself through it? I have a friend who’s self-publishing, and…”

Thanks, Colleen — because, of course, that would never have occurred to you. You’ve never encountered a dank midnight in which you dreamt of thumbing your nose at traditional publishing at least long enough to bypass the querying and submission processes, rush the first draft of your Great American Novel onto bookshelves, and then sit back, waiting for the profits to roll in, the reviewers to rave, and publishers the world over to materialize on your doorstep, begging to publish your next book.

Never mind that the average self-published book sells fewer than five hundred copies — yes, even today — or that most publications that still review books employ policies forbidding the review of self-published books. Half of the books released every year in North America are not self-published, after all. Ignore the fact that all of the effort of promoting such a book falls on the author. And don’t even give a passing thought to the reality that inorder for a self-published book to impress the traditional publishing world even vaguely, it typically needs to sell at least 10,000 copies.

Yes, you read that correctly. But the Publishing Fairy can merely wave her wand and change all of that, right?

If she can, she certainly doesn’t do it very often. Chant it with me now:  agents don’t magically appear on good authors’ doorsteps within thirty seconds of the words The End being typed.

But someone predisposed to believe otherwise is also unlikely to understand that when you land an agent, you will not automatically be handed a publication contract by some beneficent deity. If every agented writer had a nickel for each time some well-meaning soul said, “Oh, you have an agent?  When’s your book coming out?” we could construct our own publishing house.

We could stack up the first million or so nickels for girders. Mary Poppins could have a flat landing-place made out of dimes.

Try not to hold it against your father-in-law: chances are, he just doesn’t have any idea how publishing actually works.  But you do. Don’t let anybody, not even the insidious hobgoblins of midnight reflection, tell you that the reason you don’t already have a book out is –and must necessarily be — that you just aren’t talented enough. That’s magical thinking, and you’re too smart to buy into it.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that you should deliberately pick a fight with your third cousin twice removed or any other delightful soul considerate enough to inquire about your writing in the immediate vicinity of pickled beets. I sense, though, that more than a few of you would enjoy having a bit of ammunition at the ready in anticipation for that particular battle, should it arise the next time around.

Okay, how might on prepare for that especially indigestible discussion? Had you thought about responding to the question “Published yet, Charlie?” by abruptly asking how everyone at the table feels about the recent election? Or universal healthcare? Or the death penalty?

You see the point, don’t you? Just as it’s risky to assume that everyone gathered around even the most Norman Rockwell-pleasing holiday table shares identical political beliefs, it’s always dangerous to presume that every kind soul there will be concealing under that sweater-clad chest a heart open to the realities of publishing as it actually occurs. Accepting the probable reality that even the most eloquent explanation will not necessarily sway minds from devotion to the Publication Fairy may be your best bet.

So what might a writer besieged by the Publication Fairy’s acolytes do to protect her digestion? How about limiting to the discussion to “The writing’s going splendidly. How’s your handball game these days, Ambrose?”

Seem evasive? Well, it is. But would you rather allow the discourse to proceed to the point that you might have to say to a relative that has just referred to your writing as Allison’s time-gobbling little hobby, “Good one, Sis. Seriously, though, I don’t want to stultify you with an explanation of how books really get published.”

Think about giving it a rest , in short. Don’t try to educate everyone in one fell swoop; it’s not your responsibility, and actually, the lecture you give this year may not be sufficiently remembered the next to help you. (Oh, that’s only my in-laws?) Unless you are willing to resign yourself to the inevitability of annual soapbox-mounting, you might want to consider letting your loved ones’ belief in the Publication Fairy survive another holiday season.

If your inherent sense of justice urges you to convey some small sense of your monumental effort toward writing and/or revising, or to share a glimpse into multitudinous stresses involved in querying, submission,and so forth, I’d advise keeping it brief for the purposes of general discussion. It can be easy to become carried away by a topic close to your creative heart, though. If you find yourself starting to launch into a major speech, a simple “Well, I could go on for hours, Horace, but suffice it to say that it’s really hard. I’m trying to take a day off from it, though,” can easily bring it to a close. It can also allow you to control how long you’re on the spot.

Oh, now I hear some of you laughing. Yes? “Oh, Anne,” you say, wiping the tears of hilarity from your rosy cheeks, “it’s obvious you have never met my kith/kin/the relative strangers with whom I propose to spend Christmas Future. I anticipate being confronted not with the casual double-edged question, but with a level of intensive cross-examination and invasive scrutiny from which Perry Mason himself could glean a few pointers. I’m not worried about getting into the conversation; I despair of ever getting out of it.”

A tougher nut to crack, admittedly. I would recommend cutting it off at the first parry. “Wow, that’s a big subject, Gerard,” can often do the trick. Adding “I could prattle for weeks about the behind-the-scenes trials every author faces along the way, but my dinner would get cold, and I do so want to hear about Cousin Blanche’s hysterectomy in granular detail. Ask me again after the dishes are done, when we can make ourselves cozy in a corner and talk. How about during the football game?”

That last bit will, of course, work best if Gerard happensto be a die-hard football fan. It may feel like a low blow, but hey, all’s fair in love, war, and protecting your passions.

If pressed, you could always murmur, “I’d love to continue this fascinating exchange, Hermione, but would you mind if I grabbed my notebook first? Because everyone here is aware that anything you say can and will be used against you in a novel, right?”

An especially judgmental holiday table might be anticipated by the appearance of such a notebook beside your napkin, in fact. As any journalist or rationally self-protective memoirist could tell you, people are apt to clam up a littlewhen they notice their words are being recorded for posterity. Applying pen to paper proactively, accompanied by a slight, rueful shake of the head and a chuckle, will at least turn the conversation from “Why aren’t you published?” to “What are you writing down? What did I just say?”

The latter may well be spoken in a resentful tone, but you might be astonished how often it isn’t. Speaking as a memoirist, I’m here to tell you that it never pays underestimate the flattery inherent in finding people interesting enough to occupy page space. I’ve seldom met the Aunt Myra so iron-hearted that “Oh,wow — I’ve just got to write that quip down, Auntie! Talk amongst yourselves while I do” doesn’t soften her will to criticize, at least a little. And it’s a terrific defense for the moment Aunt Gloria decides your rump would benefit from some well-intentioned kicking about not polishing off your revision fast enough.

You could also call upon most people’s active dislike of boredom. An enthusiastic cry of”Oh, my goodness — you have no idea how happy I am that you want to hear all about my writing! Just a sec, while I power up my laptop.  The scene I want to read you is a trifle on the long side, but you don’t mind keeping my food warm for me, do you, Eloise?”

Prepare to be stunned by the urgency with which Uncle George and his — what are they called at that age? — great and good friend Carlotta fling themselves into a discussion of the comparative merits of The Blacklist and White Palace as James Spader vehicles at that particular moment. Or Cousin Tremaine’s burning desire to share the scores of each of his eight children’s soccer games. For the last two years.

As I learned at my mother’s knee, any dinner table seating five or more people naturally breaks up into more than one conversation. (My parents threw a lot of literary dinner parties.) Use it.

If the proposed dramatic reading of your own writing doesn’t induce panic, try a burbling offer to declaim that passage in Melville that changed your life forever. Or Proust — in the original French, if necessary. (See earlier observation about what’s fair in love, war, and ego-preservation.)

Let’s assume for the sake of caution, though, that you’re facing a tableful of kith/kin/relative strangers breaking bread with you so committed to showing you the error of your writing ways that there’s no graceful way to evade or shorten the conversation. Or that you are dining with a group whose belief in the Publication Fairy is so unquestioning as to border on the childlike (or imbecilic), and you hate the idea of any one of those people’s feeling sorry for you. Or maybe that your obnoxious brother Graham knows that the agent of your dreams has been sitting on your first 50 pages for nine long weeks, and he just enjoys needling you.

Whichever may be the case, what’s a nice (and most writers are nice) writer to do? I would recommend seizing the moment to engage in a little advance education on the practicalities of occupying the inner circle of a published author’s life.  The sooner Great-Uncle Vic learns that there’s more to beinga famous author’s relative than bragging rights and free books, the more comfortable everyone will be on the happy day when you do in fact become a famous author.

I find that concentrating upon the details tends to go over better than gentle nudges toward a more supportive attitude while folks are gnawing upon drumsticks. I would recommend, in short, of seizing the opportunity of disabusing them of the notion that they’re not going to have to buy your books.
Be prepared for a certain amount of incredulity: next to the Publication Fairy, the notion that authors’ kith and kin routinely receive free copies is one of your more ubiquitous misconceptions. It’s seldom true, at least not to the extent your relatives will think. Yes, Second-Cousin-Thrice-Removed Myrtle, publishers do generally provide their authors with an extremely limited stock of their books, with the expectation that such will be used for promotion. They’re going to want you to pass them along to book reviewers and bloggers and the clerk at your favorite bookstore, not to endow your relatives’ bookshelves, if you catch my drift.
The number of free copies will almost certainly be considerably smaller than either Great-Uncle Vic or Carlotta have been thinking, too. (Oh, you didn’t think he’d been expecting you to send him a signed copy for Carlotta, too? Think again.) Somewhere between 5 and 50 is the norm.

That means, in practice, that if you recklessly promise scads of free copies — and those of us in the biz are perpetually appalled at how often first-time authors often do —  you will be facing some hard choices.  To whom will you give those precious few books?

Undoubtedly more important to the folks with whom you are currently enjoying turkey, how many of them will not be on that short list?  What about the person sitting across the table from you? To your left? To your right?

Before you answer, you might want to take a quick mental count of all the other people who might make sense as recipients. Will you want to send one to your favorite writing teacher? The lady at the archives who took all that extra time to help you research the book? What about your college roommate? Or that blogger who gave you hope whenyour relatives criticized you?  (Oh, yes, authors constantly send me review copies. As much as I appreciate the gesture, please, don’t waste a book on me that you could send to what are euphemistically called opinion-makers: I’d be more than happy with a beautifully-phrased thank-you card, truly.)

All done toting up? Okay, here are 10 free copies. Are there any left for your relatives?

If the answer is no, trust me, it’s better you know it now. It’s also news that you might want to break with great care to your relatives.

Yes, yes, I know: you don’t want to do it. But tell me: will Myrtle be less hurt to hear about it now, or three days before your book drops? What about Uncle George, Aunt Gloria, or the rest of those quadruplets? Honestly, you would be saving them from future disappointment — and yourself from what can be quite a lot of well-intentioned pressure.

Oh, you want a foretaste? How about “What do you mean, you didn’t save a copy for your brother Ralph? You expect someone with whom you shared a bedroom for a decade to pay for his copy?”

Yes, you do. Or you will. It’s not merely that for every copy you give away, that’s one less copy sold. (Who did you think would buy your book, if not your kith, kin, and everyone who has ever known you?) That ultimately means fewer royalties for you, as well as possibly a harder time convincing a publisher to bring out your next book.
Not that it would be remotely politic to express any of this so bluntly, of course. Phrase it as gently as you know how; it will come as a blow to folks expecting not only never to have to pay a dime for a single word of your writing, but possibly — brace yourself –having also presumed that they would be on the receiving end of copies to distribute to their friends. (Hey, it’s a common fantasy amongst the author-adjacent.)

Just bear in mind that by speaking now, you’re ultimately saving the people you love from chagrin. If that doesn’t do the trick, try recalling that if you recklessly promise free copies — and again, those of us in the biz are positively aghastat how many first-time authors have — you will almost certainly be buying those gift copies yourself.

I don’t mean that conceptually, by the way:  it’s exceedingly common for first-time authors to end up actually purchasing individual copies for their relatives and friends. To see why, you need only revisit that mental list of gift recipients.

That’s a difficult reality to accept, isn’t it? I can tell you now that you’re going to feel mean as you convey this information. Feel free to blame me as the source of the bad news: trust me, it would not be the first time “You’re not going to believe what I read on Author! Author!” was used as a blow-softener. I’m tough; I can take it.

More to the point, I’m not having dinner with your kith and kin, am I?

I can, however, anticipate your mother’s first tremulous question, and possibly yours: yes, authors do generally receive fairly substantial discounts on their own books, as long as those books are purchased directly from the publisher (and, in many cases, ordered in advance of the release date). Houses like to encourage their authors to carry around copies to resell to anyone who says, “Oh, you have a book out? Cool!”

That’s why, in case you’ve been wondering, authors so often show up at reading venues staggering under heavy backpacks or enormous purses. If the venue’s not a bookstore, those authors usually have a box or two of books in their cars, ready to pile in an attractive display next to the podium. (What, you thought the Publication Fairy brought them?)

What may interest you more than your mother to hear, however, is that copies purchased with the author’s discount virtually never count toward a book’s sales totals — and thus not toward royalties. That hefty discount arises from yourprice’s not reflecting royalty costs or negotiated deals with booksellers, yousee. (You’re going to want to check your publishing contract carefully on this point; sometimes, it’s negotiable, as is the number of free copies.) A cost-conscious writer might also like to know before promising copies that one’s agent or acquiring editor might not think to point out that buying a lot of discounted books might not be to the author’s advantage.

They tend to assume that the bit about those copies’ not adding toward sales totals is quite a bit more widely known than it actually is; it’s not unheard-of for this tidbit not to be discussed at all at contract time, or even as the book is moving toward publication. The author usually hears about the number of free copies (“There you go, Mom!”) and the discount (“Okay, Great-Uncle Vic can think that his was free.”), but simply assumes that a book sold is a book sold. Why wouldn’t a discounted copy be included in the overall total and generate royalties?

Don’t believe that often comes as an unpleasant surprise?   As recently as last week, I was chatting with a quite successful first-time memoirist. Her excellent book came out earlier this year, and, as is so often the case, she had underestimated the unpaid time, effort, and expense an author at a major house is routinely expected to devote to book promotion. She was particularly irked to learn that she had to buy and pay to ship 50 copies of her book to a speaking venue — and then to pay to have the 42 that hadn’t sold at the event shipped to her home. She wasn’t sure, she said, that she would be willing to do it again.

I commiserated. “And to think that after all that effort, those books will have no effect on your book’s sales totals.   I’m so sorry.”

“Wait,” she said. “What? I won’t get royalties?”

So no, Mom, your baby’s probably not going to be coughing up the cover price for a copy for you, but it may be costly in other ways. Your in-house author may even be able to shake free a gratis copy for Great-Grandma Midge, who isn’t getting any younger, but please don’t feel guilty. Mom might want to get into the habit of telling more distant relatives — like, say, those cousins she made you inviteto your wedding, although you hadn’t seen them since you were six — that they should plan on buying their own copies. You would be delighted to sign them afterward.

Trust the voice of experience: the more special she feels at the prospect of clutching her own free book — the only one in the family, because you’re such a good kid! — the more likely she is to go to bat for you. “Every single copy Tammy sells helps her,” she can say — and she’ll get better with practice. “I’ll understand if you can’t afford it, of course. She’s been working so hard for so many years on this book, but please don’t feel guilty.”

Translation: the best thing Aunt Myra could do to support your writing career would be to commit to buying your book(s) herself. Promise to sign it for her the instant she does. If you’re feeling adventurous, extend that promise to visiting her in order to inscribe copies for all of the friends she can cajole, blandish, and/or guilt into purchasing.

I have faith in your Aunt Myra. I think she can push some volumes.

All that being said, don’t kick yourself if you find you don’t have the heart to tell your relatives and friends any of this in the course of the current holiday season. This is big stuff, and even the best of us have people in our lives prone to judging the quality of a book by its position on the bestseller list.  You have to pick your battles.  You might want to bookmark this post, though, so you have the arguments handy down the line.

Heck, you could just forward the link to your kith and kin a few months before your first book comes out. Again, I don’t mind playing the heavy here, if it helps you. I’ve spent a lifetime explaining to everyone’s relatives that since the Publication Fairy so often falls down on the job, it’s up to the rest of us to support the writers in our lives.

I see no reason to stop now. Your writing deserves it, doesn’t it?

And you have that support within our Author! Author! community. Here, we don’t dismiss every book that doesn’t sell 150,000 copies. We don’t feel that large print contributes more to reading pleasure than the style of the writing. (Take that, Madame de Sévigné!)  And most of all, we don’t believe in the Publication Fairy.

It’s sweet, in a way, that so many people do. By that logic, the Followers of the Fairy incur a greater obligation than the rest of us to buy the books of authors they know personally: the Fairy, and the industry, can only reward with success books that readers purchase. Anyone who wants to judge your dream to write by that yardstick should understand that they can, with a good will and the best of intentions, contribute to your sales totals. And thus to their opinion of the value of your writing endeavors.

As always, keep up the good work!

 

Agen Togel Online Apa Yang Terunggul buat Anda

Agen Togel Online Apa Yang Terpilih untuk Anda

Agen Togel Online Apa Yang Terpilih buat Anda! Anda mau memperoleh tiket dalam perjudian togel internasional itu, khan? Kami tidak mempersalahkan Anda, begitupun kami! Kabar baiknya yakni Anda bisa secara mudah lakukan itu tiada harus lakukan perjalanan internasional. Tambahkan kembali paspor Anda ke laci serta dengar.

bandar togel online memberinya Anda alat serta kesederhanaan yang Anda perlukan untuk beli ticket lotre dalam keamanan rumah Anda. Bila Anda udah biasa dengan website itu. Peluang Anda udah melaksanakan kajian buat pilih yang terpilih. Peluangnya yakni studi sudah kembalikan beberapa puluh situs buat diputuskan.

Jadi agen togel yang mana cocok buat Anda? Kemungkinan sukar buat jawab pertanyaan dan Anda mesti kerjakan banyak studi. Macam-macam di permainan data hk yang siap. Pilihan pembayaran, pilihan penarikan uang, feature keamanan serta bonus semuanya kudu dikontrol. Untungnya, kami sudah berusaha memperingan pekerjaan Anda untuk mengenali metode di saat main judi togel online.

Alih-alih membaca beberapa website serta membaca semuanya perbedaan agen togel itu. Anda semestinya perhitungkan untuk ambil kuis LottoExposed. Ini yaitu satu diantara alat sangat simple serta amat efisien buat penentuan agen togel online terutama.

Kuis ini fokus pada beberapa tabiat serta ciri yang dirasa penting oleh orang yang tidak sama. Ini focus di pertanyaan antara lain:

  • Jenis pengeluaran sidney dan permainan apa yang Anda rasakan?
  • Seberapa pentingkah bonus untuk penentuan agen lotere yang pas?
  • Pentingkah pengesahan harga buat Anda?
  • Seberapa pentingkah service konsumen untuk Anda?
  • Metode pembelian ticket online apa yang paling Anda senangi?

Berdasarkan input yang Anda kasih dalam kuis singkat ini, kami dapat menganjurkan agen togel yang miliki pelayanan yang hendak Anda gemari. Sesudah Anda mendapat hasil, Anda juga dikasihkan daftar feature. Ciri ini memberikan dengan cara tepat kenapa pilihan itu merupakan yang cocok untuk Anda.

Apa yang Perlu Anda Kenali dalam Main Togel Online?

Agen Togel Online Terlisensi serta Populer

Kami tahu jika beberapa dari Anda masih waspada saat melakukan pembelian online. Yakinkan, kami cukup kerap alami sentimen mirip. Ini ialah argumen pokok kenapa semua agen togel yang termaksud dalam referensi di-test serta punya rekam jejak. Mereka udah ada bertahun-tahun, mengatur buat bangun rekam jejak mereka dengan focus di service konsumen keamanan atau bintang.

