Posted on - 2 Comments on Repeat after me: I do not fear the calendar; I do not fear the calendar…

Repeat after me: I do not fear the calendar; I do not fear the calendar…

I shall return to querying tips later today, but as a freelance editor, I get to have a LOT of conversations with writers in the throes of trying to send out post-conference submission packets. Since I just finished hearing for the fifth time this week that old saw that writers only have 1 – 3 weeks in which to mail off requested materials, and as we are drawing near to the end of Week 3 after the PNWA conference, I wanted to address this as soon as humanly possible.

For the record, it’s not true. Yes, it’s nice if you can send the submission off sooner rather than later, but trust me, no one is sitting around at your dream agency, holding a stopwatch, all ready to shout triumphantly, “There! It’s been 1,814,400 seconds since the last pitch of the conference! Ha! Now we don’t have to accept any more submissions!”

Unless you were unlucky enough to pitch to the mythical troll who lives under the Brooklyn Bridge, it’s just not going to happen.

Honestly, they don’t have the time to worry about this kind of deadline — and you would be surprised at how many writers ultimately do not send requested materials at all. Partially, I think, this silly conference truism about the short time window is to blame. People panic, and then they think, mistakenly, that they’ve missed their big chance. Some of you may even be fretting that you have already waited too long, but you haven’t.

Yes, I know: you’re worried that they won’t remember you if you wait too long. At the risk of bruising a few egos out there, though, as someone with a lot of experience both pitching and hearing pitches, I can tell you that realistically, the agent is far more likely to remember your project than your name, anyway. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but most agents and editors forget pitching authors’ names before they get on the airplane home; most of them take some notes on the pitches they hear, to remind them down the line.

So an extra few days will not make them forget you more. Besides, you will be writing CONFERENCE NAME — REQUESTED MATERIALS on the outside of your submission, right? That’s an awfully darned fine spur to memory, as is beginning your cover letter, “Thank you for asking to see the first chapter of my novel…” These are smart people; they will figure out where they met you, given such subtle clues.

In my experience, it’s FAR better to take an extra week or two — or even a month or two — to send out perfectly polished pages than to rush them out the door quickly in order to meet some arbitrary deadline. So yes, the prevailing wisdom dictates that writers should send in requested materials within 1 — 3 weeks, but that is the expectation among writers, not agents and editors, for the most part.

Why? Well, summer is conference season; very few agents and editors go to only one literary conference, if they attend any, so they will be receiving packets all summer long. I have literally never heard of an instance where a writer’s submission got rejected because it turned up after 6 weeks, instead of after 3.

In practical terms, too, sending your work off toute de suite will not necessarily mean getting it back sooner. Many Manhattan-based agencies work short weeks in summer — and this summer, with an unprecedented heat wave flattening even the hardiest, is unlikely to be an exception. Also, the norm in the industry is to take vacation from mid-August until after Labor Day, so you may not hear back from some of the agents (and most of the editors) until September.

So try to relax, and concentrate on sending out pages you love. If you notice the kids going back to school, and you still haven’t followed up on those pages you promised back in July, you will want to bestir yourself, stop revising, and get to the post office. I promise, no one will yell at you.

If you are sure that your revisions are going to take longer than that, send a polite note or e-mail now, informing the requester of the delay and giving an estimated delivery date. No need for a long apology; it’s just a courtesy message. When you start noticing the leaves changing color, or find yourself decorating a Christmas tree or spinning a dreidel, then you can legitimately start worrying if you have waited too long.

But whatever you do, do NOT let fears or conference rumors prevent you from following up on a requested materials request. The only book that can NEVER get published is the one that never sees the light of day, because it is decaying in the bottom of a file drawer or lurking in a seldom-opened file on a computer. Such a request is a great opportunity: please take advantage of it.

Yes, it’s scary, but there’s a community here to support you, come what may. That’s the nice thing about hanging out with writers: we’ve all either been there, will be there, or are there now.

Posted on - No Comments on The query checklist, part II: feeding our furry friends

The query checklist, part II: feeding our furry friends

I am presently being overrun by raccoons. Baby ones, four of them, along with their parents and a mangy beast who appears to be their dissipated adopted uncle, or perhaps just The Raccoon Who Came To Dinner, a houseguest our resident raccoon family is just too polite to evict. The babies think I am the Goddess of Cat Food, and will scratch on my back door after they have eaten up all of the food our outdoor kitty was not swift enough to gobble up first, to demand more. Why do we feed them? Well, most of our neighbors have concreted-over yards (for reasons that escape me; in my experience, fallen rain needs to go somewhere after it hits the ground), but our yard is largely wild. Thus, we get a disproportionate share of the neighborhood’s wildlife traipsing through our yard.

The raccoon parents were born under our deck, and know me of yore as the Queen of the Kibble from their childhoods. They pick up each piece of kibble between their long front paws and nibble it daintily, like the well-bred critters that they are. The babies, on the other hand, almost spherical with fur except for tiny pointed ears and stripy little tails shaped like isosceles triangles, are ravenous little maulers, indiscriminately shoving everything they can manage to pick up into their sweet little maws: kibble, the edge of the doormat, small rocks, their siblings’ tails. When they discover a non-foodstuff in mid-chew, they blithely discard it and eagerly snatch up the next thing, hoping it will be something that they will want to ingest this time.

So you see, my friends, my back yard is run identically to the publishing industry. Like many experienced agents and editors, Mama and Daddy Raccoon have a very strong preconceived notion of what they want, and do not pay the slightest attention to anything, however tempting, that does not conform to their idées fixes of what they should consume. The babies are like agents new to the biz, or ones afraid that the next bestseller will pass them by: they will bite on anything and everything once, only to spit it out quickly and move on to the next thing. (See why you should consider querying the less experienced agents from time to time, as well as the big names?)

I mention this, because I have been talking lately to quite a few writers who were feeling dispirited by having been brushed off by agents and editors to whom they pitched at a recent conference that shall remain nameless, or rejected via form letter for the fiftieth time. Please, if the Mama Raccoon you had set your heart on picking up your work did not recognize it as her preferred brand of kibble, do not take it as proof positive that your work is not palatable. Take it as a sign that your pitch or query did not fit the masked one’s preconceived notions, and move on to find an agent who has been dreaming of exactly your flavor of book.

But to do that, you will need to make sure that your query letter is very nummy indeed. On with the checklist of red flags to avoid:

(4) Do I make it clear in the first paragraph of the letter why I am writing to this particular agent — or does it read as though I could be addressing any agent in North America? If I met this agent or editor at a conference, or am querying because I heard him/her speak at one, do I make that obvious immediately?

Agents complain vociferously and often about queries that read as though the writer simply used a mail merge to address letters to every agent listed on a particular website or in a given guide. There are hundreds and hundreds of literary agents — why did you choose this one, out of all others, to query?

Most agents are proud of their work: if you want to get on their good side, show a little appreciation for what they have done in the past. If the agent you are querying has represented something similar to your work in the past, definitely mention that in your query letter. As in, “Since you so ably represented X’s book, I believe you may be interested in my novel… Trust me, this kind of personal recognition makes the garden-variety agent’s furry little ears perk up instantly.

I picked up this little trick not at writers’ conferences, but in my former incarnation as an academic. When a professor is applying for a job, she is subjected to a form of medieval torture known as a job talk. Yes, she is expected to give a lecture in front of the entire faculty that is thinking of hiring here, all of whom are instructed in advance to jump on everything she says with abandon, but she is also expected to have brief private meetings with everyone on the faculty first. Think of it as going through a series of 20 or 30 interviews with authors who think simply everyone in the universe has read their work. If you’re the job candidate, you’d better have at least one pithy comment prepared about each and every faculty member’s most recent article, or you’re toast. And that’s even before the department chair slips the senior graduate students a few bucks to take you out, get you drunk, and worm your other prospective job offers out of you.

Gee, I can’t imagine why I didn’t want to remain in academia.

I had lunch this very day with a writer who just used this method in a pitch with triumphant success. The agent was blown away that the writer had taken the time to find out whom she represented and do a little advance reading. There are many ways to find out what an agent has represented. Check the acknowledgments of books you like (authors often thank their agents), or check the agency’s website to see whom the agent represents. There are several online search engines that will permit you to enter an author’s name and find out who represents him; I use Publishers’ Marketplace, as it is so up-to-date on just-breaking sales news.

If all else fails, call the book’s publisher, ask for the publicity department, and ask who the agent of record was for the book in question; legally, they must tell you, due to some obscure quirk of jurisprudence that I have never been able to track down. In any case, they will tell you, even if the book came out decades ago. I once had a charming conversation with an editor at a small Midwestern press, who confided to me that when she had acquired the book about which I was inquiring, the author did not yet have an agent. Sensing an opportunity, I promptly pitched my book to her — and she asked me to send her the first fifty pages right away.

Alternatively, if you have heard the agent speak at a conference, read an article she has written in a writer’s magazine, or even just noticed that your favorite author thanked her in the acknowledgments of a book you liked, mention that in the first line of your query letter. If you have no such personal reason, be polite enough to invent a general one: “Since you represent literary fiction, I hope you will be interested in my novel…”

(5) Is the first paragraph of my query compelling? Does it get to the point immediately? If I were an agency screener, would I keep reading into the next paragraph?

I am dwelling upon the first paragraph of the query letter because — oh, it pains me to be the one to tell you this, if you did not already know — countless query letters are discarded by agents every day based upon the first paragraph alone. Think about it: if you had to get through 200 queries before the end of the afternoon, would you keep reading if the first paragraph were not promising?

Oh, yes, you SAY you would. But honestly, would you?

Take a good, hard look at your first paragraph, and make sure it is one that will make the agent want keep reading. (Yes, even if this is an agent to whom you are sending requested material.) Cut to the chase. All too often, when writers do not make their intentions clear up front — say, by neglecting to mention the book category — the letter simply gets tossed aside after the first paragraph. (This is the reason I advise against e-mail queries, incidentally, except in the case of agents who specifically state they prefer them over the paper version: it’s too easy to delete an e-mail after reading only a line or two of it.)

Tomorrow, I shall deal with the questions you might want to ask about subsequent portions of your query letter — and yes, I know that it seems impossibly nit-picky to concentrate this hard upon a page of text that isn’t even in your book. I’m just trying to save you some time, and some misery — and a whole lot of rejection. Remember, one of the primary purposes of the query letter is to identify your work as something that the raccoon reading it will instantly recognize as her favorite filet mignon.

Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on The post-conference query

The post-conference query

I know a lot of you intrepid hallway pitchers out there are feverishly reworking your first 50 pp. (or, as some readers of my old blog wrote in to report, entire manuscripts! Hooray!) to send out to the agents and editors who requested them at recent conferences that shall remain nameless, but today, I would like to talk about how to handle those slippery folk whom you never managed to buttonhole, despite your best efforts. (Rumor has it that a few of the agents who attended the PNWA conference — oops — were blessed with prodigious bladders and scant appetites, so they were seldom seen in the hallways.) In short, today is going to be all about post-conference querying.

As I mentioned yesterday, I believe it is ALWAYS legitimate to use an agent’s having appeared at a writers’ conference as a personal invitation to query — in theory, they would not be there if they were not looking to sign new authors, right? (This is not always true in practice, but hey, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it is, just for today.) So if you so much as saw the agent’s name on a conference program, go ahead and write “CONFERENCE NAME” in gigantic letters on the outside of the envelope, and begin your query letter with, “I so enjoyed hearing you speak at the recent XX conference, and based upon what you said, I believe you will be interested in my book…” These are both legitimate tricks of the trade to get your submission read more quickly.

Do be sure before you lick the envelope, of course, that the agent in question actually DID speak at the conference you mention. At the recent PNWA conference (I give up), not all of the advertised agents (or the keynote speaker, I’m told) were able to show up, for various reasons. Does this mean these fine folks are not available for querying? Heavens, no. If you were interested in, say, Arielle Eckstut or Jandy Nelson, the outside of your query envelope should be handled exactly in the same way as the one described above, but your query letter should begin with some permutation of, “I was so sorry to have missed seeing you at the recent PNWA conference, because I believe that my book will interest you…”

I hear some of you murmuring out there, and who could blame you? “Why is Anne harping so much on the outside of the envelope,” I hear disgruntled voices whispering, “when it’s the quality of the submission within that will determine whether the agent will want to see more? And hasn’t Anne been impressing upon us for a year now that the first person to read ANY submission to an agency, be it requested chapters or a query, is generally a screener, and not the agent herself? If the agent is not going to see the outside of the envelope, why does it matter what it looks like?”

Reasonable questions, all. To understand, let me take you inside the average Manhattan-based agency, once that receives 800+ queries per week. I think it is safe to say that the excellent employees of the US Postal Service harbor some resentment toward agencies, because of all that heavy, heavy paper some luckless mail carrier must deliver every day. Once there, it is all dumped on the desk of a screener, often an intern (translation: this person may not even be paid to be there; he just wants to be an agent some day, and is collecting some résumé candy. If he is paid, it’s a pittance.). Let’s call him George, and assume that his unhappy lot is to decide which 2% out of this morass of pleas should be passed on to his (paid) superiors at the agency.

Got that image firmly in your mind? Good. Now think about the moment when your query letter first touches George’s damp fingertips. Since he is a bright boy (he’s a junior majoring in English Literature at Columbia, and he has NO idea how he is going to manage to pay off his student loans, if all of his early agency jobs pay as poorly as this one — and in all probability, they will.), obviously, the first thing George does when he receives a new mail delivery is to pull out everything marked REQUESTED MATERIALS: that goes into the top-priority pile. Then there is everything else, opened in the order that his hand happens to fall upon it.

Note that George is already scanning the outside of the envelopes, looking for clues as to what magic awaits within. Any envelope with a clear indication is going to make his life easier, right?

And that, dear friends, is going to get your query placed in a read-first pile, even if the agent who attended the conference did not (as some do) order George and his ilk to set all of the conference attendees’ queries aside into a special pile. After all, 98% of the querying writers in North America NEVER attend a conference at all; as agents like to tell anyone who seems remotely interested in the matter, queries from conference attendees tend to be far more professionally presented.

I would like to report that writing “Reader of Anne Mini’s blog” on the outside of your envelopes provokes the same hope, but alas, that is not yet true. But tomorrow, the world!

It pains me to say it, but I HAVE heard of some clever and unscrupulous writers who take advantage of the pervasive agency belief in the power of conferring to label their envelopes untruthfully. Since at a large conference, agents frequently will not remember everyone they asked to send material, I have known certain black-hearted souls who went ahead and wrote REQUESTED MATERIALS on the outside of — gasp! — unrequested materials. After all, they reason, how is George to know? They’re right: he won’t know the difference. I strongly advise against this strategy, however, on ethical grounds: for all you know, the karmic record-keeper assigned to track your triumphs and misdeeds was a literary agent in her last life. Don’t tempt that lightning bolt.

Another common, clever, and unscrupulous method adopted by those who would transfer their work into the read-first pile is to troll the net for literary conferences (large ones work best), jot down the names of the attending agents, and send “Gee, I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet you at the recent YY conference, but…” queries with appropriately garnished envelopes. (This only works, of course, if the agent in question actually showed up there.) Oh, this is not good. How on earth am I going to convince you not to do it?

Hmm. It may take me weeks, or even months, to come up with a truly compelling argument that will keep my readers’ feet firmly planted on the paths of virtue. I guess you’re just going to have to consult your own consciences until then.

Whatever strategic choices you may make (hey, I believe in free will), white, gray, or buff Manila envelope, please, for any submission longer than 6 pages — more than 5 might make a normal business-size envelope tear in the post. Use high-quality (at least 20 lb.) white paper for EVERY sheet that you intend to have touched by an agent.

Why? Well, if you’re lucky, that query and submission are going to pass through quite a few hands at the agency. Do you have any idea how fast poor-quality paper wilts when it is handled by hands that have just clutched an iced latte or walked inside after brisk walk back from a power lunch on a sweltering New York day?

Tomorrow, I shall deal with some of the common mistakes made in query and cover letters (you ARE sending winsome little cover letters out with your requested materials, right?), but for today, one final piece of advice: even if you garnered permission to send your first 50 pp. to several great agents — and more power to you if you did — please consider querying the other agents who attended the conference as well, if their interests seem anywhere close to yours. And do it soon, before you hear back from the others.

I know, I know, this may seem unnecessary, or even disrespectful to those who have asked you for a peek at your baby. But listen: agencies take time to read material; since most of the publishing industry takes vacation between mid-August and Labor Day, in all probability, you will not hear back on all of your submissions before the fall. (They’re going to send George on vacation, too. Poor lamb, his eyes are going to need the rest by then.) That’s a couple of months of your life, and if — heaven forefend! — none of the requesters is ultimately interested, won’t you be happier if you already have second-round requests lined up?

The post-conference advantage fades when the days start to cool, my friends. Get your work under as many already-primed eyes before the Georges of tomorrow will no longer recognize the initials PNWA. Yes, it is time-consuming to keep querying, but honestly, it takes less energy to keep seven or eight queries out at any given time than to start from scratch each time you (again, heaven forefend) receive a “Sorry, but this is not for us” missive.

Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Speaking the industry’s lingua franca

Speaking the industry’s lingua franca

Congratulations to all of you intrepid souls who managed to track me down already! At some point, I hope that the PNWA will allow a link from my former blogsite to this one, but at the moment, they flatly refuse. (Sic transit gloria, eh?) So for now, I am relying upon my loyal readers’ intuition and the writers’ grapevine to let people know to search for me under my name, rather than my former institutional affiliation. Let’s hope this works.

I’m going to try to start posting my old blogs into the archives here as soon as I understand the new system well enough to do it, so please be patient: over the course of 11 months, I wrote 1,126 pages of advice for writers as the PNWA’s Resident Writer. That’s a LOT of material to move, but rest assured, I shall keep the ferry service running until it is all safely archived here. (Clever readers Ute and Harold both alerted to me to the fact that it IS still possible to access my old blog’s archives, but I assume that the organization will catch on to its incomplete hatchet job soon. I’ll be happier once they are all safely stored here.)

I think today’s topic will interest both those readers who attended the recent PNWA conference and those who did not: today, I shall be talking about how to translate industry-speak into words and phrases that make some sense in the English language as she is spoke by commoners such as ourselves.

Since some of you may be currently in the throes of trying to figure out whether you liked a particular agent well enough to send a post-conference query (and if you are not already aware of it, it is ALWAYS a good idea to write on the outside of such queries THE NAME OF THE CONFERENCE in great big letters, and begin your query letter with, “I enjoyed hearing you speak at the recent X conference, and I believe you will be interested in my work…), I thought it might be a good idea to provide at least a rudimentary Rosetta Stone.

Those of you who followed my old blog might remember that I had suggested lo! these many weeks ago that it was advisable (by definition, since I advised it) to go to the agent and editor forum at any conference in order to figure out to whom you should be pitching in the hallways. After you had been sitting there for an hour or so, you may have gleaned some marvelous insights, or you may have wondered whether all of these people were speaking Urdu. Unfortunately, the way agents and editors talk about their work in general can be bewildering for writers new to dealing with it.

What are we to make of publishing professionals who, for instance, brush off pitch attempts quickly, saying, “I don’t handle that sort of book,” in a tone that implies that you should already have known that? Or the agent who tells a pitcher, “Gee, that sounds interesting, but my client roster is totally full at the moment.” (If so, why come to a conference to solicit more?) Or when an agent gives a statement of work he’s seeking that’s so wildly different from his stated preferences in the standard guides, or on his agency’s website, or even in the blurb that he submitted to the conference organizers that you want to leap to your feet, screaming that this man is an imposter?

What can you do, other than check the conference center basement for pods?

