Business
Today we welcome guest Laura Cross to Writer Unboxed. Laura, an author, editor and writing coach, is the author of a new book — The Complete Guide To Hiring A Literary Agent: Everything You Need To Know To Become Successfully Published. We’re happy she’s with us today to discuss something every writer wants to know more about: writing a successful query letter.
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Literary agencies receive tens of thousands of query letters each year. With a rejection rate of 99% (ouch!), it is essential that you carefully construct your query to receive a positive response. Here are a few tips to help you create a winning query letter:
FOR FICTION QUERIES
The publishing blogosphere has lately been ablaze with posts about ebooks and ebook pricing. A contingent of ebook consumers are crowing that, in light of the recent Amazon/Macmillan standoff and pricing precedent that was set, ebook prices will shoot through the roof. They recently attempted character assassination using a deplorable 1-star Amazon review campaign on at least one author after he spoke out in support of this “agency model.” The backlash continues, on- and offline.
Folks on the other side of the fence — publishers and authors, mostly — are pleased by the flexible pricing model. It ensures increased revenue opportunities, which they believe will benefit their livelihoods. Outspoken proponents believe the market will easily bear “beyond $9.99” pricing. Some authors suspect this new climate will empower them to influence their ebooks’ pricing; still others in the DIY self-publishing culture view this as an opportunity to better-control their financial fates. We’ll make a living at this writing thing, after all. Our future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades.
Regardless of the pro and con positions, both camps seem to agree that a substantial stake of The Future Of Publishing hinges on ebooks, and that these cantankerous days represent an embryonic Wild West of a new stage in publishing’s evolution. Everything’s in flux. We’ll find our way.
Yet I believe that the fate of ebooks, if they are indeed the Future Of Publishing, has already been sealed — which particularly impacts authors hungry to make a living wage from their works.
Read MoreI recently read this advice telling fiction writers not to worry (initially) about online presence or platform.
I run across this advice frequently—and I used to offer up some version of it, e.g., focus on perfecting your work first before you jump into submitting.
While I still believe that to some extent, this view can set up writers for disappointment and failure if/when they do get published. So let’s dispel some myths.
Myth: In fiction, craft is the most important thing.
Why this view is problematic: Most writers aspire to sell their work to a traditional publisher. While it’s important in fiction to have a wonderful and exceptional manuscript, sadly that doesn’t make your work salable or marketable.
(Writers, don’t you complain all the time about the crap that gets published by New York houses?)
Mediocre writers with sales & marketing savvy are more likely to succeed in commercial publishing than talented writers without sales & marketing skill.
Myth: Fiction writers need to focus on writing (or completing their first manuscript).
Why this view is problematic: Few writers—even the established ones—have the luxury of just writing, and frankly, it’s better not to set up an unrealistic idea that your valuable time should be spent only writing (while pushing off the undesirable online or marketing activities to a publisher).
Even while producing your first manuscript, you need to find ways to meaningfully interact with others online, consider how your stories can reach readers in new or dynamic ways, and develop some skill at soft marketing and promotion (or branding yourself), before those skills are called upon to ensure the success of your published work.
But perhaps most importantly, online interaction leads to deep developments in how you write, who you write for, and how many you write for. Every writer should be invested in audience development.
What is audience development?
Read MoreThe American Booksellers Association wrapped up their fifth annual Winter Institute meeting this weekend. The ABA discusses trends that affect booksellers, and their forecast for 2010 is also of interest to writers. The association commissioned Verso Advertising to conduct a survey of book-buying habits, breaking down demographics, frequency of purchase, and the impact of e-books. The results are both expected and surprising:
These findings shouldn’t come as any surprise. People with more leisure to read tend to skew older or younger because they are hampered less by jobs and childrearing responsibilities. But it’s encouraging to know that people are still buying books. Lots of books.
One surprising (or maybe not so surprising, given the demographics of the book buying public) is that the tipping point to buying an e-reader hasn’t been reached yet:
What can writers glean from these tea leaves?