Saat ini, kuis menganjurkan lima dari banyak agen togel online di luar. Kami bekerja giat buat memvalidasi otensitas dan keamanan kemungkinan pembelian ticket itu sebelumnya bikin ketentuan akhir serta memutus apa dapat menganjurkan. Karena kami lagi mengupayakan memberinya Anda bisa lebih banyak peluang untuk diputuskan, daftar agen togel yang disepakati akan miliki potensi tumbuh dalam tempo dekat.

Masih belum sangat percaya? Pengin pelajari sedikit banyak terkait pengalaman pihak lain sebelumnya memutuskan agen togel yang direferensikan kuis? Anda bisa datang komunitas LottoExposed buat share info dengan penggila lotre yang lain serta jawab pertanyaan tambahan. Selamat mempraktekkan serta ingat buat nikmati semuanya kesempatan pembelian ticket yang hadir dengan secara Anda secara bertanggungjawab.

Mungkin hanya itu uraian dari artikel kami berkenaan agen togel online terpilih buat Anda tentukan dalam permainkan games terka angka online. Mudah-mudahan oleh karena ada data ini lebih simpel untuk Anda meraih kemenangan permainan togel online. Selamat bermain serta mudah-mudahan sukses!

The Idiot’s Manual to Ssh Account

The Idiot’s Manual to Ssh Account

SSH Account has been made, 5. You’re now prepared to connect to your SSH account working with the private key. You’re now prepared to connect to your SSH account utilizing the keys. The expression non-user account may be employed for talking about all user accounts that are not standard user accounts.

The Bizarre Secret of Ssh Account

If you are behind your organization’s firewall and you’re using proxy, you should configure the Proxy settings. Approaches for you, If you’ve got your own business, you may need to set your own server in order for your employees and people who work in your company can be linked someone to another in better way. No matter what variety of websites your organization needs hosted, a digital private server is a wonderful and flexible alternative. Many tiny companies with different demands and workloads Ssh Account realize that cloud hosting is a powerful option that may fulfill their demands. Above, whoever owns the house directory was set to root allowing the chroot jail to get the job done.
Want to LEARN About Ssh Account?

The task necessary to begin an ssh server is reliant on the distribution of Linux which you’re using. When it is useful to have the ability to log in to a remote system using passwords, it is a much greater idea to determine key-based authentication. SSH keys needs to be produced on the computer you wish to sign in from.
After you have on the server, you will most likely be requested to confirm your identity by supplying a password. With the capability to customize your VPS on every level, you can use produce a server that will assist your business and its own domains to stay to boost their success. On the flip side, a dedicated server is a physical server that you may purchase or rent for the demands of your company. A cloud server is supposed to be legitimate when it’s conveyed through server virtualization. You don’t need to download a certain client. Also your connection is going to be encrypted. A tunneled connection is created once a server has the capacity to authenticate the connecting client.

You can find two solutions to configure ssh account

Moreover, SSH Account provides a massive suite of secure tunneling capabilities, several authentication strategies, and advanced configuration alternatives. OpenSSH is incorporated into many professional goods, but hardly any of people businesses assist OpenSSH with funding. SSH is a way to login remotely via one computer to some other computer securely. SSH is a means to remote login via one computer to a different computer securely. SSH contains the capability to deliver a safe, encrypted link between your customer and the server through this encrypted tunnel.

When you’ve create your hardware configurations, it’s period to begin preparing the rest of your digital machine. Inside the aforementioned example, the two configuration things are only used while the user a part of the sftponly user group. Such users can ordinarily be utilized to log in making use of a password and can be used for running programs using the pc. Type your password when you’re prompted for doing that. Often, disabling Password authentication might be asked to be disabled. The encryption employed by SSH provides confidentiality and integrity of information over an insecure network like the net.

Mengetahui Jalan Belajar Trading Binomo Bagi Pemula

Mengetahui Jalan Belajar Trading Binomo Bagi Pemula

Masih banyak orang-orang yang belum mengerti cara belajar trading Binomo kira pemula. Padahal orang2 tersebut tertarik pada dunia trading. Mengarifi dan paham bagaimana cara menggunakannya sangatlah menguntungkan.

Jika sudah pacak, bukan tidak mungkin Anda akan tetap mendapatkan keuntungan ketika melakukan trading . Beserta demikian, uang yang akan dapatkan sebagai semakin besar cuma dengan bermain Binomo.

Cara Belajar Trading Binomo Untuk Pemula dengan Mudah

Bagi tertarik dengan dunia trading menggunakan Binomo, oleh sebab itu Anda harus mencari ilmu terlebih dahulu. Tumpuan mempelajari trading ini adalah supaya Anda tidak kecemasan mengenai bagaimana mempergunakan Binomo, bagaimana menghasilkan akun dan taktik lainnya.

Adapun hal-hal yang harus dilakukan ketika Anda merupakan seorang pemula antara lain adalah:

  1. Mengunduh Aplikasi Binomo Terlebih Dulu

Hal pertama yang harus Kamu lakukan jika memutuskan untuk mencoba trading menggunakan Binomo adalah mengunduh aplikasinya. Anda bisa mengunduh aplikasi Binomo melalui Play Store ataupun Google Play . Ukuran aplikasi ini pun tidak terlalu besar sehingga reaksi pengunduhan tak akan berlangsung lama.

  1. Membuat Account Binomo

Sesudah aplikasi Binomo diunduh dan terinstall pada ponsel Anda, sepak-terjang selanjutnya adalah memproduksi akun. Proses pabrikasi akun ini sangatlah mudah. Anda hanya perlu memasukkan email dan juga perintah sandi untuk account Binomo. Pastikan Dikau mengingat kata rahasia yang digunakan, sebab isyarat tersebutlah yang akan digunakan untuk proses login ke akun Binomo.

  1. Memverifikasi Email

Setelah proses penggarapan akun selesai, Anda akan diminta untuk memverifikasi akun email yang digunakan untuk membuat akun Binomo. Proses verifikasi itu merupakan tahapan belakang yang harus dilakukan untuk membuat akun. Setelah proses tes ini dilakukan, maka akun Binomo telah dapat digunakan.

  1. Menguji Akun Demo Terlebih Dahulu

Asalkan Anda seorang perintis, sebaiknya untuk berbuat latihan terlebih lewat menggunakan akun demo. Binomo telah menyiapkan akun demo kira penggunanya untuk berlatih ataupun memperkuat skill dalam trading .

Pada dalam akun demo ini, Anda sudah dibekali dengan sisa yang bisa dimanfaatkan untuk latihan. Tapi saldo tersebut tidak bisa ditarik. Kamu hanya bisa menggunakannya untuk keperluan pendidikan saja.

  1. Mencoba Account Real

Setelah Anda merasa telah mahir dalam trading menggunakan Binomo, maka mulailah menguji untuk menggunakan account real. Untuk percobaan pertama, terdapat baiknya Anda memakai deposit dalam total kecil terlebih lewat. Hal ini dilakukan agar Anda tidak kehilangan banyak duit apabila mengalami kekalahan dalam trading .

Apa sebab Harus Binomo

Platform trading ini sudah biasa sangat terkenal pada penjuru dunia. Sudah biasa banyak sekali pengguna binomo dari segala dunia. Platform ini juga luar biasa ramah bagi pembimbing yang ingin menguji peruntungan di dalam dunia trading . Memilikinya akun demo & saldo yang bisa digunakan untuk latihan sangatlah membantu untuk pemula.

Pemula bisa menyimak dan membiasakan muncul terlebih dahulu tentang trading . Jika telah terbiasa dan ulung, barulah pemula tersebut bisa mencoba trading sesungguhnya secara menggunakan akun real .

Kecuali itu, Binomo juga memiliki sangat banyak fitur-fitur yang digunakan untuk menganalisa trading . Taktik ini tentu saja luar biasa membantu para penggunanya agar berhasil dalam trading oleh karena itu bisa memperoleh keuntungan yang diinginkan.

Jadi kira Anda yang sebal dengan Binomo, segeralah unduh dan buatlah akun. Tenang sekadar, jika merasa belum ahli, Anda dapat mencari cara mencari ilmu trading Binomo bagi pemula yang banyak sekali tersebar di internet.

“Really?” Millicent says, gaping at her overflowing inbox. “It’s rejection season again?” and other things queriers and submitters don’t want to hear

disaproving gargoyles

 

Did you hear that long, low howl of despair in the early working hours this morning, campers? Did its mournful resonance chill your bones, or at least lightly chill your marrow? Did it prompt you to yank the covers over your head, reasoning that whether that terrible noise came from the wind or the collective resultants of holiday merry-makers returning to work, you wanted no part of it?

If you’re a writer, I hope you obeyed that instinct, at least so far as acting upon that New Year’s resolution to pop that query or submission into the mail (or e-mail) goes. Why, you ask, teeth chattering at the far-off sounds of wailing and the rending of garments? Because today marks the statistically worst day of the year for writers to send off their work electronically — or for an agency or publishing house to receive it in either soft copy or hard.

And it’s the single worst day every year. That’s why the moans of agency screeners — those excellent souls known here at Author! Author! under the collective name of Millicent, to help us remember that these are human beings with individual literary tastes working for agents with personal preferences, as well as literary market savvy — invariably beard the heavens on not only the first work day of the year, but for most of January.

“Great Caesar’s ghost,” they cry, or some equivalent, “I’ve never seen so many queries/submissions/literary contest entries in my life!”

Actually, pretty much everyone who reads manuscripts for a living tends to indulge in a bit of moaning right about now, and with good reason: the single most common New Year’s resolution writers make involves sending off a query or finally submitting those requested pages. To toil anywhere in the publishing vineyard is to spend the opening days of every year buried under an avalanche of writers’ dearest hopes.

It’s heartwarming, really, how many writers actually follow through on their determination to make take those intimidating baby steps toward bringing their writing to professional attention. Even back when querying and submission meant typing and retyping one’s baby on an Underwood, hundreds of thousands of bright-eyed resolvers queried and submitted in early January, every year. Since the arrival of the personal computer made these tasks easier, and e-mail sped up communication, the volumes have risen astronomically. For e-mailing queriers and submitters in particular, the first weekend of the year seems just made for keeping those laudable promises to oneself.

“And why not?” aspiring writers proud of themselves for having worked up the not inconsiderable nerve required to hit the SEND key yesterday. “As you like to say here at Author! Author!, the only manuscript that stands absolutely no chance of getting published is the one that never gets sent out, right? So here I go! This is the year I’m going to land an agent/get published/place a short story/fulfill other writing dreams dependent upon the approval of other people!”

I applaud your enthusiasm, SEND-hitters, truly. It’s not an easy thing, offering up your beloved writing to an agent or editor’s judgment. You know the prospects your work is facing: it’s tough for an original story or new voice to break into the current extremely tight literary market. Add to that the tens of thousands of queries a well-established agencies will receive, and those are some pretty long odds for even a great story and wonderful style to surmount.

But you’ll never know unless you try, right? Good for you for putting your talent to the test — many a brilliant writer never finds the courage to let those pages be seen by another human being, much less a professional reader with the power and authority to bring that writing to a broader audience. An audience that might pay to read it, even.

May I make a gentle suggestion about tilting those odds ever so slightly in your favor, however? Would you consider not querying or submitting at precisely the same time as every other New Year’s resolver? Would it really not be fulfilling your resolution if you held off until, say, after Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, when the sheer volume hitting Millicent’s inbox will be significantly lower?

Would you, in short, wait until we’re past the month of the year in which rejection rates are predictably the highest?

I know, I know: you are positively aching to get that query or submission out the door. You’re resolved, in fact, that this will be the January that you crack the publication code. And the sooner you launch your plans, the better, right, because otherwise, you might lose momentum?

Admirable intentions, all, but I would urge you to rethink the last. As the media so eager to urge you to make that resolution — or, indeed, any New Year’s resolution — will be telling you in a few weeks, the average New Year’s resolution lasts only a few weeks. So woe unto he who hesitates, the prevailing wisdom goes, because as everybody knows, it’s absolutely impossible to begin any new project except immediately after the start of the year. If you miss the resolution boat by so much as a week — or, scare bleu! a month — all of the good New Year’s juju will have been sucked up by others. The laggard’s only recourse will be to sit, sad and glum, until the starting-gun goes off next year.

Unless one’s resolution was to lose weight, in which case the cultural reset button will be slapped sometime in the spring. “You wouldn’t want to miss your chance to get ready for swimsuit season?” the ambient culture will ask breathlessly. And off a significant proportion of the population will run again.

We each know in our heart of hearts, though, that just as surely as beauty is only skin deep, it’s completely untrue that there are only a couple of times per year in which it’s humanly possible to shed a few pounds. Or give up smoking. Or get that query out the door.

News flash: in publishing circles, there’s no special prize for a writer’s query being the first of the year, or even first 100,00th. Ditto with submissions: when a lot come at a time, they just pile up on agency desks. In either case, poor Millicent the agency screener is going to be working some awfully long hours until those volumes decrease a little.

Which means, in practice, that far from being the best time of the year to act upon those laudable plans, the first few weeks of the year are strategically the worst. Every year, literally millions of aspiring writers across this fine land of ours make precisely the same New Year’s resolution — with the entirely predictable result that every year, rejection rates skyrocket in the first few weeks of January. It thus follows as night the day that this is the time of year when a query or submission is most likely to be rejected.

Yes, you read that correctly. Your agile creative mind probably also leapt to the next correct conclusion: the same query or manuscript rejected in January might not have been had it dropped onto Millicent’s desk at another time of year. At minimum, the average query or submission will receive less reading time now than in, say, March.

That resounding thunk you just heard reverberating throughout the cosmos was the sound of thousands of first-time queriers and submitters’ jaws hitting their respective floors. For most writers new to the game, the notion that any factors other than the quality of the writing and excellence of the book’s concept could possibly play a role in whether a query or submission gets rejected is, well, new. If a manuscript is genuinely good, these eager souls reason, it shouldn’t matter when it arrives at an agency or small publishing house, right? No matter what else is on Millicent’s desk — or whatever else is going on at the agency, be it wedding, funeral, or just having read a proposal for the single worst nonfiction book since Mein Kampf — the only conceivable response to the advent of a good story well written must be the general dropping of all other work, cries of “Hallelujah!” and capering in the hallways, mustn’t it?

Um, no. I hate to be the one to break it to first-time submitters, but yours is not the only good manuscript that’s been written in English this year. And no true lover of literature should want it to be.

Yet almost without exception, writers responding to requests for manuscript pages act as though the agent or editor asking for it had been standing there, twiddling her thumbs, with nothing else to do until those pages arrived. Startlingly often, aspiring writers just presume that a request for pages, particularly in response to a conference pitch, constitutes a pro’s commitment to cease all work activity the moment those pages show up. Never mind that over half of requested materials never do show up — possibly because the writers in question queried or pitched before the book was done, or are trying to work up nerve to submit, or are waiting for the next new year to roll around — the horror is always the same.

“What do you mean,” indignant submitters everywhere huff, “it’s unrealistic to expect to hear back within a week or two — or a month or two? You don’t understand: the agent asked to read my manuscript!”

Yes, I know. He also asked to see other manuscripts. But apply the same logic earlier in the process, and springs a heck of a lot of holes: if a query for a truly well-written book — which is, contrary to popular opinion, not the same thing as a truly well-written query — lands on a pro’s desk, it will be received in precisely the same manner if it’s the only query arriving that day, or if it must howl for attention next to hundreds or thousands of incoming queries.

The latter is far, far more likely. Inevitable, in fact, if that query arrives anywhere near January first.

And that’s why, boys and girls, agents, editors at small publishing houses, and the screeners who read their day’s allotment of queries opened their e-mail inboxes this morning and groaned, “Why does every aspiring writer in North America hit SEND on January 1? Do they all get together and form a pact?”

Effectively, you do. You all formed such similar New Year’s resolutions.

So did the tens of thousands of successful pitchers and queriers from last year who decided that in the immediate wake of December 31, they were going to stop fiddling with their manuscripts and send those pages the agent of their respective dreams requested, unfortunately. It won’t have occurred to them, understandably, that each of them is not the only one to regard the advent of a new year as the best possible time to take steps to achieve their dreams.

Instead of — opening my calendar at random here — February 12th. Or the fifth of May. Or October 3rd. Or, really, any time of the year other than the first three weeks of January, when the sheer weight of tradition would guarantee that competition would be stiffest for the very few new writer slots available at any well-established agency or small publishing house.

That made half of you do a double-take, didn’t it? “Wait — what do you mean, very few new writer slots ?” queriers and submitters new to the game gasp. “Don’t agents take on every beautifully-written new manuscript and intriguing book proposal that comes their way?”

That’s a lovely notion, of course, but once again, pouring some water into that sieve will show us some holes. Think about it: reputable agents only make money when they sell their clients’ books to publishers and when those books earn royalties, right? There’s more to that than simply slapping covers on a book and shipping it to a local bookstore, after all. In any given year, only about 4% of traditionally-published books are by first-time authors, and those books tend as a group to be less profitable: unless a first-timer already enjoys wide name recognition, it’s simply more difficult for even the best marketing campaign to reach potential readers.

So at most agencies, most of the income comes from already-established clients — which means, on a day-to-day basis, a heck of a lot of agency time devoted to reading and promoting work by those authors. In recent years, selling even well-known authors’ work has gotten appreciably harder, as well as more time-consuming, yet like so many businesses, publishing houses and agencies alike have been downsizing. At the same time, since writing a book is so many people’s Plan B, hard economic times virtually always translate into increased query and submission volume.

Translation: agencies have to devote more hours than ever before to processing queries and submissions — an activity that, by definition, does not pay them anything in the short run — with fewer trained eyes to do it.

Why should any of that matter to a new writer chomping at the bit to land an agent in the new year? Several reasons. High querying and submission volume plus tight agency budgets result, inevitably, in less time spent on any given query or submission. The quicker the perusal, typically, the harder it is to impress an agent or an editor — and thus the more likely a time-strapped agency will be to employ Millicents to give queries and submissions the once-over. It’s not at all uncommon for a submission to have to make it past a couple of Millies empowered to say no before landing on the desk of anyone empowered to say yes.

So tell me: would you rather that Millicent had 15 other manuscripts to screen between now and lunch, if yours is No. 12, or 50? Or 150?

Got that appalling image firmly in your mind? Good. Now picture that same overworked, underpaid (or possibly not paid at all; many Millicents are interns) screener opening her e-mail inbox on the first Monday of the new year. Or the second. How much time do you think she’s going to be able to devote to each of the several thousand queries she’ll find deposited there? What about the next thousand arriving in her inbox tomorrow?

Actually, while you’re mentally trying on Millie’s moccasins, try taking a few more steps in them: how dismayed would you be at the prospect of doing ten (or more) times your usual work that day? Wouldn’t you tend to read just a trifle faster, with your fingertips lightly caressing the DELETE key? No matter how much you love literature and the good people who write it — as the overwhelming majority of folks currently working in publishing do — wouldn’t it be understandable if you found yourself screening those thousands of queries looking for quick reasons to reject, rather than eagerly perusing each one for every last clue that there might be talent hidden there?

Did I hear some momentary hesitation prior to your shouting, “By all the Muses’ togas, no! Were I lucky enough to read thousands upon thousands of queries every January, I would treat each and every one with respect — nay, reverence — down to the last semicolon and almost-legible signature!” Or at least before packing up the implied moral dilemma in your old kit bag and murmuring, “Well, if I ran the publishing world, querying wouldn’t be required; writers could simply send their manuscripts. Which agents would read in their entirety…”?

