The getting-a-book-published basics, part XI: a few more observations on offer-acceptance etiquette, and a cautionary tale

lily tomlin operator

There I was, peacefully enjoying some well-deserved rest this weekend, when a prime specimen of that species so justly dreaded by writers, the hobgoblins of self-doubt, abruptly pulled up a pillow and sat down on my bed. “Um, Anne?” the wily fellow asked, playfully poking at my cat with his tail. “You know those last couple of posts about what to say and do when an agent calls and offers representation. What if some gifted writer out there mistakenly believes that the questions you recommended are the only ones it’s polite, reasonable, and necessary to ask?”

I yanked the pillow out from under him. “Demon Joe,” — that’s the name of the hobgoblin who specializes in tormenting advice-giving bloggers in the dead of night, so you’ll know should you ever run into him — “Author! Author!’s readers are much, much smarter than that. They know that just as every manuscript requires different revision, and that every book category requires a slightly different kind of agent, every offer from an agent and every subsequent conversation will differ. Now unhand my cat and get out of here.”

Demon Joe slithered across the comforter until he was nose-to-nose with me. “Perhaps. But did you talk about what a writer’s supposed to say if she has manuscripts out with other agents at the time that she receives the offer?

“I talked about that indirectly,” I said defensively, extracting my cat’s tail from Joe’s grasp. “Last weekend, when I was discussing what to do if an agent asks for an exclusive while another agent is already reading the manuscript. You ought to remember — you yanked me out of bed to write it.”

“True enough.” Demon Joe stroked his small, pointed beard thoughtfully. “And I wouldn’t want to disturb your sleep. I Just can’t help worrying about whether an excited aspiring writer, burbling with glee over a phone call from a real, live agent, is going to be in any mood to, you know, extrapolate. But if you’re confident that you’ve covered all of your bases…”

I hate it when Demon Joe is right. If you’ve ever wondered why some of my posts bear timestamps at three or four in the morning, blame him.

I certainly do.

Here, then, is an extra-special bonus middle-of-the-night end-of-the-weekend post, devoted to that most burning of problems most aspiring writers pray someday to have: what you to say to an agent who wants to represent you, when one or more other agents are also considering your manuscript?”

Seem like an unlikely scenario? It isn’t, actually, for any aspiring writer sending out simultaneous submissions. Any time more than one agent is considering the same manuscript, one possible outcome — the best one, actually — is that the writer will need to say something along the lines of, “Gee, I’m flattered, but I’m afraid that I shall have to talk to the X number of other agents currently reading my book. May I get back to you in, say, two weeks?”

The very idea of saying that to an agent who wants to represent you made some of you faint, didn’t it? Believe me, I’ve been there.

Seriously, I have. I wish I had known from the very beginning that having more than one agent reading a manuscript at a time is actually a very good thing for a writer. At least, if all of the agents concerned are aware that they’re in competition over the book.

“What makes you do darn sure of that?” Demon Joe demands. “Stop eyeballing that head-shaped indentation in your pillow and share your experience.”

Okay, okay — I’ll tell the story, but then I’m going back to sleep. Everybody but me comfortable? Excellent. Let’s proceed.

Many years ago, I had just sent out a packet of requested materials — memoir book proposal plus the first three chapters of a novel — when another agent asked to see my book proposal as well. Naturally, when I sent off the second package, I mentioned in my cover letter that another agent was already considering the project.

Thanks, Demon Joe, but I’m way ahead of you on this one: all of you multiple submitters do know that you should always mention it in your submission cover letter if another agent is already reading any part of your manuscript or book proposal? And that you should always drop any agent already reading your work an e-mail if you submit your work to another agent thereafter?

Well, now you do.

Although I knew to be conscientious about that first part, back in those long-ago days of innocence, I was not aware of the second. Indeed, the hobgoblin of doubt dedicated to torturing aspiring writers waiting to hear back on their submissions — Demon Milton, if you must know his name — would have forbidden my acting upon it if I had known: unfortunately, the old conference-circuit advice about never calling an agent who hasn’t called you first was deeply engrained in my psyche.

In other words, I was too afraid to bug Agent #1 to let her know that Agent #2 was looking at my book proposal. Big, big mistake.

Okay, Demon Joe, stop battering my head with your tail: I’m going to show them how to avoid that particular pitfall before I reveal the hideous consequences of not playing by this particular not-very-well-known rule.

So what should I have done instead? If more than one agent asks to see my manuscript (or, in this particular case, book proposal), I should have informed all of them, pronto, so they could adjust their reading schedules accordingly.

No need to name names, of course, or even to go back and tell Agents #1 and #2 that Agents #4-6 also asked to see it a month later. All that any given agent in the chain needs to know is that she’s not the only one considering it.

But I didn’t know that; frankly, I was too tickled to have attracted so much interest. Having stumbled into this rather common error, I set myself up for another, more sophisticated one.

A month later, Agent #2 called me to offer to represent the book. Since Agent #1 had at that point held onto the proposal for over six weeks without so much as a word, I assumed — wrongly, as it turned out — that she just wasn’t interested. So I accepted the only offer on the table, and sent Agent #1 a polite little missive, thanking her for her time and saying that I had signed with someone else.

Demon Joe is prompting me to pause here to ask: did that sweeping, unjustified conclusion make you gasp aloud?

It should have, especially if you have been submitting within the last couple of years. Six weeks really isn’t a very long time for an agent to hold onto a manuscript, after all; now, six months isn’t an unusual turn-around time. But even back then, when about eight weeks was considered the outside limit of courtesy, I should not have leapt to the conclusion that Agent #1 had simply blown me off.

Two days later, the phone rang: you guessed it, an extremely irate Agent #1. Since she hadn’t realized that there was any competition over the project, she informed me loudly, she hadn’t known that she needed to read my submission quickly. But now that another agent wanted it, she had dug my materials out of the pile on her desk, zipped through them — and she wanted to represent it.