What I take away from the survey is that the market for books is strong, but the biggest market segment of readers are an aging population. These readers still like to buy (or borrow) books, but they aren’t rushing out to buy an e-reader anytime soon.
Also included in the survey is that the primary factor in a book purchase (52%) is “author reputation“. Good books still sell themselves no matter what the market forces dictate.
Read MorePublishers Weekly is reporting that the Buy buttons are back for Macmillan authors’ books on Amazon.com. Says PW:
Although the buttons were not restored to all of its titles by late Friday afternoon, sources said an agreement has been completed and the e-tailer has begun putting back the direct buy option. It was not known if Macmillan offered any concessions to get the buttons restored.
Good news at last.
Read MoreStill no sign of Amazon relenting to Macmillan, as all of that publisher’s books are unavailable to buy new from the site. In a (generous? mean-spirited?) half-concession, Amazon has been posting links to outside vendors who are selling those authors’ books — you know, like the used ones that won’t earn the author a single penny against her advance. I feel so badly for authors like Randy Susan Meyers, whose debut, The Murderer’s Daughters, released just two weeks ago to early acclaim. (See her Amazon page here.) Said Meyers in comments on our 2/2 post, “It feels like someone tripped me just as I started a race.” Check out her site, where you can find alternate buying options.
And what’s this? Coming off the heels of Apple’s iPad announcement, Amazon just acquired a touch-screen company called Touchco. Will a future generation Kindle have the touch capabilities of an Apple product?
Stay tuned.
Read MoreThe Intertubes were abuzz this past weekend, and not just because of Apple’s iPad. At least not directly.
Amazon.com, retaliating against Macmillan books for demanding that their ebooks be sold using an “agency model” (where Amazon takes 30% of a seller’s set price for a book) instead of continuing to allow Amazon to set low prices for those ebooks (generally at or below $9.99, even for bestsellers and new hardcovers), decided they weren’t going to support the publisher’s books at all — and took them off their site.
Yep. Gone.
Said Macmillan author John Scalzi in his post All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend:
Hey, you want to know how to piss off an author? It’s easy: Keep people from buying their books. You want to know how to really piss them off? Keep people from buying their books for reasons that have nothing to do with them. And you know how to make them absolutely incandescent with rage? Keep people from buying their books for reasons that have nothing to do with them, and keep it a surprise until it happens.
In case this is news to you, here’s a MacAmazonGate recap. The CEO of Macmillan, John Sargent, issued a letter via a paid ad in a special edition of Publishers Lunch on Saturday, which summarized things pretty nicely:
Read MoreWriterly news from around the Internetz:
This is pretty cool. Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries, chronicals what he calls “The DIY Book Tour” in the New York Times. His experience mirrored mine when I was a guest at a mother-daughter book club chat to talk about CONFESSIONS OF A FIRST DAUGHTER.
The people who showed up for these events had usually never heard of me. They came because it was a party at their friend’s house and the friend promised to make those cupcakes they like or was calling in a favor. Nobody wants to give a bad party, and touring this way ensured there would be at least one person other than myself who would be embarrassed if no one showed up.
The readings mostly went very long, over an hour with questions, and people didn’t leave. We were often up discussing until 1 in the morning. An important part of the book is my troubled relationship with my father and what I took to be his confession to murder in an unpublished memoir. (I investigated and found no evidence of any such killing; my father refuses to confirm or deny it.) Following the reading, over a glass of wine or slice of cake or nothing at all, people told me about their own difficult relationships with family members, people they couldn’t forgive or who wouldn’t forgive them. In a weird way the readings began to feel like an extension of the book.
Never underestimate the power of grassroots networking. Two people who liked your book and chatted with you about it could tell two more of their friends, perhaps lend them your book to read, or perhaps they’ll ask to invite you to their home. The word-of-mouth grows. It’s also a way to connect with readers on a basic level: they read a book you wrote. Best of all, they want to talk to you about it. It’s really rewarding to connect with readers that way. Plus, you’ll usually get a really great dessert or meal out of it.