Ah, you just did the mental math, didn’t you? There’s a reason the vast majority of submissions get rejected on page 1.

But let’s get back to Millicent’s agonizing decision about how long to spend reading each query. Yes, it’s her job to find the diamonds amongst the rhinestones; yes, it’s unfair and even rather unreasonable that a writer of gem-like books must also devote time and energy to composing a brilliant query and synopsis. It’s an inescapable fact of our times, however — and you might want to sit down for this one — that the more successful an agent is, the more queries s/he will receive, and thus the greater the pressure on that agent’s screener to narrow down the field of contenders as rapidly as possible.

Why, you gasp, clutching your palpitating heart? Because time does not, alas, expand if one happens to have good intentions. Most good agents simply don’t have time to take on more than a handful of new clients per year.

Starting to think differently about the tens of thousands of queries that might be jostling yours in an agency’s inbox today if you hit SEND yesterday? Or the manuscripts that will be stacked next to yours if you stuff those requested pages into a mailbox later in the week?

Or, ‘fess up, were you one of the significant minority of aspiring writers whose first reaction to the idea that the agent of your dreams might be signing only 4 or 5 clients this year ran along the lines of “Apollo’s flame! I’d better make mine the first query he sees this year, then,” followed by a rapid glance at the nearest calendar? If so, relax: it’s not as though most agencies run on quotas, or as though your garden-variety great agent will fill his satchel with fabulous manuscripts for a month or two, then ignore everything else he reads until January 1 rolls around again.

It’s not, in short, as though the publishing world runs on New Year’s resolutions. (Although that’s an interesting idea.)

If you must take steps toward representation within the next few days or weeks, may I suggest something else that might improve your query’s chances? Invest the time in narrowing your querying list to agents with a solid, recent track record of selling books like yours.

Why will that help at the querying stage? Well, performing that research is relatively rare; a staggering number of queries arrive on the desks of people who have never represented a similar book in their professional lives. That’s a positive gift to a time-strapped Millicent, you know: the overwhelming majority of those thousands of New Year’s resolution-generated queries will be quite tempting to reject at first glance, and often for reasons that have little to do with the writing.

I find it sad that at this time of year especially, new writers often pick agents to query essentially at random. Their logic tends to run thus: if agents represent good books, and a book is well written, any agent could represent it successfully, right?

Actually, no: agents specialize, and it’s very much to both a good book and a good writer’s advantage that they should. The publishing industry is wide-ranging and complex, after all; no one who sells books for a living seriously believes that every well-written book will appeal to every single reader. Readers tend to specialize, too.

That’s why, in case you had been wondering, the publishing world thinks of books in categories. While an individual reader may well enjoy books across a variety of categories — indeed, most do — readers who gravitate toward a certain type of book share expectations. A devotee of paranormals, for instance, would be disappointed if she picked up a book presented as a vampire fantasy, but the storyline didn’t contain a single bloodsucker. By the same token, a lover of literary fiction would be dismayed to discover the novel he’d been led to believe was an intensive character study of an American family turned out to be an explosion-packed thriller.

As annoying as it may be for aspiring writers to think about limiting their readerships, literary fiction, fantasy, YA, Western, memoir, etc., are the conceptual containers used to ensure that a particular kind of writing will be marketed to the specific target audience already buying similar books. It’s not (as writers new to the game often assume) that you’re being asked to say who wouldn’t be interested in reading your story, or that (as writers considering for the first time the question of genre frequently fear) that agents don’t understand that creativity can confound readers’ expectations. The goal of labeling your manuscript with a book category — as you should do in your query — is to help match the right book with the right readers in the long run, as well as with the right agent in the short run.

Not only does approaching an agent experienced in working with books in your chosen category maximize the probability that she will enjoy the story you’re telling — it also maximizes the probability that she’ll already have the professional connections to sell it. Since no editor or publishing house brings out every different kind of book, agents would be less effective at their jobs if their only criterion for selecting which books to represent was whether they liked the writing. Editors and imprints, too, tend to specialize, handling only certain book categories.

As a direct and sometimes disturbingly swift result, there is no query easier for Millicent to reject than one for a book in a category her boss does not represent. No matter how beautifully that query presents the book’s premise, that story will be a poor fit for her agency. Approaching an agent simply because he’s an agent, then, tends to be the first step on a path to rejection.

Especially, if you can stand my harping on this point, if a writer is doing it in January. New Year’s resolvers are frequently in a hurry to see results. You would not believe how many aspiring writers will simply type literary agent into Google, e-mailing the first few that pop up. Or how many more will enter a generic term like fiction into an agency search, intending to query the first 80 on the list, usually without checking out any of those agents’ websites or listings in one of the standard agents’ guides to find out what those fine folks actually represent.

That’s a pity, because — feel free to sing along; you should know the tune by now — not only is an agent who already has a solid track record selling a particular category more likely to be interested in similar books, but that agent will also have the connections to sell that type of book. Which means, ultimately, that approaching an agent specializing in books like yours could mean getting published faster than just querying every agent in Christendom.

Yes, really. You don’t just want to land any agent, do you? You want to entrust your book to the best possible representative for it.

I sense some grumbling out there. “But Anne,” the disgruntled mutter, and who could blame you? “All I want to do is get my book published; I know that I need an agent to do that. But I don’t have a lot of time to devote to finding one. Thus my wanting to act upon my New Year’s resolution toute suite: I had a few spare moments over the holidays, so I was finally able to crank out a query draft. I understand that it might be a better use of my querying time to rule out agents who don’t represent my type of book at all, but why wouldn’t sending my query to a hundred agents that do be the fastest way to reach the right one? That way, I could get all of my queries out the door before I lose my nerve — or my burst of new year-fueled energy.”

That’s a good question, one that richly deserves an answer. I’ve written quite a bit on this blog about why generic queries tend not to be received as kindly in agencies as those that are more tightly targeted; there’s a reason, after all, that the stock advice on how to figure out which agents to query has for years been find a recently-released book you like and find out who represented it. Admittedly, that excellent axiom was substantially easier to follow back in the days when publishers routinely allowed authors to include acknowledgements; it used to be quite common to thank one’s agent. Any agency’s website will list its primary clients, however, and I think you’ll be charmed to discover how many authors’ websites include representation information.

In case I’m being too subtle here: no recipient of a generic query will believe that its sender had no way to find out what kinds of books she represents, or which established authors. Neither will her Millicent. Sorry about that.

Small wonder, then, that any screener that’s been at it a while can spot a query equally applicable to every agency in the biz at twenty paces — especially if, as so often is the case with mass-produced mailed queries, it’s addressed to Dear Agent, rather than a specific person. Or if it is rife with typos, too informal in tone, or simply doesn’t contain the information any agent would want to know before requesting pages. Like, say, the title or the book category.

Oh, you think I’m kidding about the title? Millicent’s seen 10 queries missing it today.

Given the intensity of competition for Millicent’s attention on an ordinary day of screening, any one of the problems mentioned above could trigger rejection. During the post-New Year’s query avalanche, it’s even more likely.

Let’s take a moment to picture why. Agents and editors, like pretty much everybody else, often enjoy the holidays; they’ve even been known to take time off then, contrary to popular opinion amongst New Year’s resolution queriers. Since it’s hard to pull together an editorial committee — and thus for an acquiring editor to gain permission to pick up a new book — with so many people on vacation, agents and editors alike frequently use work time during the holidays to catch up on their backlog of reading. (See earlier point about existing clients’ work.) It’s not, however, particularly common to employ that time reading queries.

Why? The annual New Year’s resolution barrage about to descend, of course: they know they’ll be spending January digging out from under it. How could they not, when all throughout the holiday season, writers across the English-speaking world have been working up both drafts and nerve?

Not only do the usual post-vacation backlog await them, but so will the fruits of every New Year’s resolver’s enthusiasm. Every inbox will be stuffed to overflowing; thousands of e-mails will be crowding the agency’s computers; the mailman will be staggering under armfuls of envelopes and manuscript boxes.

Care to revise your answer about how quickly you would be inclined to read through that tall, tall stack of queries if you were Millicent? How much time would you tend to spend on each one, compared to, say, what you might devote to it on March 8th? Would you be reading with a more or less charitable eye for the odd typo or a storyline that did not seem to correspond entirely with your boss’ current interests?

Before you respond to those burning questions, consider: working her way through that day’s correspondence is necessary to clear Millicent’s schedule, or even enable her to see her desk again. As January progresses, each day will bring still more for her to read. Not every New Year’s resolution gets implemented at the same pace, after all, nor do they have the same content. This month, however, Millicent may be sure that each fresh morning will provide additional evidence that writers everywhere have their noses to the wheel — and each Monday morning will demonstrate abundantly that New Year’s resolvers are using their weekends well.

At least for the first three weeks or so. After that, the resolution-generated flood peters out.

Not entirely coincidentally, that’s also when New Year’s resolution queriers tend to receive their first sets of mailed rejections — and when e-mailing queriers begin to suspect that they might not hear back at all. (For those who just clutched your hearts: rejection via silence has been the norm for the past few years.) The timing on those rejections is key to Millicent’s workload over the next few months, as an astonishingly high percentage of first-time queriers give up after only one or two attempts.

That’s completely understandable, of course: rejection hurts. But as any agent worth her salt could tell you, pushing a book past multiple rejections is a normal and expected part of the publication process. Every single author you admire has had to deal with it at some point in the process. Yes, really: just as — again, contrary to popular opinion — even the best books generally get rejected by quite a few agents before the right one makes an offer to represent it, manuscripts and book proposals seldom sell to the first editor that reads them.

That should give you hope, by the way: while it may feel like a single rejection from a single agent represents the publishing industry’s collective opinion about your writing, but it’s just not true. Individual agents have individual tastes; so do their Millicents. Keep trying until you find the right fit.

But you might want to wait a few weeks — and if it’s not clear yet why, I ask you again to step out of a writer’s shoes and into Millicent’s. If you knew from past experience how many fewer queries would be landing on your desk a few weeks hence, would you read through this week’s bumper crop more or less rapidly than usual? Would you be more or less likely to reject any particular one? Or, frankly, wouldn’t you be a bit more tired when you read Query #872 of the day than Query #96?

Still surprised that rejection rates are higher this time of year? Okay, let me add another factor to the mix: in the United States, agencies must produce the tax information for their clients’ advances and royalties for the previous year by the end of January.

That immense sucking sound you just heard was all of the English majors in the country gasping in unison. Representing good writing well isn’t just about aesthetic judgments, people; it’s a business. A business based upon aesthetic judgments, of course, but still, it’s not all hobnobbing with the literati and sipping bad Chardonnay at book launches.

It’s also a business run by people — living, breathing, caring individuals who, yes, love good writing, but also can get discouraged at the sight of a heavier-than-usual workload. They can become tired, like anyone else. Or even slightly irritated after reading the 11th generic query of the day, or spotting five misspellings in the 111th.

Imagine, then, what it might feel like to read the 1,100th. Of the day, if one happens to be screening within the first few weeks of January.

To repeat my word du jour: wait. You’re an original writer; why would you need to pick the same day — or month — to launch your dreams as everybody else?

Oh, and if you choose to disregard this advice — and I’ve been at this long enough to have accepted that a hefty percentage of you will — please, remember to include not only your manuscript title and book category in your query, but also to tuck your contact information into the letter. If you’re submitting a manuscript, include a title page with your contact information. You want the agent that’s just fallen in love with your voice to be able to tell you so, don’t you?

Stop laughing, please. You would be flabbergasted at how often e-mailing queriers and submitters just assume that all Millicent or her boss would have to do to get in touch would be to hit REPLY. I guess they’ve never heard of a forwarded e-mail.

Best of luck with your New Year’s resolutions — and with implementing them in the way that’s most likely to bring your dreams to fulfillment. Keep up the good work!

“What do you you mean, your book’s not published yet?” and other light-hearted holiday table banter

gingerbread family

While lazily re-reading the letters of Madame de Sévigné, as one so often does at this time of year, I stumbled across a particularly revealing review of a book released several centuries ago. Quoth the great lady:

This Morale of Nicole is admirable, and Cléopatre is going along nicely, but in no hurry; it is for odd moments. Usually, it is reading this that lulls me to sleep — the large print pleases me much more than the style.

That prompted me to cast a hurried eye at the calendar, as you may imagine. “Good gravy!” I exclaimed. “Aspiring writers across this great nation are about to be having Thanksgiving dinner with otherwise charming relatives and friends who wouldn’t know literature if it were floating in the cranberry sauce! It’s time to trot out my annual balm for the souls of writers passing the mashed potatoes while trying to answer well-meant questions like ‘So you’re a writer? What have you published?’ and ‘What — you’re still working on that novel after all this time?’ Not to mention the ever-popular ‘Oh, you’re writing these days? I’d just assumed you’d given up on that dream.’”

And writers throughout the land groan with recognition. There, there, campers — you didn’t think I was going to send you over the river and through the woods without a few words of encouragement, did you?

Yet already, the eyebrows of those new to treading the path literary shoot skyward. “But Anne,” bright-eyed neophytes everywhere murmur, “aren’t you borrowing trouble here? Everyone loves a dreamer, and everyone adores good writing; therefore, it follows as night the day that everyone must be just wild about a good writer’s pursuing the dream of publication. So what makes you think we need a pep talk prior to venturing into the no doubt warm and accepting bosoms of our respective families and/or dining rooms of our inevitably supportive friends?”

Experience, mostly. In descending order of probability, a writing blogger, a fellow writer, and an editor provide the three most likely shoulders aspiring writers will dampen with their frustrated tears immediately after the festive eating and good fellowship cease. Heck, this time of year, even relatively well-established authors often beard the heavens with their bootless cries.

“Why,” they demand of the unhearing muses and anybody else who will listen, “can’t Aunt Myra, bless her heart, stop asking me why she regularly sees worse books than yours on the bestseller lists? Why must Cousin Reginald tell me at such length about his co-worker’s experience with self-publishing, as if that were relevant to my more traditional path? And why oh why cannot my beloved fraternal quadruplet Cristobal refrain from accusing me of being lazy because the memoir I wrote six years ago wasn’t out last June as a beach read?”

Excellent questions, all, but ones that can be addressed with a single answer: most non-writers harbor completely unrealistic notions about how and why good books get published. They believe, you see, in the Publishing Fairy, that completely fictional entity assigned by a beneficent universe to carry manuscripts directly from first conception to published volume swiftly, easily, and with no effort required from the writer.

Apart from the sheer act of sitting down and writing the darned thing, of course. But Aunt Myra has always suspected that half the time you claim to be spending sitting in front of your computer, wrestling with the muses, you’re actually on Facebook.

I pity Aunt Myra, Cousin Reginald, and your former womb mate Cristobal, though, truly. As a direct result of their implicit belief in the Publication Fairy and her seldom-seen-in-practice ways, they feel compelled to regard the absolutely normal years their beloved writer has spent struggling to learn the craft, wrenching the soul into written form, finding an agent who resonates with a genuinely original voice and vision, alternately waiting and revising while said agent shops the manuscript to publishers, subsequent waiting and revising while the book is in press, and exhausting marketing process as, well, abnormal.

And that, in case you had been shaking your head in wonder over a turkey leg, is why so many honest-to-goodness nice folks who deeply care about you can sound so incredibly awful when they feel forced to inquire about your writing. All of those fears about why the Publication Fairy has passed you by — or, at the very least, hasn’t yet taken you by the hand and led you to Oprah, The Colbert Report, or The New York Times Review of Books, tend to be compressed conversationally at every stage into the same ilk of question: “Why isn’t your book published yet?” They’re trying, in short, to be kind.

That’s not always apparent in the minute, though, is it? And if you’re like the overwhelming majority of writers, you’ve probably tumbled at least once into the bear trap of assuming that it was your fault for talking about your writing at all.

Come on, admit it — you’ve wished in retrospect that you hadn’t brought up your book. How could you not, when, in the course of your detailed account of just how many inches you have gnawed off your fingernails while waiting for that agent who asked for an exclusive to get back to you — it’s been five months! — Grandmamma plucked your sleeve and murmured tenderly, “Honey, why isn’t your novel in the stores? I keep telling my friends that you write” over the pie course? Didn’t you struggle just a bit to come up with a different answer than you had given her the last four times she’d asked?

If it’s any comfort, that bear trap lurks in the shadows later in the publishing process as well. When you’re six days from a hard deadline to get a revision you think is a bad idea to your publisher, Uncle Clark may well chortle, “Memoir? What on earth do you have to write memoirs about? You’re not the president.” Bearing in mind that he is fully capable of saying this to you after you have been elected president provides scant comfort, I’m sorry to say.

Or, when you’re over the moon because an agent — a real, live, honest-to-goodness agent! — has agreed to represent your baby, Gertrude-who-doesn’t-have-any-family-locally will boom over her second helping of glazed carrots, “Oh, congratulations! When’s the book coming out?” Invariably, while you are struggling to explain the vital difference between signing a representation contract and a contract with a publisher, the relative responsible for inviting Gertrude will attempt to change the subject. Perhaps violently.

And every writer currently treading the earth’s crust has encountered some form of Cousin Antoinette’s why-isn’t-he-her-ex-husband-yet’s annual passive-aggressive attempt at hearty encouragement. “Still no agent, eh? I’d always thought that the really good books got snapped up right away. Have you thought at all about self-publishing? A good writer can make a lot of money that way, right?”

Am I correct that you have on occasion kicked yourself for your reaction — or non-reaction — to such outrageous stimuli? I’m sure you’ve told yourself that a sane, confident, unusually secure writer might well have answered: “Why, yes, Roger, I have indeed thought about self-publishing. As I had last year and the year before, when you had previously proffered this self-evident suggestion. Now shut up, please, and pass the darned yams.”

Or piped merrily, “Well, as the agents like to say, Uncle Clark, it all depends on the writing. So unless you’d like me to embark upon a fifty-two minute explanation of the intrinsic differences between the Ulysses S. Grant-style national-scale autobiography that you probably have in mind and a personal memoir about the adolescence in which you played a minor but memorably disagreeable role — a disquisition with which I would be all too happy to bore the entire table — could I interest you in a third helping of these delightful vermouth-doused string beans?”

Or chirped between courses, “You know, Gertie, that’s a common misconception. If you’d like to learn something about how the publication process actually works, I could refer you to an excellent blog.”

Or, while Grandmamma’s mouth is full of pie, observed suavely, “I so appreciate your drumming up future readers for my novel, dearest; I’m sure that will come in very handy down the road. But no, ‘trying just a little harder this year’ won’t necessarily make the difference between hitting the bestseller lists and obscurity. You might want to try telling your friends that even if I landed an agent for my novel within the next few days — even less likely at this time of year than others, by the way, as the publishing world slows to a crawl between Thanksgiving and the end of the year — it could easily be a year or two before you can realistically urge them to buy my novel. Thanks for your reliable support, though; it means a lot to me.”

Most of us aren’t up to that level of even-tempered and informative riposte, alas. We’re more inclined to get defensive, to tell Dad he doesn’t know whereat he speaks — or to stuff our traitorous mouths with mashed potatoes so we won’t tell Dad he doesn’t know whereat he speaks. In the moment, even the best-intentioned of those questions can sound very much like an insidious echo of that self-doubting hobgoblin that so loves to lurk in the back of the creative mind.