I was flattered, of course, but since I had already told her that I’d accepted another offer, I found her suggestion a trifle puzzling. I had, after all, already burbled an overjoyed acceptance to Agent #2. I couldn’t exactly un-burble my yes, could I?

Yet when I reminded her gently that I’d already committed to someone else, all Agent #1 wanted to know was whether I had actually signed the contract. When I admitted that it was in the mail, she immediately launched into a detailed explanation of what she wanted me to change in the proposal so she would be able to market it more easily.

Had I been too gentle in my refusal? What part of no didn’t she get? “I don’t think you quite understood me before,” I said as soon as she paused to draw breath; #1 must have been a tuba player in high school. “I’ve already agreed to let another agent represent this book.”

“Nonsense,” #1 huffed. “How could you possibly have made up your mind yet, when you haven’t heard what I can do for you?”

I’ll spare you the 15-minute argument that ensued; suffice it to say that she raked me over the coals for not having contacted her the nanosecond I received a request for materials. Agent #1 also — and I found this both fascinating and confusing — used every argument she would invent to induce me to break my word to Agent #2 and sign with her instead.

Unscrupulous? Not exactly. She was merely operating on a principle that those of you who have been following this series should have by now committed to heart: until an agent offers a representation contract and a writer actually signs it, nothing that has passed between them is binding.

As I so often tell first-time pitchers who have just been asked to send pages: until there’s a concrete offer on the table, that nice conversation you just had with that agent about your book is just that, a nice conversation.

Of course, #1 may have taken the axiom to heart a little too much — I had, after all, already said yes to another agent, somebody equally enthusiastic about my proposal — but as it turned out, I should have listened to her. I should also have done my homework better: Agent #2, a charming man relatively new to my book category, actually had very few connections for placing the book.

Yes, Demon Joe: that is something I might have learned had I asked him a few more questions before saying yes. Thank you for pointing that out. Now stop rolling around on my flannel sheets.

What happened here? Well, my initial mistake in not keeping both agents concerned equally well-informed allowed an agent who probably knew that acting quickly was his best chance of competing in a multiple submission situation to shut out a better-qualified agent by the simple expedient of asking first.

So what should I have done instead? Contacted Agent #1 as soon as I received the second request, of course — and called her before I gave Agent #2 an answer.

Admittedly, that second part would have required some guts and finesse to pull off; if #2 was deliberately rushing me to commit before I asked too many questions about his track record in selling my type of book, I doubt that he would have been particularly thrilled about my asking for some time to make up my mind. (His agency went out of business within the year, after all; he gave up on my proposal after showing it to only five editors. I received a letter from one of them, saying that he had not submitted it through the proper channels.)

In the long run, though, it would have clearly been far better for me and my book proposal had I taken the time to make sure that I knew what my options were before I took what I deemed to be an irrevocable step. (For a more tips on handling simultaneous submissions far, far better than I did that first time around, please see the WHAT IF MORE THAN ONE AGENTS ASKS TO SEE MY MANUSCRIPT? category on the archive list at right.)

The story does have a happy ending, however: fortunately, the next time I was lucky enough to be in this position, right after having won a major award for my memoir, I had the experience to know how to handle it. I was also fortunate enough to know several previous winners of that particular contest who were kind enough to give me excellent advice on what to do if I won. (It’s always worth tracking down past winners, if you happen to be a finalist: it’s amazing how nice most authors are one-on-one.)

Just so I can convince Demon Joe to remove his pitchfork from my foot region, let’s recap what a writer should do if more than one agent is considering a manuscript when a representation offer gladdens his heart:

(1) Thank the offering agent, but remind her that other agents are currently considering the manuscript.
That should not be news to her, right?

(2) Ask for 3 weeks to check in with the others and make up your mind.
Since this is precisely what she would expect you to do for her if another agent had made an offer first, she should be fine with this. If she isn’t, offer not to commit to anyone else until you have spoken to her again — and set up an appointment a couple of weeks hence to do just that.

Why as much as three weeks? Because it’s entirely possible that none of the other agents have yet so much as glanced at the manuscript. You don’t expect them to make a representation decision before they’ve read your book, do you?

Demon Joe likes that so much that he’s doing a little jig on my bedroom slippers. “Let me be the one to draw out the implication here: yes, some agents who are aware that a manuscript is being multiply-submitted will wait to hear that someone else has made an offer before they give the manuscript a serious once-over.”

The hobgoblin in charge of that particularly nasty (from the writer’s point of view, anyway) game of chicken is called Harold, in case you were wondering. You might want to mutter at him under your breath, should you ever be the writer caught in this situation.

Which is, lest we forget, a good outcome for a submitter. Back to our to-do list:

(3) Then ask all of the other questions you would have asked Agent #1 if she had been the only agent to whom you submitted.
You want to have a basis to decide between her and any of the other agents who say yes, don’t you?

(4) As soon as you get off the phone with #1, e-mail ALL the other agents currently reading any part of your manuscript. Let them know that you have had another offer — and that if they are interested, you will need to hear from them within the next ten days.
Seem fast? It is. It’s also a reasonable amount of time for a rush read, and it gives you a little leeway if any of the other agents needs more time.

After all, the fact that others are reading it isn’t going to come as a surprise to any of them, right? Besides, you don’t want to keep Agent #1 waiting too long, do you?

Stop poking me in the kidneys, Demon Joe. I was getting to the leeway issue.

It’s not uncommon for agents in this situation to ask for more time to read your work. That’s up to you, but do be aware that if you grant extensions, you’re going to have to tell Agent #1 about them.

Doesn’t sound like such an attractive prospect, does it? Wouldn’t you rather build a little extra time into your arrangement with #1, so #2-16 can miss the mark by a few days without sending you into a nail-gnawing panic?