You may have noticed that this ambiguity of intention sometimes gets reflected in the blurbs in agents’ guides, too. How many of us have read that a particular agent is looking for new authors in a wide array of genres, including our own, only to be crushed by a form letter huffily announcing that the agency NEVER represents that kind of work? Years ago, I made the mistake of signing with an agent (who shall remain nameless, because I’m considerably nicer than she is) who listed herself as representing everything from literary fiction to how-to books, but who in fact concentrated almost exclusively on romance novels and self-help books, two huge markets. I did not learn until the rather tumultuous end of our association that she had signed me not because she admired the novel she was ostensibly pushing for me, but because I had a Ph.D.: she hoped, she told me belatedly, that I would become frustrated at the delays of the literary market and write a self-help book instead.

Why would an agent advertise that she is looking for genres she does not intend to represent? Well, for the same reason that some agents and editors go to conferences in the first place: just in case the next bestseller is lurking behind the next anxious authorial face or submission envelope. An agent may well represent cookbooks almost exclusively, but if the next DA VINCI CODE falls into his lap, he probably won’t turn it down. He may well reject 99.98% of the submissions in a particular genre (and actually state in his form rejections that he doesn’t represent the genre at all, as an easy out), but in his heart of hearts, he’s hoping lighting will strike. He is a gambler.

Honestly, most agents and editors who attend conferences ARE good at heart. Most of them truly do want to help new authors. However, not all of them are necessarily there to discover the next Great American Novel: in fact, it’s rare for an agent to pick up more than a single author from any given conference — yes, even at PNWA — or for an editor at a major house to pick up anyone at all. There are agents who pick up only one or two clients a year out of ALL of the conferences they attend.

There is even an ilk who goes to conferences simply to try to raise authorial awareness of market standards, with no intention of signing any writers at all. The soulless few who attend conferences just so they can visit their girlfriends in cities far from New York, or who want a tax-deductible vacation in the San Juans, are beyond the scope of my discussion here, but I’m morally sure that the karmic record-keepers frown upon them from above.

Oh, how I wish these people came with great big signs, so writers would know who is serious about finding new clients and who isn’t. But they don’t, and in fact, sometimes the ones with the least intention of being helpful to the writers in the room sound on the podium like the greatest lovers of good writing. And now that the conference is over, you may be wondering in retrospect which is which.

One way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to weight agents and editors’ concrete statements of likes and dislikes (“I never want to see another SF book again,” for instance, is probably a reliable indicator, as is “I am desperately looking for books on squid cookery for the pre-teen NF market”) much more heavily in your assessments than the general observations (e.g., anything from “I represent a wide variety of commercial fiction” to “I love good writing”). The more specific the expressed preference, the more reliable it is, generally speaking.

That being said, there is an accepted array of platitudes that agents and editors tend to spout during speeches and in pitch meetings when they are trying to discourage writers, and over the years, I have gathered a list of them. I suppose they are not lies, per se, so much as polite exit lines from conversations and ways to make themselves sound better on a dias, but from the writer’s point of view, they might as well be real whoppers.

Because I love you people, I am posting my top ten favorites today, so you may check them against what was said to you at the conference or in response to your latest query letter. I have included a translation for each that makes sense in writer-speak — and I suspect some of the translations may surprise you. Please bear in mind that these are accepted industry euphemisms, and thus if you do find one that was applied to your book by an agent or editor, you should NOT take it personally — or even necessarily as a reflection on your book. Do not, I beg you, use any of them as a basis for thinking your work is not marketable. Like all platitudes, they are easy substitutes for a thoughtful response.

(10) “There just isn’t a market for this kind of book right now.”
Translation: “I don’t want to represent/buy it, for reasons that may or may not have anything to do with what is selling at the moment. Do not press me for my reasons, please, because they may be based upon trends that will end tomorrow.”

(9) “The market’s never been better for writers.”
Translation: “I prefer to represent previously published writers; I want to be the second person to take a chance on a writer, not the first, so I might be willing to make an exception for contest winners. Since it is now possible for an author to self-publish a blog or write for a website,” (despite the fact that such writing is generally done for free) “I don’t think there’s any excuse for a really talented writer not to have a relatively full writing resume.” Note: this attitude is almost never seen in those who have ever published anything themselves.

(8) “I could have sold this 10/20/2 years ago, but now…”
Translation: “Your pitch was good, but I’m looking for something just like the most recent bestseller. I’m not even vaguely interested in anything else. Actually, I am pretty miffed at you authors for not paying closer attention to the bestseller lists, because, frankly, you’re wasting my time.”
OR, in the nicer cases: “This was an interesting pitch, but I started being an agent/editor a long time ago, back when it was easier to sell books. Your work may have a political slant that has gone out of fashion, or it is too long, or it shares some other trait with a book I truly loved that I struggled to sell for a year to no avail. I don’t want to get my heart broken again, so I really wish you would write something else. Have you checked the bestseller list lately”

(7) “We give every submission we receive sent careful consideration.”
Translation: “I’m having a hard time keeping a straight face for this one, because it’s so palpably untrue. Like most agencies, we spent less than a minute reading the average query — and by we, I really mean an underpaid summer intern who was looking for predetermined grabbers on the first page or in the query letter.”
OR, from a nicer human being: “If I had actually taken the time to read all of them, I might have had some constructive comments to make, but I simply haven’t the time. I do know that we ought to give some reason for rejecting each submission. In my heart of hearts, I do feel rather guilty for not having done so; that is why I habitually make this defensive statement in my form-letter replies and from the podium.”

(6) “We are looking for fresh new approaches.”
Translation: “This is a definitional issue. If it is a spin on something already popular or on a well-worn topic, it is fresh; if it is completely original, or does not appeal to conventionally-approved NYC or LA states of mind, it is weird.”

(5) “The length doesn’t matter, if the writing quality is good.”
Translation: “I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but a first novel shouldn’t be longer than 450 pages for literary or mainstream fiction, 250-350 for anything else. For some genre fiction, it could be as short as 200 pages, but frankly, I think it’s the writer’s job, not mine, to check how long works in her genre are. However, if you’re a spectacularly talented writer, I would like a peek at your work, because maybe I could work with you to bring it under accepted limits. It might be the next DA VINCI CODE!”
OR: “I think the industry’s current length standards are really stupid, and I don’t want to give them more credibility by stating them here.”

(4) “We are interested in all high-quality work, regardless of genre.”
Translation: “We do have fairly strong preferences, and actually represent only specific kinds of books, but we are afraid that we will miss out on the next bestseller if we tell you people that. Does anyone out there have the next DA VINCI CODE?”
OR: “We are an immense agency, and you really need to figure out who on our staff represents which genre. If I am feeling generous when you pitch to me, I will tell you who that might be.”
OR: “We are a brand-new agency. We don’t have strong contacts yet, so we’re not sure what we can sell. Please, please send us manuscripts. Lots of them. My kid sister is out back right now, going through the slush pile, in the hopes of finding something marketable in the mess.”

(3) “I am looking for work with a strong plot.”
Translation: “I am looking for books easy to make into movies. I’d feel a little bit silly saying this out loud, but for my purposes, BRIDGET JONES’ characters are miracles of complex characterization, and a plot too complicated to explain to the average 8-year-old before he finishes his Slurpee is not for me. Sorry.”

(2) “We are always eager to find new talent.”
Translation: “We are looking for the next bestseller, not necessarily for someone who can write well.” (Yes, I know; this one is genuinely counterintuitive.)
OR: “We are looking for young writers, and think older ones are out of touch.”

(1) “True quality/real talent/good writing will always find a home.”
Translation: “…but not necessarily with my agency/publishing house.”
OR: “If you’re having trouble finding an agent or publisher, you either do not have talent or are going about it the wrong way, but I don’t have time to sit down with you and figure out which. Come find me when you have honed your craft to professional standards.”
OR (and this is both the kindest and the most common version): “Because I love good writing, I really want to believe that the market is not discouraging talented writers, but I fear it is. My nightmares are haunted by the specters of good writers who have given up trying to hack a path through a hostile system to get their books read. Maybe if I say this often enough, the great unknown writer in the audience will take heart and keep plowing through those rejections until she succeeds.”

In this industry’s lexicon, there are two sentences that mean exactly the same as in our language: “I love your work, and I want to represent it,” and “I love this book, and I am offering X dollars as an advance for it.” These, you can trust absolutely.

Here’s to all of you out there hearing those last two very soon. Keep up the good work!

Posted on - 8 Comments on A New Beginning

A New Beginning

How nice it was to meet so many of you at last weekend’s PNWA conference and hear your pitches! The Pitch Practicing Palace staff heard over 300 pitches over the course of the conference and, as a testament to the quality of many of those pitches, we had barely stepped into the parking garage before we were all saying, “Wow. Let’s do that again sometime soon.”

Deep, heartfelt thanks a thousand times over to the Pitch Practicing Palace staffers, the generous and gifted Suzanne Brahm, the lovely and talented Phoebe Kitanides, the hilarious and incisive author-to-watch Kevin Scott, and the brilliant and lyrical prose stylist Cindy Willis, all of whom took time off work to volunteer to help other writers. Memorize their names, my friends, so you will recognize them on bookshelves in the years to come. These writers are the real deal, and the best way to express gratitude to those who have helped you is to buy their books down the line!

Kudos to all of you who were brave enough to come to the conference and pitch your work. A conference muckity-muck yanked me aside on Saturday and read me the riot act about how my readers and Palace visitants were buttonholing agents and editors in the hallway, because that is Not How It Was Done in Days of Yore, but I was genuinely proud of all of you who did. Like the outdated insistence that all pitches should be under 35 words, I think that limiting your prospects to a couple of formal meetings, followed perhaps by a few meek follow-up queries a week or two after the conference, is not to the writer’s best advantage.

And I just have to boast about this: longtime loyal blog reader Toddie even summoned up the courage to give her elevator speech to an agent IN AN ELEVATOR. I predict that she will go far. (And if you think THAT’s not going to be a great interview story when her first book comes out, think again.)

At the risk of sounding like Dr. Seuss, given the opportunity, I think an ambitious writer should pitch in a box, and to a fox, and on stairs, and over the back of chairs, and…in short, Toddie and the rest of you who pitched aggressively, I think you did the right — and hugely brave — thing.

Please remember, all of you who pitched successfully, to write PNWA — REQUESTED MATERIALS in letters three inches high on the outside of the envelope. Also include a cover letter that reminds the agent or editor in the first line (a) where you met him or her and (b) thanking him or her for asking to read your work. As I’ve been telling those of you who were kind enough to read my former blog as PNWA Resident Writer for the past 11 months, politeness pays off in the long run.

Why do you need to remind an agent whose bloodshot eyes lit up when you described your project who you are? Well, agents and editors meet so many writers at conferences that they sometimes do not remember individuals; names start to blur together fairly quickly, even if they remember the project.

If you did not get to pitch to all the agents you liked at the forum, go ahead and send each one a query letter that begins, “I enjoyed hearing you speak at the recent PNWA conference, and I think you will be interested in my work.” Or something similar. Then write on the outside of the envelope PNWA in great big letters.

And please, for my sake, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope with every follow-up missive — stamped, not metered — and read every syllable of your submission OUT LOUD and IN HARD COPY before you send it off, to catch errors. Make sure, too, that it’s in standard format — seriously, this is not the time not to be indenting your paragraphs because you think it looks cool. 12-point Times, Times New Roman, or Courier, please, and spring for at least 20-lb. paper. All of this will make your submission look professional, and assure that your good writing gets a fair reading.

If I seem to be rushing through this advice, I assure you that there is a very good reason: until Monday, I did not know that I was going to need to spend this week setting up my website! For those of you who did not follow me from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association website, I had been the organization’s Resident Writer for almost a year. On Monday, the first business day after the conference, I found myself unable to post a conference wrap-up blog; all evidence of my blog or me had been summarily removed from the PNWA site, with no advance warning.

Since I still have not been given any explanation for this, I’m not comfortable speculating here about why this happened so abruptly (take me out for coffee, and I’ll speculate up a storm, however). The president of the PNWA has taken over as Resident Writer, and I certainly wish her well in that capacity.

My experience at the recent PNWA conference reminded me of a story my learned father used to tell me when I was a child, about a great Athenian general and philanthropist of the 5th century B.C. (Hey, my parents were beatnik intellectuals; my bedtime stories were pretty heavy stuff.) Themistocles was a brilliant military strategist, leading the Greeks to many startling victories against their then-enemies, the Persians; equally adept at peace, he sponsored civic art. After many years of being an all-around praiseworthy fellow, Athens won the war, and returned to the important yearly business of picking whom among its citizens to ostracize – i.e., to throw out of the city for ten years. Think of it as a really heavily-enforced good neighbor agreement.

Being a civic-minded guy, Themistocles hied himself to the agora to vote. Every Athenian citizen was given an oyster shell upon which to write the name of a bum to throw out. As soon as Themistocles walked into the forum, he saw a blind man struggling to write on his oyster shell.

Our Themistocles, as my father used to say, had listened to his parents, and was kind to everybody. “Here, old man,” he offered, “let me help you vote, since I have two good eyes.” (This was before disability sensitivity training.) “Whose name would you like me to write?”

”Themistocles,” the old man replied promptly.

Themistocles was taken aback. Perhaps the old man was senile, and no longer understood what the ostracism ceremony entailed. Gently, he suggested that the old man reconsider, listing all the good things he had done for the city in the last twenty years. “Knowing all that,” he concluded, “would you still want Themistocles to be ostracized?”

The old man did not even pause to think about it. “Ye gods, yes! I’m so sick of hearing people praise him!”

Themistocles shook his head at the old man’s logic, but what could he do? He wrote his own name on the shell. And an hour later, he found himself unceremoniously escorted out of Athens, banished for a decade.

Did he sit down and weep? Did he curse his former beneficiaries? Did he beat on the city gates, demanding to be let back in? No: Themistocles knew he had done nothing wrong, and that he still had a lot to offer his community. So he picked himself up from where Athenian thugs had cast him into the dust, brushed off his toga, and took himself and his family to Persia. He knew they would need him there; they had an army to rebuild.

”And that,” Daddy used to say, “is why you might not want to be the most popular kid in school.”

I’m back, my friends, and I’m more committed than ever to contributing my mite to the support system that every writer deserves. This is where you will find me from now on, tackling the mundane, the difficult, and the ridiculous obstacles good writers face on the road to publication. We’re all in this together, so onward and upward.

Everybody, as always, please: keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

P.S.: Soyon Im, longtime correspondent of my former blog at the PNWA, has a short memoir up in the current myspace competition! It’s a great piece: “Dreaming of Houston,” listed under the name Soybean (July 18). If you read and like it before July 25, vote for it, and maybe our homegirl will win! Go, team!

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Pitching day arrives!

Hello, readers —

I’m packing up my troubles in my old kit bag and heading off to the PNWA conference shortly, but since I won’t be posting again until Monday, after all the pitching dust settles, I wanted to leave you with some final pre-conference thoughts.

First, at risk of repeating myself or sounding like a Lamaze coach, I can’t overemphasize the importance of reminding yourself to take deep breaths throughout the conference. A particularly good time for one is immediately after you sit down in front of an agent or editor. Trust me: your brain could use the oxygen right around then, and it will help you calm down so you can make your most effective pitch.

And please remember, writing almost never sells on pitches alone; you are not going to really know what an agent thinks about your work until she has read some of it. Whatever an agent or editor says to you in a conference situation is just a conversation at a conference, not the Sermon on the Mount or testimony in front of a Congressional committee. Everything is provisional until some paper has changed hands.

This is equally true, incidentally, whether your conference experience includes an agent who actually starts drooling visibly with greed while you were pitching or an editor in a terrible mood who raves for 15 minutes about how the public isn’t buying books anymore. Until you sign a mutually-binding contract, no promises — or condemnation, for that matter — should be inferred or believed absolutely. Try to maintain some perspective.

Admittedly, perspective is genuinely hard to achieve when a real, live agent says, “Sure, send me the first chapter,” especially if you’ve been shopping the book around for awhile. But it IS vital to keep in the back of your mind that eliciting this statement is not the end of your job, because regardless of how much any given agent or editor says she loves your pitch, she’s not going to make an actual decision until she’s read at least part of it. So even if you are over the moon about positive response from the agent of your dreams, please, I beg you, DON’T STOP PITCHING IN THE HALLWAYS. Try to generate as many requests to see your work as you can.

Trust me on this one: you will be much, much happier two months from now if you have a longer requested submissions list. Ultimately, going to a conference to pitch only twice, when there are 20 agents in the building, is just not efficient.

If an agent does fall in love with your work this weekend, you may well hear one or both of the following pieces of industry-speak fall from her lips: “I need you to overnight this to me” and/or “I want an exclusive look at this.” And you, in your giddiness, may be tempted to say yes immediately to one or both.

I wouldn’t advise saying yes to either, because the first will cost you quite a bit of money (manuscripts are heavy, and overnight shipping is expensive), and the second is not in your best interests.

Why? Well, in the New York-based publishing industry, the normal pace is hectic, so writers dealing with it are exposed to an odd rhythm: delay/panic/delay/panic. So when agents and editors say, “I want it now,” it’s not usually a statement of intention, as in, “I am going to read it as soon as it arrives,” but rather an expression of serious interest. Ditto with a request for an exclusive — it’s intended to convey to you that the agent is very, very interested in your work, not that she is going to clear her schedule for an entire day as soon as she gets back home to read your book.

It’s meant as a compliment, not as a time prediction — and thus there is no reason for you to break the bank in order to get your manuscript to New York before the agent has even unpacked from her trip. Besides, it’s pretty generally understood that we have a slower pace of life out here; she may not be sure if we even have clocks on the walls of our vegetarian commune yurts. There’s no reason that misconception shouldn’t work to our advantage from time to time. The fact is, it’s a good bet that the requesting agent already has a million manuscripts on her desk, and a few days will not make any difference at all.

I have a firm policy for myself and my editing clients: NEVER overnight ANYTHING to an agency or publishing house unless the RECEIVER is paying the shipping costs. Packages with overnight stickers on them are NOT attended to more quickly; Priority Mail packages with REQUESTED MATERIALS written on the outside are opened just as fast.

Save yourself the dosh.

Because of the industry’s peculiar sense of time, where having your manuscript be on the top of someone’s to-read list might mean he’ll read it tomorrow and it might mean it will still be propping up fifteen other manuscripts on his desk four months from now, I also always advise writers to refuse to give any agent, even the best in the world, an exclusive look at any book. It is almost never in the writer’s interest to do so — all you are doing by granting it is making sure that no other agent at the conference can beat the one you’re promising to the punch. It’s tying your hands so you can’t send your work out to anyone else, while at the same time depriving the agent of any possible incentive to read it quickly, since he knows that there’s no competition over the book.

Just say no.

If you absolutely must grant an exclusive — or if you read this AFTER you already have — say (and repeat it in your cover letter when you send the book), “I am happy to give you an exclusive look at my book for three weeks. After that, I shall still be eager to hear from you, but please know that I shall also be submitting it elsewhere.” Three weeks is plenty of time for anyone to read any manuscript. And then on Day 22, submit it to another agency. If they really are rushing to read it in time, trust me, they’ll call you to ask for an extension.

Okay, my attitude problem and I are heading off to the conference now. See some of you there, and everybody, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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More pre-conference advice, and an editor

Hello, readers —

Still breathing regularly, everyone? With the conference only a couple of days away, it’s very important that you take good care of yourself, to help cope with the extra-high levels of stress. This is no time to be skimping on the Vitamin C, or to be skipping needed hours of sleep.

And yes, I know I sound like your mother. More on that later in the blog.

For those of you who have been writing in because the blogs for the first couple of days of July haven’t yet appeared on the archives: we have heard you, and the problem has been fixed! We’d gotten a bit behind, because everyone here at the PNWA is working triple overtime at the moment, trying to tuck in the last hanging threads before the conference hits the runway. (Had I mentioned that it’s a LOT of work?) But now we’re all caught up, and life is happy again.