“If you were truly talented,” that little beastie loves to murmur in the ear of a writer already feeling discouraged, “an admiring public would already be enjoying your work in droves. And in paperback. Now stop thinking about your book and go score more leftover pie and some coffee; tormenting you is thirsty work.”

Admit it — you’re on a first-name basis with that goblin. It’s been whispering in your ear ever since you began to query. Or submit. Or perhaps as soon as you started to write.

Even so, you’re entitled to be a little startled when Bertie with the pitchfork suddenly begins speaking out of the mouth of that otherwise perfectly pleasant person your brother brought along to dinner because he’s new to town and has nowhere else to go on Thanksgiving. Instead of emptying that conveniently nearby vat of cranberry sauce over his Adonis-like curls, may I suggest trying to be charitable? Your brother’s friend may actually be doing you a favor by verbalizing your lingering doubts, you know.

“Wait — how?” you ask, cranberry-filled vat already aloft.

Well, it’s a heck of a lot easier to argue with a living, breathing person than someone whose base camp is located inside your head. Astonishingly often, an artless question like “Oh, you write? Would I have read any of your work?” from the ignoramus across the table will give voice to a niggling doubt that’s been eating at a talented writer for years.

Or so I surmise, from how frequently writers complain about such questions. “How insensitive can they be?” writers inevitably wail in the wake of holiday gatherings, and who could blame them? “I swear that I heard ‘So when is your book coming out?’ twice as often as ‘Pass the gravy, please.’ Why is it that my kith/kin/the kith and/or kin of some acquaintance kind enough to feed me don’t seem to have the faintest idea of what it means to be a working writer, as opposed to the fantasy kind that writes a book one minute, is instantly and spontaneously solicited by an agent the next, and is chatting on a couch with a late-night TV host immediately thereafter? Why is publication — and wildly successful publication at that — so frequently regarded as the only measure of writing talent?”

The short answer to that extraordinarily well-justified cri de coeur is an unfortunately cruel one: because that’s how society at large judges writing. I’m relatively certain, though, that the question-asking gravy-eschewers who drove the writers mentioned above to distraction (and, quite possibly, drove them home afterward) did not intend to be cruel. They’re just echoing a common misunderstanding of how books do and don’t get published.

Which brings us once again to our old pal, the Publication Fairy. Her pixie dust can blind even the most sensible bystander to the writing process. Not only does popular belief hold that the only good book is a published book — a proposition that would make anyone who actually handles manuscripts for a living positively gasp with laughter — but also that if a writer were actually gifted, publication would be both swift and inevitable, following with little or no effort hard upon typing THE END on a first draft. Commercial success arrives invariably for great books, too, because unless the author happens to be a celebrity in another field, the only possible difference between a book that lands the author on the bestseller lists and one that languishes unpurchased on a shelf is the quality of the writing, right? Because no one ever buys a book without reading it first.

Are you guffawing yet? More importantly, is Bertie the Hobgoblin? Trust me, anyone who works with manuscripts for a living would be rolling on the shag carpet by now.

Yet I sense that you’re not laughing. You’re not even smiling. In fact, if you’re honest about it, you and Bertie may have been nodding silently while reading through that list of risible untruths about publishing.

Because this is such a frequent source of self-doubt, let’s tease out the logic a little. If we accept all of the suppositions as accurate, there are only two conceivable reasons that a manuscript could possibly not already be published: it’s not yet completed (in which case the writer is lazy, right?) or it simply isn’t any good (and thus does not deserve to be published). That means, invariably, that a writer complaining about how hard the road is must either need a kick in the rump or gentle dissuasion from pursuing a dream that can’t possibly come true.

Fortunately for dinner-table harmony, most nice folks aren’t up to providing either to a relative they see only once or twice a year. (Although your Aunt Gloria is always up for a little rump-kicking, I hear.) Accordingly, they figure, the only generous response to a writer who has been at it a while, yet does not have a book out, must be to avert one’s eyes and make vaguely encouraging noises.

Or to change the subject altogether. Really, it isn’t your sister’s coworker’s fault that your mother told him to sit next to the writer in the family. Why, the coworker thinks, rub salt in the already-wounded ego of some poor soul writhing under a first query rejection, and who therefore clearly has no talent for writing?

Chuckling yet? You should be. While it is of course conceivable that any of the reasons above could be stifling the publication chances of any particular manuscript to which a hopeful writer might refer after a relative she sees only once a year claps her heartily on the back and bellows, “How’s the writing coming, Violet?” yet again, the very notion that writing success should be measured — or could be adequately measured — solely by whether the mythical Publication Fairy has yet whacked it with her Print-and-Bind-It-Now wand would cause the pros to choke with mirth.

So would the length of that last sentence, come to think of it. Ol’ Henry James must surely be beaming down at me from the literary heavens over that one. Unless he’s still lingering over the pecan pie with Madame de Sévigné, Noël Coward, and Euripides. (They’re always the last to leave the table.)

Again, though, my finely-tuned antennae tell me that some of you are not in fact choking with mirth. “But Anne,” frustrated writers everywhere point out, “although naturally, I know from reading this blog (particularly the informative posts under the HOW THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY WORKS — AND DOESN’T category at right), listening carefully to what agents say they want, and observation of the career trajectories of both my writer friends and established authors alike, that many an excellent manuscript languishes for years without being picked up, part of me really, really, REALLY wants to believe that’s not actually the case. Or at least that it will not be in my case.”

See what I mean about the holidays’ capacity for causing those internalized pernicious assumptions to leap out of the mind and demand to be fed? Let’s listen for a bit longer; perhaps we can learn something more. Let’s get it all out on the table.

“If the literary universe is fair,” writers and their pet hobgoblins typically reason…

(Stop here for every agent, editor, and book promoter who has ever lived to snort with hilarity.)

“…a good manuscript should always find a home. If that’s true, perhaps my kith and kin are right that if I were really talented, the only thing I would ever have to say at Thanksgiving is that my book is already out and where I would like them to buy it.”

Actually, in that instance, you would be fending off injured cries of “Where is my free copy?” But we’ll talk about that later. Your hobgoblins were saying?

“Since it’s an agent’s job to find exciting new talent,” Bernie et al. continue, “and my query — not my manuscript — has been rejected by four agents and I’ve never heard back from the fifth who asked to see the first 30 pages, there’s really no point in continuing to try to find an agent for this book. They all share the same tastes, and anyway, they’d probably only want me to change things in my manuscript. Maybe Roger is right to urge me to self-publish. But then all of the costs and pressures of promotion would fall on me, and…”

“Wait just a book-signing minute!” another group of not-yet-completely-frustrated writers and their hobgoblins interrupt us. “What do you mean, many an excellent manuscript languishes for years without being picked up? How is that possible? Isn’t it the publishing industry’s job — and its sole job — to identify and promote writing talent? And doesn’t that mean that any truly talented writer will be so identified and promoted, if only he is brave enough to send out work persistently, until he finds the right agent for it?”

“Whoa!” still a third demographic and its internal demons shout en masse. “Send out work persistently? Rejected by four agents — and not heard back from a fifth? I thought that if a writer was genuinely gifted, any good agent would snatch up her manuscript. So why would any excellent writer need to query more than one or two times?”

Do you hear yourselves, people? You’re invoking the Publishing Fairy. Are you absolutely certain you want to do that?

It’s a dangerous practice for a writer, you know. The Publication Fairy’s long, shallow shadow can render seeing one’s own publication chances decrease over time. Following her siren song can lead a writer to believe, for instance, that the goal of querying is to land just any agent, rather than one who already has the connections to sell a particular book. Or that it would be a dandy idea to sending out a barrage of queries to the fifty agents a search engine spit out, or even to every agent in the country, without checking first to see if any of them represent a your kind of book. Or — you might want to put down your fork, the better to digest this one, my dear — to give up after just a few rejections.

Because if that writer were actually talented, how he went about approaching agents wouldn’t matter, would it? The Publishing Fairy would see to it that nothing but the quality of the writing would be assessed — and thus it follows like drowsiness after consuming vast quantities of turkey that if a writer gets rejected, ever, the manuscript must not be well-written. You might as well give up after the first rejection. Or before taking a chance on a query.

Why shouldn’t you, when by prevailing logic, it’s hardly necessary for the writer to expend any effort at all, beyond writing a first draft of the book? Those whom the Publishing Fairy bops in the noggin need merely toss off an initial draft — because the honestly gifted writer never needs to revise anything, right? — then wait mere instants until an agent is miraculously wafted to her doorstep.

Possibly accompanied by Mary Poppins, if the wind is right.

Ah, it’s a pretty fantasy, isn’t it? The agent reads the entire book at a sitting — or, better still, extrapolates the entire book from a swift glance at a query — and shouts in ecstasy, “This is the book for which I have been waiting for my entire professional career!” A book contract follows instantaneously, promising publication within a week. By the end of a couple of months at the very latest, the really talented writer will be happily ensconced on a well-lit couch in a television studio, chatting with a talk show host about her book, pretending to be modest.

“It has been a life-changing struggle,” the writer says brightly, courageously restraining happy tears, “but I felt I had to write this book. As Maya Angelou says, ‘there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’”

You would be astonished at the ubiquity this narrative of authorial achievement enjoys amongst aspiring writers. They may not all believe it intellectually — they may have come to understand, for example, that since no agent in the world represents every conceivable type of book, it’s a waste of time to query an agent who does not habitually handle books in one’s chosen book category. At a gut level, however, every rejection feels like just more evidence of being ignored by the Publication Fairy.

Which must mean that the manuscript isn’t nearly as good as you’d thought, right? Why else would an agent — any agent — who has not seen so much as a word of it not respond to a query? The Publication Fairy must have tipped her off that something wasn’t quite as it should be.

Otherwise, where’s Mary Poppins? Aunt Myra may have a point.

‘Fess up — you’ve thought this at time or two. Practically every aspiring writer who did not have the foresight to become a celebrity (who enjoy a completely different path to publication) before attempting to get published entertains such doubts in the dead of night, or at any rate in the throes of being questioned by those with whom one is sharing a gravy boat for the evening. If the road to publication is hard, long, and winding, it must mean something, mustn’t it?

Why, yes: it could mean that the book category in which one happens to be writing is not selling very well right now, for one thing. Good agents are frequently reluctant to pick up even superlative manuscripts they don’t believe they could sell in the current market. It could also signify that the agents one has been approaching do not have a solid track record of selling similar books, or that for querying purposes, one has assigned one’s book to an inappropriate category.

Any of these can result in knee-jerk rejection. Even if a manuscript is a perfect fit and everyone at the agency adores the writing, the literary marketplace has contracted to such an extent in recent years that few agents can afford to take on as many truly talented new clients as they would like.

But those are not the justifications likely to pacify Bernie the Hobgoblin in the night. Nor are they prone to convince Uncle Clark, or make Grandmamma happy, or to awe Roger into the supportive acceptance you would prefer he evince until Cousin Antoinette finally gives him the heave-ho. If only there were some short, pithy quip you could trot out at such instants, if not to cajole these excellent souls into active support, at least to stop them from skewering you when you’re feeling vulnerable.

I cannot give you that magical statement, unfortunately. All I can offer you is the truth: offhand, I can think of approximately no well-established authors for whom the Publishing Fairy fantasy we’ve been discussing represents a real-life career trajectory.

Sorry, Dad — that’s just not how books get published. More pie?

The popular conception of how publishing works is, not to put too fine a point on it, composed largely of magical thinking. All of us would like to believe that if a manuscript is a masterpiece, there’s no chance that it would go unpublished. We cling to the comforting concept that ultimately, the generous literary gods will reach down to nudge brilliant writing from the slush pile (which no longer exists) to the top of the acceptance heap.

We believe, in short, in the Publication Fairy. That’s understandable in a writer: those of us in cahoots with the muses would prefer not to think that they were in the habit of tricking us with false hope. An intriguing belief, given that even a passing acquaintance with literary history would lead one to suspect that the ladies in question do occasionally get a kick out of snatching recognition from someone they have blessed with undoubted talent.

Edgar Allan Poe didn’t exactly die a happy man, people. Oscar Wilde was known to have run into a barrier or two. Louisa May Alcott toiled to churn out potboilers and war anecdotes to pay the coal bill for years before turning to YA, and the primary reason that we know the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley is that his wife happened to be a major novelist and the daughter of two major novelists; Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was arguably the greatest literary publicist of all time.

And the first novel Jane Austen sold to a publisher? It didn’t come out until after her death.

The muses donate their favors whimsically. I ask you, though, through the lens of that historical perspective: is it really soon enough to judge your writing solely by its immediate commercial prospects? Is it ever?

To non-writers, these perfectly reasonable questions can appear downright delusional, or at the very least confusing. They have no experience having their passions bandied about by the muses, you see. To be fair, you cannot expect otherwise from an upstanding citizen whose idea of Hell consists of a demon’s forcing him into an uncomfortable desk chair in front of a seriously outdated computer and howling, “You must write a book!”

So we are left to ask ourselves: what can such a sterling soul possibly gain by believing that, unlike in literally every other human endeavor, excellence in writing is invariably rewarded? Even those who strenuously avoid bookstores often cling to the myth of the Publication Fairy with a tenacity that makes Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy turn chartreuse with envy. If only adults believed in them with such fervor!

If you doubt the strength of the Publication Fairy’s sway, try talking about your writing over a holiday dinner to a group of non-writers who haven’t asked about it. “So when is your book coming out?” that-cousin-whose-relationship-to-you-has-never-been-clear will inquire. “And would you mind passing that mysterious grey substance with which your roommate chose to trouble our family meal?”

“What do you mean, you haven’t finished writing that book yet?” Great-Aunt Mavis chimes in, helping herself to sweet potatoes. “You talked about writing it before Travis here was born, and now he’s on the football squad.”

“Are you still doing that?” Grandpa demands incredulously. “I thought you’d given up when you couldn’t sell your first book. Or is this still the first book?”

Your brother’s wife might attempt to be a bit more tactful; Colleen always tries, doesn’t she? “Oh, querying sounds just awful. Do you really want to put yourself through it? I have a friend who’s self-publishing, and…”

Thanks, Colleen — because, of course, that would never have occurred to you. You’ve never encountered a dank midnight in which you dreamt of thumbing your nose at traditional publishing at least long enough to bypass the querying and submission processes, rush the first draft of your Great American Novel onto bookshelves, and then sit back, waiting for the profits to roll in, the reviewers to rave, and publishers the world over to materialize on your doorstep, begging to publish your next book.

Never mind that the average self-published book sells fewer than five hundred copies — yes, even today — or that most publications that still review books employ policies forbidding the review of self-published books. Half of the books released every year in North America are not self-published, after all. Ignore the fact that all of the effort of promoting such a book falls on the author. And don’t even give a passing thought to the reality that in order for a self-published book to impress the traditional publishing world even vaguely, it typically needs to sell at least 10,000 copies.

Yes, you read that correctly. But the Publishing Fairy can merely wave her wand and change all of that, right?

If she can, she certainly doesn’t do it much. Chant it with me now: agents don’t magically appear on good authors’ doorsteps within thirty seconds of the words The End being typed. But someone predisposed to believe otherwise is also unlikely to understand that when you land an agent, you will not automatically be handed a publication contract by some beneficent deity. If every agented writer had a nickel for each time some well-meaning soul said, “Oh, you have an agent? When’s your book coming out?” we could construct our own publishing house.

We could stack up the first million or so nickels for girders. Mary Poppins could have a flat landing-place made out of dimes.

Try not to hold it against your father-in-law: chances are, he just doesn’t have any idea how publishing actually works.

But you do. Don’t let anybody, not even the insidious hobgoblins of midnight reflection, tell you that the reason you don’t already have a book out is — and must necessarily be — that you just aren’t talented enough. That’s magical thinking, and you’re too smart to buy into it.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that those of you who have yet to dine today deliberately pick a fight with your third cousin twice removed or any other delightful soul considerate enough to inquire about your writing in the immediate vicinity of pickled beets. I sense, though, that more than a few of you would enjoy having a bit of ammunition at the ready in anticipation for that particular battle, should it arise.

Okay, how might one gird one’s loins for that especially indigestible discussion? Had you thought about responding to the question “Published yet, Charlie?” by abruptly asking how everyone at the table feels about the recent election? Or universal healthcare? Or a certain grand jury verdict in Missouri?

You see the point, don’t you? Just as it’s risky to assume that everyone gathered around even the most Norman Rockwell-pleasing holiday table shares identical political beliefs, it’s always dangerous to presume that every kind soul there will be concealing under that sweater-clad chest a heart open to the realities of publishing as it actually occurs. Accepting the probable reality that even the most eloquent explanation will not necessarily sway hearts and minds from devotion to the Publication Fairy may be your best bet.

So what might a writer besieged by the Publication Fairy’s acolytes do to protect her digestion? How about limiting to the discussion to “The writing’s going very well. How’s your handball game these days, Ambrose?”

Seem evasive? Well, it is. But would you rather allow the discourse to proceed to the point that you might have to say to a relative that has just referred to your writing as Allison’s time-gobbling little hobby, “Good one, Sis. Seriously, though, I don’t want to stultify you with an explanation of how books really get published.”

Think about giving it a rest this year, in short. Don’t try to educate everyone in one fell swoop; it’s not your responsibility, and actually, the lecture you give this year may not be sufficiently remembered the next to help you. (Oh, that’s only my in-laws?) Unless you are willing to resign yourself to the inevitability of annual soapbox-mounting, you might want to consider letting your loved ones’ belief in the Publication Fairy survive another holiday season.

If your inherent sense of justice urges you to convey some small sense of your monumental effort toward writing and/or revising, or to share a glimpse into multitudinous stresses involved in querying, submission, and so forth, I’d advise keeping it brief for the purposes of general discussion. It can be easy to become carried away by a topic close to your creative heart, though. If you find yourself starting to launch into a major speech, a simple “Well, I could go on for hours, Horace, but suffice it to say that it’s really hard. I’m trying to take a day off from it, though” can easily bring it to a close. It can also allow you to control how long you’re on the spot.

Oh, now I hear some of you laughing. Yes? “Oh, Anne,” you say, wiping the tears of hilarity from your rosy cheeks, “it’s obvious you have never met my kith/kin/the relative strangers with whom I propose to spend the holiday. I anticipate being confronted not with the casual double-edged question, but with a level of intensive cross-examination and invasive scrutiny from which Perry Mason himself could glean a few pointers. I’m not worried about getting into the conversation; I despair of ever getting out of it.”

A tougher nut to crack, admittedly. I would recommend cutting it off at the first parry. “Wow, that’s a big subject, Gerard,” can often do the trick. Adding “I could prattle for weeks about the behind-the-scenes trials every author faces along the way, but my dinner would get cold, and I so want to hear about Cousin Blanche’s hysterectomy. Ask me again after the dishes are done, when we can make ourselves cozy in a corner and talk. How about during the football game?”

That last bit will, of course, work best if Gerard happens to be a die-hard football fan. It may feel like a low blow, but hey, all’s fair in love, war, and protecting your passions.

If pressed, you could always murmur, “I’d love to continue this fascinating exchange, Hermione, but would you mind if I grabbed my notebook first? Because everyone here is aware that anything you say can and will be used against you in a novel, right?”

An especially judgmental holiday table might be anticipated by the appearance of such a notebook beside your napkin, in fact. As any journalist or rationally self-protective memoirist could tell you, people are apt to clam up a little when they notice their words are being recorded for posterity. Applying pen to paper proactively, accompanied by a slight, rueful shake of the head and a chuckle, will at least turn the conversation from “Why aren’t you published?” to “What are you writing? What did I just say?”

