Are You Ready to Contact an Agent? Take This Short Quiz and Find Out
By Guest | May 30, 2013 |
Today’s guest is Erica Verrillo. Erica is the coauthor, with Lauren Gellman, of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide (St. Martin’s) and author of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Treatment Guide, 2nd Edition. Her short stories have appeared in Million Stories, Front Porch Review, THEMA Literary Magazine, 580 Split and Nine. Ms. Verrillo’s first screenplay, The Treehouse, was completed in 2011.
Erica says, “Although creativity is the chief concern of writers, I know from experience that the publishing world demands that writers also be businessmen – that is, if they want to become authors. It is very easy these days to simply self-publish, but in order to become a successful author a good working knowledge of how the publishing world works is essential.”
Follow Erica on Twitter or visit her Facebook page to learn more. Enjoy!
Are You Ready to Contact an Agent? Take This Short Quiz and Find Out
You’ve finally completed your book. You’ve had it critiqued – brutally – and done more revisions than you care to count. Your proofreader has made sure there’s not a single error in the entire manuscript, and now you are confident that your work is ready to be published. What next? Obviously, you need an agent. So, after searching AgentQuery for agents representing your genre, and consulting Jeff Herman’s Guide and the most recent Writer’s Digest, you are sitting down to compose the perfect query letter.
Stop. You’ve skipped some steps.
Before you can even think about contacting an agent, there are several important questions you must be able to answer. Why? Because, if an agent calls you, she or he will ask them. (I know this from painful personal experience.) You must be prepared to reply with compelling answers.
This short quiz will tell you if you are ready to take on the publishing industry.
- Have you written a one-page summary of your novel? Do you have a “hook,” an intriguing sentence that will draw your audience into your story? For example: “A man wakes up one morning to discover that every single person he knows is trying to kill him – even his wife and kids – and he has no idea why.” Can you keep your agent’s full attention for three minutes while you describe (verbally, or in writing) the rest of the story? In short, if your agent asks, “What’s your book about?” can you sell it? 20 points
- Have you researched your market? Who will buy your book? Agents rely on numbers because publishers do, so you have to be able to say, with accuracy, how many people are in your demographic. (Hint, “adults” is not a demographic. College-educated, married women with small children is a demographic.) 20 points
- What is your competition? Your agent will want to know the titles, authors, publishers, and year of publication of other popular books in your genre (or field). There are two reasons for identifying your competition: 1) You have to prove that there is already a market for your kind of book, and 2) You have to prove that your book is better or different. (Give specifics.) 20 points
- How will you reach your market? Do you have a platform? You may think that marketing is the job of your publisher, and it is. But agents must convince editors that not only is there a market for your book, but that you have the credentials, and visibility, to promote your work. In the old days, BI (before internet), this was done through book tours, signings, and talks. You can still do those things, but what agents really want to know is how many people are reading your blog/website. (Publishers are fond of the number 10,000, so it helps to be able to say, “My blog/website has had 10,000+ page views.”) If you have published other books, how many were sold? Do people in your field or niche know who you are? Do you have any famous contacts who can give you endorsementS? 20 points
- Do you, in Michael Larsen’s immortal words, “harbor a consuming lust for success,” and are you “irresistibly driven to do whatever it takes to make your books sell?” Your agent will expect you go the whole nine yards, and to comply – eagerly – with whatever sports metaphors your publisher will hurl at you. This is no time to be a shrinking violet. You are going to have to step up to the mat and bat a thousand. 20 points
If you scored a hundred, congratulations! You are ready to contact an agent.
If you answered, “I don’t need to do that,” “I can’t do that,” or “Huh?,” to any of the above questions, then get to work!
How to score 100 on the test
- Fortunately, there are a many good books about pitches and proposals. I recommend Michael Larsen’s How to Write a Book Proposal. (This book is also useful for fiction.) Larsen really understands the publishing industry, so you can rely on his advice. To get the hang of preparing pitches, start with a pitch for a book you haven’t written. If your one-sentence hook can make your friends want to read the book, then move on to pitching your own work.
- To determine your demographic, check the Alexa ranking for every well-trafficked website related to your genre or field. Alexa includes a demographic profile for high-ranking sites. Identify all the organizations or groups that might have an interest in your topic. What is their membership?
- Amazon is one of the greatest research tools of all time. To identify your competition, look up the bestsellers in your genre. What books are on the top 100 lists? Who publishes them? Use the “look inside” feature to compare those books with your own. (Google Books also allows generous previews.)
