Posts by Chuck Sambuchino
GIVEAWAY: I am (again) excited to give away a free copy of either the 2013 Guide to Literary Agents or Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript, 3rd Ed., to a random commenter. Comment within one week; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. Good luck to all! (UPDATE: Chad Lynch won.)
Keep moving forward. That is probably the best advice I can give you as you continue toward your writing goals, whatever they may be. Just keep moving forward.
2011 was a strange year for me. The first eight months seemed to be filled with near-misses and small disappointments concerning my writing. Things just weren’t going my way. I vented to those who would listen; my wife and literary agent both told me they could take no more so I started complaining to the dog. (If he listens for five minutes, he gets a treat.)
But then, in a span of 45 days in the fall of 2011, I had a flood of good writing news. I formally sold the film option and Japanese language rights to my first humor book about garden gnomes. My new freelance editing business is off to an amazing start, and I’ve helped lots of people so far with their queries, synopses, and manuscripts. I sold a new book on writing called Create Your Writer Platform (released fall 2012). And I finally sold my second humor book — a fusion of funny dog pictures and political humor called Red Dog / Blue Dog: When Pooches Get Political (summer 2012).
So much happened in a span of weeks — all of it amazing news. And I attribute it to one simple thing.
Read MoreThis column excerpted from my book, CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM (Nov. 2012, Writer’s Digest Books), a guide on how to build your visibility, brand, and network to better market yourself and your books. The book includes lots of interviews with literary agents and platform-heavy authors.
When I’m instructing at a writers’ conference, occasionally someone will raise their hand and try to point out flaws in my instruction. Here are some common examples regarding fiction:
Or the most prevalent nonfiction one is this:
Here are three quick things you should know if you’re trying to be a professional writer:
Read MoreGIVEAWAY: I am (again) excited to give away a free copy of the 2012 Guide to Literary Agents to a random commenter. Comment within one week; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. Good luck to all! (Update: Kaitlyn B. won.)
I’ve never met a single person who liked writing a synopsis. Seriously — not one. But still, synopses are a necessary part of the submission process (until some brave publishing pro outlaws them), so I wanted to share 5 basic tips today regarding how to compose one in case you’re query agents or getting ready to pitch at a writers’ conference.
A synopsis is a summary of your book. Literary agents and editors may ask to see one if you’re writing an adult novel, a memoir, or a kids novel (young adult, middle grade). The purpose of a synopsis request is for the agent or editor to evaluate what happens in the three acts of your story to decide if the characters, plot and conflict warrant a complete read of your manuscript. And if you haven’t guessed yet, they’re pretty tough to write. If you are indeed putting one together and sending your work out, check out these tips below:
1. Reveal everything major that happens in your book, including the ending. Heck, revealing the story’s ending is a synopsis’s defining unique characteristic. You shouldn’t find a story’s ending in a query or in-person pitch, but it does leak out in a synopsis. On this note, know that a synopsis is designed to explain everything major that happens, not to tease — so avoid language such as “Krista walks around a corner into a big surprise.” Don’t say “surprise,” but rather just tell us what happens.
2. Make your synopsis two pages, double-spaced. There is always some disagreement on length. This stems from the fact that synopses used to trend longer (six, eight, or even 12 pages!). But over the last five years, agents have requested shorter and shorter synopses — with most agents finally settling on 1-2 pages, total. If you write yours as one page, single-spaced, it’s the same length as two pages, double-spaced — and either are acceptable. There will be the occasional agent who requests something strange, such as a “5-page synopsis on beige paper that smells of cinnamon!” But trust me, if you turn in a solid 1-2 page work, you’ll be just fine across the board.
3.
Read MoreGIVEAWAY: I am (again) excited to give away a free copy of the 2012 Guide to Literary Agents to a random commenter. Comment within one week; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. Good luck to all! (Update: Julia Monroe Martin won.)
I just got back from our awesome-yet-exhausting WD writers’ conference in NYC. During our agent panel, the four literary agents got a lot of intelligent questions from the crowd. One of the questions, which I hear frequently at events, was a complicated one: “Do you need multiple literary agents if you write in different genres or categories?” This is a tricky subject, but one that I want to address, since I myself have multiple agents.