The latter may well be spoken in a resentful tone, but you might be astonished how often it isn’t. Speaking as a memoirist, I’m here to tell you that it never pays underestimate the flattery inherent in finding people interesting enough to occupy page space. I’ve seldom met the Aunt Myra so iron-hearted that “Oh, wow — I’ve just got to write that quip down, Auntie! Talk amongst yourselves while I do” doesn’t soften her will to criticize, at least a little. And it’s a terrific defense for the moment Aunt Gloria decides your rump would benefit from some well-intentioned kicking about not polishing off your revision fast enough.

You could also call upon most people’s active dislike of boredom. An enthusiastic cry of “Oh, my goodness — you have no idea how happy I am that you want to hear all about my writing! Just a sec, while I power up my laptop. The scene I want to read you is a trifle on the long side, but you don’t mind keeping my food warm for me, do you, Eloise?”

Prepare to be stunned by the urgency with which Uncle George and his — what are they called at that age? — great and good friend Carlotta fling themselves into a discussion of the comparative merits of The Blacklist and White Palace as James Spader vehicles at that particular moment. Or Cousin Tremaine’s burning desire to share the scores of each of his eight children’s soccer games. For the last two years.

As I learned at my mother’s knee, any dinner table seating five or more people naturally breaks up into more than one conversation. (My parents threw a lot of literary dinner parties.) Use it.

If the proposed dramatic reading of your own writing doesn’t induce panic, try a burbling offer to declaim that passage in Melville that changed your life forever. Or Proust — in the original French, if necessary. (See earlier observation about what’s fair in love, war, and ego-preservation.)

Let’s assume for the sake of caution, though, that you’re facing a tableful of kith/kin/well-meaning relative strangers breaking bread with you so committed to showing you the error of your writing ways that there’s no graceful way to evade or shorten the conversation. Or that you are dining with a group whose belief in the Publication Fairy is so unquestioning as to border on the childlike (or imbecilic), and you hate the idea of any one of those people’s feeling sorry for you. Or maybe that your obnoxious brother Graham knows that the agent of your dreams has been sitting on your first 50 pages for nine long weeks, and he just enjoys needling you.

Whichever may be the case, what’s a nice (and most writers are nice) writer to do? I would recommend seizing the moment to engage in a little advance education on the practicalities of occupying the inner circle of a published author’s life. The sooner Great-Uncle Vic learns that there’s more to being a famous author’s relative than bragging rights and free books, the more comfortable everyone will be on the happy day when you do in fact become a famous author.

I find that concentrating upon the details tends to go over better than gentle nudges toward a more supportive attitude while folks are gnawing upon drumsticks. I would recommend, in short, of seizing the opportunity of disabusing them of the notion that they’re not going to have to buy your books.

Be prepared for a certain amount of incredulity: next to the Publication Fairy, the notion that authors’ kith and kin routinely receive free copies is one of your more ubiquitous misconceptions. It’s seldom true, at least not to the extent your relatives will think. Yes, Second-Cousin-Thrice-Removed Myrtle, publishers do generally provide their authors with an extremely limited stock of their books, with the expectation that such will be used for promotion. They’re going to want you to pass them along to book reviewers and bloggers and the clerk at your favorite bookstore, not to endow your relatives’ bookshelves, if you catch my drift.

The number of free copies will almost certainly be considerably smaller than either Great-Uncle Vic or Carlotta have been thinking, too. (Oh, you didn’t think he’d been expecting you to send him a signed copy for Carlotta, too? Think again.) Somewhere between 5 and 50 is the norm.

That means, in practice, that if you recklessly promise scads of free copies — and those of us in the biz are perpetually appalled at how often first-time authors often do — you will be facing some hard choices. To whom will you give those precious few books?

Undoubtedly more important to the folks with whom you are currently enjoying turkey, how many of them will not be on that short list? What about the person sitting across the table from you? To your left? To your right?

Before you answer, you might want to take a quick mental count of all the other people who might make sense as recipients. Will you want to send one to your favorite writing teacher? The lady at the archives who took all that extra time to help you research the book? What about your college roommate? Or that blogger who gave you hope when your relatives criticized you? (Oh, yes, authors constantly send me review copies. As much as I appreciate the gesture, please, don’t waste a book on me that you could send to what are euphemistically called opinion-makers: I’d be more than happy with a beautifully-phrased thank-you card, truly.)

All done toting up? Okay, here are 10 free copies. Are there any left for your relatives?

If the answer is no, trust me, it’s better you know it now. It’s also news that you might want to break with great care to your relatives.

Yes, yes, I know: you don’t want to do it. But tell me: will Myrtle be less hurt to hear about it now, or three days before your book drops? What about Uncle George, Aunt Gloria, or the rest of those quadruplets? Honestly, you would be saving them from future disappointment — and yourself from what can be quite a lot of well-intentioned pressure.

Oh, you want a foretaste? How about “What do you mean, you didn’t save a copy for your brother Ralph? You expect someone with whom you shared a bedroom for a decade to pay for his copy?”

Yes, you do. Or you will. It’s not merely that for every copy you give away, that’s one less copy sold. (Who did you think would buy your book, if not your kith, kin, and everyone who has ever known you?) That ultimately means fewer royalties for you, as well as possibly a harder time convincing a publisher to bring out your next book.

Not that it would be remotely politic to express any of this so bluntly, of course. Phrase it as gently as you know how; it will come as a blow to folks expecting not only never to have to pay a dime for a single word of your writing, but possibly — brace yourself — having also presumed that they would be on the receiving end of copies to distribute to their friends. (Hey, it’s a common fantasy amongst the author-adjacent.)

Just bear in mind that by speaking now, you’re ultimately saving the people you love from chagrin. If that doesn’t do the trick, try recalling that if you recklessly promise free copies — and again, those of us in the biz are positively aghast at how many first-time authors have — you will almost certainly be buying those gift copies yourself.

I don’t mean that conceptually, by the way: it’s exceedingly common for first-time authors to end up actually purchasing individual copies for their relatives and friends. To see why, you need only revisit that mental list of gift recipients.

That’s a difficult reality to accept, isn’t it? I can tell you now that you’re going to feel mean as you convey this information. Feel free to blame me as the source of the bad news: trust me, it would not be the first time “You’re not going to believe what I read on Author! Author!” was used as a blow-softener. I’m tough; I can take it.

More to the point, I’m not having Thanksgiving dinner with you, am I?

I can, however, anticipate your mother’s first tremulous question, and possibly yours: yes, authors do generally receive fairly substantial discounts on their own books, as long as those books are purchased directly from the publisher (and, in many cases, ordered in advance of the release date). Houses like to encourage their authors to carry around copies to resell to anyone who says, “Oh, you have a book out? Cool!”

That’s why, in case you’ve been wondering, authors so often show up at reading venues staggering under heavy backpacks or enormous purses. If the venue’s not a bookstore, those authors usually have a box or two of books in their cars, ready to pile in an attractive display next to the podium. (What, you thought the Publication Fairy brought them?)

What may interest you more than your mother to hear, however, is that copies purchased with the author’s discount virtually never count toward a book’s sales totals — and thus not toward royalties. That hefty discount arises from your price’s not reflecting royalty costs or negotiated deals with booksellers, you see. (You’re going to want to check your publishing contract carefully on this point; sometimes, it’s negotiable, as is the number of free copies.) A cost-conscious writer might also like to know before promising copies that one’s agent or acquiring editor might not think to point out that buying a lot of discounted books might not be to the author’s advantage.

They tend to assume that the bit about those copies’ not adding toward sales totals is quite a bit more widely known than it actually is; it’s not unheard-of for this tidbit not to be discussed at all at contract time, or even as the book is moving toward publication. The author usually hears about the number of free copies (“There you go, Mom!”) and the discount (“Okay, Great-Uncle Vic can think that his was free.”), but simply assumes that a book sold is a book sold. Why wouldn’t a discounted copy be included in the overall total and generate royalties?

Don’t believe that often comes as an unpleasant surprise? As recently as last week, I was chatting with a quite successful first-time memoirist. Her excellent book came out earlier this year, and, as is so often the case, she had underestimated the unpaid time, effort, and expense an author at a major house is routinely expected to devote to book promotion. She was particularly annoyed to learn that she had to buy and pay to ship 50 copies of her book to a speaking venue — and then to pay to have the 42 that hadn’t sold at the event shipped to her home. She wasn’t sure, she said, that she would be willing to do it again.

I commiserated. “And to think that after all that effort, those books will have no effect on your book’s sales totals. I’m so sorry.”

“Wait,” she said. “What? I won’t get royalties?”

So no, Mom, your baby’s probably not going to be coughing up the cover price for a copy for you, but it may be costly in other ways. Your in-house author may even be able to shake free a gratis copy for Great-Grandma Midge, who isn’t getting any younger, but please don’t feel guilty. Mom might want to get into the habit of telling more distant relatives — like, say, those cousins she made you invite to your wedding, although you hadn’t seen them since you were six — that they should plan on buying their own copies. You would be delighted to sign them afterward.

Trust the voice of experience: the more special she feels at the prospect of clutching her own free book — the only one in the family, because you’re such a good kid! — the more likely she is to go to bat for you. “Every single copy Tammy sells helps her,” she can say — and she’ll get better with practice. “I’ll understand if you can’t afford it, of course. She’s been working so hard for so many years on this book, but please don’t feel guilty.”

Translation: the best thing Aunt Myra could do to support your writing career would be to commit to buying your book(s) herself. Promise to sign it for her the instant she does. If you’re feeling adventurous, extend that promise to visiting her in order to inscribe copies for all of the friends she can cajole, blandish, and/or guilt into purchasing.

I have faith in your Aunt Myra. I think she can push some volumes.

All that being said, don’t kick yourself if you find you don’t have the heart to tell your relatives and friends any of this in the course of the current holiday season. This is big stuff, and even the best of us have people in our lives prone to judging the quality of a book by its position on the bestseller list. You have to pick your battles. You might want to bookmark this page, though, so you have the arguments handy down the line.

Heck, you could just forward the link to your kith and kin a few months before your first book comes out. Again, I don’t mind playing the heavy here, if it helps you. I’ve spent a lifetime explaining to everyone’s relatives that since the Publication Fairy so often falls down on the job, it’s up to the rest of us to support the writers in our lives.

I see no reason to stop now. Your writing deserves it, doesn’t it?

And you have that support within our Author! Author! community. Here, we don’t dismiss every book that doesn’t sell 150,000 copies. We don’t feel that large print contributes more to reading pleasure than the style of the writing. (Take that, Madame de Sévigné!) And most of all, we don’t believe in the Publication Fairy.

It’s sweet, in a way, that so many people do. By that logic, the Followers of the Fairy incur a greater obligation than the rest of us to buy the books of authors they know personally: the Fairy, and the industry, can only reward with success books that readers purchase. Anyone who wants to judge your dream to write by that yardstick should understand that they can, with a good will and the best of intentions, contribute to your sales totals. And thus to their opinion of the value of your writing endeavors.

As always, keep up the good work. Happy digestion to all, and to all a good night.

A rare unvarnished glimpse into post-publication life

The Red Book cover

I don’t usually post links to online articles, campers, but I wanted to give you a heads-up about an unusual piece just published on Café by the always thought-provoking Deborah Copaken. The article is a good example of short memoir writing — something I always like to celebrate. It’s also, I suspect, going to be of interest to pretty much anybody who has ever hoped to make a living as a writer.

You see, the popular conception that getting published — nay, signing a first book contract — means instantly quitting one’s day job is seriously outdated. It was never a particularly accurate view of how authorship worked (says the lady whose family has been publishing since the 1920s), of course. In recent years, though, the combination of plummeting advances, declines in hard copy book sales, and the costs of promotion and even editing being pushed onto authors has meant that one’s work being recognized by a major publisher isn’t necessarily a financial boon, if you catch my drift. Yet the myth persists that to have an even moderately successful book equals pulling in money by the wheelbarrow load.

It’s rare that an established author writes about this experience, except in retrospect. That’s why I’m so excited about Deborah’s piece: the lady’s had a novel on the bestseller lists, and not that long ago.

“Aha!” the masses cry, slapping its collective forehead. “That’s why I know the name! You’re talking about Deborah Copaken Kogan, author of the novel whose cover happens to be gracing the top of this post. If only someone would post links to The Red Book’s Amazon page, or, for those who prefer an indie bookseller, Powell’s.”

What an excellent idea, masses — and good for you for paying attention to our ongoing (if rather sporadic) discussion of book promotion. You’re well on your way to building up some excellent authorial karma. Chant the rule with me now: whenever you talk online about a book or author you like, it’s courteous to include a link. It’s especially kind if that link leads to a place to purchase the title in question.

My, we’ve learned a lot for what I’d intended as the briefest of notes, haven’t we? To learn even more, find yourself a nice, comfortable chair and take a sobering look at what it’s like to have a bestseller on your résumé. As I say so often, the more realistic an aspiring writer’s notions are going into the publishing, the happier that writer is going to be throughout the whole shebang.

Speaking of book promotion, the comments on this post would be a terrific place to post your questions/concerns/clawing, pathological fears about it. As soon as we polish off our current series on exclusives, we’re going to be hearing from some pros on the subject. After all, readers have to know that your book exists before they can read and fall in love with it, right?

Let’s keep building that tool kit — and learning from one another. As always, keep up the good work!

When “where do I send those requested materials?” is a multiple-choice question

proposal drawing
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When last we met, before time so rudely interrupted me by passing in the conventional manner, we were deep in the throes of discussing the thorny issue of exclusive submissions, de facto and otherwise. As flattering as it is to be asked not to send your manuscript elsewhere while an agent or editor at a small press considers your writing, it’s not invariably to a conference pitcher or successful querier’s advantage to give into the almost universal initial impulse to shout, “Yes! Yes! A thousand times, yes!” before it’s entirely clear to what one is agreeing. Sometimes, that happy shout echoes later rather dismally in the ears of the writer caught in the ostensibly enviable situation of having a second agent or editor at a small press say yes to a query whilst the manuscript in question (or a partial) is dallying with the first.

That echo can be especially mournful, if you’ll forgive my bringing it up, to the writer who learned only through first-hand experience that just because an agent or editor asks, usually quite nicely, if she may read the book before any other pro does, it doesn’t necessarily speed up the consideration process. A request for an exclusive does not generally mean that the requester intends to clear his schedule to read those pages the instant they arrive, after all. That’s not too astonishing, considering how rare it is for any single request for an exclusive to be the only one an agent or editor makes in, say, a conference season. Or in six months’ worth of queries.

Oh, dear, did the behemoth thump that just shook the cosmos indicate that I should have advised you to sit down before reading that last paragraph? I’m not altogether flabbergasted, because frankly, misunderstanding — or even misreading — the terms of an exclusive submission request tends to be the norm, rather than the exception. All too often, overjoyed pitchers and queriers will respond to what they think the agent is asking, rather than what she actually says.

Completely understandable, right, when such requests so frequently come as a surprise? In the moment, even a simple “Hey, that was a good pitch; send me the first 30 pages” can sound like winning, if not the lottery, then at least a bet on a long shot at the Kentucky Derby. With every cell in a writer’s brain gurgling, “At last! At last!” it’s not particularly uncommon for conference pitchers to presume that any request for pages could only have been intended as an exclusive.

“But Anne!” those of you who joined me for our last discussion on the topic cry. “How can that be? Such expectations are always stated explicitly. So unless an agent or editor actually asks for an exclusive, or the agency for which the requesting agent works has a clearly-expressed exclusives-only policy posted on its website, why would it ever be to a submitter’s advantage to stop submitting to others while the requesting agent is reading the manuscript? Heck, why would it even be to that writer’s advantage to cease querying in the meantime?”

The short answer is that it wouldn’t — and how gratifying that you caught that, inveterate readers. It almost invariably slows down a manuscript’s search for a professional home to submit, much less query, only one agency at a time. And what does the writer gain by the delay, really? At best, submitting it to only one agent might save the writer from having to query and/or submit further. Not an insignificant conservation of energy, true, but bought at the expense of quite a risk.

“What risk?” those of you delighted by the very notion of having to query and submit only once over the course of a long and doubtless illustrious literary career. “Spending as little time as possible in this stress-fest sounds completely fabulous to me!”

And it could indeed be great — presuming that this agent is in fact the perfect fit for the book, literary market conditions appear to be favorable for that book category, and the manuscript itself is in great shape. Oh, and that our old pal and nemesis, Millicent the agency screener, happens to be in an exceptionally good mood on the day that the submission crosses her desk. If even one of those elements happens to be slightly off, resulting in Agent #1’s not saying yes, then that eager writer will have to start all over again from scratch.

Which, let’s face it, can require quite a bit more oomph than getting a set of queries out the door the first time around. Post-rejection querying, pitching, and even submission in response to the next yes calls for not only faith in your talent and your work — it also requires telling the hobgoblins of doubt to stop murmuring in the dead of night something that logic tells us cannot possibly be true: that a rejection from one agent must mean that every other agent currently trundling across the earth’s crust would just reject it, too.

“So why bother?” the hobgoblins chortle at 3 a.m. “Why not just write off the book into which you have been pouring your heart and soul for eons? You could always start a new one.”

Fortunately, hobgoblins are notoriously ignorant of the ways of the publishing industry. The next time they rear their ugly heads, inform them that good, even great, manuscripts get rejected all the time. It can take a while to find the right fit for a book. So shut up and let nice writers everywhere sleep, already!

Given that level of querying-, pitching-, and submission-related anxiety, it’s hardly astounding that the overwhelming majority of aspiring writers respond to requests for exclusives with an enthusiastic chorus of, “By all of the great heavenly muses, YES! If I overnight it to you, will that be soon enough to get started?” As long as you’re walking into it with a clear mutual understanding of what you and the requesting agent are and are not promising each other by agreeing to an exclusive, go ahead and be as enthusiastic as you please.

What’s that the masses are thinking so loudly? That you’d like a refresher in what the default terms would be? Happy to oblige.

If a writer agrees to grant an exclusive to an agent,

(a) only that agent will have an opportunity to read the requested materials;

(b) no other agent is already looking at it;

(c) the writer will not submit it anywhere else;

(d) in return for these significant advantages (which, after all, mean that the agent will not have to compete with other agents to represent the book), the agent will make a legitimate effort to read and decide whether or not to offer representation, but

(e) if no time restriction is specified in advance, or if the agent always requests exclusives, the manuscript may simply be considered on precisely the same timeframe as every other requested by the agency.

Sometimes, though, even knowing all of that in advance and acting with according wisdom will not prevent a conscientious submitter from running into exclusive-related problems. What happens, for instance, if Agent A, the original requester, hasn’t gotten back to the writer by the time another request for pages arrives? Oh, it could happen, if the writer has been serious enough about landing an agent to send out more than one query at a time.

That trajectory runs something like this: our hero/ine took a deep breath, girded his or her loins, and sent out a truly impressive array of queries to category-appropriate agents. Of those many recipients, several responded, asking to read pages. Response rates are as unique as snowflakes, though, so each agent responded in her own time. So once Agent A was delighted enough with the query to ask for an exclusive peek, it’s entirely possible that our intrepid writer will have already sent out a partial to Agent B, as well as full manuscripts to Agents C and D.

Then, too, sometimes requests for pages come in clumps. If an e-querier sends out a barrage of missives all at once, he might well receive several positive responses withina few days. If nobody asks for an exclusive, no problem: he can just send them all out simultaneously. But what if one of those agents wants to be the only one looking at it?