- Building a platform takes time. But you can accumulate 10,000 page views in a few months if you blog about interesting topics – and if you do some social networking. Advertise your blog posts on Book Blogs, Goodreads, and LinkedIn groups. You can precycle your posts on blogs that get more traffic than yours. You can recycle your blogs, as well, on sites that accept reprints. Look up the top 50 blogs in your genre on Blogrank and read them! High-ranking blogs invariably contain lots of insider tips, trends, news, and industry gossip.
- Getting writers to harbor a consuming lust for anything other than writing is a tall order. Writers are an idealistic lot, deeply committed to exploring the human soul while crouched in front of a keyboard in a dim, unheated garret. Before you contact an agent, you need to go through a metamorphosis – from idealistic writer, to practical businessman. When your agent asks if you will do anything to sell your book (mine did), there can only be one answer.
Are you ready to contact an agent?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
I’m choosing to not seek an agent at this time. I’ve self-published two books. I’m blogging and using social media as promotional tools. Based on editor and reader feedback, my books are ready for publishing. But I want to hone my craft. I’ll likely write two or three more books before I seen a traditional deal.
I’m guessing #4 is going to be the most difficult one for most writers.
Social networking is an entirely different skill set from writing, and while some authors excel at it, others don’t. Less socially-gifted authors, after reading they should be able to ‘accumulate 10,000 page views in a few months’, would probably laugh, cry, or both.
Then there’s the frightening prospect that they will spend all this time building up a platform (an activity they don’t enjoy), only to discover upon querying that no agents are passionate enough about their book to offer representation. Thus, they have to go through more edits, and/or finish the next book. This could take months, if not years, and during that whole time they will have to maintain their online presence.
That’s why I feel a lot of your readers can easily score an 80 on this quiz with a little effort. It’s the last 20% that will require the most hard work.
This list is excellent, Erica. You’re spot on that there’s so much more to getting a book published than simply writing the book. Thanks for upping the business side list of expectations.
These are all good questions, but another to add to the list, especially for a debut author, is what are you working on next, and how far along are you? Agents want writers who are planning on having a writing career, and they know that publishers might ask them the same question when they put the author’s book forward.
You’re right Claire. A question one of my critique partners was asked before her agent signed her was a list of future story ideas. They didn’t need to have been started (or even followed through, in the future). Her agent simply wanted to gauge the level of a potential client’s creative thinking. Agents want to know the book you’ve written isn’t a one-off wonder.
All of these are awesome, but I think number 1 may be the most important. Getting your 90,000 word novel down to one intriguing sentence? That’s tough! But still very necessary to catch an agent’s attention. If you can’t interest them in your book, they won’t be able to interest a publisher.
Building a platform is not really necessary for fiction writers. Anthony Ryan, a fantasy author, managed to get a publishing deal after self publishing because his book was selling well without a platform. Any fiction writer who spends enough time to build a platform that gets 10000 hits is probably not writing enough.
This is a wonderfully practical and concise 0post-a real keeper, and one to share with my students. Thank you you!
I’m sorry, I don’t agree with some of the things on this list, the platform being the main one. It really depends on the agent you choose and the kind of book you’re writing. At this point, it’s fairly well known that if you write non-fiction, you need a platform. But if you write fiction, agents are quite divided about whether you need a platform before or after publication.
The first thing an agent will want to see after your query letter is your story. It’s the story that will determine whether the agent thinks your book has a market.
As for blogs, the jury is also out on blogging these days. The blogging market is saturated, and most writers quite frankly write the wrong kind of blog to attract a “Reader” audience. They write incredibly boring blogs about the craft of writing, which readers really don’t care about, at all; instead of sharing who they are as a person–which is what we are, before we’re a writer. Besides, Tumblr has become the preferred platform.
If an agent likes your script enough to pick up the phone, depending on how inspired they are by it, the conversation can go in a number of different directions, and not one of the questions you suggest may be asked in that first conversation. Very often, what an agent wants to know in that first call is “who is the person who wrote this story I’m in love with?” Your post makes it sound as if every agent who calls will ask the exact questions you’ve listed. While it’s good to know these things will be necessary at some point, and good to keep them in mind, it *is* the creative part of the work that grabs an agent first. Because in fiction it is originality that sells the story. The rest, i.e,. all the marketing, can be created after the fact in any number of ways. That is the difference between fiction and non-fiction.
I also question how you have phrased preparing the script before submission. Perhaps it’s tongue in cheek when you say “you’ve finished your book and had it critiqued–brutally,” but this doesn’t sound appealing to me, either as a writer or as a developmental editor. Nothing has to be brutal in the writing process, except the writer’s honesty with him- or herself as they’re writing. Some people may be brutal in their approach to your work, but unless you trust them, RUN, and don’t look back. There is a universe of difference between brutal and honest. Or brutal and direct.