Also via the New York Times, here’s another example of what our valued contributor J.C. Hutchins has been saying: giving away your book can lead to more sales:
Read MoreI hate the term “slush pile.” It’s a concept that I find outdated. Unfortunately, last week’s article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Death of the Slush Pile,” did a fantastic job of continuing the mythic symbol of the slush pile in the most unhelpful way.
First, to clarify, “slush” refers to any work that is sent to a publisher or agent that is unsolicited. Many New York publishers do not accept unsolicited submissions—and haven’t in more than two decades. Is this phenomenon really worthy of a trend article by the WSJ?
Even more strange, WSJ decries the disappearance of the publisher-based slush pile as something that harms aspiring writers—as if the opportunities available to writers have diminished as a result.
Not true. If any opportunities have gone away, it’s because publishers are cutting their title counts, cutting budgets, doing different types of projects, and finding a way to survive massive change in the media industry. It has absolutely nothing to do with slush.
What’s even more odd about this WSJ article is that most writers want to bypass the slush pile entirely rather than ensure they’ll always have a chance to get lost or misunderstood in it.
Writers who are new to the industry, or just have oddly shaped egos, will ask me, “How can I avoid the slush pile?”
Well, just by virtue of having something to sell that no one has asked for, you can’t avoid the slush pile.
Even if I, Jane Friedman, had a manuscript to publish—and I know dozens of New York agents/editors—my work would still end up in the slush pile. That’s because no one is coming to me proactively, asking to publish my work. It’s very rare for an agent or editor to approach anyone, and say, “Hey, let me give you a book deal!”
But some people DO get approached.
I bet you’d like 5 tips on how to be one of those lucky people.
1. Get media coverage. This can be on a large or small scale, but of course, the bigger the publication covering you, the more likely you’ll have agents and editors calling you within hours. Have you seen the movie Julie & Julia? Classic example of someone featured in the New York Times, then landing a book deal.
2.
Read MoreWho better to explain how important Voice is in story than someone who not only sees a mountain range of submissions on a regular basis but has the opportunity to receive feedback on those submissions from editors? I asked my fabulous agent, Elisabeth Weed, if she’d be willing to step in today, say hello to the Writer Unboxed audience, and speak on this topic from her perspective. I’m thrilled that she agreed!
Elisabeth, welcome. The floor is yours.
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Voice: An agent’s perspective
Many thanks for including me in your discussion about Voice. Teri asked me to answer a few questions on the importance of Voice from an agent’s perspective: Is it THE thing that hooks you, or is it in the top five elements you must see in a partial to request more? Do you look for Voice in query letters, too? What’s an example of great Voice?
Since receiving Teri’s questions, I spent the last month (during which I requested 6 manuscripts from the slush pile) paying even closer attention to Voice and how important it is in making a decision to take something on. The simple answer is, voice is everything. If a voice doesn’t ring true, you don’t believe your narrator and you aren’t sucked into his or her world.
Read MorePlease welcome Jane Friedman as the newest contributor to Writer Unboxed. Jane is the publisher and editorial director of the Writer’s Digest brand community at F+W Media in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she oversees Writer’s Digest magazine, Writer’s Digest Books, and the Writer’s Market series. (Read her full bio HERE.) This is her first post.
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Editors and agents often talk about “what makes me stop reading.”
What’s probably not discussed enough is what makes us stop reading online, especially websites and blogs by writers.
I’ve been compiling best tweets for writers for half a year now, and have scanned tens of thousands of blog postings and homepages, all by following a Tweeted link.
Just as I have a sense about whether a manuscript will be any good in the first few minutes, now I have the same gut feel about blog posts. Only it takes seconds.
Keep in mind: I have different standards for online reading than offline reading. People leave your site in a split second if they can’t find what they’re looking for. We all have the online attention span of an ADHD gnat.
What makes me stop reading online:
1. Sites with black backgrounds
I don’t care if it saves the world’s energy to have a black background, or if there’s a special function to reverse it. No one’s going to figure that out. If your site’s primary goal is to have people read it, then make it easy to read.
There are some sites that are fine with black backgrounds—sites meant to showcase photography, portfolios, products, etc—but most writers do not fall into this category.
2.