Are those of you devoted to conference pitching feeling left out? No need: let’s say that prior to a well-stocked writers’ conference, our hero/ine knelt before his or her computer and swore not to allow a single viable (yet polite) opportunity to pitch pass ungrasped. It’s entirely possible that s/he will stride away from those pitch sessions with more than one request. If only Agent A asked for an exclusive, should the our knight grant it, even if that means putting off non-exclusive requests from Agents B-D?

While we’re tossing around rhetorical questions, what is the writer to tell all of those other agents in the meantime? And, at the risk of terrifying you, may I also inquire what happens if the exclusive-requester doesn’t get back to the writer in a timely manner?

None of these are particularly uncommon dilemmas for submitters to face, incidentally. Often, though, writers who find themselves in these awkward positions are too embarrassed to discuss them. They tend to feel, sometimes with some justification, that they should have been prepared for any of these eventualities. After all, an exclusive is serious business, a matter of professional integrity, and therefore probably not the kind of thing to which a savvy writer would, upon mature consideration, grant lightly.

Say, in the midst of an extended fit of alternated giggling and hyperventilation because a REAL, LIVE AGENT has asked to see one’s work. At that particular moment, the other seventeen queries one has out and about might conceivably slip one’s mind.

Especially if, as is often the case, the request for an exclusive is a trifle vague. (“I’d like an exclusive on this, Minette,” is often the extent of it.) In the throes of delight, the impulse to scream “YES!” has occasionally been known to overcome the completely rational urge to ask, “Excuse me, but what precisely would that mean for me?” Or even, “Pardon me, O person who has the power to change my life, but what happens if I don’t say yes immediately?”

I can feel some of you quaking in your jammies over the idea of being bold enough to ask either of those questions. Or, indeed, any at all: follow-up questions in the wake of exclusive requests are as rare as spotting a unicorn having tea with the Loch Ness Monster on a blue moon. That’s unfortunate, since, as junior high school taught so many of us, picking dare in a game of truth-or-dare is dangerous precisely because one does not get to hear all the details of the dare before agreeing to attempt it.

Oh, like I was the only eighth grader who…well, never mind. Suffice it to say that in manuscript submission, as in life, one makes better choices if one knows the options prior to choosing amongst them.

Which is to say: you have more power here than you think, provided you are aware of it in advance. Why? Well, think about it: as flattering as a request for an exclusive is to an aspiring writer, granting it is optional.

Before anyone starts jumping up and down, thrilled to the gills at the idea of magnificent concessions writers might wrest from an agent averse to reading competition, the power to which I refer is fairly limited. The writer may say yes to the exclusive, or she may say no. She may also say, “Thanks, but not now.”

Not that the writer is required, or even encouraged, to give any of these responses directly to the agent, mind you. If the answer is anything but yes, don’t contact the agent to explain. Trust me, if your manuscript doesn’t arrive within a few months, Agent A will intuit that you’re not leaping to say yes to an exclusive. Since the manuscript’s arrival (accompanied, ideally, by a cover letter beginning, “Thank you so much for asking to read my pages on an exclusive basis,” or something similar) would be the accepted means of agreeing to an exclusive, there’s no call for the writer to fill Agent A’s inbox with notifications that it’s on its way, explanations that while an exclusive would be great, Agent B will have to respond first, or the most popular option of all: a long, whiny missive complaining that Agent C has had the manuscript for X amount of time without getting back to the writer, so could Agent A please retract that whole insistence-upon-an-exclusive thing?

I can tell you now that none of these communications will be appreciated. It’s hardly news to agents that aspiring writers query and submit widely these days; it’s quite normal for a savvy writer not to be able to grant an exclusive right away. Until that writer can, however, the particulars of who would need to respond simply don’t matter to Agent A.

And no, in response to what half of you just thought so loudly, if Agent A prefers an exclusive, or if his agency does, you’re not going to be able to talk him out of it. Regardless of how stressful you find the multiple-request situation, it’s not fair to expect the agent to solve it for you. If you can’t say yes now, say it when you can.

That doesn’t mean, though, that you need to grant an open-ended exclusive. Whether you already know that Agents B-D want to read pages, that they are considering your query, or just that you wish to keep your options open, it’s always a good idea to set a time limit on an exclusive. You should also reserve granting exclusives your top-choice agents.

What’s that? When two million of you are shouting, it’s hard to hear. Yes, 10,000 closest to me? “But Anne, I just want an agent! How the heck do I, someone brand-new to the business side of publishing, know who should be my top picks? All I really know about Agents A-D is that they represent books in my category!”

Actually, if you’ve done that much research, you’re ahead of the game: it’s not at all uncommon for aspiring writers to query agents without first checking to see what they do and don’t represent. (“An agent’s an agent, right?” they reason, wrongly.) It’s also pretty common for pitchers to approach agents at conferences without having any idea what they represent. That’s just annoying for everybody. It truly is in your book’s best interest to do a bit of homework about what kinds of books an agent has sold recently before trying to interest him in representing yours.

But let’s say that you didn’t, perhaps for a good reason. Perhaps a conference’s organizers simply assigned you to an agent for your pitch session; maybe you just entered thriller into one of those search engines, and it spit out every agent in the country that checked that box on a form. Or you spent most of your time with a guide to agents in the index-by-region section. Regardless of how you ended up with requests for pages from Agents A-D, you certainly have the means of finding out more about them before you submit, enabling you to decide which might be the best fit for you.

Why put in that effort, when all reputable agents sell books? Because, contrary to amazingly popular opinion amongst aspiring writers, no good writer wants to land just any agent; everyone wants the best agent for his or her book. Or should want that, at any rate.

How might a savvy writer figure out which interested agent that’s likely to be? Well, a simple web search isn’t a bad place to start. If the agency has a website — and not all of them do, believe it or not, even at this late date — it will usually list the major clients. Generally, it will also feature at least a brief bio for each of its member agents.

It’s also worth checking whether the agent (or the agency) has a blog or has given interviews about being an agent. Not every agent does, of course, but why not embrace the generosity of those who have taken the time to share their literary preferences with potential clients?

My point: it’s going to be awfully difficult to decide whether you’re already excited enough about Agent A to be positive that she is the agent of your dreams — positive enough that you’re willing to forego, at least for now, submitting to Agents B-D — in the absence of some substantive research about all of them. If, after doing that research, you don’t feel that you would say yes right away if Agent A offered to represent your book, are you sure that you want to give A an exclusive that’s going to limit your ability to show your manuscript to others?

Think of granting an exclusive as if you were applying for early admission to an Ivy League school: if the school of your dreams lets you in, you’re not going to want to apply to other universities, right? By applying early, you are saying that you will accept their offer of admission, and the school can add you to its roster of new students without having to worry that you’re going to go to another school instead.

It’s a win/win — but only if that actually was the school you wanted to attend. (I speak from experience here: once I got into Harvard early, I had a whale of a good time going to group interviews with my high school friends and saying, “Wow, that’s an interesting question, Mr. Alumnus. Allow me to turn that question into an opportunity to discuss the merits of Kathleen here.” And then Kathleen would get all excited, because Mr. Alumnus had the power to admit her to the school of her dreams.

Oh, you thought I woke up one bright day as an adult and suddenly became public-spirited? I regard a broad range of endeavor as team sport.)

If the best agent in the known universe for your type of writing asks for an exclusive, you might be well advised to say yes. But if you have any doubt in your mind about whether Harvard really is a better school for your intended studies than Yale, Columbia, or Berkeley — to mix my metaphors again, as well as irk my erstwhile classmates — you might want to apply to all of them at the same time. That way, you may later decide between those that do admit you.

In the extremely unlikely case that I’m being too subtle here: a request for exclusive is great only in proportion to how much you would like to be represented by the person asking for it. The good news is that you don’t have to wait around passively. Once you have done your homework, you can more easily decide whether you would prefer to go steady right off the bat or date around a little. Got it?

If not, I can keep coming up with parallels all day, I assure you. Don’t make me delve into my vast store of zoology metaphors.

Do all of those averted eyes mean that you have no intention of saying no to a REAL, LIVE AGENT that wants to SEE YOUR WORK? Or merely that you’re hoping desperately that the muses have abruptly decided to assign one of their number to make sure that of those 17 agents you have approached, the only one that prefers exclusive submissions contacts you first, swears to get back to you within 48 hours, and offers to sign you in 36?

Well, I wish the best for you, so I hope it’s the latter, too, but let’s assume for the moment that at least one writer out there falls into the former category. If you say yes, lone intender, set a reasonable time limit on the exclusive, so you don’t keep your manuscript or proposal off the market too long. This prudent step will save you from the unfortunately common dilemma of the writer who granted an exclusive a year ago and still hasn’t heard back.

Yes, in response to that gigantic collective gasp I just heard out there: one does hear rumors of agents who ask for exclusives, then hold onto the manuscript for months on end. Or even — brace yourself — a year or two.

I can neither confirm nor deny this, of course. All I can tell you that since the economic downturn began, such rumors have escalated astronomically.

Set a time limit, politely. Three months is ample. (And no, turning it into three weeks will almost certainly not get your manuscript read any faster. This is no time to be unreasonable in your expectations.)

No need to turn asking for the time limit into an experiment in negotiation, either. Simply include a sentence in your submission’s cover letter along the lines of I am delighted to give you an exclusive look at my manuscript, as you requested, for the next three months.

Simple, direct — and believe me, if Agent A has a problem with the amount of time you’ve specified, you will be receiving a call or an e-mail. It will probably come at the end of those three months, and it will probably be a request for more time, but hey, at least you will have established that you are not expecting to keep your manuscript out of circulation indefinitely.

Before those gusty sighs of relief blow anyone’s pets out of the room, I add hastily: protecting your ability to market your work isn’t always that simple. Negotiation generally isn’t possible with the other type of exclusive request, the kind that emerges from an agency that only reviews manuscripts exclusively, for the exceedingly simple reason that the writer is not offered a choice in the matter. Consequently, a request for an exclusive from these folks is not so much a compliment to one’s work (over and above the sheer desire to take a gander at some of it, that is) as a way of doing business.

In essence, exclusive-only agencies are saying to writers, “Look, since you chose to approach us, we assume that you have already done your homework about what we represent — and believe us, we would not ask to see your manuscript if we didn’t represent that kind of writing. So we expect you to say yes right away if we make you an offer. Now squeal with delight and hand over the pages, please.”

Noticing a homework theme running throughout all of these unspoken assumptions? Good. Let me pull out the bullhorn to reiterate: because agents tend to assume that any serious writer would take the time to learn how the publishing industry does and doesn’t work, submitters that don’t do their homework are significantly more likely to get rejected than those who do.

Oh, did some of you want to ask a question? Here, allow me to lower my bullhorn.

“But Anne,” the recently-deafened point out, uncovering their ears, “I don’t get it. Why might an exclusives-only submissions policy be advantageous for an agency to embrace?”

Well, for one thing, it prevents them from feeling pressure to snap up a manuscript before another agency does. If you send them pages, they may safely assume that you won’t be e-mailing them a week later to say, “Um, Agent Q has just made me an offer, slowpoke. I still would like to consider you, so could you drop everything else you might have intended to do for the foreseeable future and finish reading my manuscript so you can give me an answer? As in by the end of the week?”

Okay, so you wouldn’t really be that rude. (Please tell me you wouldn’t be that rude.) But agents who don’t require exclusive submissions do receive these types of e-mails fairly often: nervous writers often assume, mistakenly, that they should be sending agents who have their manuscripts constant status updates, if not pleading or outright ultimata. A writer’s sense of how long is too long can be awfully short. And agents hate the kind of missive mentioned in the last paragraph, because nobody, but nobody, reads faster than an agent who has just heard that the author of the manuscript that’s been propping up his wobbly coffee table is fielding multiple offers.

Which is precisely the point. Agencies who demand exclusivity are, by definition, unlikely to find themselves in an Oh, my God, I have to read this 400-page novel by tomorrow! situation. After the third or fourth panicked all-nighter, requiring exclusives might start to look like a pretty handy policy.

Increased speed is the usual response to multiple offers, note, not to hearing that other agents are reading a book. Since people who work in agencies are perfectly well aware that turn-around times have been expanding exponentially of late, the mere fact that other agents are considering a manuscript isn’t likely to affect its place in the reading queue at all.

All of which again begs the question: what does the writer get in return for agreeing not to submit to others for the time being? Not a heck of a lot, typically, unless the agency in question is in fact the best place for her work and she would unquestionably sign with them if they offered representation. But if one wants to submit to such an agency, one needs to follow its rules.

Happily, agencies that maintain this requirement tend to be far from quiet about it. Their agents will trumpet the fact from the conference dais. Requires exclusive submissions or even the relatively rare will accept only exclusive queries will appear upon their websites, in their listings in standard agency guides, and on their form-letter replies requesting your first 50 pages.

(Yes, in response to that shocked wail your psyche just sent flying in my general direction: positive responses often appear as form letters, too, even when they arrive via e-mail. I sympathize with your dismay.)

If exclusives-only agencies had company T-shirts, in short, they’d probably ask the silk-screener to add an asterisk after the company’s name and a footnote on the back about not accepting simultaneous submissions. If they’re serious about the policy, they’re serious about it, and trying to shimmy around such a policy will only get a writer into trouble.

Do I feel some of you tensing up again? Relax — not very many agencies harbor this requirement.

It limits their applicant pool, you see. Since they require their potential clients to bring their often protracted agent search to a screeching halt while the submission is under consideration, such agencies are, in the long run, more time-consuming for a writer to deal with than others. As a result, many ambitious aspiring writers, cautious about committing their time, will avoid approaching agencies with this policy.

Which, again, is a matter of personal choice. Or it would be, if you happened to notice before you queried that the agency in question required solo submissions. Do check their T-shirts in advance, because I assure you, no one concerned is going to have any sympathy for a writer complaining about feeling trapped in an exclusive.

They’ll just assume that he didn’t do his homework. Keep up the good work!

Sing it along with me now, submitters: torn between requests for pages, feeling like a fool. Is showing my manuscript to both of you breaking all the rules?

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Ah, exclusivity. As a recent question from a member of the Author! Author! community reminded me, few issues trouble the sleep of writers new to submission more than this: if an agent asks to read my manuscript, may I show it to another while she’s reading it?

That burning question does not concern merely the stressed-out fortunate lucky enough to have received a request for an exclusive peek at their manuscripts, either. Writers’ minds are, let’s face it, unusually gifted at spinning out scenarios both fabulous and fabulously disastrous about what happens to their manuscripts after those pages disappear into the murky depths of an agency, doubt abounds — and multiplies unmercifully. What happens if an agent asks to see my book on an exclusive basis, the aspiring fret, and who could blame them? and she doesn’t make up her mind before another agent asks to see it? What if I’ve already sent pages to fifteen other agents, and somebody asks for an exclusive? What if one of those fifteen never gets back to me, so I don’t know whether I have a manuscript under consideration or not when a new one asks? While I’m at it, what if an agent really did want an exclusive, but I didn’t pick up some subtle, publishing-world-specific signal and mistakenly submitted my book widely? What if paper-devouring giants come along and inhale my pages between the time they land at the agency of my dreams and when the agent of the aforementioned dreams has a chance to read them? What if…

Enough, already. The short answer to all of these questions is this: you’re probably not going to find yourself in most of these situations. Particularly that one with the giants.

Or, as it happens, the one about being ethically bound not to show your work to a second agent while a first is pondering it. Contrary to popular dead-of-night fears, requests for exclusives — the perversely longed-for situation in which an agent cries, “Wait! I liked your query/pitch/first few pages that I read so much that I want to be the only agent in Christendom reading it! Don’t show it to anyone else until I have, ‘kay?” — are actually relatively rare. And contrary to rumors lingering from the writers’ conference circuit, it’s also not especially common for agents to demand exclusive peeks at manuscripts as a matter of policy.

Except that some agencies do harbor that policy. Some agents do ask for exclusives. And occasionally, a perfectly well-intentioned writer just trying to follow the rules finds herself singing the title of this post to a dark ceiling at 4 a.m.

How do I know this? Experience, mostly: the Author! Author! comment section has been the go-to source for writers’ anxiety for years now. During and after every single conference season — yes, and every single autumn, in the weeks after savvy writers have sent out post-Labor Day queries — successful pitchers and queriers have come creeping to me furtively with a terrified question: what have I done, and how may I fix it?

Oh, you think that’s an exaggeration, do you? Let me put it this way: for the last few years, I have asked these panicked persons — after I have soothed their heated brows, of course — to give me suggestions for what category title, if any, would most easily have caught their eye on the archive list at the height of their chagrin. Without exception, every single respondent has suggested that I include the word Help!

Usually with several exclamation points. I have some reason to believe, then, that there’s just a little bit of ambient confusion about when it is and is not okay to submit a manuscript to several agents or editor at a time. And, perhaps even more pertinent to the midnight terrors haunting many right about now, how should a writer lucky enough to walk away from a conference with more than one request for pages decide which agent or editor to submit to first?

The short answer, as it so often is in publishing matters, is it depends. The long answer is a question: what about these particular requests make you believe you have to rank them?

If you’re like most writers gearing up to submit, the answer to the long answer probably runs a little something like this: well, obviously, I shouldn’t submit to more than one agent at a time — that would be rude. Or is that I’ve heard that agents consider it rude? Anyway, I wouldn’t want to run the risk of offending anyone. Besides, if I submit only to the one I liked better — which was that again? — I don’t have to come up with a graceful way to say no to the other one. And it’s less work for me: if the first one says yes, I don’t have to go to the trouble of making up another submission packet. But if I do that, must I wait for the first to say no before I send out pages to the second? What if the first never gets back to me? Or what if the first doesn’t get back to me until after I’ve already submitted to the second, and then yells at me because he didn’t want me to show the book to anyone else? And what if…

Hey, I wasn’t kidding about writers’ being gifted at spinning out the ol’ plot lines. If that logic loop sounds familiar, the first thing to do is calm down. In the vast majority of multiple submissions, no problems arise whatsoever.

Especially if you’re clever and conscientious enough to have double-checked the various agencies’ websites and/or listings in a recent edition of one of the popular guides to literary agents. If an agency has a policy of demanding to be the only one considering a manuscript for representation, they’ll generally say so. It’s also quite normal for an agent expecting to read a manuscript without competition to ask for an exclusive point-blank.

And already, I hear sighs of relief bouncing off mountaintops around the cosmos. “Phew!” thousands of submitters mutter. “That was a close one. I’d heard that maybe all agents secretly expected me to submit, or even query, only one of them at a time. So when my already-bloodshot eyeballs caught sight of the title of this post, I instantly felt guilty!”

If so, you’re not alone. The welter of dire warnings and fourth-hand horror stories floating around out there has created a miasma of anxiety around querying and submission. Surely, I don’t have to tell any of you reading this that there’s an awful lot of querying and submission advice out there, much of it contradictory. (Which is, in case those of you searching frantically through the archives have been wondering, why I always provide such extensive explanations for everything I advise here: since so many of my readers are considering quite a bit of competing information — and frequently doing it in a moment when they are already feeling overwhelmed — I believe that it’s as important that you know why I’m suggesting something as to understand how to implement the suggestion. I never, ever want any of my readers to do what I say just because I say so. So there.)

I probably also don’t have to tell you — yet here I am doing it — that quite often, submission problems are the result of believing the common wisdom and applying it to every agent one might ever want to approach, rather than carefully reading each agency’s submission guidelines and treating each query/submission situation as unique.