As for the one- or two-page summary (up to 500 words of a short synopsis), an agent will ask for that at some point. Maybe at the beginning, if they have read the script partially and want to see if you’ve figured out the arc of the storyline. But they will also ask for it down the road, when the script is ready to go out to a publisher for consideration. I know this from second-hand experience. One of my critique partners landed a top agent in her genre last year and it wasn’t until her script was going to out publishers that her agent asked for the synopsis, and we worked on it at that point. So, again, no hard and fast rule as to when this should be ready.
Finally…comparing your book to those of other authors in order to show a potential readership…some agents like this, some don’t. I can’t think of the agent offhand who recently wrote that they’re uninterested in hearing this, especially in a query letter and in general they don’t care.
I notice you are both non-fiction writers. Perhaps many of the things you’ve listed are for non-fiction publication?
Thanks for the excellent list, Erica.
I struggle with the condensing my 90,000 word novel down to one “catchy” sentence. Sometimes this gets subjective and one man’s hook is another man’s clunker but it’s important to try to capture your pitch in a single sentence.
Again, knowing the market, being able to speak about your book and having the tools necessary to put yourself in a position of success is key.
Great post.
Obviously I was not the only writer bothered by #4. I agree with Sevgne that the blogging market is pretty saturated, and I simply cannot fathom that every blogger who just “blogs about interesting topics and social networks” is really going to attract 10,000 readers in a few months. Someone would have to prove to me that there are truly that many readers for every blog. I know I can barely keep up with all the blogs I would like to, due to time constraints.
And the blanket statement that “High-ranking blogs invariably contain lots of insider tips, trends, news, and industry gossip”? So all Joe Blogger needs to do is make sure that, whatever else he writes about, whatever his heart is for his blog, he includes some gossip and trends, etc., to bring in more readers? What if he’s not privy to the gossip in his particular industry? And even if every blogger does this – what’s to make THEIR news/gossip/trends stand out from all the other bloggers doing the exact same thing in an effort to attract those mythical 10,000 readers? I would like to think that agents have more brains than this.
Finally, “Do you have any famous contacts who can give you endorsements?” No, and I don’t think I’m likely to come across them in my daily life, frankly. Nor, I suspect, will the vast majority of authors out there.
That said, the rest of the advice is far more useful and helpful – and makes more sense overall.
This is SO helpful! Thank you a million times over; I was just about to search for this very information on google!
Love this. Great reminders distilled to five points. Thanks.
I will join the many who disagreed with points the authors have made. I, too, felt the post was more geared to non-fiction than fiction. But the point that bothered me the most was the comment about Alexa rankings. I’m the owner of a 7-year-old, 800-page website that gets 5 million hits per year. (Trust me, no matter what you read, Google believes in hits and mentions them in their Google Analytics “Terms of Service” policy.) I would contend that Alexa rankings have very little value in most cases and would never recommend that writers spend much, if any, time on them.
I feel the tone of the post is way too harsh and discouraging. Honesty is a good thing, but so is reality. Not every writer is going to have 1-5. Will an agent turn the writer’s magnum opus down because of that? I doubt it.
I would be interested in hearing what some of the agents on this forum have to say about the recommendations of the authors of this post.
I hope my comments and those of others don’t seem too harsh to the post authors. We wouldn’t want to discourage them. Just the opposite, I think a bit of conflict in blog posts can be just as good/exciting as conflict in a good novel.
I would definitely agree with this. As someone about to try (again) to query my first novel, I was left feeling more than a bit nervous by this post.
I just came back from a writer’s conference last weekend, where at least half a dozen agents (including Donald Maass, who often posts on this site), gave the exact same message.
Great writing trumps EVERYTHING.
EXACTLY.
If I boiled my comment response to a log line it would be: “Great writing trumps EVERYTHING.” Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you for sharing this quiz. I am in a re-write of my novel after a writer’s conference and self-editing course. I question how to use a blog effectively as a young-adult fiction writer without fearing that your ideas could be snapped up before you have a chance to contact an agent? Perhaps this fear is unwarranted?
I have invested lots of moolah and logged breathtaking hours of research on this subject, but I still learned MUCH MORE in this post. Thank you.
[…] Are You Ready to Contact an Agent? Take This Short Quiz and Find Out – A clever way to ask yourself some key questions in your pursuit. […]
Thank you for such an informative and helpful list.