As I mentioned yesterday, another agent and editor were added to the conference rolls after I completed my series on the agents and editors who will be attending. Yesterday, I filled you in a little on the agent, Kate McKean; today, I want to talk a bit about the editor, Michelle Nagler of Simon & Schuster. Here’s what she has to say for herself in her conference blurb:

“Michelle H. Nagler began her publishing career at Scholastic, where she edited all levels of children’s books from preschool novelty formats through young adult. Her primary focus was on middle-grade paperback series including Goosebumps, Animorphs, and Tony Abbott’s The Secrets of Droon.

“Michelle is now the Senior Editor at Simon Pulse, a division of Simon and Schuster. With their fingers on the “pulse” of the teen market, Simon Pulse is one of the leading commercial teen imprints, and the publisher of such classic hit series as Francine Pascal’s Fearless and R.L. Stine’s Fear Street; and newcomers including the Seven Deadly Sins series by Robin Wasserman, Scott Westerfeld’s successful Uglies trilogy, and the bestselling Romantic Comedy line. Michelle edits both series and single-titles, in a variety of formats.”

Well, that sounds promising, doesn’t it? Let’s take a look at what she’s acquired lately (with the standard reservations about the accuracy rates of the industry databases that are providing me with this information):

Julie Linker’s DISENCHANTED PRINCESS, “about a rich socialite who’s sent to live with her aunt in rural Arkansas.” (acquired 2006; are there many poor socialites?); Kristen Tracy’s debut LOST IT, “the story of a wilderness-wary girl coming-of-age on the outskirts of Yellowstone, and her first romantic misadventures, in which she also gains insights into bomb making, bear survival skills, and the actual size of a bull moose.” (acquired 2006; now THAT’s a pitch!); Deborah Reber’s CAREER BOOK FOR TEEN GIRLS (acquired 2005); Kristopher Reisz’s “coming-of-age novel about two girls on a psychedelic road trip.” (acquired 2005); Johanna Edwards’ CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE SPY, “about a high school girl whose world is turned upside down when her FBI Agent dad brings his work — protecting a very cute 17-year-old boy — home with him.” (acquired 2005 at auction, in a two-book deal); Derrick Barnes’ SHE ROX MY WORLD! The Making of Dr. Truelove, “a humorous look at an African-American boy’s attempt to win back the girl that got away through the creation of an internet advice column.” (acquired 2005); Jennifer Echols’ debut QUEEN GEEK, “about a high school beauty queen turned band geek in a small southern town,” and a second untitled book (acquired 2005); Kelly McClymer’s SALEM WITCH TRY-OUTS, “about a girl who goes from being the star cheerleader at Beverly Hills High to a witch school in Salem, where it becomes apparent that her magic skills are sadly lacking, but she’s determined to improve,” and THE EX-FILES, “about a college student who never goes on a third date (while everyone deserves a second chance, not too many deserve a third), and is pushed to go back through her ex-files to see if she might have missed the love of her life.” (acquired 2005); Lauren Barnholdt’s debut IN THE HOUSE, “a snarky account of an eighteen-year-old woman’s attempts to distract herself from the fact that her college basketball player boyfriend is going to school a thousand miles away by trying out for the reality show In the House — shocked to find that she, the most normal teenager in the world, get cast, and will be watched during her first semester at college.” (acquired 2005 in a two-book deal)

Kind of a fun list, isn’t it? Before we move on, oh ye prospective pitchers, go back through these book descriptions: which is a good pitch, and which isn’t? Why?

Three things about her list caught my eye: first, note all the debuts. Ms. Nagler has a track record of being willing to take a chance on a first-time author, and for that, we should all look upon her with kindness, if not actual adulation. Second, three of these sales were from the same agent — Nadia Cornier, formerly of CMA, now of Firebrand Literary. Now, if I wrote YA, and I were taken with Ms. Nagler at the conference, I would seriously consider shooting a query off to Ms. Cornier before I set down my bag after coming home from the last day of the conference.

But hey, don’t ask me — I have it on pretty good authority that a couple of the writers who will be staffing the Pitch Practicing Palace at the conference know quite a lot about Ms. Cornier’s tastes, and perhaps by extension Ms. Nagler’s. Rumor has it that she’s their agent. If you write YA, stop by the PPP for a chat, why doncha?

Which gives me a perfect segue to reiterate: if you will be attending the conference, PLEASE come by the Pitch Practicing Palace and give your pitch a test drive. Everyone there, including yours truly, has a track record of successful pitching, and we are very eager to help you refine your pitch before The Big Moment. Why, two of the Palace’s pitch-listeners — again, including yours truly — landed our agents by pitching to them at past PNWA conferences! We’ve been there, and we can help.

And when will the PPP staff be there to give you feedback on your pitch, you ask? Why, Thursday, July 13th, 3 pm to 5 pm; Friday, July 14th (Bastille Day!), 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, and Saturday, July 15th, 7:30 am to 3 pm. We’re anticipating being pretty swamped beginning Friday afternoon (the actual pitch appointments begin at 1:30), so please, plan to visit us early (and WELL before your first appointment, please) to sign up for a time to practice with the pros!

Okay, back to conference-attending advice. Perceptive reader Judith writes in to ask a series of questions that I suspect are on everybody’s mind right now: “Looking at all the program’s offerings over four days, and imagining approx. 400 folks mingling, learning and networking — the question for me is: how do I best pace myself and use my energy in a way that doesn’t overwhelm me? Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.”

Judith, that’s such a sensible question that I seriously considered devoting all of tomorrow’s blog to it. However, since so many of you are tense right now, I decided I should just go long today and try to set your minds a little at ease.

As a veteran of many, many writers’ conferences all over the country, I can tell you from experience that they can be very, very tiring. Especially if it’s your first conference. Just sitting under fluorescent lights in an air-conditioned room for that many hours would take something out of you, and here, you will be surrounded by, as Judith notes, a whole lot of very stressed people while you are trying to learn as much as you possibly can.

Most of my advice is pretty much what your mother would say: watch your caffeine intake, and make sure to drink enough water throughout the day. Eat occasionally. I know that you may feel too nervous to eat before your pitch meeting, but believe me, if you were going to pick an hour of your life for feeling light-headed, this is not a wise choice. If you are giving a hallway pitch, or standing waiting to go into a meeting, make sure not to lock your knees, so you do not faint. (I’ve seen it happen, believe it or not.)

And do try to take some breaks. Yes, the schedule is jam-packed with offerings, but cut yourself some slack; don’t book yourself for the entire time. Get out of the building; sit in the sun; take a new friend you’ve made at the conference out for coffee, or even to the hotel bar for a drink. If you are new to the conference circuit, learning so much so fast can be overwhelming, so give your brain an occasional rest.

Oh, before I forget: open your word processing program right now (it’s okay; I’ll wait) and print out fifty little slips of paper with your name and contact information printed on them, so you are ready to hand them out to people you meet at the conference. Or bring your business cards. Conferences are about CONFERRING, people: network! But prepare in advance, so you do not add to your stress by having to scrabble around in your tote bag every time you meet someone nice.

And practice, practice, practice before you go into your meetings; this is the single best thing you can do in advance to preserve yourself from being overwhelmed. As I pointed out yesterday, not only will the Pitch Practicing Palace’s services be available to you, but you will also be surrounded by hundreds of other writers. Introduce yourself, and practice pitching to them. Better still, find people who share your interests and get to know them. Share a cookie; talk about your work with someone who will understand. Seriously, the first thing I said to many of my dearest friends in the world is, “So, what do you write?”

Because, really, is your life, is any writer’s life, already filled with too many people who get what we do?

At the risk of repeating myself, it’s a mistake, I think, to walk into any conference only looking to talk to the bigwigs: the agents, the editors, the published authors. Yes, you should try to meet them, too, but a literary conference, particularly if it’s your local one, is an INVALUABLE forum for meeting other writers. It’s the ideal place, for instance, to find fellow critique group participants. It’s also a perfect location for making friends for the long haul that is the road to publication. Trust me, it’s a much, much easier road if you’re not traveling it alone.

Why? Well, long waits, punctuated by mad, last-minute deadline-meeting rushes, are inevitable parts of the professional writer’s life. I say this, even speaking as a writer whose milestones were reached fairly quickly: after I won the PNWA’s Zola award in 2004, I had signed with an agent within three months; she sold the book for which I won the award six months after that. And now Amazon says my book is going to ship at the end of this month. (Keep your fingers crossed, please. I still do not have a firm publication date, alas.) That, my friends, is practically unheard-of speed in this industry.

That doesn’t mean that while each stage was going on, it didn’t feel positively interminable. Unfortunately, most non-writers have no real conception of what it means to sell a book to a publisher, land an agent, or even finish a book: bless their well-meaning little hearts, the vast majority of my non-writing friends have expressed their support, since I won the award, primarily by asking every time they see me: “So when is it coming out?”

Which, trust me, is an annoying question when, to pick a random example, one’s publisher is being threatened with lawsuits over one’s book and the publisher is waffling about whether to publish the book at all. (Not that I’d know anything about THAT.) But I’m positive that each and every one of them thought that he was being as supportive as humanly possible.

Fact: you will be an infinitely happier camper in the long run if you have friends who can understand your successes and sympathize with your setbacks as only another writer can. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but if you do not currently hang around with writers much, I can virtually guarantee that the first thing that 85% of your acquaintance will say when you announce that you’ve landed an agent is, “So, when is your book coming out?”

Seeing a pattern here? Guess what they’re going to say when your agent sells your first book? I don’t think any writer ever gets used to seeing her friends’ faces fall upon being told that the book won’t be coming out for a year, at least. Ordinary people, the kind who don’t spend all of their spare time creating new realities out of whole cloth, honestly, truly, sincerely, have a hard time understanding the pressures and timelines that rule writers’ lives.

Thought I got off track from Judith’s questions, didn’t you? Actually, I didn’t: finding buddies to go through the conference process with you can help you feel grounded throughout. (Among other things, it gives you someone to pass notes to during talks — minor disobedience, I find, is a terrific way to blow off steam — and you can hear about the high points of classes you don’t attend from them afterward.) Making friends will help you retain a sense of being a valuable, interesting individual far better than keeping to yourself, and the long-term benefits are endless.

To paraphrase Goethe, it is not the formal structures that make the world fell warm and friendly; it is having friends that makes the earth feel like an inhabited garden.

So please, for your own sake: make some friends at the conference, so you will have someone to pick up the phone and call when the agent of your dreams falls in love with your first chapter and asks to see the entire book! And get to enjoy the vicarious thrill when your writing friends leap their hurdles, too. This can be a very lonely business; I can tell you from experience, nothing brightens your day like opening your e-mail when you’re really discouraged to find a message from a friend who’s just sold her first book.

Well, okay, I’ll admit it: getting a call from your agent telling you that YOU’ve just sold your first book is rather more of a day-brightener. But the other is still pretty good.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

P.S. to Iris: on question #2, hold off on asking until Friday, then go to the appointment desk and see if she has openings. On #3, I don’t know, but I’ll try to find out between now and the conference. See you there!

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The Building Blocks of the Pitch, Part VIII: the ups and downs of the elevator speech

Hello, readers –

Welcome back to my ongoing series on the building blocks of a fabulous pitch — and to the 200th blog I have written for the PNWA! Not including today’s post, that’s 1,032 pages of irreverent advice, in standard manuscript format. I wish I had more time to linger on this major milestone, but with the conference a scant week away, I want to move through the rigors of pitching as quickly as possible.

News flash, though, everybody: sharp-eyed faithful reader Ron was kind enough to point out to me that the agent meetings this year are TEN minutes, not fifteen, presumably so more writers can see more agents. I have no idea why they should have changed (I couldn’t go to the conference last year, so it’s possible that this is a change from last year), but a shorter meeting requires slightly different advance planning. Many thanks, Ron, for alerting us to this.

Also, I notice that David Moldower is no longer going to be attending the conference, but agent Kate McKean and Michelle Nagler of Simon & Schuster will. I hope to have time to check out their respective sales and acquisitions records before the conference, but right now, my top priority to make sure to get through the basics of pitching.

Yesterday, I discussed the elevator speech, and gave you several examples of how to construct one for a fiction book. ”This is all very well for a novel,” I could hear your NF writers out there grumbling, “but how does all this apply to a MY book?” Today, I am going to deal with that very issue, and explain where and when an elevator speech can be more effective to use than a fully-fledged pitch.

In an elevator speech for a NF book, your goal is the same as for a novel: to intrigue your hearer into asking follow-up questions. Here, too, you do not want to tell so much about the book that the agent or editor to whom you are speaking feels that you have told the whole story; you want to leave enough of a question hanging in the air that your listener will say, “Gee, that sounds intriguing. Send me the first 50 pages.” However, for a NF book, you will need to achieve one other goal in both your elevator speech or pitch — to establish your platform as the best conceivable writer of the book.

Piece o’ proverbial cake, right?

To achieve these goals, you can use the same tools as for a novel, providing specific, vividly-drawn details to show what your book offers the reader. Demonstrate what the reader will learn from reading your book, or why the book is an important contribution to the literature on your subject. In other words, make it clear what your book is and why it will appeal to your target market. Here’s an example:

“Swirling planets, the Milky Way, and maybe even a wandering extraterrestrial or two — all of these await the urban stargazing enthusiast. For too long, however, books on astronomy have been geared at the narrow specialist market, those readers possessing expensive telescopes. ANGELS ON YOUR BACK PORCH opens the joys of stargazing to the rest of us. Utilizing a few simple tools and a colorful fold-out star map, University of Washington cosmologist Cindy Crawford takes you on a guided tour of the fascinating star formations visible right from your backyard.”

See? Strong visual imagery plus a clear statement of what the reader may expect to learn creates a compelling elevator speech for this NF book. And did you notice how Prof. Crawford’s credentials just naturally fit into the speech? By including some indication of your platform (or your book’s strongest selling point) in your elevator speech, you will forestall the automatic first question of any NF agent: “So, what’s your platform?”

Remember, your elevator speech should entertaining and memorable, but leave your hearer wanting to know more. Don’t wrap up the package so tightly that your listener doesn’t feel she needs to read the book. Questions are often useful in establishing WHY the book needs to be read:

”EVERYWOMAN’S GUIDE TO MENOPAUSE: “Tired of all of the conflicting information on the news these days about the change of life? Noted clinician Dr. Hal Holbrook simplifies it all for you with his easy-to-use color-coded guide to a happy menopausal existence. From beating searing hot flashes with cool visualizations of polar icecaps to rewarding yourself for meeting goals with fun-filled vacations to the tropics, this book will show you how to embrace the rest of your life with passion, armed with knowledge.”

Okay, here’s a pop quiz for those of you who have been following this series so far: what techniques did the NF pitcher above borrow from fiction writing?

Give yourself at least a B if you said that the writer incorporated vivid sensual details: the frigid polar icecaps, the twin heat sources of hot flashes and tropical destinations. And make that an A if you noticed that the savvy pitcher used a rhetorical question (filched from Dr. Holbrook’s keynote statement, no doubt) to pique the interest of the hearer — and double points if your sharp eye spotted the keywords agents love to hear: happy, passion. Extra credit with a cherry on top and walnut clusters if you cried out that this elevator speech sets up conflicts that the book will presumably resolve (amongst the information popularly available; the struggle between happiness and unhappiness; between simple guides and complicated ones). Dualities are tremendously effective at establishing conflict quickly.

And now congratulate yourselves, campers, because you have constructed all of the elements you need for a successful hallway pitch — or, indeed, an informal pitch in virtually any social situation. Did that one creep up on you? Because — brace yourself for this one, because it’s a biggie —

MAGIC FIRST 100 WORDS + ELEVATOR SPEECH = HALLWAY PITCH.

Ta da!

With advance preparation and practice, you should be able to say all of this comprehensibly within 30 – 45 seconds, certainly a short enough time that you need not feel guilty about turning to the agent next to you in the dinner line, or walking up to her after the agents’ forum, and asking if she can spare a minute to hear your pitch. (Always ask first if it’s okay.) Because that is literally what you will be taking up, less than a minute, you may feel professional, not intrusive, by giving your hallway pitch immediately after saying, “Please pass the rolls.”

You’re welcome.

The elevator speech has other uses, too, the most important being that it makes a stellar describe-your-book paragraph in your query letter. There, too, you will be incorporating the elements of the magic first hundred words — minus the “Hi, my name is” part, they make a terrific opening paragraph for a query. The elevator speech also gives you a concise, professional follow-up after someone you meet at a conference responds to your magic first hundred words with, “Wow. Tell me more.”

You see, I really am working hard here to keep you from feeling tongue-tied when dealing with the industry. Don’t be afraid to give your hallway speech to other writers at the conference — it’s great practice, and it is absolutely the best way imaginable to meet other people who write what you do. (Other than starting a blog, of course.)

You’ve noticed that there’s a situation I haven’t mentioned yet, haven’t you? ”But Anne,” I hear some of your murmur, “if the elevator speech is so effective at piquing interest, why SHOULDN’T I just use it as my pitch in my meetings with agents and editors?”

That’s an excellent question. The short answer is: you can, but what would you do with the other 14 1/2 — no, scratch that; make it 9 1/2 — minutes of your pitch meeting? And why would you trade an opportunity to say MORE about your book for a format that forces you to say LESS?

The longer answer is, a lot of people do use the 3-sentence elevator speech as a pitch; in fact, if you ask almost any writer who signed with her agent between 5 and 15 years ago, she will probably tell you bluntly that the 3-sentence pitch is industry standard. And so it was, at one time. To be fair, it still can work.

However, by emphasizing the 3-sentence pitch to the exclusion of all others, I think the standard sources of writerly advice have left first-time pitchers ill-prepared to address those other vital issues involved in a good pitch, such as where the book will sit in Barnes & Noble, who the author thinks will read it, why the target market will find it compelling…in short, all of the information contained in the magic first 100 words.

You’d be amazed (at least I hope you would) at how many first-time pitchers come dashing into their scheduled pitch appointments, so fixated on blurting those pre-ordained three sentences that they forget to (a) introduce themselves to the agent or editor, like civilized beings, (b) mention whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, (c) indicate whether the book has a title, or (d) all of the above. I find this sad: these are intelligent people, for the most part, but their advance preparation has left them as tongue-tied and awkward as wallflowers at a junior high school dance.

And don’t even get me started on the sweat-soaked silence that can ensue AFTER the 3-sentence pitcher has gasped it all out, incontinently, and has no more to say. In that dreadful lull, the agent sits there, blinking so slowly that the pitcher is tempted to take a surreptitious peek at his watch, to make sure that time actually is moving forward at a normal clip, or stick a pin in the agent, to double-check that she isn’t some sort of emotionless android with her battery pack on the fritz. “And?” the automaton says impatiently. “Well?”

”What do you mean?” I hear some of you gasp, aghast. “Doesn’t the agent or editor make a snap decision after hearing those three or four sentences, and immediately leap into chatting with me about her plans for marketing my book?”

Well, not usually, no, and in fact, in recent years, as the elevator speech has come to be regarded as the standard pitch, I have been noticing an increasingly disgruntled attitude amongst agents and editors at conferences. Whey walk out of pitch meetings complaining, “Why does everyone stop talking after a minute or so? I’m getting really tired of having to drag information out of these writers on a question-and-answer basis. What do they think this is, an interview? A quiz show?”

Call me unorthodox, but I don’t think this is a desirable outcome for you.

Nor is the other common situation, where writers talk on and on about their books in their pitch meetings so long that the agent or editor hasn’t time to ask follow-up questions. You really do want to keep your pitch to roughly two minutes (as opposed to your hallway pitch, which should be approximately 30 seconds), so that you can discuss your work with the well-connected, well-informed industry insider in front of you. Make sure you come prepared to talk about it — and in terms that will make sense to everyone in the industry.

And how are you going to do that, you ask? Tune in tomorrow, my friends, and I shall fill you in on the conclusion of all of this work we have been doing for the past week: pulling it all together into a persuasive face-to-face pitch.

In the meantime, keep up the good work, everybody! And happy 200th anniversary to the blog!