(5) Try to obtain similar information from every agent who makes an offer.
That way, you will be comparing apples to apples, not apples to squid. So if you ask one for a client list — and you should — ask each one that makes an offer. If you talk to a client of #1, talk to #3′s client as well. Otherwise, it’s just too tempting to sign with the one who spontaneously offered you the most information — who may or may not be the best fit for your work.

(6) Make up your mind when you said you would — or inform everyone concerned that it’s going to take a little longer.
But don’t push it too long, and don’t try to use what one agent has said to hurry another. (Over and above simply informing them that another has made an offer, that is.) This is not a bargaining situation; it’s a straightforward collection of offers from businesspeople about whom you should already have done your homework.

And try not to move the deadline more than once. Why? Well, you’re going to want to have a pleasant working relationship with whomever you choose — and although writers often feel helpless when torn between competing agents, that is not how they will see it. The last impression you

(7) After you’ve chosen, inform the agent with whom you will be signing first.
This is basic self-protection, especially if you’ve had to push the decision deadline back more than once. It’s unusual for an agent to change her mind after making an offer, but if she does, you will be a substantially happier camper if you have other offers in reserve.

(8) After you have sealed the deal with your favorite, inform the others promptly and politely.
Do this even if some of the others didn’t bother to get back to you at all — some agents do use silence as a substitute for no, but it’s not courteous to bank on that. They honestly do need to know that they’re no longer in the running.

Resist the urge — and believe me, you will feel it — to explain in thanks, but no thanks e-mails why you selected the agent you did. The agenting world is not very big, after all, and the other agent(s) really don’t need to know anything but that you have indeed made a decision.

Above all, make sure to thank them profusely for their time. After all, they were excited enough about your writing to consider representing you; don’t you want them to buy your book when it comes out?

Hey, my cats are asleep, my various body parts seem to be free of pitchforks, and the hobgoblin all-clear has sounded. (It sounds a lot like a snore from my SO.)

That means it’s time for me to turn in, campers. Good night, sleep tight, and don’t let the hobgoblins of self-doubt bite. Oh, and keep up the good work!

The getting-a-book-published basics, part VIII: why no single rejection means the end of the line — or even rocks ahead

French road sign

One of the ever-changing communications phenomena that most fascinates me is the relatively new practice of people forwarding newspaper articles to one another. Or even blog posts — some of mine have ended up in some awfully odd places. Scads of people who would never dream of clipping a column out of a physical newspaper blithely forward other people’s writing on subjects that interest them all over the place, often with minimal comment.

Basically, they’re saying: I saw this and thought it would interest you, but I don’t really have anything to add to the discussion.

Okay, so maybe that’s a trifle harsh: unlike, say, aspiring writers, many people prefer to be content consumers, rather than producers. The pervasiveness of the forwarding-without-substantive comment practice is largely a side effect of so much information being available online these days. But I must confess, I don’t think it’s really a substitute for discussion, conversation, or even a friendly I was thinking of you.

In particular, I’m constantly bemused at how often I’m forwarded pieces that simply confirm things that the sender is already aware that I have known for years. How do I know that they’re aware of it? Because when I’m interested in something, I like to have discussions about it.

Case in point: last week, no fewer than fifteen people — delightful, well-meaning, quite intelligent people, fully capable of holding up their respective ends of conversations — forwarded me the link to a recent Wall Street Journal article revealing the shocking fact that major publishers in the US no longer read unsolicited submissions from unagented writers. The slush pile, the article breathlessly informed readers, is all but dead.

Which will not come as a surprise, I suspect, to any aspiring writer who has tried to get a book published within the last 15 years. The agented-only submissions policy has been in place at the majors for an awfully long time now.

As, indeed, I would hope that anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis, or even has been following this month’s posts on how the publishing industry does and doesn’t work, was already aware. In case anyone still is not: under no circumstances should a writer query or submit directly to an editor at a major (or even mid-sized US publishing house, unless the editor has specifically requested it. It’s just a waste of a writer’s time and resources.

There, now: none of you fainted, did you? Were any eyebrows even raised?

But then, I am perpetually astonished at the already pretty well-established phenomena that are evidently supposed to flabbergast otherwise reasonable adults. That TV characters who have been flirting for seven consecutive seasons suddenly end up romantically entangled during episodes aired during sweeps week, for instance: um, who precisely is not going to have seen that coming? Or that any given major political initiative is greeted by anything but the unanimous approval of any given legislative body: as nearly as I can tell from the news every night, we’re all supposed to be floored by the fact that politicians disagree with one another from time to time, even when those splits run along precisely the party lines that characterized the last 17 major disagreements. Or that anyone’s cockles wouldn’t be warmed by the magic of Christmas.

Frankly, I like to think that most people are a trifle less credulous than that — and more inclined to learn from experience. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, I don’t think too much of people who are not wiser today than they were yesterday.

Which is one aspect of how the publishing industry treats writers that I really like: it assumes not only that anyone who can write well enough to deserve to be published is an intelligent human being, but also that a good writer can and will learn the ropes of the business side of publishing That’s not an insignificant compliment, in this era where even news shows operate on the assumption that the average adult has the attention span of a three-year-old — and one who has been stuffing candy into his eager mouth for the last two hours at that. Actually, I find agents’ and editors’ presumption of authorial intelligence rather refreshing.

If not always completely justified. Aspiring writers often expend a great many tears, trying to capture the attention of an agent or editor when they do not know the rules for flagging ‘em down. Or that there are rules at all.

Hey, did you hear that new writers never get discovered from the slush pile? Film at 11.

Which may, I suppose, be the point of forwarding some information around. Since the pros expect writers to do their own research before trying to get their books published, those brand-new to the biz are often stunned that nobody in the industry just tells them what to do. From a first-time querier’s perspective, it can seem downright counterproductive that agents just expect her to know what a query letter should look like, what information it should contain, and that it shouldn’t just read like a back jacket blurb for the book.

Heck, how is someone who has never met an agented author in person to know not just to pick up the phone and call the agent in question? Magic? Osmosis?