Some writers get into writing with a clear focus in mind — i.e., penning young adult fantasy novels. Other writers want to compose books in different areas. Sometimes it’s not a far stretch to jump — from young adult to middle grade, say. Other times it’s a whole new world — like making a jump from paranormal romance novels to writing nonfiction books about gardening.
(When you’re ready to submit, check out these lists of numerous agent interviews: fantasy agents, science fiction agents, general fiction agents, horror agents, nonfiction agents, middle grade fiction agents, and young adult fiction agents.)
THE 3 PROBABLE OPTIONS
Here are the three likely ways this will happen if you have a literary agent and want to branch out into new worlds.
1. You will have an agent that represents everything you write. In fact, if you want to write in different areas, it would be to your advantage to, if possible, specifically target agents who rep all of your areas when you first query.
2. Your agent will make an exception to rep all your works.
Read MoreI always tell people that my biggest challenge of my job in helping people find literary agents is correcting bad information on the Internet. This is no doubt my biggest challenge on a day-to-day basis in helping people get published.
But if I had to pick a second frustration — one that drives me absolutely bonkers more often than I’d like to explain — it’s the fact that so many writers make themselves difficult to contact and hurt their writer platform. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve wanted to help someone or promote a book or interview an author only to find no e-mail address anywhere online. For example, at least a dozen times, I’ve found a great debut author online whose book I wanted to include in my recurring Writer’s Digest magazine column (“Breaking In”) only to find … no e-mail. No Twitter. No contact information. Plenty of times no website at all. Other times I’ve wanted to interview up-and-coming writers for one reason or another, and I face the same problem. They don’t make themselves available, and I find someone else instead. (Makes you wonder … perhaps someone reading this column right now missed out on some easy promo because they kept their e-mail hidden.)
I have no idea why people make themselves difficult to contact. I think it comes from some sort of old-school fear that if their e-mail is online, all hell will break loose and their identity will get stolen by someone in Chechnya or they’ll be deluged with spam and from hundreds of people asking to borrow money.
Take it from me — this will not happen. I make myself very available through all channels and am in a position to help people, but the amount of cold-contact e-mails I get each month is small and manageable.
The point I’m trying to make is this: In this day and age, book publicity is very valuable and very hard to come by. The last thing writers want to do is make it more difficult for editors to publicize their books. In order to give yourself the best chance at success, here are my suggestions for all up-and-coming writers in terms of making yourself available and easy to contact:
If you’re going to wheel and deal with literary agents and editors, you’ll end up spending more time than you’d like discussing rights, contracts, advances, royalties and a whole lot of other boring important stuff. That said, I want to address the most common questions regarding how advances and royalties work. In other words, how does the payment process work when you sell a book? Here are some FAQs:
1. How do writers make money?
You sign a contract with a publisher. In exchange for signing over the North American and English language print rights to your book and possibly other rights, as well, you are paid one of three ways:
2. Which of the three methods above is most desirable?
An advance against royalties. It’s probably the most desirable, and it is by far the most common. It’s like you get both #1 and #2 combined. Let me explain exactly how an advance against royalties would work. For this example, I’ll keep it real simple (for my own sake). Let’s say the publishing house offers you an advance of $60,000 and royalties of $3/book. Note that the upfront advance of $60,000 is not in addition to royalties, but rather part of royalties – meaning they’ve given you royalties for the first 20,000 books (times $3/book) upfront. Since they’ve already paid you the royalties of the first 20,000 books, you will not start actually making an additional $3/book until you sell copy 20,001. The royalty possibilities are essentially endless. You can make $3 a book forever as long as it keeps selling in bookstores and on Amazon.
3. What if my book bombs? Do they get the money back?
Read MoreThis column excerpted from my book, CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM (Nov. 2012, Writer’s Digest Books), a guide on how to build your visibility, brand, and network to better market yourself and your books. The book includes lots of interviews with literary agents and platform-heavy authors.
Ah, platform. It’s that dirty word writers hate. It appeared several years ago like a bad dream — a word publishing bigwigs used to describe a writer’s ability to sell their own work through a writer’s social media, networking and visibility. The bigwigs made it clear: Writers would not only have to write books now, but be the main marketing force behind them, as well.