– Anne Mini

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The Building Blocks of the Pitch, Part V: Hitting the Keynote

Hello, readers –

Welcome back to my ongoing series on building a persuasive pitch. Shout hallelujah, citizens, for today, we are finally ready to tackle reducing your book to a single quip of bon mot-iness that would make Oscar Wilde blush furiously with envy. (Did you know that when he gave public readings, he NEVER read the published versions of his own work? Ditto with Mark Twain. They always added extra laugh lines, so that even audience members very familiar with their writing would be surprised and delighted. Interesting, no?

Today, I am going to talk about coming up with your book’s KEYNOTE, also known colloquially as a BOOK CONCEPT. What is it, you ask? The keynote is the initial, wow-me-now concept statement that introduces your book to someone with the attention span of an unusually preoccupied three-year-old.

Before you pooh-pooh the idea of WANTING to discuss your marvelously complex book with someone whose attention span precludes sitting through even an average-length TV commercial, let me remind you: sometimes, you have only a minute or so to make a pitch. After a very popular class, for instance, or meeting your dream agent coming out of the bathroom (hey, this is a glamorous business). Since any reasonably polite hello will take up at least half of that time, wouldn’t you like to be ready to take advantage of the remaining 30 seconds?

Seriously, there are several reasons that you might want to come up with a keynote statement for your book (other than that I told you to, of course). A keynote will allow you to be able to sound out someone in a hallway about interest in your book, to give an agent or editor an instant, read-made hook to sell your work, and to be able to sound like a professional writer on a moment’s notice. None of these are abilities at which you should be sneezing, smarty-pants.

Let me pause for a moment and focus on the last benefit on the list. One of the biggest differences between a professional writer and one who is new to the biz is how she answers the ubiquitous question, “So, what do you write?” Almost invariably, those unused to the question will betray their inexperience by shilly-shallying, giving evasive answers. A professional, on the other hand, will promptly tell the questioner in a couple of brief sentences the book category in which she writes, along with a quick quip or two about her most recent project. Not a long-winded speech, or boasts about her own writing talent, just a snippet about the book itself, to see if her auditor is interested before moving into more detail.

Agents and editors really, really like to see unpublished writers exhibit the latter behavior. They are acutely, even exaggeratedly, aware of how busy they are. (To quote those immortal social philosophers, the Bee Gees, all we can do is “try to understand/New York time’s effect on man.”) In their native habitat, these are people who fly into a fury if the woman in front of them in the deli line hesitates for fifteen seconds between pastrami or roast beef on her sandwich; just because they are our guests in the more laid-back PNW for a few days doesn’t mean that they shed that Manhattanite resentment of people who waste entire nanoseconds of their precious time.

Some writers don’t like to be perceived as tooting their own horns, which is understandable. But to someone trying to get a quick impression of whether a writer’s work might be worth sampling, demurrals do not come across as charming self-deprecation, but as an annoying disregard of the industry’s unspoken limit to how long a writer gets to take up an agent or editor’s time. No matter what anyone tells you, if you are over the age of 10, it’s just not cute.

Let me give you a non-writing example to demonstrate how irritating such waffling can be. I went to Harvard as an undergraduate, something I do not tell people lightly, as they either take an instantaneous dislike to me, assuming that I must be a snob, or glom onto me, assuming that I have the private ears of kings and presidents alike, having gone to college with them. (The old university joke illustrates the third unappetizing possibility: How does a pretty woman get men to leave her alone in a bar? She starts a rumor that she went to Harvard.) For these reasons, many of us who do not habitually go around wearing our institutional affiliations on our chests in the form of sweatshirts choose not to share our educational backgrounds in social settings.

So when you ask many of my classmates where they went to school, they will respond evasively, “In the Boston area.” Now, to any Harvardian, that automatically declares that the speaker went to Harvard; people who went to MIT or Tufts tend to say so. But to anyone who doesn’t know the code, it sounds like an invitation to further questions, doesn’t it? So all too often, the subsequent conversation degenerates into a cutesy guessing game, with the Harvardian giving more and more evasive answers until the questioner loses all patience and shouts, “What — did you go to Harvard or something?”

This is precisely what it sounds like to people in the publishing industry when you equivocate about what you write. They don’t like guessing games, as a rule.

Okay, out comes my fairy godmother wand again: the next time you hear yourself start to equivocate about what you write, I decree that you will start hearing STAYING ALIVE playing in the back of your head on a continuous loop. Surely, any sane person will be willing to go to any length to avoid that dreadful fate…so don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Okay, back to the keynote itself. What is its goal? To pique your listener’s interest as quickly as possible, so s/he will ask to hear more. How do you accomplish this? By providing a MEMORABLY INTRIGUING PREMISE in a BRIEF sentence or two.

And did I mention that it should be memorable and brief?

There are two schools of thought on how best to construct a keynote statement. The better-known is the Hollywood Hook, a single sentence utilizing pop culture symbolism to introduce the basic premise of the book. Logical contradiction provides the shock of a Hollywood Hook, the combination of two icons that one would not generally expect to be found together. For instance, a Hollywood Hook for a book that teaches children the essentials of the electoral college system might be: “Bill Clinton teaches Kermit the Frog how to vote!” A book on alternative medicine for seniors might be expressed as “Deepak Chopra takes on the Golden Girls as patients!” A novel about sexual harassment in a tap-dancing school could conceivably be pitched as “Anita Hill meets Fred Astaire!”

Didja notice how they all ended in exclamation points? There’s a certain breathlessness about the Hollywood Hook, a blithe disregard for propriety of example. There’s a reason for this: in order to be effective as an enticement to hear more, the icons cited should not go together logically.

Otherwise, where’s the surprise? The whole point of the exercise is to intrigue the listener, to make him ask to hear more. If someone pitched a book to you as “A private investigator chases a murderer!” wouldn’t you yawn? On the other hand, if someone told you her book was “Mickey Mouse goes on a killing spree!” wouldn’t you ask at least one follow-up question?

I have to say, I’m not a big fan of the Hollywood Hook method of keynoting. Yes, it can be attention-grabbing, but personally, I would rather use those few seconds talking about MY book, not pop culture. Not every storyline is compressible into iconic shorthand, whatever those screenwriting teachers who go around telling everyone who will listen that the only good plotline is a heroic journey. (Use the Force, Luke!)

I once asked a screenplay agent who favored pitch compression how he would pitch THE REMAINS OF THE DAY, a book light on plot but strong on character development. What would one say? A butler butles quietly? Hardly a grabber. Without missing a beat, the agent answered, “I would just pitch it as, ‘based on the bestselling book.’”

I love this answer, because it illustrates the point of the keynote so beautifully: the message itself is less important than the fact that you get your hearer’s eyebrows to shoot up.

Which brings me to the other school of thought on constructing a keynote statement — and my preferred method — the rhetorical teaser. The rhetorical teaser presents a thought-provoking question (ideally, posed in the second person, to engage the listener in the premise) that the book will answer.

For example, a friend of mine was prepping to pitch a narrative cookbook aimed at celiacs, people who cannot digest gluten. Now, there are a whole lot of celiacs out there, but she could not automatically assume that any agent or editor to whom she pitched the book would either be unable to eat wheat or know someone who couldn’t. (Remember that great rule of thumb from yesterday: you can’t assume that an agent or editor has ANY knowledge about your topic.) So she employed a rhetorical tease to grab interest: “What would you do if you suddenly found out you could NEVER eat pizza again?”

Rhetorical teasers are more versatile than Hollywood Hooks, as they can convey a broader array of moods. They can range from the ultra-serious (“What if you were two weeks away from finishing your master’s degree — and your university said it would throw you out if you wouldn’t testify against your best friend?”) to the super-frivolous (“Have you ever looked into your closet before a big date and wanted to shred everything in there because nothing matched your great new shoes?”).

The main point is to make it — say it with me now — MEMORABLE. Don’t be afraid to use strong imagery (as in, “The earth is about to be covered thirty feet deep in lichen in three days. What would you do?”) If you can provoke a laugh or a gasp, all the better. Remember, though, even if you pull off the best one-liner since Socrates was wowing ‘em at the Athenian agora, if your quip doesn’t make your BOOK memorable, rather than you being remembered as a funny or thought-provoking person, the keynote has not succeeded.

Whatever you do, please do not confuse good delivery with book memorability. I once went to a poetry reading at conference that shall remain nameless because it got flooded out last year. A fairly well-known poet, who may or may not come from a former Soviet bloc country closely associated in the public mind with vampire activity, stalked in and read, to everyone’s surprise, a prose piece. I don’t remember what it was about, except that part of the premise was that he and his girlfriend exchanged genitals for the weekend (and then, as I recall, didn’t do anything interesting with them). Now, this guy is a wonderful public reader. To make his (rather tame) sexual tale appear more salacious, every time he used an Anglo-Saxon word relating to a body part or physical act, he would lift his eyes from the page and stare hard at the nearest woman under 40. (I’ll spare you the list of words aimed at me, lest our webmaster wash my keyboard out with soap.) By the end of his piece, everyone was distinctly uncomfortable — and remembered his performance.

Notice what happened here — he made his PERFORMANCE memorable by good delivery, rather than his writing. Sure, I remember who he is, but did his flashy showmanship make me rush out and buy his books of poetry? No. Did it make me avoid him at future conferences like the proverbial plague? Yes.

This is a problem shared by a LOT of pitches, and even more Hollywood Hooks: they’re all about delivery, rather than promoting the book in question. Please don’t make this mistake; unlike other sales situations, it’s pretty difficult to sell a book concept on charm alone. Even if you’re the next Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, or strange Eastern European sex fiend/poet.

Tomorrow, I shall discuss how to USE your newly-constructed keynote to wow all and sundry at a writers’ conference. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

P.S.: For those of you who have not yet signed up for pitching meetings at the conference, please check out my archived blogs of April 26 – May 17 for the agents and May 18 – 26 for the editors. There, you will find information on who is representing and buying what these days, to help you make your appointment rankings wisely.

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The Building Blocks of the Pitch, Part III: identifying your target market

Hello, readers –

Welcome back to my continuing series on the building blocks of a successful pitch. With them firmly stuffed into your writer’s bag of tricks, you should be as prepared as it is possible for any first-time pitcher to be to present your work to agents and editors at the upcoming PNWA summer conference. (And for those of you who have not yet registered, and thus not you’re your agent and editor selections, please check out my archived posts for April 26 – May 17 for the agents and May 18 – 26 for the editors. There, you will find copious information on who represents or prints what.)

So far, I have covered the building blocks that not only should feature prominently in your pitch, but also on the title page of your manuscript and in the first few lines of your query letter: for the last couple of days, I have been discussing book categories, and I snuck in a treatment of how professionals estimate word count (hint: it’s not the way your word processing program does) on June 23rd. (If it’s news to you that your title page should include these elements — or if it’s news to you that your manuscript should include a title page at all — please see my post of February 17th.)

Today, however, I shall be moving on to a more sophisticated marketing tool, one that is not technically required, but is always appreciated. I refer, of course, to a concise, well-considered statement of your book’s target market, including an estimate of how many potential buyers are in that demographic. I refer, admittedly with some trepidation, to statistics. Even the most personal literary fiction is about something other than the writing in the book, and chances are, you will be able to track down some demographic information about who is interested that topic.

What do I mean? Well, let’s say you’ve written a charming novel about an American woman in her late 30s who finds herself reliving the trauma of her parents’ divorce when she was 12. Since the book is set in the present day, that makes your protagonist a Gen Xer — of whom there are 47 million currently living in the U.S., roughly half of whom have divorced parents. Think some of them might identify with your protagonist? Let’s say that your protagonist’s father is a collector of classic cars. Think he’s the only one in the country? And so forth.

”Whoa!” I hear some of you cry indignantly. “Who do I look like, George Gallup? Wouldn’t any agent or editor who specializes in a book like mine have a substantially better idea of the existing market than I ever could — and what’s more, infinitely greater means of finding out the relevant statistics? Do I have to do ALL of the agent’s job for him? When will this nightmare end, oh Lord, when will it end?”

You’re beautiful when you get angry. Especially, as in this case, when annoyance stems from a very real change in the publishing industry: even ten years ago, no one would have expected a fiction writer to be able to produce relevant potential target market statistics for her book. (It’s always been pretty standard for NF book proposals.) And in truth, you could probably get away with not quoting actual statistics, as long as you are very specific about who you think your ideal reader is. However, if you do, you run the very serious risk of the agent or editor to whom you are pitching radically underestimating how big your potential market is.

They don’t do it on purpose, you know. Honestly, is it fair to expect someone who spends her days poring over manuscripts in a Manhattan high-rise to have any idea how many corn farmers there are in Iowa?

How much harm could it possibly do if your dream agent or editor misunderstands the size of your book’s potential audience? Let me let you in on a dirty little industry secret: people in the industry have a very clear idea of what HAS sold in the past, but are not always very accurate predictors about what WILL sell in the future. THE FIRST WIVES’ CLUB floated around forever before it found a home, for instance, as, I’m told, did COLD MOUNTAIN. And let’s not even begin to talk about BRIDGET JONES.

In fact, five of the ten best-selling books of the twentieth century were initially refused by more than a dozen publishers who simply did not understand their market appeal — and refused to take a chance on a first-time author. Get a load of what got turned down:

Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H — rejected by 21 publishing houses.

Thor Heyerdahl’s KON-TIKI — rejected by 20 publishing houses. (Yes, THAT Kon-Tiki.)

Dr. Seuss’ first book, AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET — rejected by 23 publishing houses.

Richard Bach’s JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL — rejected by 18 publishing houses.

Patrick Dennis’ AUNTIE MAME — rejected by 17 publishing houses.

And think about it: these first books were roundly rejected back when it was significantly easier to get published, too, when the major publishing houses were still willing to read unagented work, and back before so many of the major publishing houses consolidated into just a few. With this much editorial rejection, can you imagine how difficult it would have been for any of these books to find an agent today, let alone a publisher?

And yet can you even picture the publishing world without any of them? Aren’t you glad they didn’t listen to the prevailing wisdom? And don’t you wish that Richard Hooker had taken a few moments to verify the number of Korean War veterans (or veterans of any foreign war, or doctors who have served in war zones, or…) BEFORE he composed his query letter?

My point is, even if you write on a very well-traveled topic, it’s always a good idea to have a few statistics at the ready, to back up your claim that there is a significant pre-existing audience for your book. The Internet is a tremendous resource, although do double-check the sources of statistics you find there — not all of the information floating around the web is credible. If you really get stuck, call the main branch of public library in the big city closest to you, and ask to speak to the reference librarian. (In Seattle, the Quick Information Line number is 206-386-4636, and the staff there is amazing. Send them flowers.) They may not always be able to find the particular fact you are seeking, but they can pretty much invariably steer you in the right direction.

Even after all this, I’m sure that there are more than a few of you out there who deeply resent the idea of having to identify a target market at all. Shouldn’t a well-written book be its own justification? Well, yes, in a perfect world, or one without a competitive market. But think about it from the editor’s POV: if she can realistically only bring 8 books to press in the next year, how many of them can be serious marketing risks, without her losing her job?

It’s been my experience that most fiction writers do not think very much about the demographics of their potential readers — but, as with book category, if you explain in nebulous terms whom you expect to read your book, you will simply not be speaking the language spoken by agents and editors. Their sales and marketing departments expect them to be able to speak in numbers — and no matter how much the editors at a publishing house love any given book, they’re unlikely to make an actual offer for it unless the sales and marketing folks are pretty enthused about it, too.

Let me give you a concrete example of what happens when you are vague. Remember the book above, about the Gen X woman reliving her parents’ messy divorce? Let’s assume that our author, Suzette, has not thought about her target market before walking into her pitch meeting. She’s stunned when the agent, Briana, says that there’s no market for such a book. Being a bright person, quick on her feet, Suzette’s instinct is to argue. “I’m the target market for this book,” she says. “People like me.”

Now, what Suzette actually meant by this is: my target readership is women born between 1964 and 1975, half of whom have divorced parents. Just under 12 million Americans, in other words — and that’s just for starters.

But what agent Briana heard was: oh, God, another book for aspiring writers. (People like the author, right?) What does this writer think my agency is, a charitable organization? I’d like to be able to retire someday.

And what an editor at a major publishing house (let’s call him Ted) would conclude is this: this writer is writing for her friends. All four of them. Next!

Obviously, then, being vague has not served Suzette’s interests. Let’s take a peek at what would have happened if Suzette had been a trifle more specific, shall we?

Suzette says: Yes, there’s a target market for my book: Gen Xers, half of whom are women, many of whom have divorced parents.

Agent Briana thinks: Hmm, that’s a substantial niche market. 5 million, maybe?

But when Briana pitches it to editor Ted this way, he thinks: Great, a book for people who aren’t Baby Boomers. Most of the population is made up of Baby Boomers and their children. Do I really want to publish a book for a niche market of vegans with little disposable income?

So a little better, but no cigar. Let’s take a look at what happens if Suzette has thought through her readership in advance, and walks into her pitch meetings with Briana and Ted with her statistics at the ready.

Suzette says (immediately after describing the book): I’m excited about this project, because I think my protagonist’s divorce trauma will really resonate with the 47 million Gen Xers currently living in the United States. Half of these potential readers have parents who have divorced at least once in their lifetimes. Literally everybody in that age group either had divorces within their own families as kids or had close friends that did. I think this book will strike a chord with these people.

Agent Briana responds: there are 47 million Gen Xers? I didn’t know that. Let’s talk about your book further over coffee.

And editor Ted thinks: 47 million! Even if the book actually appealed to only 1% of them, it’s still a market well worth pursuing.

The moral is, it ALWAYS pays to be prepared in as many ways as possible for questions you may be asked about your book’s market potential. Think about your target reader — and why that reader really wants to read your book.

Tomorrow, I shall move on to another building block of a great pitch: knowing your book’s selling points. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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The Building Blocks of the Pitch, part I: identifying your book

Hello, readers –

As those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile have no doubt already figured out, my take on the publishing industry does not always conform with the prevailing wisdom. GASP! The problem with the prevailing wisdom, as I see it, is that it is so often out of date: what was necessary to land an agent 20 years ago is most emphatically not the same as what is necessary today, or what will be necessary 5 years from now.

If you doubt this, chew on this industry development: when I signed the contract for my memoir, A FAMILY DARKLY: LOVE, LOSS, AND THE FINAL PASSIONS OF PHILIP K. DICK, in March of 2005, it naturally contained the standard contractual provisions about truthfulness; the contract specified that my publisher believed that I believed that I was telling the truth in my book. (Which I am, and I do.) Yet if I signed a standard NF contract for the same book today, it would almost certainly contain some provision requiring me as the author to obtain signed releases from everyone mentioned in the book.

What happened in that intervening 15 months to alter the standard contract, you ask? A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, that’s what.

The very tangible result: industry rumor has it that within the last couple of months, a major publishing house required a writer who spent a significant amount of time living with cloistered nuns to obtained signed releases from each and every one of the wimpled ones, swearing that they would not sue the publisher over the book. Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t nuns generally take vows of poverty? Yet such is the prevailing paranoid that the publishing house was legitimately concerned that suddenly they all would metamorphose into a gaggle of money-hungry, lawyer-blandishing harpies.

Let no one say that the industry’s standards do not change.

That being said, I’m going to be upfront with you: I do not advise walking into your agent meeting and giving the kind of 3-sentence pitch that you will usually see recommended in writers’ publications. Oh, the 3-sentence pitch definitely has its usefulness: it is equally helpful to have one ready for when you buttonhole an agent in a hallway and in preparing your query letter, where you can use it as the paragraph that describes the book.

But think about it: your agent appointment is 15 minutes long, and if you are like most writers, you will probably be very nervous. Do you really want to have only a minute’s worth of material prepared?

(If you have trouble imagining the awkward pause that might conceivably ensue, check out yesterday’s blog. And to get my housekeeping duties out of the way early today, if you have not yet made your selections for agent and editor meetings – I’m told that there area still many slots available – check out my archived posts for April 26 – May 17 for the agents and May 18 – 26 for the editors. Lots of useful information there, even if I do say so myself.)