Similarly, agents, editors, and contest judges presume that anyone genuinely serious about her writing will have taken the time to learn how professional writers format their manuscripts — an interesting presumption, given that many, if not most, aspiring writers are not aware that professional manuscripts are not supposed to resemble published books. (To those of you who just gasped: don’t worry; I shall be going over the differences again as soon as I wrap up my current series on how books get published.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not information that the average writer is born knowing — which is a real shame, since professionally-formatted manuscripts tend to be taken far more seriously at submission time than those that are not.

Why? Well, partially because of that flattering supposition I mentioned above: because people who read manuscripts for a living tend to assume that since good writers are intelligent people, the common conclusion is that the only reason that a manuscript would not be formatted properly is that the submitter did not bother to do his homework.

In other words, from their perspective, a query or submission that does not conform to their expectations of what is publishable (in terms of writing) or marketable (in terms of content or authorial authority) is a sign that the writer just isn’t ready yet to play in the big leagues. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they believe that writer will never produce professional-level work; indeed, folks in the industry tend to assume (and even say at conferences) that they’re confident that if a truly talented writer gets rejected, she will take it as a sign that she needs to improve her presentation.

Since the information on how to do that is available — although nowhere near as readily or conveniently as most agents who say this sort of thing seem to think, despite the pervasiveness of the forwarding culture — why wouldn’t someone with a genuine gift invest the time and effort in learning to do it right?

In my experience as a freelance editor, writing teacher, and conference presenter, there’s a very straightforward answer to that: because the average querier or submitter, gifted or otherwise, doesn’t have a clear idea of what he’s doing wrong. And since most rejection letters these days contain absolutely no clue as to what caused the agent (or, more commonly, the agent’s screener) to shove the submission back into the SASE — or don’t respond at all if the answer is no — I don’t find it all that surprising that the aspiring writer’s learning curve isn’t always particularly steep.

You may forward the link to my saying so. Just don’t quote me without giving me credit, okay?

All of this is why I am bringing up the expectation of intelligent research toward the end of this series on how writers bring their books to publication. Indeed, it’s a large part of the reason that I write this blog: from an outside perspective, it’s just too easy to interpret the sometimes esoteric and confusing rules of querying, pitching, and submission as essentially hostile to aspiring writers.

That’s not really the case. While many of the querying and submission restrictions have indeed been established, as we have discussed, in order to narrow the field of candidates for the very, very few new client slots available at most agencies, the intent behind that weeding-down effort is not to discourage talented-but-inexperienced writers from trying to get their work published. The underlying belief is that an intelligent person’s response to rejection will not be to give up, but to analyze what went wrong, do some research about what can go right, and try, try again.

Yes, what you just thought so loudly is quite correct: the fine folks who toil in agencies and publishing houses don’t expect the writers they reject to disappear permanently, at least not the ones with genuine talent; they believe that the gifted ones will return, this time better equipped for life as a professional writer. To cite the old publishing industry truism, good writing will always find a home.

What the agents and editors who spout this aphorism seldom think to add is: but not necessarily right away. Like learning any other set of job skills, becoming a professional writer can take some time.

Which means, from the business side of the industry’s perspective, writers who give up after just a few rejections — which is the norm, incidentally, not the exception — are those who aren’t seriously interested in making the rather broad leap between a talented person who likes to write and a professional writer in it for the long haul. Trust me, they don’t waste too many tears over the loss of the former.

I don’t see it that way, personally: given how many writers I meet in my classes, at conferences, and through this blog, I see the crushed dreams. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that most talented aspiring writers take individual rejections from agents far, far too seriously.

That’s why, in case you were wondering, I didn’t move on to my promised topic du jour, what happens after an agent agrees to represent a manuscript. There will be time enough for that happy contingency tomorrow.

Today, I want to concentrate on the importance of keeping faith with your own work. These days, it seems as though every other aspiring writer I meet has either:

(a) had sent out a single query, got rejected, and never tried again,

(b) had a few queries rejected two years ago, and has been feverishly revising the manuscript ever since, despite the fact that no agent had yet seen it,

(c) had pitched successfully at a conference, but convinced herself that the only reason four agents asked to see her first chapter was because those agents were just saying yes to everybody,

(d) had received a positive response to a query or pitch, then talked himself out of sending the requested materials at all, because his work isn’t good enough,

(e) had sent out the requested pages, but in order to save herself from disappointment, decided in advance that none of the replies will be positive,

(f) had received the first manuscript rejection — and expanded it mentally into a resounding NO! from everyone in the industry, and/or

(g) concluded from conference chatter that no one in the industry is interested in any book that isn’t an obvious bestseller.

In short, each of these writers had decided that his or her fears about what happened were true, rather than doing the research to find out whether the response that fear and hurt dictated was in fact the most reasonable one.

How might one go about figuring out whether a fear is reasonable? Let me address each of above quickly, to save you some late-night agonizing time:

(a) A single query is not — and cannot — be indicative of how every agent on earth will respond.
A better response: why not try again?

(b) Until agents have actually seen the manuscript, there’s no way a writer can know how they will respond to it.
A better response: work on improving the query.

(c) No, the agents and editors WEREN’T asking everyone to send chapters — pitching doesn’t work that way.
A better response: assume that you did something right and send out the requested materials.

(d) How do you know for sure until you send it out?
A better response: learn how to present your work professionally, then submit it.

(e) In my experience, foretelling doom does not soften future misfortune, if it comes — it only serves to stultify present hope.
A better response: hedge your bets by continuing to query other agents while waiting to hear back from the first round.

(f) ANY individual agent or editor’s opinion of a book is just that, an opinion. It’s not the considered response of everyone affiliated with the publishing industry forever and ever, amen.
A better response: see (a)

(g) Contrary to popular opinion, the publishing industry makes MOST of its money on books that are neither bestsellers nor small-run books. Most of the time, the mid-list titles are paying the agency’s mortgage.
A better response: take the time to learn how the industry works, rather than killing your chances entirely by not continuing to try.