Sometimes, though, even that level of hedging doesn’t prevent a writer from falling into a ditch. Witness, for instance, the situation into which Virginia, a long-time member of the Author! Author! community, innocently tumbled a while back.

Help! I submitted only two queries to two agents. One got back to me quickly and did ask for exclusive right to review. A few days after I agreed to this, the second agent replied and asked for pages. I don’t want to violate my agreement, but how do I tell the second agent I’m really happy she wants to see more but she has to wait?

Successful queriers and pitchers end up in this kind of dilemma all the time, often without understanding how they ended up there or why they’re stressed out about what was presumably the outcome they were seeking when they approached multiple agents simultaneously: more than one agent interested in reading their work. An exclusive is always a good thing, they reason nervously, a sign that an agent was unusually eager to see a queried or pitched book, and thus decided to bypass her usual method of requesting manuscripts.

Not always, no. But it depends.

Sometimes, a request for an exclusive genuinely does indicate an agent’s being so excited by a query or pitch (especially if that book has just won a major literary contest) that she’s afraid that another agent will snap it up first. Far more frequently, though, a surprise request for an exclusive is the natural and should-have-been-expected outcome when a writer approaches an agent working at an agency that has an exclusives-only policy.

Does that forest of hands springing up out there mean some of you have been paying attention? “But Anne,” attentive readers everywhere shout, “isn’t that precisely the kind of behavior you have been exhorting us not to practice?”

Yes, shouters: help yourself to a gold star out of petty cash. A savvy querier does indeed double-check every agency’s submission policies every time.

But let’s say that you didn’t. Again, that wouldn’t exactly place you in the minority — the overwhelming majority of queriers don’t read each individual agency’s submission guidelines before sending out those letters. At least the first time around, aspiring writers generally assume that all agencies operate in the same manner. And very few pitchers do much research on the agents and editors they plan to approach at conferences, beyond reading the blurbs in the conference brochure.

So if you find yourself teetering uncomfortably in Virginia’s steps, don’t worry. You’re certainly not the only aspiring writer that’s ever slipped into those moccasins. Heck, you’re probably not the only one to try to trudge a mile in them today.

Especially likely to find themselves limping through this dilemma: pitchers and queriers who do what virtually every aspiring writer asked to submit materials does — and what Virginia probably did here: sending out pages within hours of receiving the request.

It’s a completely understandable faux pas, in short, especially if the request for an exclusive arises from a query. Overjoyed at what they assume (in this case, wrongly) will be the only interest their queries will generate, many multiply-querying writers don’t pause to consider that multiple requests for manuscripts are always a possible outcome while sending out simultaneous queries.

Thus, it follows as night the day, so is a situation where one of those agents requests an exclusive. And it follows as day the night that an exclusive request is also a possibility when pitching at a conference.

This is why, in case any of you inveterate conference-goers have been curious, agents and editors invariably sigh when an aspiring writer raises his hand to ask some form of this particular question — and it’s not for the reason that other aspiring writers will sigh at it. (The latter usually sigh because wish they had this problem, and again, who could blame them?) The pros will sigh because they’re thinking, Okay, did this writer just not do his homework on the agents he approached? Or is he asking me to tell him that he can blithely break the commitment he’s made to Agent #1? Does this writer seriously believe all agents are in league together, that I would be able to grant permission to insult one of my competitors?

That’s why everyone else will sigh. I, however, sigh because my thought process runs like this: okay, I have to assume that the questioner is someone who hasn’t read any of my blog posts on querying or submission, as much as that possibility pains me to consider. But since I have a small army of explicitly-named categories on my archive list — conveniently located at the bottom right-hand side of my website’s main page, including such topics as EXCLUSIVES AND MULTIPLE SUBMISSION, EXCLUSIVES TO AGENTS, SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS, and WHAT IF MORE THAN ONE AGENT ASKS TO SEE MY MANUSCRIPT? — directly aimed at answering this question, and a battalion more that deal with it within the larger context of submission (under provocative headings like AFTER YOU RECEIVE A REQUEST FOR PAGES, AFTER YOU SUBMIT, HOW LONG BEFORE THE REQUEST FOR PAGES EXPIRES? HOW SOON MUST I SEND REQUESTED MATERIALS? INDUSTRY ETIQUETTE, IS IT OKAY TO SUBMIT TO SEVERAL AGENTS AT ONCE? and other similarly-named categories based upon panicked questions from members of our little community), as well as a dramatically-reenacted scenario directly related to this issue in the Industry Etiquette series. Yet I have to assume that the questioner is facing a situation that I have managed to overlook addressing in any of these posts. So I shall eschew the temptation just to send the questioner to any or all of those categories, try to understand how and why this situation is unique, and answer the question for the 1,477th time, because gosh darn it, a writer is in pain!”

Yes, I can think with that much specificity in mid-sigh, thank you very much. It’s just one of my many, many dubious talents.

All that being said — or, at any rate, thought exceptionally loudly — it is undoubtedly true that more writers than ever before seem to be finding themselves enmeshed in Virginia’s dilemma. Or simply unsure about whether it’s okay to submit to more than one agent at once. Quite a bit of the common wisdom out there, after all, dictates that writers should wait to hear back on one submission before sending out the next.

The short answer to that: poppycock! The long answer — and I sincerely hope that by now you saw this coming — is it depends.

On what? On the individual agency’s policies, of course, as well as how the agent in question phrased the request for pages. And, lest we forget, upon the writer’s planned submission schedule.

Let’s face it, more than one agent’s reading your pages simultaneously constitutes a fairly significant advantage. In an environment where submission volumes are so high that even a requested full manuscript may well sit on a corner of an agent’s desk for a year or more — and that’s after Millicent has already decided she liked it enough to pass it along to her boss– just presuming that any agent would prefer to be the only one considering a manuscript could add years to the submission process. If an agency has a no-reply-if-the-reply-will-be-no policy, stated or unstated, the hapless submitter can have no idea whether silence means (a) no, (b) the manuscript got lost in transit, (c) the manuscript got lost at the agency, d) those pesky giants made a meal of it — or e), most common of all: the agent just hasn’t had time to read it yet.

Well might you turn pale. As agencies have been cutting their staffs over the last few years (and aspiring writers who wouldn’t have had time to query or submit before the economic downturn have been digging old manuscripts out of bottom desk drawers), turn-around times lengthened demonstrably. Not entirely coincidentally, the practice of not informing a submitter if the answer is no has increased dramatically. So has hanging on to a manuscript someone at the agency likes in the hope that market conditions will improve for that type of book.

An unfortunate side effect: more and more submitters who just don’t know whether they can legitimately grant exclusives to another agent or not. How could they, when they have heard that writers should never bug agents while their manuscripts are under consideration?

All of which is to say: let’s not be smug when a fellow writer finds himself stuck in this particular tar pit. It actually isn’t fair to leap to the conclusion that if aspiring writers read agents’ websites and agency guide listings more thoroughly, they would never end up in this situation. Sometimes, an exclusive request does come out of a genuinely blue sky, whacking a conscientious multiple querier or submitter right in the noggin.

How is that possible? Amazingly often, the writer simply does not know that exclusivity is even a remote possibility until an agent asks for it. Unless an agency has an exclusives-only policy (do I need to remind you again to check?), the prospect generally will not be mentioned in its submission guidelines.

Then, too, the request for an exclusive is seldom formulated in a manner that informs a writer not already aware of the fact that she can say no. Or that she can defer saying yes, granting the exclusive at a later date. Or put a time limit on the exclusive, if she agrees to it at all.

All are perfectly legitimate responses to a request for an exclusive, incidentally. But whether any of them is situationally-appropriate depends on the actual content of the request; they vary more than one might think.

I can, however, rule out a couple of possibilities up front. First, there is no such thing as an implied request for an exclusive; such requests are always directly stated. So unless an agent or editor specifically asked for an exclusive peek at all or part of a manuscript or the agency has a clearly-posted exclusives-only policy on its website, a writer does not need to worry at all about offending Agent A by submitting simultaneously submitting the same manuscript to Agent B.

Yes, really. Just mention in your cover letters to each that another agent is looking at it — no need to say which one — and you should be fine.

Would you fling the nearest portable object in my general direction, though, if I swiftly added that the advisability of even this morally blameless route sometimes depends upon factors beyond the writer’s knowledge and control? Back in my querying days, I blithely sent off requested materials to a seventh agent, while six were already considering it. In that, I was being completely ethical: all seven’s agencies websites, communications with me, and listings in the standard agency guides failed to mention any exclusives-only policies. Nor did #7’s request for the manuscript specify that he wanted an exclusive. That being the case, I simply told him in my cover letter that he was not the only agent reading the book.

You can see this coming, can’t you?

I must admit, I didn’t — his irate announcement that his agency never considered multiple submissions left me pretty gobsmacked. But once he had expressed that preference, I was compelled to abide by his rules, even though they were late-breaking news: I had to choose whether to e-mail him back to say I accepted his terms, and would be telling Nos. 1-6 that my manuscript was no longer available, or to apologize for not being aware of what I could not possibly have known and withdraw my submission to him. I chose the latter, and lived to submit another day.

I sense some of you seething, do I not? “But Anne!” the hot-blooded among you cry. “That wasn’t fair! Why didn’t you insist that he abide by what you thought were the original terms of the submission?”

Because, passionate ones, as Thomas Hobbes once so rightly observed, rights are the ability to enforce them. Arguing with an agent about his own submission policies is always a losing proposition for a writer.

So before you say yes to an exclusive, make sure you understand its terms, as well as what granting it would mean for you. Read that request very, very carefully, as well as the agency’s website. (Yes, again; they might have changed their policies since you sent your query.) Will the exclusive be open-ended, or is the agent asking for you to hold off on submitting elsewhere for a particular period of time? If the request doesn’t specify an end date — and most exclusive requests don’t — would you feel comfortable setting the request aside for a few months while you responded to any other agents that had already expressed interest? Or if it took three months to get an answer from an agent that already had the manuscript?

Stop gasping like a beached whale. A three-month turn-around on a manuscript submission would be a positively blistering rate, by current standards.

While you’re asking those follow-up questions, here’s another: are you absolutely positive that the agent is asking for an exclusive? Sometimes, in the heat of excitement at hearing a yes, a successful querier — or, even more commonly, a successful pitcher — will slightly misinterpret what he’s being asked to do.

Yes, really. Many a super-excited conference attendee has floated away from a pitch meeting falsely believing that he and the agent have hit it off so darned well in that ten-minute conference that obviously, the agent must be expecting an exclusive. Heck, good ol’ (fill in polite pitch-listener’s name here) would be positively hurt if her new buddy allowed another agent so much as a peek at it, right?

Um, wrong. Chant it with me now, close readers: unless an agent specifically asks for an exclusive or her agency has an established exclusives-only policy, you are free to submit as widely as you wish. The same holds true if you have indeed received a request for an exclusive, but have not yet granted it. While the manuscript remains in your hands, you retain complete control.

Feel better, submitters? I thought so. Remember, a request for an exclusive is in fact a request, not a command. Even if a writer receives one or more requests for an exclusive, she’s not under any obligation to grant any or all of them– nor does she need to agree to any right away.

That’s vital to know going in: the instant the writer has agreed to an exclusive, she does in fact have to honor it. So it’s in the writer’s best interest to give the matter some advance thought.

I just felt half of you tense up at the very notion of delaying so much as forty consecutive seconds before bellowing, “Yes! Yes! Whatever you want, agent of my dreams,” but think about it. If Virginia had pondered Agent A’s request for a week or two, wouldn’t she have found herself in a much, much happier dilemma when Agent B’s epistle arrived? Then, she would merely have had to decide to which she wanted to submit first, the one that wanted the exclusive or the one that didn’t.

What would have been the right answer here, you ask with bated breath? Easy: it depends.

Upon what? Feel free to pull out your songbooks and sing along: if Agent A’s agency’s had a posted exclusives-only submission policy, he had a right to expect Virginia to be aware of it before she queried, and thus to believe that by querying him, she was agreeing to that condition. If an agency will only accept solo submissions, that’s that: it’s not as though Virginia could negotiate an exception in her case.

It would also depend upon whether the agent put a time limit on the request. It’s rare that an agent or editor includes a start date in an exclusive request (they have other manuscripts waiting on their desks, after all), but they do occasionally specify how long they expect the exclusive to be.

Given Virginia’s surprise, though, my guess is that neither of these conditions applied. That means, ethically, the choice of when the exclusive would commence would be up to her.

The only thing she could not legitimately do was submit to both A and B after A said he would read it only as an exclusive. That does not necessarily mean, however, that if Virginia wanted to submit to A first, she could not suggest a time limit on the exclusive, in order to enable her to take advantage of B’s interest if A decided to pass.

And a thousand jaws hit the floor. Yes, yes, I know: the very idea of the writer’s saying, “Yes, Agent A, although you did not indicate a time limit, I would love to grant you a three-month exclusive — here’s the manuscript!” would seem to run counter to the idea that the requester gets to set the terms of the exclusive. But in Virginia’s case, I happen to know (my spies are everywhere) that Agent A is of the ilk that does not habitually specify an end date for an exclusive. So proposing one would not constitute arguing with him; it would merely be telling him how long she believes she is agreeing to refrain from sending the manuscript elsewhere.

He could always make a counterproposal, after all. Or ask for more time at the end of those three months. It’s a reasonable length of time, though, so he probably won’t say no — as he would, in all likelihood, if she set the time at something that would require him to rearrange his schedule to accommodate, like three weeks.

Why so glum? Was it something I said? “Three months?” the impatient groan. “I thought you were kidding about that earlier. To me, three weeks sounds like a long time to hear back! If the agent is interested enough to request an exclusive, why shouldn’t I expect a rapid reply?”

Ah, that’s a common misconception. 99.999% of the time, what an aspiring writer asked for an exclusive thinks the agent is saying is not, “Okay, your book sounds interesting and marketable, but I don’t want to have to rush to beat competing agents in reading the manuscript. Please remove the necessity of my having to hurry by agreeing not to show it to anyone else until I’ve gotten back to you.”

Which is, incidentally, what a request for exclusivity means, at base. Rather deflating to think of it that way, isn’t it? It is, however, realistic.

By contrast, what 99.999% of aspiring writers in this situation hear is “Oh, my God — this is the most exciting book premise/query/pitch I’ve ever heard. I’m almost positive that I want to represent it, even though I have not yet read a single word of the manuscript or book proposal, and thus have absolutely no idea whether it is written well. Because my marrow is thrilled to an extent unprecedented in my professional experience, I shall toss all of my usual submission expectations and procedures out the nearest window. If you grant my request for an exclusive, exceptional writer, I’m going to clear my schedule so I may delve into this submission the nanosecond it arrives in my office. May I have it today — or, at the very latest, tomorrow — so I can stop holding my breath until it arrives?”

And then the giddy submitter is astonished when weeks or months pass before the agent makes a decision, precisely as if there had been no exclusive involved. The only difference between that and a regular old submission, from the writer’s point of view, is that he was honor-bound not to approach other agents until he heard back.

Pardon my asking, but what did the writer gain by granting that exclusive? Or by not politely attempting to place a time limit upon it from the get-go?

I’m sympathetic to the impulse not to look that gift horse firmly in the mouth, but frankly, many, if not most, aspiring writers confuse initial interest with a commitment. Too often, aspiring writers consider an agent’s request for materials, whether as an exclusive or not, as a signal that the long quest to find a home for that manuscript has come to an end. Acceptance is assured, right?

“Why would an agent ask to see a manuscript exclusively,” they reason, “unless she already thought she might want to sign the author? There must be something else going on. Like hungry giants having overrun the agency.”

A fair enough question, except for the giants part, but I’m not sure you’re going to like the answer. Typically, an agent won’t ask for an exclusive (or to see the manuscript, for that matter) unless she thinks representing it as a possibility; it is a genuine compliment. However, as agents who ask for exclusives seldom make the request of only one writer at a time, it’s not very prudent for a writer to presume that his will be the only exclusive on the agent’s desk.

If that last bit made your stomach drop to somewhere around your knees, please don’t feel blue, or even slightly mauve. The vast majority of writers who have ever been asked for an exclusive peek at their work were under laboring under the same presumption. Often, aspiring writers agree to an exclusive without understanding what it will entail — and usually are either too excited or too shy to ask follow-up questions before they pack off those requested materials.

For the benefit of those overjoyed and/or excited souls, I’m going to invest some blog space into going over what granting that solo peek will and will not require. If you’re planning upon querying an agency that will only consider submissions exclusively, you might want to bookmark this page, for your rereading pleasure.

Within the context of submission, an exclusive calls for a writer to allow an agent time to consider representing a particular manuscript, a period during which no other agent will be reviewing it. In practice, both the agent and the writer agree to abide by certain rules:

(a) only that agent will have an opportunity to read the requested materials;

(b) no other agent is already looking at it;

(c) the writer will not submit it anywhere else;

(d) in return for these significant advantages (which, after all, mean that the agent will not have to compete with other agents to represent the book), the agent will make a legitimate effort to read and decide whether or not to offer representation, but

(e) if no time restriction is specified in advance, or if the agent always requests exclusives, the manuscript may simply be considered on precisely the same timeframe as every other requested by the agency.

Is everyone clear on the rules? Be honest: they differ quite a bit from what you were expecting, don’t they?

Now that we know what Virginia agreed to do in granting an exclusive to Agent A, as well as what her options would have been had she received Agent B’s request before she had sent off the first submission, let’s take a gander what she should do about the situation she described in her question. (You knew I would get to it eventually, right?)

The answer is, as you have probably guessed, it depends. If she wants to play by the rules — and she should, always — her choices are three.

If she specified a time limit on the exclusive when she granted it to Agent A, the answer is very simple: if less than that amount of time has passed, don’t send the manuscript to anyone else until it has. On the day after the exclusive has elapsed, she is free to submit to other agents.

What is she to tell Agent B in the interim? Nothing, if the agreed-upon length of the exclusive is reasonable — say, between three and six months.

Breathing into a paper bag will stop that hyperventilation in no time. While you recover, consider: agencies often face monumental backlogs. It’s also not uncommon for agents and editors to read promising manuscripts at home, in their spare time, because they are so swamped.

And no, Virginia, waiting that long before submitting requested materials to B will not seem strange. Agents are perfectly used to writers taking some time to revise their manuscripts. B probably wouldn’t blink twice if she didn’t get back to him for a few months.

Remember, it’s not as though an agent who requests materials sits there, twiddling his thumbs, until he receives it. He’s got a lot of manuscripts already sitting on his desk — and piled on the floor, threatening to tumble of his file cabinet, stacked next to his couch, and causing his backpack to overflow on the A train. Not to mention the legions of paper hanging out in Millicent’s cubicle, awaiting a first screening.

Besides, what would Virginia gain by telling him she’d already promised an exclusive to another agent, other than implicitly informing him that she had already decided that if Agent A offered representation, she would take it? How exactly would that win her Brownie points with B? Or, indeed, help her at all?

And no, Virginia, however tempting it is, informing A that B is twiddling his thumbs, impatiently waiting for A to polish off those pages, will not necessarily speed A’s reading rate. Why should it, when A’s got an exclusive?

In practice, then, all waiting on fulfilling the second request means is that Virginia will have an attractive alternative if A decides to pass on the manuscript. That’s bad because…?

Oh, wait: it isn’t. Actually, it’s an ideal situation for a just-rejected submitter to find herself occupying. Way to go, Virginia!