There’s another reason not to use the same pitch format as everybody else: pitch fatigue. At the end of last Saturday’s pitching class, the fabulously talented Cindy Willis and yours truly spent 4 1/2 hours listening to pitches from class attendees. (I am pleased to report that had I been an agent, there were several that I would have asked to read right away.) Now, Cindy and I are both writers and chronic readers, so our sympathies, I think it is safe to say, are almost always on the writer’s side of the pitching desk. But after 4 1/2 hours – a far shorter shift than most the agents and editors will be putting in at PNWA – neither of us could even begin to imagine ever wanting to pick up a book again. It’s surprisingly tiring to listen to pitches; there’s so much emotion floating in the air, and it’s so vital to pay attention to every last detail.

And we were outside, listening to dozens of pitches with the advantageous backdrop of glorious weather. Agents and editors at conferences, by contrast, are generally expected to listen patiently while sitting under flickering fluorescent lights in uncomfortable chairs, being rapidly dehydrated by punishing convention center air conditioning. You can hardly blame them for zoning out from time to time, under the circumstances.

Gather up all of those factors I have just mentioned into a neat mental picture, please. Pretend you are an agent. Now: what is more likely to snap you out of your stupor, a three-sentence pitch, which forces you to go to the effort of drawing more details about the book out of the pitcher? Or a slightly longer pitch that explains to you not only what the book is about, but who is going to buy it and why? Or, to consider the other common advice about structuring pitches, would you be more likely to pay attention to a pitch that is rife with generalities, glossing lightly over themes that are common to many books? Or a pitch stuffed full of briefly-described scenes, decorated with a few well-chosen significant details?

Exactly.

So if I deviate from the received wisdom about pitching here — and I assure you, I will — please be aware that I am not doing it merely to be an iconoclast (although that’s kind of fun, too). I am making these suggestions because I truly believe that they will make your pitch better.

So here is my first unorthodox suggestion: say right away where your book would be placed on the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble.

Did I just hear the “ding-ding-ding” of alarms going off in the heads of my long-time readers? Yes, my friends, it is time to revisit the dreaded book category. If you are planning to pitch, the best description of your book is NOT “(sigh) well, it’s a novel…mostly, it’s women’s fiction, but it’s also suspense. And the writing is definitely literary.”

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but to an agent or editor, this sounds EXACTLY like that noise that Charlie Brown’s teachers used to make: “Wah wah wah wah waagh…”

To put it bluntly, agents and editors think about books as products, rather than merely as works of art or expressions of the inner workings of the writers’ souls. And as products, agents need to sell books to editors, and editors to editorial committees, and marketing departments to distributors, and distributors to bookstores, and bookstores to readers. And I assure you, a vaguely-defined book is much harder to drag through that process.

So tell them up front what kind of book it is – and don’t just make up a category. Take a gander at the back jacket of most hardcover books: you will find, usually in either the upper left corner or just above the barcode, a one- or two-word category description. In order to make sense to people in the industry, you need to speak their language. Pick one of their recognized categories.

The generally accepted fiction categories are: Fiction (a.k.a. Mainstream Fiction), Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Futuristic Fiction (that is not SF. The usual example is THE HANDMAID’S TALE.), Adventure Fiction, Sports Fiction, Contemporary Fiction; Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Chick Lit, Lady Lit, Lad Lit; Romance, Category Romance, Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance (designate period), Paranormal Romance, Romantica, Erotica, Inspirational Romance, Multicultural Romance, Time Travel Romance; Science Fiction, SF Action/Adventure, Speculative SF, Futuristic SF, Alternate History, Cyberpunk; Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Comic Fantasy, Epic Fantasy; Horror, Paranormal, Vampire Fiction; Thriller, Spy Thriller, Suspense, Romantic Suspense; Mystery, Police Procedural Mystery, Legal Mystery, Professional Mystery, P.I. Mystery, Psychological Mystery, Forensic Mystery, Historical Mystery, Hardboiled Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Cops & Killers Mystery, Serial Killer Mystery, British Mystery, Noir, Caper;
Western; Action/Adventure; Comics; Graphic Novel; Short Stories; Poetry; Young Adult, Picture Book, Children’s, Middle Readers.

 

Pick one. But whatever you do, NEVER say that you have a “fiction novel” – this is a very, very common pet peeve amongst agents and editors. By definition, a novel IS fiction, always.

For NF, the accepted categories are: Entertaining, Holidays, House & Home, Parenting & Families, How-To, Self-Help, Pop Psychology, Pop Culture, Cookbook, Narrative Cookbook, Food & Wine, Lifestyle, Medical, Alternative Medicine, Health, Fitness, Sports, Psychology, Professional, Engineering, Technical, Computers, Internet, Automotive, Finance, Investing, Business, Careers, Memoir, Autobiography, Biography, Narrative Nonfiction, Historical Nonfiction, True Crime, Law, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality, Travel, Travel Memoir, Outdoors & Nature, Essays, Writing, Criticism, Arts, Photography, Coffee Table, Gift, Education, Academic, Textbook, Reference, Current Events, Politics/Government, Women’s Studies, Gay & Lesbian (a.k.a. GLBT).

 

Yes, I’m running through these quickly, but do not despair: the major genre’s writers’ associations tend to provide precise definitions of each subgenre on their websites, and I went through the distinctions at some length in my blogs of February 13 – 16. Check out the archives.

And when in doubt, pick the more general category. Or at any rate, the more marketable one. It increases your chances of your work sounding like something that will sell. (And for you doubters out there: yes, naturally, there are new categories popping up all the time. That doesn’t mean you should make one up.)

Yes, it’s a pain, but stating your category up front will simply make you come across as more professional, because it’s the way that agents and editors talk about books. Agencies do not impose this requirement in order to torment writers, you know; the category you pick will determine to a very great extent whether any given agent or editor will be even remotely interested in your work. Because yes, Virginia, there are professionals who will simply not read a query or listen to a pitch unless it is for a book in one of their pre-chosen categories.

Agents and editors LIKE making snap judgments, you see. It saves them time. Sorry. But to put a more positive spin on the phenomenon, think of it this way: if you tell an agent immediately what kind of book you are pitching, the busy little squirrels in her brain can start those wheels spinning toute suite, so she can instantly start thinking of editors to whom to sell your book.

Tomorrow, I shall delve a bit more into how putting your work into the right box can help you. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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Knowing your pitchee

Hello, readers —

I was felled with a migraine yesterday, so I am a day later than planned getting started on my series on pitching. But computer screens and dark rooms do not mix well, alas.

Before I get started, a word or two to the many readers new to this blog who have been writing in (or thinking very, very loudly) suggesting rather forcefully that that the blog’s archives would be easier to use if they were searchable or organized by category, rather than date. Well, yes, that is true — and if anybody out there is willing to donate the many, many hours it would take to make the archives subject-searchable, please write in, and I shall connect you with a very grateful volunteer coordinator.

Yes, it is a little hard to find specific topics in the archives, and I’m sorry if you find it inconvenient. A blog, however, is not a reference book, by definition, but an ongoing document with frequent additions over time. At some point, I probably shall organize all of this into a book, with a chapter on each major topic. But then, you would be paying for my words of wisdom, and would have a clear right to be annoyed if it were hard to find what you wanted, right?

Here, however, I am limited by the constraints of the blog form, and the fact that the PNWA is a volunteer-run organization. Again, if any of you out there have the expertise to make the archives easily searchable, and would like to volunteer your time… And to the guy who was really, really rude about it recently: why would you WANT to take writing advice from a female dog?

I am not merely writing about archive organization in order to blow off steam: my first piece of advice on pitching may well send some of you scurrying to the archives, specifically those for April 26 — May 17 (my write-ups on the agents who will be attending this summer’s PNWA conference) and May 18 — 26 (the editors). For the advice in question is this:

Whenever possible, be familiar with the work of the person to whom you are pitching.

Why? Well, there are several reasons that it is in your best interest to do a bit of research before you pitch. First, it ensures that you are pitching to someone who does in fact handle your type of book. As anyone who has ever endured the agony of a mismatched pitch appointment can tell you, if your book falls outside the agent or editor’s area of preference, it doesn’t matter how good your pitch is: they will stop you as soon as they figure out that your book is categorically not for them. No amount of argument is going to help you at that point, so advance research is a very, very good idea.

And, as it happens, I have already done quite a bit of research for you: in the aforementioned blog posts, I have gone over what the standard professional databases say these agents and editors have sold and bought over the last three years. (And when’s the last time any dog, female or male, did something like THAT for you, Mr. Smarty-Pants?) As my long-time readers already know, the blurb agents and editors write about themselves is not always the most reliable indicator of the type of work they represent. Check first.

However, sometimes agents and editors’ preferences switch rather abruptly: it is not at all uncommon, for instance, for an agent whose sister has just had a baby suddenly to be interested in parenting books. Or for an editor who has just been mugged to stop wanting to read true crime. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, you end up pitching to someone who is categorically disinclined to listen — which more or less guarantees rejection.

What should you do if you end up in an inappropriate meeting?

Yes, you will be disappointed, but I can absolutely guarantee that an hour after the meeting, you will be significantly happier if you didn’t just sit there, being miserable. Remember that you are at the conference not merely to make contacts with people in the industry, but to learn how to market your work better. You have a highly-qualified, well-informed insider sitting in front of you: ask some questions.

What kind of questions, you ask? Well, for starters, how about, “if you were in my shoes, which agent here at the conference would YOU try to buttonhole for an informal pitch?” Or, “Does anyone at your agency handle this kind of work? May I say in my query letter that you suggested I contact this person?: Or, even more broadly: “I understand that this isn’t your area, but who do you think are the top five agents that handle this sort of book?”

Usually, they’re only too happy to help; don’t forget, this is an awkward moment for them, too. Only sadists would LIKE seeing that crushed look in a writer’s eyes. Mentally, I promise you, that agent will be cursing the evil fate that decreed that the two of have to spend fifteen interminable minutes together; he doesn’t want to face recriminations, either from disappointed aspiring writers or from his boss if they come back with work that he is not technically supposed to have picked up. (Editors at major publishing houses, anyone?) So many will become very frosty, in the hope you will walk away and end this awful uncomfortable silence.

So if you can move the both of you on to topics where you’re comfortable, trust me, they’ll appreciate it. Not enough to pick up your book, but still, enough to think of you kindly in future.

So prep a few questions in advance, as insurance. Approaching the disappointment as a learning experience can make the difference between your stalking out of your meeting, biting back the tears, and walking out feeling confident that your next pitch will go better. Agents are often flattered by being asked their opinions, I find. There’s such a thing as human nature: few people are insulted by being admired for their expertise.

Unless you’re rude about it, Mr. Dog-Hater.

If the agent or editor seems approachable, you might even want to ask, after the other questions, “Look, I know it isn’t your area, but you must hear thousands of pitches a year. Would you mind listening to mine and giving me some constructive criticism?”

Remember, though, that in giving you this advice, these people are doing you a FAVOR. Be accordingly polite. As someone who both teaches classes and goes to a lot of writing conferences, I both see and have first-hand experience with the ilk of writer who, having found a knowledgeable person in the industry gracious enough to answer questions, quickly becomes demanding. Literally every agent and editor I have ever met has a horror story about that writer at a conference who just wouldn’t go away.

A word to the wise: remember, in this state, stalking is illegal.

So be polite. Remember, too, that an agent, editor, or writing teacher who was glad to be helpful to you at a conference may well be less pleased if you spend subsequent months peppering her with e-mails. I can’t even count the number of times I have told someone who asked me a question, “Gee, I’m not sure. But I’d be happy to check my files and get back to you with the information” — and then returned home to find a petulant phone message or injured-sounding e-mail, demanding to know why I haven’t yet sent the information. (The usual answer is that I haven’t yet set down my bags after the airplane trip.) And trust me on this one: even if your message is very courteous, and you sent it because you were afraid that the person might not remember you or the request, if you send it before, say, a week after the event, it is going to come across as badgering.

The moral of the story: as long as you are polite, many people in the industry will be glad to share their expertise with you at a conference. When someone in the industry is generous enough to be willing to help you, express gratitude, and try not to be a pest. Free advice is best when given freely — and accepted as a favor.

This is a good rule of thumb for anyone you meet at a conference, by the way. Chances are, you’re going to meet an author who is farther along the path to publication than you are. Writers tend to be very nice people; many of them will be happy to have you solicit their advice on, say, who would be a good agent to query with your type of book, particularly if you write in the same genre. This is a perfectly legitimate question to walk up to a conference presenter and ask. However, this type of friendliness usually doesn’t mean that writer wants to be your lifetime chum — or, as happens more often, your first stop for every industry-related question that occurs to you for the next decade.

If you’re in doubt as to whether you have made a friend or not, limit your follow-up to a single polite thank-you e-mail or card. If you made a true connection, the writer will respond.

All right, back to the reasons to do research on an agent or editor before a meeting. Knowing books they have handled enables you to walk in and make a stellar impression as someone who has done her homework. It is surprisingly rare, and accordingly impressive.

It can also help you calm down before giving your pitch. Instead beginning with a nervous “Hi,” followed by an immediate launch into your pitch, wouldn’t it be great if you could stroll in and break the tension with something along the lines of, “Hello. You represent Lynne Rosetto Casper, don’t you? I just loved her last cookbook.”

Why is this a good idea? Again, human nature: we all like to be recognized for our achievements. Agents and editors tend to be genuinely proud of the books they handle; remember, the vast majority of ANY agent’s workday is taken up with her existing clients, not ones she is thinking about perhaps picking up. Trust me, she will be flattered by meeting someone who has contributed to her retirement fund by buying one of her clients’ books.

One caveat: if you plan to make mention of a particular book, do come prepared to talk about it for a couple of minutes. Don’t praise a book you haven’t read. And don’t lie about liking a book that you hated, of course.

Knowing something about the agent or editor will also enable you to ask intelligent questions about how he handles his clients’ work. For instance, in the past, most fiction was published first in hardcover; until fairly recently, newspapers refused to review softcover fiction. However, increasingly, publishing houses are releasing new fiction in trade paper, a higher-quality printing than standard paperback, so the price to consumers (and the printing costs) may be significantly lower. Why should you care? Well, traditionally, authors receive different percentages of the cover price, based upon printing format. Trade paper pays less.

So if you were speaking with an agent who had a lot of clients who were publishing in trade paper, you might want to ask, “So, I notice that several of your clients published their first novels in trade paper. Is that your general preference? What do you see as the major advantages and disadvantages to going this route?”

Knowing something about the books an agent has sold will also demonstrate that, unlike 99.9% of the aspiring writers he will see this year, you view him as an individual, an interesting person, rather than a career-making machine with legs. This is a serious advantage. Think about it: if the agent signs you, the two of you are going to be having a whole lot of interaction over a number of years. Would you prefer his first impression of you to be that you were a nice, considerate person, or a jerk who happened to be talented?

Pitch specifics follow in the days to come. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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Time after time

Hello, readers –

Happy Walt Whitman’s birthday, everybody!

I’ve just been out having a lovely confab with my friend Suzanne Brahm, a wonderful YA writer who signed recently with a great agent and is just on the point of having her work sent out to editors. Well done, Suzanne!

Our talk got me thinking about all of the delays inherent in the publishing game, and how little control the writer has over the timing of her own work being seen. As is the case for most newly-agented writers in the current market, Suzanne spent months revising her (already very good) book to her agent’s specifications before the agent was ready to send it out. I went through the same type of delay with the book proposal for my memoir, A FAMILY DARKLY: LOVE, LOSS, AND THE FINAL PASSIONS OF PHILIP K. DICK (and no, it has not been released yet; here again, the timing is beyond the author’s control). When you’re in the midst of it, those periods of pre-submission preparation seem endless.

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you will be a substantially happier human being in the long run if you just accept that this process is going to take one heck of a long time, even after you find the perfect agent.

I’m speaking from experience here – yes, even me, whose memoir was snapped up by a publisher after only a month on the market. Not to frighten those of you who have been paying attention, but does anyone happen to remember my Novel Project, first mentioned in the blog of February 23rd? In case you don’t recall, that was the day I spent frantically scrabbling together the requisite perfect copies of my novel, THE BUDDHA IN THE HOT TUB, to send in a box the size of a Labrador retriever to my agent. The Lab has been sitting in a corner of my agent’s office ever since, occasionally thumping its tail impatiently, waiting to be taken out for a walk. My agent is sending the individual copies to editors this week.

Brace yourself: this is not an usually long lag time between a manuscript’s leaving the author’s printer and the agent’s passing it along to editors.

Okay, take a deep breath and let that sink in, because most aspiring writers assume, wrongly, that the only lengthy part of the road to publication is the seemingly interminable search for the right agent. If you’re in it for the long haul, though, it’s important to be prepared for the waits AFTER signing: the revisions, the time to convince editors to read the book, the time for editors to get around to reading it.

And then, once it is finally sold, there is typically at least a year between contract signing and release, often more. Knowing that is important, not merely for the sake of pacing yourself (hey, worrying takes energy), but so you do not make immediate plans for spending the advance: under most publishing contracts, the author does NOT get the entire advance all at once. Usually, the payments are broken into thirds: one-third upon signing, one-third upon manuscript delivery, and one-third upon publication.

Why, you may be wondering, am I making such a point of telling you all this just as we are heading into writers’ conference season, when you will be talking to agents and editors? To try to scare away the fainthearted? To diss agents? To convince you to start buying five-year calendars to track your writing career?

Not at all. I want you to be aware of all this before you sit down and have a conversation with an agent about your work, so your expectations about what that agent can and cannot do for you are realistic. Too many writers look at agents and editors with dollar signs in their eyes, which can blind them to the fact that there is a great deal more than money at stake here. You will be committing irreplaceable time to these people if they pick up your book, years of it, and they to you.

Being aware that you will be committing time, as well as talent and pages of text, to any agent or editor with whom you sign is useful, as will prompt you to listen differently to what they have to say. If the agent you ranked as your first choice for an appointment strikes you, when he speaks at the agents’ forum at the conference, as someone with whom you could not happily have conversations several times per month over the next few years, run, don’t walk, to try to switch your appointment to someone you like.

I’m serious about this.

The best way to avoid having to switch at the last minute, of course, is to find out as much as possible about the scheduled attendees BEFORE you make your appointments. If you want to know more about the agents coming to the conference, check out my archived blogs for April 26 – May 12; for the editors, May 18 – 26.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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Editors, Part VII: The end of the line

Hello, readers –

Hey, guess what I just noticed? The April issue of Northwest Ink (always so full of useful information) contains blurbs for all of the agents and editors scheduled to attend the conference, including the ones I lambasted for not having blurbs. That’ll teach me to let my mail pile up. Interestingly, though, not all of the blurbs here are the same as those on the PNWA website…it’s a mystery.

This is, thank goodness, the last of my series on the editors coming to the conference. No disrespect to the fine agents and editors I have been researching, but I am very anxious to move on to talking about practical matters that may help you pitch to them. (If you are looking for information on the attending agents, check out my posts from April 26 to May 17. And for those of you who have been asking, the agent from the agency that represents me is Lauren Abramo of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. Not that I think you all should mob her or anything, but in my experience, the lovely people at DGLM are kind, respectful of good writing, and have a sense of humor. Considering that I’m sort of their poster child for difficulties on the road to publication = not EVERY memoirist gets repeated lawsuit threats, just a lucky few — I think I would know by now if they didn’t have all of these fine qualities. )

Also, of course, I want you to have information in hand to make your agent and editor choices before June 6th. If your registration form is postmarked by then, you get $50 off the conference fee! How great is that? It’s also $100 cheaper, no matter when you register, if you are or become a member of the PNWA. (Annual membership is $65; do the math.)