I don’t mean to imply that bouncing back from rejection is easy, or that landing an agent is a snap. The road from first idea to publication is long and bumpy, and seems to get bumpier all the time.

As Maya Angelou tells us, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”

Yes, it’s emotionally hard work to prep your pages to head out the door to agents and editors; yes, it is hard to wait for replies to your submissions. To give you a foretaste of what’s down the road if you’re successful, it’s also psychically difficult to watch the weeks tick by between when you sign with an agent and when that sterling soul decides that, in her professional opinion, the time is ripe for her to submit your book to editors. And then it’s rough to wait until those editors get around to reading it, just as it is agonizing to hang around, feigning patience, between the time a publisher acquires your book and it appears on the shelves.

I’m not going to lie to you: it’s all incredibly wearing on the nerves. Again, though: is film at 11 really necessary?

But if you are thinking about throwing in the towel on your book before you have given the querying and submission processes a thorough test, I’m just not the right person to look to for validation of that decision. Sorry. I’ll give you practical advice on how to query; I’ll hand you tips on how to improve your submission’s chances; I’ll share pointers on the fine art of revision; I’ll answer your questions along the way.

I will cheer from the sidelines until I’m blue in the face for your efforts as a writer — as long as you keep trying.

Why? I can only refer you to one of the few industry truisms that is actually true 100% of the time: the only book that has ABSOLUTELY no chance of being published is the one that stays hidden in the bottom drawer of the author’s filing cabinet.

Keep pushing forward; keep sending your work out. Because while it’s time-consuming, expensive, and emotionally wearing, it’s also literally the only way that your book — or any book — comes to publication.

Long-time readers of this blog will groan with recognition, but once again, I feel compelled to remind you that five of the best-selling books of the 20th century were rejected by more than a dozen publishers before they were picked up. Everybody count down with me now:

Dr. Seuss, AND TO THINK THAT I SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET (rejected by 23 publishers)

Richard Hooker, M*A*S*H (21)

Thor Heyerdahl, KON-TIKI (20)

Richard Bach, JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL (18)

Patrick Dennis, AUNTIE MAME (17)

And all of those books got published back in the days when new writers actually did get discovered in the slush pile. Yet the lesson to derive from these facts, I think, is not that a changing industry should make aspiring writers fling up their hands at how much more difficult it is to get into print now, but that it’s imperative to keep moving forward.

Please, please, PLEASE don’t dismiss your book too soon, on the basis of some preconceived notion of what will and will not sell — even if that preconceived notion fell from the ostensibly learned lips of the agent of your dreams.

Concentrate on what you CAN control, not what you can’t. In order to do that effectively, you’re going to need to learn about how the process actually works. The good news is that the writer does have practically absolute control over the technical and cosmetic aspects of the submission.

Yes, yes, I know — for most of us, getting our thoughts, stories, and worldviews out there is the primary goal of writing a book, so concentrating on the details seems comparatively boring. Most writers want to move directly to unfettered self-expression — and then are surprised and frustrated when the resulting book has difficulty finding an agent, getting published, or winning contests.

But this is a bad idea, both professionally and emotionally. Concentrating almost exclusively on the self-expressive capacity of the book, we tend to read rejection as personal, rather than as what it is: an industry insider’s professional assessment of whether she can sell your work within her preexisting sales network.

To return to what I was saying last week: ask anyone in the biz, and he will tell you that 99% of rejections are technically-based. The rejection usually isn’t of the submitter’s style or worldview, for the simple reason that those are not considerations unless the basic signs of good writing — in the sense of professional writing — are in the submission.

That can be a very empowering realization. As can coming to terms with the fact that while people may be born with writing talent, the ability to present writing professionally is a learned skill.

Once a writer grasps the difference between technically good writing and stylistic good writing, as well as the distinction between a well-written manuscript and a professionally-formatted one, rejections become less a personal insult than a signal that there may be technical problems with how she is presenting her writing. The question turns from, “Why do they hate me?” to “What can I do to make this submission/query read better?”

Yes, yes, I know: emotionally speaking, it’s not much of an improvement in the short term. But at least when the question is framed in the latter manner, there is something the writer can DO about it.

I’m a big fan of tackling the doable first, and getting to the impossible later. And I know I say this quite a bit on this blog, but it bears repeating: without a doubt, absolutely the best thing you can do to increase your chances is to make sure that your submission is crystal-clear and professionally formatted before you send it out.

Out comes the broken record again: pass it under other eyes, preferably those of other writers, people who both know basic good writing when they see it AND have some idea how to fix it.

Longtime readers of this blog, chant with me now: as marvelous as your kith and kin may be as human beings, they are unlikely to give you unbiased feedback — and only unbiased, knowledgeable feedback is going to help hoist your work up over the professional bar.

You can also control how many agents are considering your work, and how often. Since turn-around times tend to be long (a safe bet is to double what the agent tells you; call or e-mail after that, for they may have genuinely lost your manuscript), do not stop sending out queries just because you have an agent looking at your chapters or your book proposal. If an agent turns you down — perish the thought! — you will be much, much happier if you have other options already in motion.

What else can you control, even a little? Well, you can avoid sending your query or submission during the traditional industry dead times (between the second week of August and Labor Day; between Thanksgiving and New Year’s day), or predictable periods of heavy submission (immediately after New Year’s, right after school gets out for the summer). You don’t want to have your work end up in the “read when we get around to it” pile.

Not to be confused with the slush pile, which no longer exists. The Wall Street Journal said so.

Don’t let the hobgoblins of self-doubt carry you off, my friends. Have confidence in your talent — but work hard to learn as much as you can to maximize your book’s chances of success.

Next time, I honestly will talk about what happens if an agent decides to take on a manuscript. Keep the faith, everybody — and keep up the good work!