Read MoreI promised you a post on building Facebook ads, and this is it. I know, I know, you can barely contain your excitement!
So why Facebook ads? Facebook ads are something the marketing team at Shaye Areheart Books recommended I try, since I wanted to contribute to my book’s campaign. They were easy to set up, they said, not to mention customizable in order to target the right demographics. They could also be an uber inexpensive marketing option. While I contributed to my marketing campaign in other ways, this was one area that would be all me. I would need to set up the ads, establish my price points, monitor everything, etc…
Where to begin? I found this handy guide to setting up a Facebook ad on eHow, and decided to time myself. How quickly might I be able to do this?
Read MoreToday, guest author PD Martin is here to tell us about her new project and her innovative approach to engaging readers — and creating fans — before the book is even finished. Sound unboxed? We thought so, too. Enjoy!
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Madness or genius?
I admit, my latest project probably verges on madness – at the very least it’s a little bit crazy…
A couple of weeks ago I launched a website called Coming Home – the start of a new book in my Sophie Anderson series. But there’s one key difference…instead of writing this book in the “normal” way, each week voters will nominate how they want the next chapter to unfold, using different scenarios I put forward. At the end of the short voting period, majority rules and I’ll have six days to write that chapter.
After 12 weeks I’ll have a Sophie novella, which will be available for free on my website after some editing and formatting.
The idea came about after a conversation with a friend of mine in marketing, who was talking about the importance of drawing people into you/your products (in our case books). He asked if there was a way readers, whether they were existing fans or not, could get involved in my writing process. Enter my voting system. It’s too early to say if it will be an effective marketing strategy but feel free to email me in March to ask!
On a creative level, this project is extremely exciting (and scary) for me. It gives me a chance to write a Sophie story I’ve longed to write – the tale of Sophie’s brother’s murder 28 years ago – while also challenging me with this voting system. It’s a leap of faith, but it’s a leap I’m dying to take.
Is it for you?
Read MoreLast month, I explained the circuitous route my thriller novel, 7th Son: Descent, took to finally getting in print . . . and then outlined the ambitious online promotional campaign I’d crafted for the book’s debut. The post was so danged long, Writer Unboxed had to break it into two parts!
Find part one here. Find part two here.
We’re a month into the book’s life out in the wild. I’d like to share some results, and some conclusions I’ve made so far.
In case you didn’t read those two posts linked above, here’s the super-quick recap: In 2005, I realized the 1,200-page thriller I’d spent three years writing and editing didn’t have the proverbial snowball’s chance of being published. Convinced the story had value, I rebranded the book as a trilogy, turned to the Internet, and released the first act as “Book One: Descent” as a free serialized audiobook. Tens of thousands of folks showed up, enjoyed it, and cheered me on. I released the second and third acts the same way. Eventually, I got on the radar at St. Martin’s Press, inked a deal for the series’ first novel, and here we are.
7th Son: Descent is a trade paperback original. I’m not a competitive person by nature, but I knew I’d be squaring off against other original trades, as well as books that were once in hardcover, now “ported” to trade paperback. This eliminated Bestseller opportunities. I also knew that my publisher wasn’t putting forth money for co-op (valuable placement on the front tables / displays in bookstores), and would publicize 7th Son: Descent as much — if not more than — a typical fiction newcomer.
My personal promotion for the print release was pretty ambitious:
• A free prequel short story anthology, released as serialized audio
• Free music “written and performed” by a character in the book
• A completely re-recorded, free serialized audiobook of the print manuscript, released at my site and three others
• Free fan updates with “street team” missions and prizes
• Free serialized PDFs of the book, released at my site and one other
• A free serialized “blog text” version of the book at BoingBoing.net
• A 10-chapter PDF excerpt released on 20 sites
• A program that rewarded fans for multiple book purchases
• Mucho pitches to blogs, podcasts and mainstream media
As we roll into December, only one aspect of my promotion and outreach has yet to be realized: the mainstream media outreach. That begins today, actually. But the rest of the machine has been chugging along for more than a month. Before I get to what I can share about sales results, I’ll provide the results of the outreach itself:
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