Enough about commerce! On to the editor du jour, Paul Taunton of Random House. Here’s his blurb from the PNWA site:

”Paul Taunton (Editor) has been on the editorial staff at the Random House Publishing Group since 2003, working mainly on the Ballantine list. Prior to that he worked in the Random House sales department for several years serving independent booksellers. Categories of particular interest include narrative nonfiction, suspense, crime, literary fiction, and journalism.”

Okay, that’s straightforward enough: he’s relatively new to editing, but he might have some interesting things to tell us about the connection between the creative and sales sides of a major publisher. But hark! Did I hear warning bells going off in the heads of my readers who have been following this series? I think I did.

Yup, Random House does not accept unagented submissions. Hoo, boy, do they ever not accept ‘em. I even found a flat corporate statement on the web about it: “However, due to the overwhelming number of submissions received each week, as of March 1, 2000, the Random House General Submissions Board prohibits our Editorial Department from accepting unsolicited manuscripts.” One sees this kind of language a lot in the publishing industry, especially in defending such policies: it’s not our fault, the giant conglomerate whimpers; we had to take this stand because of all of those nasty writers out there who want to get their books published. Eew.

You may accept or reject this logic, as you see fit. Either way, it would be prudent to walk into a meeting with Mr. Taunton NOT expecting him to pick up your work. Go into a meeting eager to learn anything he is willing to teach you, however, and you shall not be disappointed.
Seriously, try to keep an open mind. Really, he has not been an editor long enough to have had anything to do with setting up Random House’s policy toward the unagented, so it isn’t fair to blame him for it.

As with all of the editors, listen to what he has to say at the editors’ forum. If he does wow you there, go ahead and try to pitch to him. If he likes your pitch in the group meeting (editors from publishing houses that deal exclusively with agented writers tend not to be very eager to hear pitches outside these meetings, so I would avoid trying to pitch to Mr. Taunton in the hallway), go ahead and ask him to recommend a few agents he thinks would be good matches for your book. I’m sure he knows tons.

If you are too shy for that, but think your book would be a good fit for him, be as charming as you can in the meeting, then try sending a query to Laura Dail of Laura Dail Literary Agency. Mr. Taunton just bought a debut novel from her, Heather Benedict Terrell’s THE CHRYSALIS, “a suspense story that features an attorney on the cusp of making partner, who defends a major New York auction house against the claim that one of its clients’ paintings had been stolen by the Nazis.” The good impression you make now might well pay off later.

So much for the editors. I’m quite glad that Mr. Taunton came last in the alphabetical list, because writing about him reminds me to reiterate the not-so-subtle lesson I hope has come across in this series: when you are scanning the editors available for pitch meetings at a conference, do not automatically assume that the editor from the biggest-name house would be the best choice for your pitch. If your goal is to get your work published — and for most of us out there pounding on our keyboards, it is, right? — being able to speak directly about your book to a major decision-maker at a smaller house may well get you farther along in the process than speaking to someone whose buying power is constrained by the immense entity for which he works. Do your homework, and choose with care.

Incidentally, if you do decide to list the editors from smaller houses as your first choices, you will usually be more likely to get the appointments you want. Despite the no-unagented-books policies of most of the majors, the editors from the big-name houses almost invariably are the most requested. Which, for conference attendees new to the game, makes perfect sense: it’s natural to believe that the largest house would have the most power to help an aspiring writer; in a perfect world, they would. It’s also natural to want to go with the house that publishes your favorite author. Obviously, most people are going to pick the name they know.

But you’re too wily for that, right?

I had promised to do a quick run-down on the people offering seminars on the Sunday following the conference, but frankly, I’ve been rushing pretty hard to finish this series before Memorial Day weekend (and before the early registration deadline), and the prospect of conducting serious research on ANOTHER six people makes me weak at the knees.

I have, however, dug up enough information to give you a running start on conducting your own research. Some of the scheduled presenters have their own websites, so I will direct you to those. That way, they can promote themselves in their own words. (Since these seminars are being given by professional speakers outside of the conference proper, and I have personally taken classes with none of them, I really do think that it is more appropriate for them to do their own promotion than for me to use this space for it.) Here are the basics:

Creating Your World and the World of Magic with Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon: Heavy hitters in the fantasy world! My gut feeling is that this one is going to fill up fast. If you’re not familiar with their work, Ms. Lackey’s website will give you a taste of what fantasy books she writes, sometimes with writer/illustrator Mr. Dixon. If the subject is fantasy, I suspect these two know whereat they speak. Ms. Lackey is an IMMENSELY prolific writer: from 1987 on, her SLOWEST year appears to be 2 books published. IfMs. Lackey’s complete list and Mr. Dixon’sdon’t convince you that they know the SF biz, nothing will.

No More Rejections with Alice Orr: Ms. Orr is the author of No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript that Sells, published by Writers Digest Books, so is it unreasonable to expect that the seminar will cover the same material? I did a little background checking, to see what her areas of specialty were (since this is an industry that runs on specialization, and different genres have very different standards), but most of the info I found came from her website, so start there. Ms. Orr has been both an editor (mystery and women’s fiction) and an agent (at her own agency, which no longer exists), but long enough ago that I could not pull up sales or acquisitions on the standard databases, to see with whom she has worked. If you want to try to dig for more specifics, she writes articles with tips for writers for Romantic Times

How to Write an Irresistible Non-Fiction Book Proposal with Rita Rosenkrantz: this is a name you should recognize! She is an NF agent coming to the conference, and as such, someone I have already written about at some length. See my May 12th posting in the archives to see whom she represents. A very well-respected name in NF.

Pathways to the Novel with Robert J. Ray and Jack Remick: No website that I could find, but here’s a nice interview with Mr. Ray: http://www.slowreads.com/InterviewsRay.htm He is quite well known, both in the UW community and as the creator of Matt Murdock, an Orange County PI. Mr. Ray has written quite a lot about writing, too: THE WEEKEND NOVELIST, THE WEEKEND NOVELIST WRITES A MYSTERY, THE WEEKEND NOVELIST REWRITES THE NOVEL…seeing a trend here? I’ve heard on the grapevine that the nickname for one of Mr. Ray’s past classes was, “Shut up and write your book,” so I’m guessing that this is going to be a pretty no-nonsense approach.

Surveillance and Counter-Surveillance with Agent Sheila Stevens: no web presence on this one at all, so is it possible that when Ms. Stevens refers to herself as an agent, she might not mean what, say, Jandy Nelson means by it? As in the kind of agent with a badge? Sorry – you’re going to have to find out the skinny on this one for yourself. Surveil a little.

Traditionally, the Sunday classes fill up fast, as space is limited. So if you are planning on attending one, do try to register soon.

If you are intending to attend both the conference and a Sunday seminar, a word to the wise: you might want to bring a tape recorder, so you need not rely entirely upon your memory and/or written notes to recall all of the amazing things you learned throughout this action-packed weekend. Ask first, of course, to make sure that the seminar leader is willing to allow you to record the proceedings.

Why? Well, conferences tend to be pretty exhausting events. Not just due to the stress of pitching appointments or the often-arid air-conditioned rooms (which make it hard to keep hydrated), but because you will be exposed to so much information so fast. Especially if you are new to either the publishing process or the conference scene, the combination can easily leave you feeling wiped out. Please, for your own sake, pace yourself, and don’t underestimate how much energy it will take to work up the nerve to pitch your book to a total stranger with the power to change your entire life forever.

I hear all of you conference veterans yelling, “AMEN!”

And above all, when you register for the conference, be proud of yourself for committing to the important professional step of saying, “Yes! I am ready to pitch my work to an agent!” It honestly does take courage to take action to achieve your dreams, both to sit down with a publishing professional and talk about your work and to take your writing seriously enough to come to a conference and learn how to promote your work properly.

As I have said many times before, the more you learn about how the industry works, the less intimidating it will be. (More frustrating, perhaps, but certainly less intimidating.) Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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Editors, Part V: Fantasy and FANTASY

Hello, readers –

Welcome back to my series on the editors who are scheduled to attend this summer’s PNWA conference. Why am I running through them, you ask? Well, every conference attendee is booked for one appointment with an agent and one with an editor. I suppose one could talk about matters of peripheral interest at these appointments, but most aspiring writers choose to use the time to pitch their work!

Obviously, then, it is in your best interests, dear friends, to ask to see the agent and editor whose preferences most closely match your writing. Most of the attendees have already posted bio blurbs elsewhere on this website (you can find the link on the PNWA homepage), but not all have, and one of my great rules of thumb is that you can never have too much information about people you are trying to impress. Thus, this series. (If you are looking for information on the attending agents, check out my posts from April 26 to May 17.)

I’m trying to get through the rest of the editors this week, because there is a SUBSTANTIAL financial incentive for all of you to register for the conference prior to June 6: it’s $50 cheaper if you register early. I’m just saying.

The sharper-eyed among you may already have noticed that I have skipped Raelene Gorlinsky of Ellora’s Cave in this alphabetical series. I do intend to write about her, but she does not have a blurb up yet. I have it on pretty good authority that her blurb and picture might well be going up on the website this week, so I have been holding off until we had her own words in hand. Rest assured, though, I am not ignoring her many very valid claims on your attention.

So, coming within a few days: an authoritative definition of romantica!

On to the editor du jour, Liz Scheier of Penguin. Right away, I hear alarm bells ringing in the heads of those who have been following this series: Penguin! That’s one of the Pearson Group, isn’t it? That’s a gigantic publisher, so does that mean that they don’t accept unagented work?

See? You really are learning how to think like an industry insider. Make sure to ask Ms. Scheier this question point-blank at the editors’ forum. (Or, if you’re shy about poking someone to whom you may be making a pitch, bribe the person sitting next to you, the one whose nametag indicates that she writes NF or Romance, to do it for you.)

Ms. Scheier edits for Penguin’s New American Library (NAL), including the well-known Roc imprint. While NAL publishes lots and lots of paperbacks, Roc prints SF and Fantasy in hardcover, trade paper, and paperback. (Why is this important? The author’s royalty, expressed as a percentage of the cover price, varies widely by format. The harder the cover, the higher the percentage — and no, the author does not get to pick.)

Heavens, I was getting so carried away with Roc that I forgot to reproduce Ms. Scheier’s blurb from elsewhere on the website:

”Liz Scheier (Editor) spent four years at the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, and left in early 2004 to join the New American Library, a division of the Penguin Group USA. She acquires mainly science fiction, fantasy, and horror for the Roc imprint, but is also interested in biography, humor, popular culture, and works of GLBT interest. She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, where she studied English literature and thereby rendered herself blissfully unemployable in any other field.”

A nice, straightforward blurb: I like it. Checking her recent sales to see how heavily she buys in her other areas of interest, I had a bit of a surprise: Ms. Scheier has been busy as a beaver of late buying an even broader array of books than she has indicated here – not only for Roc, but for NAL proper. Because I love you people, I have broken these acquisitions down by category:

Fiction: SF/Fantasy: Diana Pharaoh Francis’s THE CIPHER, “a series set on and around the strange island of Crosspointe, center of commerce and conspiracies.” (Roc, acquired 2005); Faith Hunter’s BLOODRING, “a dark urban fantasy.” (Roc, in a quite spendy three-book deal, 2005); Author of HAMMERED, Elizabeth Bear’s BLOOD & IRON, WHISKEY & WATER, “a contemporary fantasy about the ages-old war between the realms of Faerie and the human mages of the Promethean Society, told from the point of view of the pawns who will be instrumental in deciding the fate of both worlds.” (Roc, acquired 2005); Janine Cross’s MEMOIRS OF A DRAGONMASTER, “a trilogy of dark and erotic fantasy novels.” (Roc, acquired 2004); Chris Bunch’s fantasy trilogy THE STORM OF WINGS, “comprising Dragonmaster, Knighthood of the Dragon, and The Last Battle, originally published by Orbit/Time Warner UK.” (Roc, acquired 2004); Susan Wright’s TO SERVE AND SUBMIT, an erotic fantasy. (Roc, acquired 2004; there are fantasies and there are fantasies, right?); Marianne de Pierres’ NYLON ANGEL, “a sci-fi (sic) novel of a future Australia and the adventures of Parrish Plessis, bodyguard and all-round survivalist.” (Roc, in a two-book deal, acquired 2004); Rachel Caine’s next three books in the Weather Warden series (Roc, acquired 2004); E.E. Knight’s next three untitled Vampire Earth books (Roc, acquired 2004); Lou Anders’ anthology FUTURESHOCKS, “collecting science fiction and sci-horror stories dealing with fears arising out of social, biological or technological change, with include stories by Kevin J. Anderson, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Mike Resnick and Harry Turtledove, and others.” (Roc, acquired 2004)

Fiction: Women’s /Romance (which, please note, was not on her current interest list, but hey, she bought one of these books as recently as last March, so I’m including it): Lucy Finn’s debut paranormal romance, I DREAM OF DIAPER GENIE (NAL. Acquired 2006); USA Today bestseller Savannah Russe’s next three books in the DARKWING CHRONICLES, “an ALIAS meets BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER thriller/suspense series featuring a vampire recruited by the US government to become a spy.” (NAL, acquired 2006).

Fiction: Mystery (also not on her preference list): Jay Caselberg’s next two untitled Jack Stein mysteries, “featuring a psychic investigator.” (Roc, acquired 2004)

Fiction: YA (again, not on her preference list): Rachel Caine’s GLASS HOUSES, the first novel in a three-book vampire series (NAL, acquired 2005)

NF: Humor: PIRATTITUDE! FROM AHOY TO ZANZIBAR, YOUR PERSONAL GUIDE TO ALL THINGS PIRATE, a humorous book by the inventors of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, sharing their tips on how to work pirate patter into your day-to-day conversation; descriptions of what pirattitude is and how to tell if you’ve got it; and observations of who has pirattitude and who doesn’t.” (Avast, already! NAL, acquired 2004)

All right, campers, notice any patterns? Let’s start first with what isn’t here: biography, pop culture, or (unless I am misreading the descriptions) anything with a GLBT bent. In fact, she doesn’t seem to buy much NF at all, which makes me wonder why she has listed so many NF categories – and not all ones that are hot right now. (A good question for someone to ask her at the editors’ forum, maybe?) If I were planning to pitch NF at the conference, I would try to get an appointment with her, but I’m not sure that she would be my first choice.

On to fiction. Frankly, the only horror I’m seeing here is vampire-oriented fantasy, which raises the rather interesting question of whether she would even consider any non-bloodsucking flavor of horror. The fact that she (or someone in her office) has listed SERVE AND SUBMIT as SF/Fantasy makes me wonder, too, what criteria are being used to categorize the books – or if the editor was doing a little genre-blurring here.

Because my eyebrows were raised a little by this list, and because Ms. Scheier’s transplant from Bantam was fairly recent, I did some checking from farther in her acquisitional past. Take a gander at her last year of sales at Bantam:

Fiction: Chick lit (not a peep about which on her preference list, you will note): Donna Kauffman’s SLEEPING WITH BEAUTY and NOT-SO-SNOW WHITE, “two more fun, sassy chick lit novels, taking a new twist on your average fairy tale.” (Bantam Dell, acquired 2003); Donna Kauffman’s THE CINDERELLA RULES, “a sexy new contemporary novel.” (Bantam, two-book deal, acquired 2002.)

Fiction: mainstream (ditto): “Susan Miller’s untitled story of a Jamaican woman who leaves her beloved daughter in her mother’s care and comes to America in search of a better life, caring for the children of a wealthy Chicago-area family, who must rebuild her life after her six-year-old daughter is killed.” (Bantam Dell, acquired 2003); Sean Murphy’s THE FINISHED MAN (along with one other untitled novel), “a witty satire about a down on his luck (sic) writer in LA, determined to discover the truth about his successful hack writer friend’s new novel that is inexplicably getting great reviews.” (Bantam, acquired 2003; this is presumably not to be confused with all of those non-witty satires out there.)

Almost doesn’t sound like the same editor as the earlier list, does it? Her track history takes an abrupt swerve after she moves to NAL: she apparently used to do women’s and chick lit, which may explain why her SF/Fantasy preferences seem a tad romance-like. As I have pointed out before, the preferences of the publishing house or agency necessarily trump those of the individual editor or agent who works there, but this is quite a strong switch. It makes me wonder if she would still be open, say, to women’s or chick lit, if someone happened to pitch it to her. Or whether she really wanted to be doing Fantasy all along, but Bantam did not want her to go in that direction. Either is possible.

My strongest recommendation, based upon all this evidence: if you write SF, fantasy, or vampire books with a fair amount of pretty flesh in them, this would probably be a GREAT editor meeting for you to have. If your tastes in SF/Fantasy run in other directions, particularly dark ones, head for Liz Gorinsky (she of the genuinely interesting photo next to her conference blurb). If you can manage to score spaces in both of their pitch meetings, great, but looking at their respective track records, I suspect that they define their chosen genres rather differently.

It just goes to show you (again!) that similar words in different editors’ blurbs do not always translate into their liking similar books. Keep reminding yourself: they are all individuals, with personal tastes and quirks. Listening carefully at the editors’ forum can be invaluable for discovering what those works are.

Oh, and one other thing about Ms. Scheier: she has bought a LOT of books in the last three years from Lucienne Diver at Spectrum Literary. So if you absolutely fall in love with what Ms. Scheier says on the editors’ panel, you might want to consider shooting a query off to Ms. Diver seconds after the conference concludes.

On an unrelated note, I had mentioned in yesterday’s post that there are not a whole lot of good books out there geared toward helping writers pitch books, rather than screenplays. Ever-helpful loyal reader Toddie wrote in to point out that Arielle Eckstut (THAT’s a name that should sound pretty familiar by now) and David Henry Sterry’s PUTTING YOUR PASSION INTO PRINT does in fact deal with this issue, “including a sampling of three (pitches) on pp. 88-89.” She reports that the book is primarily geared toward NF.

Thanks for the tip, Toddie! If any of you out there know of good resources for writers anxious to learn how to pitch, please do let me know.

A couple more days, and I think we shall have the editors polished off. Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Posted on - No Comments on Very practical advice, Part III

Very practical advice, Part III

Hello, readers —

Welcome back to my multi-part series on how to figure out which agent on the PNWA conference guest list (or listed in any conference’s brochure, for that matter) is one you should rank first on your registration form. Assuming, of course, that you’re coming to this summer’s conference — but naturally you are, if you live within driving distance: I’m counting on lots of good conversations over tea with my readers there. One of the perqs of extremely minor celebrity is tea conversation, and plenty of it.

(Incidentally, if you will need financial aid to attend the conference, check out the scholarship form on this website as soon as possible.)

All right, on to the next agent in the alphabetical hit parade: Arielle Eckstut of the Levine Greenberg Literary AgencyApart from the fact that her name’s pretty fabulous in print — don’t you wish you had invented it for a character? — what can we learn from her official blurb, cribbed from elsewhere on this very website?

  •  Arielle Eckstut (Agent) is a literary agent who runs the West Coast office of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. She is also the co-author of three books including, Putting Your Passion into Print (Workman, 2005) and Pride & Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen (Simon & Schuster, 2001).

 

  • Whether working with a medical doctor or an interior designer, an academic or a poet, Arielle is most excited by ideas that expand our consciousness, challenge our assumptions and seek to make our world a more visually exciting place. Her clients include New York Times bestselling author, Larry Dossey; Bellwether Award-winner, Gayle Brandeis; James Beard Award-winners, Laura Schenone and Georgeanne Brennan; While You Were Out star, Mark Montano; and numerous others. The Levine Greenberg Literary Agency represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction clients. Their bestselling authors include The Onion (Our Dumb Century), Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm), Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs), Roslyn Wiseman (Queen Bees and Wannabes), and Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team).

 

  •  A voracious reader of 19th century novels and a wide range of nonfiction, Arielle has always been a lover of books. Her “Great Books” major at the University of Chicago focused on only six texts in four years–which lent a whole new meaning to the words “close reader”. Before she became an agent, Arielle baked for Madonna, performed improvisational comedy at the Edinburgh Theater Festival Fringe, and cut karyotypes.