The getting-a-book-published basics, part VII: unwritten rules, turn-around times, and other things that make writers want to run crying to their mothers

giant kites in Oregon

Before I launch into today’s wit and wisdom, a bit of shameless promotion on behalf of a long-time FAAB (Friend of Author! Author!): the ever-fascinating Mary Hutchings Reed, author of COURTING KATHLEEN HANNIGAN is the featured interview on Women’s Radio’s Your Book is Your Hook. In this radio interview, Mary talks about an issue dear to all of our hearts, successfully marketing one’s own novel. She and other authors also write on the subject at the YBIYH blog.

Okay, back to the business at hand. We begin today’s foray into the realities of publishing with a parable.

I was in a jam-packed coffee shop mid-morning, chatting with a photographer friend of mine. It’s a local mommies’ haunt, so the air was shrill with childish exclamations of joy, outrage, and pay-attention-to-me-now. My much-belated Christmas present to the photographer, a fragile bobble, was wrapped, bubble-wrapped, and in my purse; since the shiny red bow was peeking out, I prudently tucked the purse under the hem of my long skirt whenever children were playing with the contents of the nearby toy box.

You can feel the crisis coming, can’t you? That’s what we in the biz call suspense.

Several three- to five-year-olds were marauding the box when I felt my skirt move beneath me. Before I could shield my purse, a wee pickpocket had nabbed the present and was running away with it, screaming, “Mommy! Christmas!”

Being longer of arm than he was of leg, I was able to snatch the box back before it went smashing to the floor. “No,” I told the miniscule would-be pirate in gentle-but-firm tones, “please don’t take that.”

Naturally, he darted off to tell his mother all about it — probably not flatteringly, as she began glaring at me from the coffee line, twenty feet away. Continuing my interrupted conversation, I gradually noticed a small, terrified figure frozen in my peripheral vision. Another toy box marauder covered his mouth guiltily, as if he expected me to scold him.

Taking in the situation at a glance, as the omniscient narrator of many a late 19th-century novel would say, I hastened to comfort him. “It’s okay — I wasn’t talking to you. You didn’t do anything wrong. Go ahead and play.”

After several soothing iterations, he seemed to calm down. Either that, or the Transformer teetering on the top of the toy pile was more attractive and interesting than I was. Rejection happens to the best of us.

A full two minutes of apparently absorbed play later, Moppet #2′s mother showed up with coffee, stroller, and baby sister. Promptly, the little boy burst into tears, clambered into her lap, and began wailing that he was too scared to play. Amidst the rising hysteria, I could discern only two repeated words: “mean lady!”

Now I had two mothers glaring at me. As the child sobbed, the mother murmured, “I won’t let her hurt you,” and the photographer laughed, I tried to explain what had happened. Without a word to me, Mommy scooped up the increasingly incoherent child and stomped off to a table on the other side of the coffee shop, presumably to distance herself and her brood from my negative aura. The first mother made a point of walking over and introducing herself. For the next hour, nasty glances and reiterations of “I won’t let her hurt you, honey.” passed from their table — yes, the moms joined forces — to ours.

Why am I bringing this up, other than as an explanation of why I don’t tote my laptop to nearby coffee shops as often as I otherwise might? Because even as this story played out, I said to myself, “Wow, this is how a good third of the aspiring writers I know initially reacted to learning how the publishing industry works.”

Yes, seriously. Bear with me here.

Kid #1 is the writer who leaps into approaching agents — or, sacre bleu, editors at publishing houses — without doing his homework: he sees something he wants, so he grabs for it. He doesn’t know better: he calls the agency to pitch directly; he e-mails 45 identical boilerplate queries; he sends an unsolicited manuscript.

And when any of those 45 agents or editors says no, he concludes not that there might be rules he doesn’t know about, but that she’s just mean and withholding.

Kid #2, by contrast, is the writer so terrified by everything he’s heard — on the Internet, at writers’ conferences, from fellow writers — about the perils of rejection that he simply worries himself to a standstill. He wants to play with the toys (which are, after all, there in the box for his enjoyment), but he’s scared of someone yelling at him if he makes the effort. He might do something wrong, and thus blow his chance. Just look at what happened to that other kid!

So he waits for someone in authority to tell him that what he wants to do is okay. And then, like so many aspiring writers who have worked up the courage to query or pitch and have received requests for pages, he loses his nerve.

Far, far less risky to complain vociferously about how genuinely scary the situation is than to stick out his neck solo. Some Millicent might scold him if he tried.

I can’t work the two moms into the metaphor; sorry.

My point is, for both kids, the mere fact that someone they didn’t know was enforcing a rule was intimidating, even if the adult laying down the law was someone as soft-spoken as yours truly. I’m not precisely the type whose approach makes dogs and small children whimper, if you catch my drift, but limits are startling, especially when you’re new to the game.

If you didn’t know that a fence was there until you ran right into it, the shock is substantial. It hurts almost as much as the bump the fence post gave your head.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the fence was out to get you, any more than the lady who doesn’t want you to steal from her purse is mean. Every type of human interaction has its own set of rules, and the sooner a person learns them, the sooner he can learn not to react to impersonal barriers as though they were personal attacks.

On a not entirely unrelated note, last time, I broached the burning question at the front of the mind of every writer who has ever submitted a manuscript to an agency: how soon will the agent make a decision about whether to represent my book?

The answer, pretty much invariably, runs a little something like this: not as quickly as the writer would like.

And that reality, like the excellent life axiom Do Not Lift Things From Other People’s Purses, is applicable to everyone, not just oneself. Try not to take slow turn-around times personally — or as any reflection whatsoever upon the quality or marketability of your writing.

It’s just the way the system works. And no, that present in my bag is not for you, kid.

Don’t believe me? Or, more likely: believe me rationally, but can’t accept it emotionally? Let’s analyze the situation.