“But Anne!” I hear the more empathetic among you fretting. “I’m worried about what might happen to Virginia if Agent A doesn’t get back to her within the specified time frame? It’s not as though she can pick up the phone and tell him his time’s up, is it? (Please say yes. Please say yes. Please say yes.)”

I’m going to say no to that last one — it’s always considered rude to call an agent while he’s considering your manuscript — but relax. Our Virginia still has several pretty good options: one completely above-board, one right on the board, and the last slightly under it.

First, the high road: a week or two after the agreed-upon exclusive expires, Virginia could send Agent A a courteous e-mail (not a call), reminding him that the exclusive has elapsed. Would A like more time to consider the manuscript solo, or should Virginia send the manuscript out to the other agents who have requested it?

Naturally, if A selects the latter, she would be delighted to have him continue to consider the manuscript also. That’s fortunate, because I can already tell you the answer will be the former, if A has not yet had a chance to read it.

It’s also quite possible, though, that the response to this charming little missive will be silence. Quite a bit of it. As in weeks or months of it.

Oh, stop clutching your chests — Virginia’s polite request did not insult A into silence. He was already silent, right? That delay might mean that Agent A is no longer interested, but it might also mean that he intended to answer and forgot. Or that he’s planning to read her manuscript really, really soon. Or that he’s taking her at her word about no longer enjoying an exclusive, but honestly believes he can make a decision on the manuscript before another agent has a chance to make an offer. As each of these is actually pretty plausible, Virginia should not take A’s silence as an invitation to load him with recriminations about not getting back to her.

Which, unfortunately, is what submitters in this situation usually do. It’s entirely wasted effort: if the answer was no, jumping up and down to try to regain the agent’s attention won’t change that; if the agent hasn’t had a chance to read it yet, reproaches will seldom move a manuscript up in a reading queue. And that phone call that seemed like such a good idea at the time will generally result in rejection on the spot.

So what is Virginia to do? Well, ethically, she is no longer bound by that exclusive. She should presume that A’s answer was no, elevate her noble chin — and send out that submission to Agent B without contacting A again.

That’s the high road. The writer doesn’t achieve much by taking it, usually, other than possibly an extension of the exclusive, but you must admit, it’s classy. The level road is cosmetically similar, but allows the writer more freedom.

It runs a little something like this: a week or two after the exclusive has elapsed, Virginia could write an e-mail to Agent A, informing him courteously and without complaint (again, harder than it sounds) that since the agreed-upon period of exclusivity has passed, she’s going to start sending out requested materials to other agents. If A decides he would like to represent the book, she would love to hear from him. Then she should follow through on her promise immediately, informing Agent B in her cover letter that another agent is also considering the work.

I heard you gasp, but you read that right: Virginia should submit those requested materials to Agent B without waiting to hear back from Agent A. That way, she gets what she wants — the ability to continue to circulate her work — while not violating her agreement with Agent A and being honest with Agent B. All she is doing is being up front about abiding by the terms of the exclusive.

Might she receive an e-mail from A afterward, asking for more time? Possibly. If so, she can always agree not to accept an offer from another agent until after some specified date. That was what Agent A had in mind when he asked for the exclusive in the first place, right, the chance to be first in line to ask to represent the book?

The slightly subterranean third option would be not to send an e-mail at all, but merely wait until the exclusive has lapsed, then send out the manuscript to Agent B. Virginia should, of course, inform B that there’s another agent reading it. I don’t favor this option, personally: despite the fact that she would be perfectly within her rights to pursue it, if Agent A does eventually decide to make an offer, Virginia will be left in a rather awkward position.

Enviable, of course, but still a bit uncomfortable. I’d stick to one of the higher roads — unless, of course, after months of waiting, Virginia isn’t certain that she can resist pointing out to Agent A that time is in fact linear, and quite a lot of it has been passing. It’s not in her interest to pick a fight, after all.

The shortness of the space between here and the bottom of this post is making some of you nervous, isn’t it? “But Anne,” you quaver, shifting in your desk chairs, “I’m going to be up all night, wondering what happened next in Virginia’s story. I can see another possible road here: what happens if the exclusive Virginia agreed to grant Agent A didn’t have a time limit? How long must those of us who deal in linear time wait to submit to an Agent B? That seems like the most complicated option of all, so I’m really, really hoping that you’re not planning to trot out that annoying it depends line again.”

Well, her options would depend on quite a number of things, but you’re quite right that discussing the perils and escape hatches of the unlimited exclusive is too complex to toss off in an aphorism. I shall deal with it in depth next time.

For now, suffice it to say that as exciting as a request for an exclusive may be, it is not a gift horse to clamber upon without some pretty thorough examination of its dentistry. Before you saddle it — and yourself — take the time to consider what the ride might be like. And, of course, keep up the good work!

Teknik Belajar Trading Binomo Pemula, Pastilah Aman Dan Cuan

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Overcoming those bare-page blues, or, getting those wheels spinning productively

spinning lady

One of the things I miss most about no longer being able to blog on a consistent basis — if not every day or week, then at least as often as I’d like — is constant interaction with aspiring writers and their questions. The Author! Author! community asks such trenchant questions, you see. Unfortunately, the answers to those questions are not always seen by the excellent many with the time to read only the most recent posts.

One misses quite a lot that way, from a blogger’s perspective: even when I’m not posting fresh material, I’m often answering questions quietly behind the scenes. Reasonably enough for a blog with archives this extensive, great questions frequently appear in the comments on posts weeks, months, or even years old.

That doesn’t mean that the issues raised might not be of every bit as much interest as those upon which I have written more recently. Take, for instance, a comment reader Firma asked some months back:

First of all, I want to say superb blog! I had a quick question that I’d like to ask if you do not mind. I was interested to find out how you center yourself and clear your mind prior to writing.

I have had a tough time clearing my mind in getting my thoughts out. I truly do enjoy writing; however, it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are generally lost simply just trying to figure out how to begin.

Any suggestions or hints? Thank you!

A very good question about a problem that plagues a great many writers, right? Indeed, it may well sneak up upon all of us from time to time: hands up, everyone who has ever staged at a blank screen or page, feeling it taunting you to fill it up.

I do indeed have a number of suggestions, but first, let’s talk about why this species of writer’s block annoys so many, and why it’s so hard to overcome. Heck, while we’re at it, let’s also take a swing at why, compared to more major forms of I just can’t seem to write today! syndrome, it’s comparatively little discussed in writing circles. And when it is, the sufferer is very often made to feel that a lack of dedication, patience, or even story must be at fault.

Just to clear the air: none of those explanations is necessarily apt, in practice. Plenty of highly dedicated aspiring writers with the patience of medieval saints apply themselves to stories that would knock your socks off — and still find themselves staring helplessly at that blank page for the first twenty minutes of every writing session.

Darned frustrating, even if you didn’t have to fight tooth and nail, as so many committed writers do, to free that writing time from other obligations. No one needs to remind you that you could have used that time more productively. So I have an idea: let’s all agree that informing a writer acutely aware of a ticking clock is, at best, redundant.

At worst, it’s kind of cruel, isn’t it? Good writers, after all, tend to be rather sensitive people: to paraphrase H.G. Wells, it takes a mind unusually open to stimulus to produce strong sensations on the page. (Actually, he was talking about matters below the waist at the time, but it’s still a useful principle, is it not?)

Instead of nagging Firma — who, I think we all can agree, has been doing an awfully impressive job of nagging herself — to use her time better, let’s dig into why she and hundreds of thousands of other writers experience difficulty jump-starting that writing session. Part of the problem, in my experience, lies in the expectation that every last second a writer spends with a manuscript should be productive, as if the writing process consisted solely of slapping words on a page. To be fair, there’s certainly a lot of external validation of that attitude; heck, there’s even a month every year devoted to exhorting folks who haven’t found the time to sit down with their stories for the past eleven months to write a whole novel in thirty days.

Why, that month is coming up very soon, isn’t it? What a remarkable coincidence.

As any established author chafing under a deadline can tell you, pressure to produce X number of pages within a short time frame has a nasty habit of exacerbating writer’s block. Even if the deadline in question exists only in the mind of the writer — an obligation that can be as nebulous as plan to finish that chapter by the end of the week, or a commitment to try to write X number of words in any given writing session — finding the time and energy to sit in front of the computer may not the hardest part of the process by a long stretch. For many, many writers, the biggest challenge emerges from the intimidation of that blank screen, that bare sheet of paper.

It’s conquering the fear of starting.

If you feel this way, you are certainly not alone. Many writers have terrific ideas, but find themselves stymied once it is time to commit those ideas to paper. Almost invariably, those newer to the game blame themselves, as if falling prey to writer’s block were a question of character. (Experienced writers know better: they blame the unreasonableness of their deadlines. But that’s another story.)

The demons of self-doubt can be deafening, can’t they? Especially for a creative mind looking for an outlet. Stumped writers worry that they are not talented enough, or that no one will be interested in what they have to say, or that their writing is not important enough to justify taking time away from all of their other obligations. So they just don’t start, or if they do, once they do clear the time from their busy schedules, they feel guilty for not utilizing every nanosecond of it with productive keystrokes.

Obviously, you’re never going to find out for sure how talented, interesting, or important you are as a writer if you don’t make the time to write in the first place, but ultimately, I suspect this fear isn’t a rational phenomenon as much as a matter of conditioning. Americans are, after all, trained from birth to work as hard as possible, and to feel that there is virtue in slogging through quotidian workplace tasks, because there is a paycheck attached to them. By contrast, since the rewards of writing tend to fall into the very, very long-term range, writing feels like a luxury.

Which, as any lifetime writer can tell you, it isn’t. Not if the storytelling urge is really in your blood.

That last sentence made half of you feel guilty, didn’t it? I’m not surprised: in the throes of writer’s block, even encouraging statements can induce guilt or feelings of inadequacy. “If I were really meant to write,” the blocked writer scolds herself, staring in frustration at the blank computer screen, “my fingers would be flying right now.”

Not necessarily. Blank screen-staring is a vital part of any successful writer’s job description. The pros call it processing.

So do not, I beg you, conclude from a few isolated bouts of block that this is not the life for you or stop trying to write after merely a week or two of effort. Do not conclude it even if it goes on for weeks or months at a time, or if you find yourself making excuses about why you can’t write today. This type of block is common, I tell you, and transcends boundaries of talent.

As does coming up with creative ways to prevent oneself from sitting down to stare at that infernal screen. Heck, about a third of the working writers I know can’t make themselves sit down to write until after every iota of the housework is done, right down to the last folded t-shirt and balled-up sock. For some reason they can’t quite define, writing for them seems to be a perpetual when-I-have-time-for-it phenomenon.

I’m not going to lie to you –- if you find that you’re not cozying up to a computer on a regular basis and writing, it’s going to take an awfully long time to produce something publishable. If you are waiting until you have an entire day free of work, laundry, and other obligations, you may well be waiting for quite a long time. Most Americans work far, far too much (and in return receive the lowest amount of vacation time in the industrialized world) to have a lot of leisure time available to give free rein to their creativity.

Again, I could parrot other writing advice-givers, blaming every difficulty upon a lack of willpower. I could, for instance, order you crabbily to turn off the TV/DVD/DVR/iPod/TiVo/other electronic distractions, but honestly, we live in a world. Things happen. I would be the last person to advise you to be less aware of what is going on around you.

Mr. Wells’ sensitive nervous tissue, you know. Anyway, chances are that by the time you collapse in front of the TV, you’re pretty exhausted from work, keeping up with the kids, and so forth.

I could also echo William Faulkner’s famous advice to Eudora Welty, when she complained about how difficult it was to find writing time while taking care of her ailing mother: I believe his plan involved a window and a flinging action. Somehow, however, I can’t feel that urging you to defenestrate your nearest and dearest would free your mind from clutter when you next pulled up a chair to your writing desk.

Besides, where would that leave you when you wanted to take Mr. Wells’ advice literally? After a productive writing session, some human contact can be very nice. Best to keep supportive folks on this side of the sill, I say.

That being said, and as much as it pains me to tell you this, it probably will not get your book written to expend your few leisure moments daydreaming about the month-long vacation at a mountain cabin that would permit you to dash off a first draft in its entirety. Even professional writers, the ones who are making a good living at it, seldom have huge chunks of completely untrammeled time at their disposal. Life is obtrusive, after all.

If you can afford to take such a retreat, great. There are plenty of artists’ colonies and secluded bed-and-breakfasts that would simply love to shelter you for a period of limited, intense work. (Check out the back of Poets & Writers magazine, where many fellowships for such retreats are advertised.)

But I would bet a nickel that the very idea of arranging your life to disappear for a month’s writing retreat feels impossible right about now. You’re a responsible person with obligations. If you have kids, it’s hard to imagine disappearing for that long; if you have a demanding job, it may well be impossible. Not to mention the need to pay your bills throughout this theoretical retreat.

So it probably behooves you to make the most of the work time you already have – and to make a commitment to using it productively.

If you have been able to carve out an hour or two per day, or a few hours at a stretch each week, good for you! Yet the need to make the most of every second can in and of itself can be intimidating; as I mentioned above, if you waste your scarce writing time, you feel terrible, right? (Which, incidentally, is why most writers are so sensitive to our kith and kin’s remarking that we seem to be sitting in front of our computers staring into space, rather than typing every instant. Reflection is necessary to our work, but it is genuinely difficult sometimes NOT to fall into a daydream.)

Here’s one trick the pros use, one that I find works well for editing clients writing everything from bone-dry dissertations to the Great American Novel. It may seem suspiciously simple, but I assure you, it works: play the same piece of music at the moment you sit down to write.

As in every time you sit down to write. Not just the same album — they still make those, right? –but the same song. Preferably one that reminds you in some way of the project at hand.

Do select something you like, because it’s going to be your book’s soundtrack for a while. And do pick more than one song to play — always in the same order, please. It’s fine to create a playlist, or you can listen to the same CD beginning to end. You’re going to want at least half an hour’s worth of music, enough to play in the background until well past the point at which your brain generally starts switching into writing mode.

Here’s the trick, though: if inspiration does not come winging to you immediately, don’t do anything else but write. Stay there in front of that blank screen and think about your story. It’s fine to write something other than the scene you planned, as long as it remains within the world of your book. Go ahead and write character sketches, if you like. Brainstorm an outline for a future scene. Write a hunk of dialogue that doesn’t currently have a place in the storyline. Picture taking your protagonist and antagonist out to a four-course meal at the restaurant of their choice. It’s up to you.

Oh, stop groaning: it’s better than berating yourself in silence for those first ten minutes of trying to write, isn’t it?

What you may not do, if you want to give this experiment a valid try, is plan out other books in your series. Don’t write on another project. And, of course, don’t give up and start answering e-mails. Don’t surf the net. Don’t check Facebook.

I’m serious: don’t do anything else for at least half an hour. The time is going to pass slowly, but don’t give up. It doesn’t matter if you’re bored — in fact, for the purposes of correcting the problem, it would be great to bore yourself in this manner.

Why, you ask in horror? You’re prompting the creative part of your mind to get cracking — and that you’re willing to sit there until it stops resisting getting to work on the darned interesting book you’re writing.

“But Anne,” I hear the blocked cry, and who could blame you? “Won’t this take a lot of time? I mean, I’ve already been flogging myself mentally for not beginning to write the instant my writing time begins — won’t this just feel like punishing myself further?”

Ah, but isn’t part of the problem that your creative urges have been taking their time to start flowing? This is a way to make it pellucidly clear to those pesky Muses that you are indeed committed to your writing process — not merely to the story itself. There is a difference, you know, on the composition level, necessarily so if what you are writing is a book-length piece.

Why? Well, contrary to what the hobgoblins may have been hissing at you in the wee hours, no author, no matter how gifted, writes an entire book in one sitting. (Not a good one, anyway.) Nor do talented authors typically whip off a first draft that’s published as is. That means, in practice, that committing to writing a good book entails a long, hard effort over time.

“Aha!” the part of your brain eager to procrastinate announces triumphantly. “In other words, what I do today doesn’t matter. Maybe, if I resist plunging into the task of writing for another three minutes, the rest of my mind will get frustrated and decide to do something else.”

Sound familiar? And see why it might take a firm resolve to keep staring at that blank screen to convince that truant portion of your mind to stop skylarking?

Both the wait time and the musical repetition may drive you crazy at first, but be consistent. Before long, your brain will come to associate that particular song with writing — and with spending some serious time not doing anything but writing. That in turn will help you sink into your work more quickly. Be consistent, and do be prepared to keep it up for a good dozen writing sessions, to set the pattern.

“But not forever, right?” you ask nervously. “I’m not committing myself to a lifetime of listening to nothing but John Denver’s greatest hits, just so I can write productively, am I?”

Naturally, you can play other music later on, but I would recommend always beginning with the same song for at least a few months. Until your brain has become accustomed to snapping immediately into creative mode, not yielding to the temptation of playing something else in those early minutes. You want the message to sink into every synapse: hearing this means it’s time to write.

Stick with it. And do be aware that if this trick works — and it usually does, if a writer gives it a solid chance — you will forever associate that music with the book. There are worse fates. Even now, I can’t hear more than a bar or two of Yaz’s Upstairs at Eric’s without falling into musings about my long-completed dissertation.

Do I see some timid raised hands out there in the ether? Yes? “But Anne,” some of you murmur, “I’m already pretty easily distracted; that’s part of my problem. Hadn’t it occurred to you that if I don’t write to music, that might have been a sensible, deliberate choice?”

It did, actually; thus the swiftness of my snappy comeback: it actually doesn’t matter what your getting-started-writing ritual is, so long as you perform it consistently. The point is to provide all of that sensitive nervous tissue with a set of nonverbal clues that it’s time to get down to writing.

You’re a creative person — experiment. If music’s not your thing, try lighting the same scented candle just before you sit down to write, if you can do it safely. (Make sure it’s set in a fireproof holder.) Burn some incense. Drink a particular flavor of tea. Always wear the same pair of socks.

At least for the duration of that particular writing project. You might want to set up a different set of stimuli for your next book. Why? Well, it will help you at revision time: a fringe benefit of establishing a ritual for the first draft is that it can make getting back into that book’s mindset a snap.

“Oh,” the creative parts of your noggin will shout, “that’s Alice Cooper singing Cheek to Cheek. It must be time to write about the planet Targ again.”

And another forest of hands has sprouted. “But Anne,” timorous writers everywhere protest, “I’m willing to try these wacky things, because I’m desperate. I can’t even begin to imagine how crazy it’s going to drive my spouse/significant other/neighbors/particularly judgmental cat to hear All the Single Ladies six times a week, but I’ll risk it.

“I’m scared, though: what do I do if this doesn’t work for me? Hand myself over to the hobgoblins of self-doubt then and there?”

No, no, fearful ones; this certainly isn’t the only way of approaching the problem. My sleeves are positively stuffed with fresh cards to toss into the game.

Before I start whipping ‘em out, though, I would like to ask of you coping with the writer’s-block blues: what other ways have you been experiencing it? Dead-of-night self-critique? Backspacing over half of what you’ve written in a day? The impulse to toss completed manuscripts into the nearest geyser?

There are many different strains of the phenomenon, after all, and sometimes, coming up with a specific diagnosis provides half the cure. In the meantime, pressing forward — and not just because you resolved to do it, or because a calendar told you so, but because you believe in the story you have to tell and your ability to express yourself well.

And, as always, keep up the good work!

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