A karyotype, in case you were wondering, is an individual’s set of chromosomes. So I gather that the lady’s sliced up some DNA in her time, not a usual credential for an agent. And WHAT, one wonders, does one bake for someone as skinny as Madonna?

The lady also evidently wants to put out a call for quirky books, I would conclude from this blurb. Nineteenth-century storytelling is not much in vogue these days, alas; in fact, it is sort of an industry code word for REALLY LONG BOOK. So if Herman Melville is your role model (of John Irving, or Jeffrey Eugenides, or…), I think Ms. Eckstut would be a great first pick for your list.

I notice that the agents’ list for this year’s conference includes two agents who hail from the University of Chicago, Ms. Eckstut and {name removed at agent’s request; apparently, although where he went to school is in his standard blurb, that information is not to be reproduced.} . I got my master’s degree at the U of C (the unofficial motto: Hell does freeze over), and I’m here to tell you, Ms. Eckstut is not kidding about the 6 books in 4 years. I knew people there who read only a scant dozen books on the ways to their Ph.D.s. They train their students to be CLOSE readers.

Translation: do not even DREAM of handing so much as a business card to either Ms. Eckstut or {name removed} until it has been proofread 45 times. I am absolutely serious about this. Be prepared to discuss the nuances of every comma.

Also — and perhaps this goes without saying — if you are serious about wanting Ms. Eckstut as your agent, read at least one of the books she has published before the conference. Human nature being what it is, I’m betting that a graceful, informed compliment on her insights into Jane Austen will go a long way toward helping her remember who you are amongst the literally hundreds of aspiring writers she will meet at the conference. (As always, though: give only compliments that you sincerely believe. Not only is it far better karmically, but also, insincere flattery is usually pretty apparent.)

What else can we learn from her blurb? Focus in on Gayle Brandeis, author of SELF STORAGE, “a humorous story of a young mother of two who loves to attend self storage auctions, and then sells her winnings at yard sales.” There are a couple of reasons to pay attention to this particular book: Ms. Eckstut sold it to Anika Streitfeld of Ballantine; significant, because it was Ms. Streitfeld’s her first acquisition there. A two-book deal, no less. If you have aspirations for publishing with Ballentine, signing with an agent with such a good in with a relatively new editor isn’t a bad idea.

The more important thing to notice is that Ms. Eckstut represents a Bellwether Prize winner — so if your work has feminist sensibilities, or deals with issues of race or class, run, don’t walk, to make an appointment with her. The Bellwether Prize was established by Barbara Kingsolver (of THE POISONWOOD BIBLE fame) to encourage novels aimed at spurring social change. Social problem novels are not very popular these days — but they certainly were in the 19th century.

Hint: if you have the opportunity to pitch to her, work a sentence or two into your pitch showing how your book might help its readers. Just a suggestion. She is telling you something here: she wants to represent novels whose importance is more than literary.

She also mentions representing James Beard Award winners — this means that she is interested in cookbooks. (Georgeanne Brennan, incidentally, has also won the Julia Child Award.) Looking over her recent sales, I notice has been selling quite a few cookbooks of late, but it seems to be a relatively new interest of hers. If this is your area, run with it: pick her as a top choice. You might even want to bring her a homemade cupcake.

Her most recent cookbook sale (to Random House) sounds like so much fun that I can’t resist including it here: THE GREEN EGGS AND HAM COOKBOOK, by Georgeanne Brennan and Frankie Frankeny (author of THE STAR WARS COOKBOOK), “an official Dr. Suess (sic!) cookbook filled with delectable treats such as Pink Ink Drink and Solla Sollew’s Chocolate Rocks.”

Ms. Eckstut has added another interesting element here: “The Levine Greenberg Literary Agency represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction clients,” followed by a list of some of the authors the agency (which is a very solid, large one) represents. I would assume, based upon this, that she is coming to the conference ready to pick up clients not only for herself, but for others at the agency. So a smart conference-goer might want to check out the agency’s website in advance, in order to be able to ask Ms. Eckstut for an invaluable introduction to one of her colleagues.

Looking over her recent sales, I notice that she represents a lot of journalists, so if that’s your background, definitely mention it to her. Also, her agency represents a fair amount of humor — so if your novel is funny, I would recommend that you make your pitch to her funny, too.

But now that you’ve had a little practice deriving insights from agent info, let me just give you a list of some of the major sales she has made in the last few years that are not in her blurb, so you can check them out for yourself. (The dates listed are when the presses bought them, not when the books were published, incidentally.)

Chris Baty, NO PLOT? NO PROBLEM! (Chronicle; sold 2003); Shawn Carlson, CHASING FRANKLIN’S KITE (Little, Brown; sold 2001); Paul Davidson, CONSUMER JOE (Broadway; sold 2002) and BLOGOSPHERE (Warner, sold 2005);Dan Kennedy, EVIDENTLY I KNOW EVERYTHING (Crown; sold 2001) and an as-yet untitled narrative NF book (Algonquin, 2005); Nancy Levine, HOMER FOR THE HOLIDAYS (Viking; sold 2004), as well as LETTERS TO A YOUNG PUG and “an untitled pug romance” (Viking, sold 2005); Rabbi Alan Lew, THIS IS REAL AND YOU ARE COMPLETELY UNPREPARED (Little, Brown; sold 2002); Beth Lisick EVERYBODY INTO THE POOL (Regan Books; sold 2004); Andrew Newberg, WHY WE BELIEVE WHAT WE BELIEVE (Free Press; I couldn’t find the sale date); Kent and Keith Zimmerman, MYTHBUSTERS: The Explosive Truth Behind the 30 Most Perplexing Urban Legends of All Time (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2005).

Okay, pop quiz: what did you learn from this list?

If you said that Ms. Eckstut might be a good choice for pitching a spirituality book, well done! By my count, there are 2 on this list. You also score high marks if you noticed that Ms. Eckstut’s taste is pretty eclectic, as is her agency’s, and her sales are pretty consistent from year to year. If you are a producer of offbeat prose, she may well be the agent for you, but if your work is very solidly mainstream, she might not be your best top choice. (If you do mainstream, check out my write-ups on Loretta Barrett and Stephen Barbara.)

You get extra credit if you also noticed that she sells to a broad array of publishers, rather than concentrating upon a few. Why should you care about this? Because you should be thinking now about whom you would like to have publish your book, that’s why. An agent who already has connections at the press you want through previous sales will probably be more helpful to you than an agent who doesn’t, right?

If this does not seem completely self-evident to you, think a bit about the stages of marketing a book. Your target market isn’t just the group of readers you ultimately envision buying your work; it’s also agents who represent that kind of book and editors at publishing houses who sell to that market. Start trolling bookstores, paying attention to who publishes work like yours, and think about querying agents who have a successful track record of selling to those publishers.

If you learn nothing else from this series, learn this: agents are not a monolithic group, a collection of people with identical tastes. They are individuals, with individual tastes.

Let me say that again: every agent has an array of individual tastes.

Think about the implications of this. Let’s say you send out ten queries to ten agents, and receive ten rejections (not uncommon at all). You are sure that your queries contain none of the standard mistakes (I blogged about many of these in August and September), and you are not marketing a book that is terribly out of fashion at the moment (like, say, a memoir set in a rehab facility, a travelogue about eating your way through some well-traveled part of Europe, or a how-to book on reading the tarot). Should you conclude that the entire agenting community has rejected your work with one voice?

No: ten agents, with ten individual sets of criteria have — and that is a MAJOR distinction. Thinking that it doesn’t matter who reads your queries is like believing that it doesn’t matter who sits on the Supreme Court on the day you happen to be arguing your big case: what will strike Antonin Scalia’s fancy will not, I assure you, generally make Ruth Bader Ginsberg chuckle. Individual agents look for different things in submissions, and what’s more, they look for different things at different times.

Reminding yourself of this from time to time throughout the often long and drawn-out querying process is very, very good for your sanity. These people are not all ganged up against you: you just have not hit a good match yet. Keep on querying until you do.

And keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Posted on - No Comments on Very practical advice, Part II

Very practical advice, Part II

Hello, readers –

For those of you who missed yesterday’s post, I’m in the midst of doing a series on how to read agents’ blurbs in conference brochures, as well as giving you some idea what you can turn up on agents through standard industry background research. I’m hoping that this will save you some time (and give you easier access to some of this information) as you are carefully considering your rankings for your agent appointments at this summer’s PNWA conference. The wonderful volunteers at the PNWA honestly do screen potential agents very carefully before inviting them; I just thought those of you new to querying could use some help telling them apart.

Again, some standard disclaimers: I am listing the agents scheduled to attend this summer’s conference in alphabetical order here, not ranking them. I am not going to give you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on any individual agent; my dual intent here is to teach you how to read a blurb and to give you enough background, wherever possible, so you can weigh your options. (My agency is not represented this year, alas, so I have no stake in pushing one or another.) I have gathered this information from the standard industry databases, and so cannot be sure that it is all 100% up-to-date. So if you find out that I’ve conveyed some misinformation here, please let me know, so I can pass the correct information on to my readers.

Okay, next on the alphabetical Loretta Barrett of Loretta Barrett Books. Here is her official blurb, lifted from the PNWA website:

”Loretta A. Barrett (Agent) is a literary agent and president of Loretta Barrett Books, Inc. in New York. She founded the agency in 1990. Prior to that she was Editor-in-Chief of Anchor Books and Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday. She is a member of AAR, and has representation in every major foreign market, East and West.

”Ms. Barrett’s nonfiction interests cover a wide range of topics. These include psychology, science and technology, religion, spirituality, current events, biography and memoir. She represents the New York Times bestseller Symptoms of Withdrawal, by Christopher Kennedy Lawford; the New York Times bestseller Mother Angelica, by Raymond Arroyo, the national bestseller The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, and Stressed-Out Girls, by Roni Cohen-Sandler, Ph.D. Other notable clients include George Weigel, Ann Douglas, Wayne Muller and Stephen Levine.

”Her fiction preferences are largely mainstream and contemporary. She is particularly drawn to women’s fiction and thrillers. Her current fiction list includes the New York Times bestseller Cold Truth, by Mariah Stewart, and national bestseller The Lake of Dead Languages, by Carol Goodman. In addition, she represents noteworthy novelists such as Gary Birken, MD, Laura Van Wormer, M.J. Rose and Dora Levy Mossanen. For a complete list of clients, as well as submissions guidelines, please visit www.lorettabarrettbooks.com .”

What can we learn from this blurb? First of all, when an agent gives her website in her blurb, VISIT IT BEFORE YOU SELECT HER AS ONE OF YOUR TOP CHOICES. I would bet a nickel that there is information there, particularly in the submissions guidelines, that will prove useful to you in both your decision-making process and in prepping for your meeting at the conference.

(Fear not; as the conference draws closer, I shall be giving you tips on how to pitch your work more impressively in these meetings – and in hallways. They are very different venues, and require different approaches!)

Second, judging from this blurb, I would suspect that Ms. Barrett is pretty sympathetic to writers: she has gone to the trouble of including enough information here that an aspiring writer could glean a sense not just of the genres she likes, but of the kind of WRITING. If you will be listing her as a top choice, it will be well worth your while to spend a few moments in the big bookstore nearest to you, reading a few pages from the works of the authors she lists.

Why? I’m guessing that you’re going to see some stylistic patterns amongst her clients. And if you can walk up to an agent and say, “My writing style is very similar to that of your client, X,” the agent’s eyes will generally light up.

See, I’m trying to make the conference a better experience for the agents, too. I’m just generally hospitable.

She has also, I notice from checking her recent sales, provided in this blurb quite a nice mix of very recent sales and ones made longer ago, to give a better impression of her interests as they stand now. No book on this list, as nearly as I can tell, was sold more than 5 years ago, and she has sold books by some of these clients within the last few months. Nice of her; it saves you some trouble in your research.

Third, she mentions that she’s a member of AAR, which saves you the effort of looking it up. Why should you care? Well, AAR members agree to adhere to certain professional standards in dealing with writers – most notably, members cannot charge reading fees. (They can, however, charge editing fees. For a list of other membership restrictions, see most of the standard agent guides.) Also, AAR members are not supposed to do nasty things like sell lists of authors who query them to editing services or writers’ publications, nor are they allowed to make working with a particular editing service a precondition of their reading your work.

The idea here is that an AAR member agency will make the bulk of its income through commissions on sales of its authors’ writing, rather than by charging eager aspiring writers for the opportunity to have an agency screener read a chapter of the book. In the long run, this is for your benefit: if an agency cannot sell your work, being signed with it will not help you much.

Not every non fee-charging agent is a member of AAR, of course, so you should not necessarily write off any agent who is not. (Especially if you write screenplays: many, many screenplay agents are not AAR members.) Some agencies choose not to become members because they are set up as management agencies, which means that they reserve the right to bundle their clients into package deals (novelist + screenwriter + director, for instance).

Being an AAR member does not guarantee that an agent is a decent human being (although it helps), but it does guarantee that if something goes terribly wrong down the line, you will have a court of appeal. For instance, AAR specifies that its members can charge only reasonable fees for photocopying, so if you signed with an agent, and then found you were being charged $2.00/page, you could pick up the phone, and AAR would straighten it out for you.

Ms. Barrett has also been kind in defining her interests with precision: in fiction, mainstream, contemporary, women’s, and thrillers (translation: novels with wide market appeal); in NF, psychology, science and technology, religion, spirituality, current events, biography, and memoir. If you have even the vaguest doubt about the category into which your book falls (and, no, Virginia, “it’s sort of a cross between thriller and literary” isn’t going to fly here; we’re talking where your book would be shelved in a bookstore), check out my blogs for February 13-16. And if you have any doubt about whether your work is mainstream enough for Ms. Barrett, check out her website and her authors’ work for comparison.

A quick aside about pitching NF at a conference: there are usually fewer NF writers at a literary conference, which does make one stand out a bit. However, the first thing that ANY agent will ask a writer pitching NF is, “What is your platform?” In other words, what background do you have that makes you a credible author for this book?

(And P.S., you need to be able to state your platform for a memoir, too. Yes, it’s your life, but memoirs are generally about something else, too. Why are you the best person to write on that secondary topic? And why is your life so compelling that it needed to be turned into a memoir?)

I bring this up in the context of Ms. Barrett’s blurb, because I notice that many of the areas she lists are ones that generally require professional platforms: people who write psychology, science, or technology books tend to have Ph.D.s after their names, for instance; religion and spirituality books tend to be written by those with extensive experience with their subjects, and current events books are generally written by journalists. Not that this should discourage you from pitching these kinds of books here – just be very, very well prepared to answer the platform question before you walk into the meeting.

If you are planning to be pitching fiction, do be aware that Ms. Barrett represents many heavy hitters in the industry, and thus may be rather difficult to impress. (One reason I think so: I noticed only one fiction sale in the last three years specifically identified as a debut novel, anthropology professor Lila Shaara’s debut literary thriller “about a former model turned college professor whose scarily obsessed students create a website of doctored photos from her previous career, and soon the danger they pose to her and her two young sons becomes shockingly real.” However, this Feb. 2005 sale was part of an apparently terrific two-book deal to a major publisher.)

I think it’s safe to assume, then, that she may not be as hungry as a less well-established agent. (Hungry is an industry term: it means to be very, very eager to sell books; typically, the better-heeled agents are less hungry than those newer to the game.) So if you’re going to pitch to Ms. Barrett, I would suggest taking the time before the conference to make your book sound as appetizing as possible. Plan to walk into your meeting with her very, very prepared to make your book sound like the best novel since, well, ever.

More agent blurb deciphering follows in the days to come, but before I end today, let me add what I’ve heard on the writers’ grapevine: I have heard from many who have pitched to her (as I have not) that she is a good person to ask for recommendations for OTHER agents who might be interested in a particular book. That, too, is a good thing to know before you walk into a pitch meeting.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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Some very, very practical information, or, you WERE planning on attending the PNWA conference this summer, right?

Hello, readers –

I feel as though my blogs have been waxing a bit theoretical lately, so I thought I should concentrate on some very, very practical information for awhile. In fact, it’s hard for me to imagine information more practical than today’s, at least for those of you who are planning to attend this summer’s PNWA conference: it’s information that will help you decide how to rank your agent choices on the conference application.

And you thought I didn’t love you.

It can be quite hard to tell the agents apart, based just upon their write-ups, can it not? Some agents choose to share a little, some share a lot; there seems to be no standard for an agent blurb in a conference brochure. A lot of them are quite vague, and others merely list the agents’ best-known clients. Usually, the titles included were sold quite some time ago, so you can’t always be sure that the agent still represents that kind of work.

In case you were curious, the agents don’t list old sales in blurbs and agent guides to be misleading: they are trying to use titles that a prospective client might be able to find in a bookstore. Because the fact is, if an agent sold a book within the last year and a half, it almost certainly is not in bookstores yet for you to find.

For those of you who were shocked my last statement, let me fill you in on why: unless a press is trying to coincide with a specific event (such as a presidential election) or capitalize on a major catastrophe (such as Hurricane Katrina), the MINIMUM time between a book’s sale and its release is generally a year. Often, it’s longer. And you have only to talk to virtually any agented author to learn that the length of time between signing with an agent and the first sale is frequently as long or longer than production time after the sale.

So, realistically, the books you are seeing on the shelf today are probably much more representative of what any given agent was interested in three or four years ago than today. A lot can happen in a person’s life in three years, and even more in the publishing industry. (Three years ago, for instance, memoirs were not primarily regarded as potential lawsuit traps — thank you, James Frey — but as rich sources of highly reader-grabbing material.)

Sometimes, too, we misread the specialties listed in the blurb, rushing to read through all of them before making ranking decisions, or do not know that a particular agent does not want to see certain kinds of work at all. Yes, it seems a little nasty when an agent says he won’t even consider certain genres, but once you’ve been at it awhile, you’ll come to recognize that those who are upfront about their dislikes are giving you a gift: you know not to waste your time, or theirs, if you write work they do not like.

At the risk of sounding jaded (and who wouldn’t, after a decade of attending writers’ conferences all over the country?), it’s been my experience that in reading these blurbs, it’s a good idea to remember that these people sell things for a living. Sometimes, an agent who sounds warm and friendly on paper turns out in real life to be…well, let’s be charitable, shall we, and say unwelcoming?

Sometimes, the opposite is true, where a hostile-sounding blurb conceals a warm and wonderful agent. And often, it’s hard to tell whether an agent sounds eager to find new talent because she genuinely is, or because that’s her standard line, or because she’s brand-new to the publishing world and hungry for sales.

Again, how can you tell who is a good bet for you?

For all of these reasons, it’s often quite a jolt when you get to the conference, appointment card in hand, and hear your assigned agent speak at the agents’ forum: you catch yourself thinking, if only I knew all this a few months ago, when I made my agent choices. So you scramble around, trying to switch your appointment with others’. The best way to avoid this situation, of course, is to do advance research on the agents who will be attending.

It also makes possible a very graceful opening line for your meeting: “You represent so-and-so, don’t you? I just love his/her work!” Trust me, there isn’t an agent in the world who doesn’t like to hear that. A word to the wise, though: if you use that opener, you had better be familiar with any book you mention. Because a significant proportion of the time, the agent so accosted will want to talk about it. Go figure.

So doing your homework about agents is smart conference preparation. Sometimes, however, finding out which writers they represent can be hard work. Agents often seem amazingly unaware of this, or even incredulous when writers point it out: it’s a relatively small industry, so everyone within it knows who represents whom. But if you, like pretty much every aspiring writer who did not go to school with someone in the industry, don’t know the affiliations, how are you to find out?

More to the point, how do you find out what the agent in question is selling NOW, rather than a couple of years ago?

I’m going to tell you how I handle it, personally: I check industry publications to see not only who and what the agent represents, but also what books the agent has sold recently. As in this year and last, the stuff that isn’t on the shelves yet. While all of that information is a matter of public record, not everyone has access to it easily.