Let’s be clear: If you’re a fiction writer, you want a platform. If you’re a nonfiction writer, you need a platform. In fact, if you’re writing nonfiction and you don’t have at least a modest platform, literary agents and editors probably won’t even consider your book idea, no matter how good it may be. If you can’t sell your own book, they ain’t interested in your pitch. In fact, I’ve been speaking so much about platform lately that I wanted to write something here about it here on WU — my thoughts on “current platform” vs. “future platform.” See, building a platform is difficult and takes time. But some good news, in my opinion, is that if you get off to a solid start, you can use realistic, down-to-earth predictions when pitching your book regarding where you will be in the future. After all, your book won’t get published for a year and a half or two years. Surely by that time your platform will have continued to grow — so feel free to mention where you think you’ll be.
ELEMENTS OF A PLATFORM
Off the top of my head, here are some elements that contribute to a writer’s platform:
1. A successful blog
2. A successful newsletter
3. Article/column writing with bylines
4. Contributing to large publications/blogs/etc.
5. Networking and who you know
6. Public speaking, such as presenting at writers conferences and retreats
7. Social media (Twitter/Facebook/etc.)
8. Organization membership
9. Media appearances and interviews
These are all things that a publisher will want to hear about if you’re pitching a nonfiction book. These are your weapons in pitching to a publisher as well as selling your book to readers.
YOUR “FUTURE PLATFORM”
Read MoreThis column excerpted from my book, the GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS (Writer’s Digest Books), the biggest database anywhere if you’re seeking a literary agent.
One of the most common questions I get at writers conferences is this: Can I query multiple literary agents at once? My answer is that not only yes you can, but you’re encouraged to. After all, though an agent will usually reply quickly (bless you, e-mail), they may take three whole months to get back to you, only to send you a form rejection. You can’t wait around for agents one by one like that.
So if you’re contacting various agents at the same time (“simultaneous submissions”), how many agents should you query? Would it be wise to just mail out your query to all 50 agents who rep science fiction, trying to personalize your letter wherever possible? I wouldn’t, if I were you. I would submit to 6-8 at a time, including those you’ve met at a writers conference or retreat.
(By the way, when you’re ready to submit, check out these lists of numerous agent interviews: fantasy agents, science fiction agents, general fiction agents, horror agents, nonfiction agents, middle grade fiction agents, and young adult fiction agents.)
But why 6-8? Isn’t that a strange arbitrary number?
I say 6-8 because I want you to protect yourself. My question to you is this: What if you submit your query to all 50 agents on your master list, but — heaven forbid — your query letter sucks? Every agent will turn you down and you’ll have hit a brick wall at the beginning of your journey. Instead, submit to a limited number of agents and gauge a response. If you submit to 7 agents and get 7 rejections with no reps asking to see more work, then guess what? Your query sucks. So edit your query letter. Overhaul it. Give it to friends, beta readers, and/or a professional book editor for a look. Protect yourself.
Taking this approach one step further, let’s say you send your polished query to 7 new literary agents, and get 4 responses asking for more work. Congratulations — your query letter is doing its job. But let’s say that none of those 4 agents who see a partial ask to read your full manuscript. Guess what that means? Your first few chapters aren’t up to snuff. Revise them. Overhaul them. Give the chapters to friends for a blunt critique.
The message is this: If you’re not progressing as you hope, try to identify where you’re going wrong so you can improve on it as quickly as possible. Protect yourself. Give yourself the best chance of success in finding a literary agent.
Photo courtesy Flickr’s kizette
Read MoreThis column excerpted from my book, the GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS (Writer’s Digest Books), the biggest database anywhere if you’re seeking a literary agent.
One of the most common recurring work blog items I get complimented on (besides my headshot, which my wife has called “semi-dashing … almost”) is my “New Literary Agent Alerts,” a series where I spotlight new/newer literary agents who are open to queries and looking for clients. At writers conferences, a frequent question I get is “Is it OK to sign with a new agent?” This is an interesting question, so let me try to delve into it here.
First of all, let’s look at the CONS:
Now let’s look at the PROS:
How can you decide for yourself?
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