Tell me again why the submission process seems to take so long?
As we discussed in the previous post, agents don’t draw out the submission process just to torture writers — the delays in turn-around are often due to logistical considerations, such as the number of screening levels though which a manuscript must pass prior to the agent, how backlogged the agent’s reading schedule is (remember, she doesn’t just need to peruse new clients’ books; her existing client list keeps producing manuscripts, too), and the sheer volume of submissions an agency receives.

Oh, and people who work in agencies have lives too; no one, however dedicated to literature, reads 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year plus one in leap year.

As much as impatient writers might like them to do so. Or to believe that any delay in hearing back, however minute, could only be explained by the agent’s reaction to the manuscript.

But that’s almost never true. Despite the fact that aspiring writers tend to be very, very gifted at manufacturing creative reasons that they haven’t yet received a response after submitting requested materials, the usual reason is quite prosaic: if you haven’t heard back about a submission, chances are that the people at the agency who need to read the manuscript just haven’t had time to get to it yet.

Or at least, as is often the case, haven’t read beyond the first few pages. But believe it or not, when an agent skims the opening of a manuscript and sets is aside to read more closely later, that’s actually good news, from the writer’s perspective. Even if the submission subsequently gathers dust and coffee stains on the corner of his desk, its author has reason to rejoice.

Why? Well, contrary to popular belief, agents and editors will seldom read an entire manuscript before deciding to reject it. Once they come to a page (or paragraph, or even sentence) that raises a red flag, they generally stop reading altogether.

In fact — and you might want to sit down for this, if you’re new to this blog — it’s very, very common for submissions to get rejected before the bottom of page 1. One frequent flag-raiser: wildly unprofessional presentation; in case you’re not aware of it, there is a standard format for book manuscripts (explained in great detail in the posts under the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT and STANDARD FORMAT ILLUSTRATED categories at right).

I can sense some resistance to the concept of quick rejection floating out there in the ether. “But Anne,” dewy-eyed idealists everywhere exclaim, “that can’t possibly be right. No one seriously interested in writing would dismiss a book without reading it. They’ve got to give it a fair chance. If an agent asks to see my manuscript, of course he’s going to take the time to read it!”

Oh, my dears. The explanation is going to be even harder for you to accept than what has already raised your hackles, I’m afraid.

The front-loaded submission screening process
Rejected manuscripts rarely read in their entirety, for the exceedingly simple reason that if a manuscript has problems throughout — anything from clichèd dialogue to grammatical errors to lack of excitement on the page — it tends to show up within the first few pages. Or at least within the first fifty.

Which is why, in case anyone was wondering, agents so often ask for fifty pages. Or the first chapter. Millicent the agency screener assumes — and so does her boss, and so will an editor — that if the writing has problems or the story is weak early on, it will remain so for the rest of the book.

Are you thinking that aspiring writers who take a while to warm up are out of luck? Good; you’re beginning to understand how the system works. And that, my friends, is a significant advantage.

How? Being aware of how front-loaded the submission process is enables a writer intending to submit to edit those opening pages so that at least some of the book’s best writing appears first, as well as prompting a special care to avoid rejection triggers there.

Again, not entirely coincidentally, here at Author! Author!, we tend to spend quite a bit of our energy on how to identify and excise these manuscript red flags. For an intensive analysis of dozens of the most common rejection reasons and tips on avoiding them in your submissions, please see the HOW NOT TO WRITE A FIRST PAGE category on the list at right.

Back to that good news I mentioned above: if an agent reads the first few pages of a submission and sets it aside to peruse later, that means he hasn’t rejected it; unlike the overwhelming majority of submissions, its opening passed muster. Hooray!

Insofar as a submission’s sitting on an agent’s bedside table for three months can be a hooray-inducing situation.

I’m sensing more disturbance in the ether. “Okay,” the idealists concede reluctantly, “I can see how rejection might be a speedier process than acceptance. But if the agent (and his Millicent who screens things for him) makes up his mind that quickly about most rejections, does his setting my manuscript aside to read later mean that he’s already basically decided to accept it?”

Oh, would that it were that simple. Once a manuscript has cleared the instant rejection hurdle, many other criteria come into play.

What makes an agent decide to take on one manuscript, rather than another, when both have been sitting on the edge of his desk for the past three months?
One reason, and one reason only: she believes that she can sell the first book in the current literary marketplace. Period.

In other words, in her professional opinion, not only is the book is well-written and might interest people who buy and read books, but she also has the connections to editors at major or mid-sized publishing houses who will be interested in bringing this particular manuscript to publication. Furthermore, she believes that the book concept and presentation are polished enough that she can begin sending it out to editors without having first to invest tremendous amounts of her time in re-editing the work. Also, based upon how the writer has presented the manuscript and handled the querying/pitching and submission process, she believes that the writer is sufficiently professional and well enough versed in how publishing works that she will not need to hold his hand throughout every step of the process.

Makes you want to run crying to your mother, doesn’t it?

Idealists’ hands just shot up all over the English-speaking world. “But Anne, this extremely complicated set of conclusions is, you must admit, hardly likely to be something an agent is likely to reach on a purely spontaneous basis three lines into the manuscript! So how can Millicent possibly reject any manuscript on page 1?”

Rather easily, as it happens — you wouldn’t believe how many submissions contain major grammatical or logic errors on page 1. But you do have a point, idealists: even for the minority (and it is a minority, alas) with impeccable opening pages, Millicent needs to see more than just a technically correct, clearly-written, genre-appropriate manuscript: she is looking for something that will grab her boss.

In other words, most agents require far, far more reasons to accept a manuscript than to reject it. Just good, or even good and marketable, is seldom good enough to land an agent.

Quash the impulse to throw a toy at the mean lady who is telling you the rules, please. She didn’t make them.

In order to come up with that array of pluses, the agent will need to spend some time getting to know the book. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that she will be reading it with a charitable eye. Remember, reputable agents only make money if they can sell their clients’ books: she can only afford to take on what she’s confident she can sell.

So since even an extremely successful agent can take on only a few new clients per year — especially in this economy — in practice, agents considering a new client typically read with an eye peeled for reasons not to take on the book.

Yes, even for that tiny percentage of submissions that make it past Millicent. As an agent of my acquaintance likes to say, he scours the first 185 pages of a submission from a would-be client eager to find reasons to reject it. After he’s invested the time to read up through page 185, then he starts looking for reasons to accept it.

Those reasons will not necessarily be purely literary, or even aesthetic, mind you. Agenting is, after all, not a non-profit enterprise devoted to the cause of art for art’s sake, but a business.

The choice to sign a client, then, is very seldom purely the result of the agent’s just falling in love with the book at first sight — although rejection often does come that quickly. She may well fall in love with it eventually, but it’s a more mature, reasoned sort of love, the result of a considered decision, not a gut impulse.

I’m bringing this up because often, the underlying assumption behind the “But what’s taking so long?” cri de coeur is not just the mistaken belief that an agent who requested materials will drop everything in order to read them the moment they arrive, but also the misguided theory that if a book is compelling, the reader won’t be able to put it down until she finishes reading it.

Trust me, people who read manuscripts for a living manage it. All the time. If they couldn’t, they’d never be able to leave work at the end of the day or go to sleep at night.

And you know how Millicent needs her beauty sleep.

Another frequent submitter’s assumption is that good writing is inherently so arresting that any professional reader worth her salt should be able to identify an exciting new voice instantly, practically from the top of page 1. While it is often the case that good writing will make professional readers think, “Wow, I’m looking forward to reading on!” that does not mean the initial tingle of hope should be confused with the ultimate decision to represent the book.

The former merely means that the latter outcome is possible, not that it is guaranteed. That possibility is what keeps Millicent — and her boss, if a submitter is lucky — turning pages.

Thus, the secret writerly fantasy about a literary agent’s taking one look at a query letter or hearing a pitch and crying, “STOP! I don’t need to know anything else! I must sign this writer immediately!” just doesn’t happen in real life. (Well, okay, so it does happen to the occasional celebrity, but I’m guessing that if any of you were already famous and/or internationally disreputable, my blog wouldn’t be the first place you would look to find out how to seek representation.) A reputable agent is going to want to read the manuscript in its entirety before making up her mind — or, for nonfiction, the entire book proposal.

Yes, no matter how stellar the book’s premise may be or how good the writer’s credentials may be for writing it. Many a marvelous idea has been scuttled by poor presentation. As they like to say in the industry, it all depends on the writing.

Yet that truism is a trifle misleading, because — and this would be a good time to reach for your inhaler, if you’re prone to stress-induced asthma — writing quality alone is not necessarily enough going to be enough to charm an agent into agreeing to represent a book.

Yes, the agent generally has to like the writing, find the premise appealing, regard the characters as well-rounded and believable, and so forth, but since she will have to make a substantive argument to an editor about how this manuscript is different and better than both similar books already on the market and the other manuscripts the editor is likely to see anytime soon, she does need to pay close attention to the book’s selling points over and above the beauty of the writing.

Including, incidentally, whether the manuscript is the kind of book that’s selling right now. Not what is currently featured in bookstores at the moment, but what editors are buying now.

Trends: sometimes the writer’s enemy, sometimes friend
As we discussed earlier in this series, there’s generally at least a year between when a publisher acquires a book and when it’s released, so what consumers may buy today is actually a reflection of what editors were buying 12 or 15 months ago, possibly more.

This fact is crucial for aspiring writers to understand, as it has a huge effect on the marketability of their manuscripts, from an agent’s perspective. Since the book market is notoriously susceptible to trends — ask anyone who happened to be trying to sell a vampire romance immediately after the TWILIGHT series hit the bestseller lists, or anyone attempting to market a memoir just after the A MILLION LITTLE PIECES scandal broke — agents’ self-protective attention to what is selling now, as opposed to 5, 15, or 100 years ago, often means that a manuscript that would have experienced little difficulty finding representation in another year might seem like too big a risk to for an agent to take on now, and vice versa.

Yes, you are understanding me correctly: from an agent’s point of view, a good book is not necessarily a marketable book — and a book that is marketable today is not necessarily what will be considered especially marketable six months or two years from now.

Which is why, in case those of you who have attended writers’ conferences recently have been wondering, some agents are prone to telling rooms full of gaping aspiring writers, “Oh, no one is buying that kind of book anymore.” They don’t mean that the specified type is never going to sell again — they mean that there isn’t a particularly strong demand for it amongst editors at the major houses right now.

But as an honest agent will be the first to tell you, no one can possibly say for sure what will be selling well next year. Especially given current market conditions.

So when aspiring writers complain about how books like theirs are not finding agents these days, it’s unlikely to strike anyone affiliated with the publishing industry as a searing indictment of their collective aesthetic judgment, but rather as a simple statement of fact about the current literary market. That some types of writing will fall out of fashion from time to time is inevitable; that ones that were not hot in the past will become so is equally inevitable.

And if that fact makes you want to tattle on agencies, rather than sending out another flotilla of queries next month, or renders you immobile with horror at the prospect of mailing the book you’ve spent the last three years writing to an agent who routinely dismisses excellent manuscripts because he cannot expect to sell them, well, you’re like most aspiring writers.

Specifically, like the ones who become convinced that a handful of rejections can only mean that their manuscripts are no good. Or the ones that never work up the nerve to query or submit at all.

If, on the other hand, your first response was, “Wow, it sounds like Anne’s spouting that old truism about the weather, if you don’t like it, wait a minute,” then congratulations: you’re catching on to how publishing works.

See why it’s so vital to a writer’s continued happiness not to take the vagaries of the literary market personally? Don’t let the rules of the coffeehouse frighten you away from that toy box; it’s there for creative people like you.

Keep up the good work!