But I do. And I’m going to share it with you, so you can make informed decisions, as well as gaining some insight on how to read agents’ blurbs productively. Please note, though: this is information based upon publishing databases, so it may not be entirely up-to-date or totally accurate. Also, it will reflect only those clients for whom these agents have actually sold books, rather than their entire client lists, which may not give a truly representative (so to speak) picture.

Please note, too, that I am presenting these agents in alphabetical order, not ranked in any sort of hierarchy of excellence or interest, and over enough days’ blogs to justify the length of time it took to track the information down. (Seriously – I hadn’t gone through this process in a couple of years, and time had whitewashed my sense of how time-consuming the research is.) And since I have spent so much space today explaining why I think this is a good idea in the first place, I’m only going to go over one agent today, Stephen Barbara of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, tops in the alphabetical list. Here’s his official blurb, gleaned from elsewhere on this very website:

”Stephen Barbara (Agent) is an agent and contracts director at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Prior to this, he worked as a junior agent at the Fifi Oscard Agency, an editorial assistant at Regan Books, and an intern at the Kaplan Agency. He is interested in literary fiction, YA and middle grade novels, narrative non-fiction, historical and topical non-fiction, and a variety of commercial fiction genres.”

Okay, this is a good one for starters, because our good Mr. Barbara has given the savvy reader quite a bit of information in this blurb that might not be apparent to the less experienced eye, and his solo sales record is recent enough that searching the bookstores for his clients might not have been too helpful. So what can we learn here?

First, he works at an immense and prestigious literary agency, one very well known for genre fiction (it would make sense to ask him in a meeting who ELSE at his agency might be interested in your work), but he has not worked there very long (if my information is correct, he switched over within the last 6 months). This is probably a good sign: going from being a junior agent at one big agency to being an agent at another probably means that he didn’t bring a whole lot of clients with him. Translation: he needs a list.

Second, he is relatively new to agenting: if he were more advanced in his career, he probably would not have listed his editorial assistant or intern jobs. (Although actually, having an in at Regan Books is a definite asset.) Now, I can feel some of you turning off, wanting to hold out for a bigger-name agent, but think about it: who is more likely to sign a new writer, a hungry new agent or the head of an agency?

Long-time attendees of the PNWA conference may have already pitched to the boss in this case: Don Maass has honored our conference many times. And he is a BUSY man. He used to be president of AAR , the agents’ professional association, and he goes around the country, giving seminars on how to write better novels. He has written several books on same. It’s just my gut feeling, of course, but I suspect that such a busy agent doesn’t have a whole lot of spare time to lavish on previously unpublished writers at this point in his career. But an agent new to his agency might.

Aspiring writers, please be aware of this: a relatively junior agent at a major agency can be a very good bet for a first-time author. The agency will provide connections that a smaller agency might not, yet unlike the big-name agents, a relative newcomer may well have both more time and greater inclination to push a new discovery. (Remember, with a big-time agent, you may well end up being her 105th client, and thus perhaps a rather low priority.)

What else can we learn from this blurb? Well, the agent has told us what kind of discovery he hopes to make at PNWA: literary fiction, YA and middle grade novels, narrative NF, historical and topical NF, and commercial fiction. Not a lot of big surprises here — the Maass agency is known for commercial fiction; in fact, in the past, they’ve signed the winner of the PNWA mainstream novel category. Mssr. Maass has been telling conference-goers for years that he would like the agency to handle more literary fiction, and Mssr. Barbara has a solid track record in sales for the middle grade market.

How do I know that? Because I looked at his recent sales, that’s how. In the past two years, I was able to find three of his sales, which incidentally confirm our sense that he switched agencies recently:

In March, 2006, as an agent at the Maass agency, he made an impressive three-book deal with Margaret K. McElderry Books for middle grade author P.J. Bracegirdle’s THE JOY OF SPOOKING, “in which a girl must save her beloved hometown, Spooking, from being turned into an amusement park by a villain.”

His previous two sales (both in July, 2005) are listed under the aegis of the Fifi Oscard Agency. The first is a set of two middle grade books (with QUITE the impressive advance, I notice), Lisa Graff’s THE THING ABOUT GEORGIE, (“a young boy learns to overcome his small stature and his fears of being a not-so-big brother”) and BERNETTA WALLFLOWER: THE PROS AND CONS “about a 12-year-old girl in the summer after she gets kicked out of private school for running a cheating ring — the only problem being it isn’t true”). Oh, and in case you were wondering how his connections at Regan Books might help his clients, these works were sold to a subsidiary of HarperCollins; Regan Books is also a subsidiary of HarperCollins.

So I would estimate, based upon what we see here, that if you write for middle grade readers, this would be a GREAT agent appointment for you to have. Sign up for an appointment with him, pronto.

The other listing seems on its face as if it couldn’t be more dissimilar, a history/politics NF book by a retired Marine, defense analyst, and former professor, about the future of the draft and military service. This clearly fits under the rubric of historical and topical non-fiction, so we know that Mssr. Barbara already has some connections in that direction.

You may have noticed that the blurb mentioned a few other types of work Mr. Barbara is seeking; I was not able to find a history of sales in those other areas. (As I said, though, my databases aren’t infallible.) But, as I said, the Maass agency does have a very good track record in commercial fiction. My suggestion would be that if you write literary fiction, narrative NF, or genre fiction, you should go to the agency website and take a look at their overall client list, to see if your work would fit into their areas of demonstrated interest.

One more piece of advice: if you intend to list Mr. Barbara as one of your top agent picks for the conference (or plan to accost him after the agents’ forum or in the hallway), do bring a copy of the first 5 pages of your book. If memory serves, agents from the Maass agency routinely ask pitchers and queriers for a writing sample, and it’s best to be prepared, right?

Whew! That was a lot of information, wasn’t it? But I would urge you, if you do decide that Mssr. Barbara is going to be one of your top picks, to do additional research for yourself before the conference. The more you know before you walk into your appointment with an agent, the better you can refine your pitch for his ears.

If doing this level of background research on an agent with whom you may be having a 15-minute meeting three months from now seems nutty to you, let me remind you again that the publishing world actually isn’t terribly big. Agents and editors are used to the writers soliciting them knowing who they are; keep an ear out at the agents’ forum at the conference, and you may notice an edge to their voices when they speak of writers who have not done their homework. Think of being familiar with their recent sales as a gesture of respect to their professional acumen, a way you can step most gracefully into their world, to present your book as effectively as you can.

More info on agents scheduled to attend the conference follows over the day to come. Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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What the customer wants

Hello, readers –

Clearly, I’m taking everything too seriously at the moment, a recognized symptom of being an author with a novel circulating amongst editors. Completely normal, I tell you.

Case in point: the other night, some non-writing friends (yes, I do have them) and I went to see Book-It’s stage version of Edith Wharton’s THE HOUSE OF MIRTH. Since THE HOUSE OF MIRTH is a favorite book of mine, one I first read in the heady days right after I discovered MADAME BOVARY, I dragged my friends to opening night. The world premiere, no less.

If you live in the greater Seattle metro area, and you’re not familiar with the Book-It Repertory Theatre,do yourself a favor and check them out. Their work is intensely gratifying for writers, because they don’t do plays per se – they adapt their favorite short stories and novels for the stage. Their two-night production of John Irving’s THE CIDER HOUSE RULES was so impressive – and so faithful to the book – that it made the movie version that came out a few years later seem as though the screenwriter had only skimmed the original. And who wrote that screenplay, you ask? John Irving. He won an Oscar™ for it.

Have you ever read THE HOUSE OF MIRTH? It’s about a very beautiful woman, Lily Bart, a gem of the right kind of parentage to get invited to the right parties in New York in the 1890s. Lily has no money of her own (and no one in her social circles would dream of working, or even dressing badly), and so must marry well. But Lily really doesn’t like the prospect, and so keeps messing up her increasingly depressing prospects by strategically unwise decisions, such as speaking her mind occasionally and not blackmailing people she really should be blackmailing in her own self-interest. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, because it is genuinely touching, but suffice it to say, it’s not a laugh riot.

Wharton was, among other highlights in her long literary career, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, for THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, and is cherished by those who know her writing as the mistress of repressed passion. Unfortunately, her work tends to be dismissed by those who have NOT read her as prissy, an assumption that tends to cover the work of most women writers prior to Anaïs Nin, alas, as though the Victorian Age retroactively threw a blight over the sensibilities of all females from the beginning of time to the 1920s, at least those who might conceivably have picked up a pen.

This is a pet peeve of mine, so I’m going to digress for a moment. The #1 best-selling novel of the 19th century, Mme. de Staël’s CORINNE, concerns a struggle between two lovers: he wants her to give up her career (she’s a celebrated poet) before he marries her, and she refuses; the novel is so sexually charged that it was Lord Byron’s standard gift to his lover du jour.
The modern potboiler was invented by Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823); her work was such a cultural phenomenon that Jane Austen wrote a parody of it, NORTHANGER ABBEY. Actually, if you are looking for lurid subject matter, look no farther than the works of Aunt Jane: if memory serves, her novels include at least three illegitimate children (two in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, one in EMMA), four illicit sexual affairs (one in MANSFIELD PARK, one in PERSUASION, two in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY), a couple who lives together without being married (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE – yes, you read that right)… And if you really want to see bawdy, check out the work of Aphra Behn, 1640-1689!

Okay, that’s out of my system now. Suffice it to say, our time does not have a monopoly on sexy writing, and I have scant patience with people who dismiss anything written before they were born. So there.

Now, I know THE HOUSE OF MIRTH very well; I am a huge fan of how Wharton uses details about clothing and room décor to convey both internal emotion and collective notions of propriety. (Her first publication was a nonfiction work on interior design.) I was prepared, therefore, to have an emotional reaction to the story, especially the part where Lily stands up for her own principles, is misunderstood by the people around her, and refuses to stoop to their level in order to save her own pretty skin. Like most readers, I suspect, I would like to think I would have done the same thing in similar circumstances.

So I was all busy meditating upon my own virtues, as one does, after the show was over, when it hit me very hard: when I first read this book when I was in junior high school (Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School, no less; yes, the Stevenson who once memorably compared writers to filles de joie), one of my big fears was that I was going to grow up to be merely what was then beginning to be called a people-pleaser, someone who was entirely dependent upon what other people thought of her. Essentially, Lily Bart made her living as a people-pleaser, an occupation that can eviscerate the soul in the long run.

And it struck me that in a lot of ways, writers are like those decorative women of the 1890s, constantly primping in order to attract the right husband. Only in our case, we dress up our work to catch the interest of agents and editors. We need to get married to them, contractually, in order to have even a chance of success. But the agents and editors are not, by and large, looking to fall in love with a book when they first encounter it, but only for its potential market value.

They want a mercenary marriage, whereas we do it for love.

It’s hard to accept that about one’s own work, isn’t it? But it’s true: even the agents and editors most devoted to the literary arts are not in a non-profit business; they will only take on what they think will sell, and sell quickly. And to writers, who often devote years or even decades to polishing their works of art, that can seem a little, well, sordid. We want to be loved for our talent, not just our momentary market appeal.

And that’s why, I think, so many writers come away from their first writers’ conferences seriously depressed. Almost everybody walks in wanting to believe that the agents and editors are there to fall in love with talent. But the only way to fall in love with a writer, really, is to read her work on the page. Instead, you get judged on a three-minute verbal pitch; essentially, it’s the publishing world’s version of speed dating.

It’s a little hard on anyone who walks into a conference expecting romance, rather than commerce.

That’s not to say that there aren’t agents and editors out there who love good writing, and are eager to find the next great talent — there are many who answer that description, and those most serious about it often attend conferences. But one of the most sensible things you can do for yourself before your next conference, one of the best ways to keep yourself from feeling hurt in what is invariably a very stressful situation, is to figure out how to describe your work not as someone who loves it would, but as a marketer would.

I know; it’s crass, and I hate to recommend it to you. But it will help you get a fairer hearing for your ideas. If you step into a meeting with an agent or editor without knowing who your target audience is, for instance, or why your book would appeal to that market better than any other book currently on the market, you will not be pitching in the language of the industry. You will be speaking the language of love, and that does not necessarily translate well.

Again, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but now that agents are every bit as tough to court as editors have ever been (and in some cases, significantly tougher), a writer has to be more than a talented wordsmith: a writer has to be bilingual, able to talk about her work both as art and as commercial product. And being a smart marketer, contrary to popular opinion amongst the unpublished, does not make a writer either a sell-out or a bad person: it merely makes her more likely to succeed.

Fear not, my friends: between now and the PNWA conference, I’m going to be giving you tips on how to speak that language. Perhaps not fluently, but enough to get your foot in the door.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

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The Grand Silence

Hello, readers –

When I was a kid, I lived out in the middle of a vineyard, literally. In three directions, our nearest neighbors were half a mile away, and wildlife abounded. I learned to stomp hard when I walked anywhere near where rattlesnakes might be taking a mid-afternoon snooze, to avoid picking up rocks that might conceal sting-happy scorpions, and to use gloves when I cleaned out the garage, lest a territorial black widow jump out at me. They are known for their bad tempers, you know. I learned to walk with care, respecting their habits and preferences, and to jump away quickly, almost without thinking about it, at the first sound of a rattle or move indicative of cold-blooded annoyance.

All of which, of course, was terrific training for when I grew up and started dealing with people in the publishing industry. It’s easy to forget, in the throes of querying and submitting, that these people aren’t mean, for the most part: they, like the beasties of my youth, just are very, very particular about having their boundaries respected. Sometimes, you stumble over a boundary unawares, and then, all you can do is get out of their way.

Remember, this, please, the next time you get a scathing rejection letter or a publishing professional snubs your pitch at a conference. It usually isn’t aimed at you personally; you’re just the one the venom hits. They’re usually not doing it to be mean — you just inadvertently pushed the wrong conversational button. How were you to know that the agent snarling before you had a memoir deal go sour the week before — and yours was the next memoir pitch he heard? How were you to know that the protagonist of your novel bore a startling resemblance to the agency screener’s nasty ex-boyfriend?

But that wasn’t why I started to tell you about my youthful life amongst the beasties. There was a lot of warm-blooded wildlife, too, bears and foxes and deer. And, of course, masses of jackrabbits. So on any given Easter morning of my childhood, my mother could be observed pointing out a window at a racing rabbit and crying, “Look, kids! There goes the Easter Bunny!”

Do you think it actually was?

Now, I’m not here to speculate on whether the Resurrection Rabbit actually exists or not; that is a question, I feel, best left to the great philosophers of our day. I’m telling you this story to remind you of a cardinal rule of dealing with the often writer-insensitive publishing industry: not everything is always what it appears to be from where you’re standing.

Case in point: over the last three days, I have had conversations with four different writers (talented writers, all; three agented, one on the verge of being so) who were racked with worry because their respective agents had been sitting on manuscripts of theirs for so long. In two of the cases, the agents had promised to read the manuscript by a certain deadline, which had passed; in another, the author had performed a major revision, and the book had ostensibly been seen by a number of editors, yet the agent had not said word one for weeks; in the last, the agent had told the author a few weeks ago that the first two readers at the agency absolutely loved the book, and that she herself was reading it now and was hooked, but had gone mum ever since. What could it all mean?

Okay, I don’t want to upset anyone’s relationship with the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus here, but I’ve been in the industry long enough to tell you with a good deal of certainty what it means: these delays have nothing to do with the books. Nor are they indicative of how the agent feels about the author’s work, particularly. They do not mean, in all probability, that the agent is considering dropping/not signing the author, and they do not mean that the agent has been sitting around for weeks now, trying to figure out how she can possibly tell the author that her work is terrible. And they most emphatically do not mean that these gifted writers should give up the craft entirely.

I would bet my last kopeck that the delays in question are indicative of none of these things — all of which, incidentally, were suggested to me by the authors themselves. No, all of my years of experience shout to me that there is another, completely different reason behind each and every one of these delays.

Brace yourself, bunny lovers: the reason is that none of the agents have read the manuscripts yet.

The notion that a manuscript, the result of countless hours of the author’s hopeful effort, could conceivably sit on an agent’s (or editor’s) desk for weeks or months unread is a frightening one, isn’t it? But the sad fact is, it happens all the time.

I hear you rend the skies with your cries: Why?

Well, most agents and editors are really, really busy people; during the day, they work on manuscripts from writers they have already signed, go to meetings, argue with publishers over advances and royalties slow to materialize, pitch new books, etc. Which means that for manuscripts they have not yet accepted, or writers not yet signed, their reading time tends to be limited to a few stray moments throughout the day — and whatever time they can snatch during evenings and weekends.

So your manuscript may well not be gathering dust on a corner of the agent or editor’s desk; it may be gathering dust on in her kitchen, or on her bedside table, or on the floor next to her couch. And that’s the manuscripts she likes enough to want to read beyond the first few pages; few make it as far as being lugged home on the subway.

Think about this for a moment. A manuscript read at home is competing for the reader’s time and attention with any or all of the following: the reader’s spouse or partner, if any; the reader’s kids, if any; going to the gym; giving birth; AMERICAN IDOL; following current events; taking mambo lessons; trying to talk her best friend through a particularly horrible break-up; her own particularly horrible break-up; Jon Stewart on THE DAILY SHOW; grocery shopping; a teething infant; a date with someone who acts like a teething infant; personal hygiene, and voting in local, state, and national elections.

Honey, you shouldn’t be surprised that your manuscript has been sitting in limbo for a month; you should be surprised that it gets read in under a year.

The truth is, agents and editors tend to make decisions very quickly, once they have actually read the manuscript. There is a good practical reason for this: they read far, far too many manuscripts to be able to rely on their memories of the sixteen they read last week. In the long run, a snap decision saves time. However, it may take them a long while to find a moment in which to make that snap decision.

In other words: it’s not about you.

Knowing this doesn’t make the wait any easier, of course, but it might help stop you from indulging in that oh-so-common writers’ mental tic: compulsively wondering what is wrong with you and/or your manuscript. After awhile, that wonder starts to grow, nagging at you, urging you to revise your opening paragraph for the seventeenth time, or making you decide that the agent hates your work and is never going to contact you again. Or – and this one is particularly nerve-wracking – convincing yourself that the agent or editor is sitting up nights, vacillating about whether to go with your book or not. If only there were something you could do to push the decision in your favor…

Yes, I know: there is a rabbit running through those grapevines, and there is a basket of goodies on your doorstep. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the rabbit carried the basket there, does it?

For your own sake, nip this kind of enervating speculation in the bud. It is harmful to your self-esteem, and it honestly doesn’t help your book move through the process. Yes, it is tempting, in a situation where you have absolutely no control over the timing of a decision that will necessarily change your life, to think that there is something you can do to change the outcome. But the instinct to tinker with the manuscript to that end is attractive only because it is one of the few aspects of the situation that you CAN control.

When you feel yourself giving way to this type of thinking (as I do, too, occasionally), don’t let it dominate your life. Pick up the phone or e-mail a writer friend in a similar situation, or someone who is farther along in the process, to reassure yourself that you have not been singled out. Talk to someone who has read your manuscript, to be reassured that it is good. Take up needlepoint. Go to the gym. Start your next novel. But whatever you do, don’t sit around and brood about it, for that way lies great unhappiness.

And if an agent has been sitting on your manuscript for a month, it is perfectly acceptable to send a cheery, non-confrontational e-mail or call for an update. If the agent in question is reading your work with an eye to signing you, it is perfectly legitimate to send an e-mail after three weeks or a month, politely saying that you’re still interested in working with her, but that other agents are now looking at it, too. In fact, the knowledge that another agent is interested in the manuscript might even move you up in the queue.

If you are really afraid of annoying the reader, double the promised amount of reading time, THEN call or e-mail. Don’t whine, and don’t try to persuade; just calmly ask for an update on when you can expect to hear back.

And don’t be surprised if, when you do hear back, it turns out that the agent or editor hasn’t read it yet. She’s been too busy, leaving those baskets of eggs on other writers’ doorsteps.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini