Business
Heard at the Backspace Agent seminar:
“Trying to find an agent through blind querying is like trying to find a job by sending out blind resumes.”
“Write your query and synopsis sometime between the first and third draft. Don’t just write and send; allow it to sit and age and improve. Treat it like your novel.”
“If you have a good story, you must write a good query to interest an agent. It’s not a crap shoot.”
Unless you’ve already made a strong agent connection and can bypass this step, your submitted work will land as another melting crystal of ice in the slush pile. Because of this, you’ve got to find a way to distinguish yourself from the other sloshy bits. The query is an important tool in this regard and can act as your golden ticket into Agent Land–if you’ve written it well.
One of the main purposes of the Backspace seminar was to allow writers to learn about the query process from the queried masses themselves. What do agents really like to see? What do they hate? And which choices will land you in the grey zone? Here’s a peek at my notes.
Read MoreAmazon debuts its wireless e-reader, Kindle; an agency closes; Oprah chooses a new novel to promote; National Book Award winners are announced; the strike takes its toll in Hollywood as several movies are pushed back; and a first edition copy of Wuthering Heights sells for…how much? Check out the Google Notebook Books & Business updates HERE.
We’re taking tomorrow off, but we’ll be back Friday with a post from Dave Duggins about–what else?–Black Friday. Next week, we kick off a three-part interview with agent Donald Maass. Don’t miss it!
Kath and I are thankful for all of you–our terrific WU partners and all of our readers.
Gobble on.
Photo courtesy Flickr’s Stavenn
Read MoreCanadians will soon see a reduction in the cost of books printed by Penguin Group, Borders introduces its own television channel, Science Fiction Writers of America steps up in support of the WGA strike, Harlequin is giving away short stories, Harry Potter’s lexicon has been delivered a killing curse, The James Potter site is revealed for a hoax, Mel Brooks fights to save the word “shmuck” and what the heck is “Babysick Lit?” Check out the latest books and business news at the WU Google Notebook HERE.
And just for fun, take a look at this YouTube on any writer’s nightmare pitch.
For some REAL tips on how to pitch your novel, check out Agent Kristin Nelson’s Blog Pitch Workshop (Click for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11).
Write on, all!
Read MoreI had a great time in NYC last week. Saw the fabulous WICKED (just in time, too, as the stagehands’ strike has shut down a chunk of Broadway), got to wear my hip city clothes and had the pleasure of participating in Backspace’s Agent Seminar. During the seminar, we were given the opportunity to peer inside agently minds, to hear what made agents take note, what made them groan, and what made them laugh (see mass query on Gawker).
We also were able to read our first two pages aloud for a group of fellow writers plus two agents. Because I did this on two consecutive days, I read for four agents. The experience was truly enlightening, since the agents were asked to stop a reader once they reached the point where they’d put the work down if sent to them as a submission.
Although I already understood cerebrally the importance of hook, these sessions drove home this point: To be taken seriously in the slush–and I’m including partial submission requests here–you must not only possess a first graph that’s going to get an agent’s undivided attention, but you’ve got to entice them on and convince them that your work is about as close to perfection as humanly possible. Ugh. But it’s true. Said agent Jessica Faust, “It has to be perfect to sell it.”
Agents face a mountain of slush and partial subs on a weekly, if not daily, basis, and they just don’t have time to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. In fact, I’d say the assumption when they peruse page one is that the work isn’t going to be good. Uphill battle? You bet. So don’t hobble yourself. Your story picks up steam in chapter two? Tough, no one’s going to read that far to see it. Your story gets brilliant on page three? Sorry, never made it past the first paragraph.
This hard truth upset a lot of people, but sitting through a live version of slush-pile processing, I’d have to say it’s undeniable. Perfection is an unpublished author’s one true hope of standing out. But is the flavor of perfection in those first few agent pages different than what we think of as perfection for the work as a whole?
Read MoreTempers are starting to fray in Hollywood, and it’s only Week 2 of the Writer’s Guild Association strike.
Showrunners, the creative directors of most televisions shows who simultaneously wear both hats of writer and producer, are under pressure as they are squeezed by both sides. CBS/Paramount has sent “breach of contract” letters; WGA members vow solidarity with the union.
Ellen DeGeneres, WGA member, crosses the picket line after one day and goes back to work.
Obituaries for television shows are hitting the op-ed pages.
And the fallout continues. Theatre stagehands on Broadway have gone on strike, putting pressure on NYC entertainment industry. Novelist associations are weighing in. SFWA has pledged support to WGA members. Late night shows like Conan and Leno are in hiatus because their writing is topical and to-the-minute.
The pressure is mounting. And I repeat, it’s only Week 2 of this thing.
Stay tuned. Or maybe instead of watching reruns,support the WGA and read a good book. At least the author was paid a royalty for it.
Read MoreEver heard of a keystone species?
A keystone species is a species that has a disproportionate effect on its environment relative to its abundance, affecting many other organisms in an ecosystem and help in determine the types and numbers of various others species in a community.
Such an organism plays a role in its ecosystem that is analogous to the role of a keystone in an arch. While the keystone feels the least pressure of any of the stones in an arch, the arch still collapses without it. Similarly, an ecosystem may experience a dramatic shift if a keystone species is removed, even though that species was a small part of the ecosystem by measures of biomass or productivity.
Folks are beginning to wake up to the fact that that’s what writers are in the entertainment industry. Without writers, long considered the lowliest of the white-collar workers in Hollywood, the whole system collapses. West Coast Writers Guild, which is the union for television and screenplay writers, calls for writers to strike today.
The results will reverberate far and wide:
Around Los Angeles County, where about 254,000 people work in the entertainment industry, agencies and production companies are already considering layoffs and cost-cutting to cope with the anticipated slowdown.
Read MoreLooks like the latest trend in publishing, the peer-selected novel, is gathering steam. Gather.com’s second contest, this time for romance novels, has selected not one but TWO winners:
What do a 28-year-old PhD student from the University of Chicago and a 56-year-old horse farmer from rural Michigan have in common? Both of these lucky women will soon have their romance manuscripts published by one of America’s most prestigious publishing houses.
We are pleased to announce that Meredith McGuire, author of The Shadow’s Kiss, is the grand prize winner in our First Chapters Romance Writing Competition. AND, as a testament to the amazing talent of the Gather community, Simon & Schuster has decided to award a second publishing prize to Starr Toth, author of Trust Me.Congratulations to Meredith and Starr on such a tremendous achievement!
Amazon.com’s Breakthrough Novel Award contest has already reached its registration limit–three weeks after it opened (submissions were supposed to continue until Nov. 5 or 5,000 entries had been received, whichever occured first.)
If you’ve missed the deadline for these contests, you can go the more traditional route and enter one of WritersDigest.com’s contests. And if you are contemplating entering a contest soon, be sure to read SFWA’s helpful tip sheet on how to spot a contest scam.
Be sure to check out the other Google Notebook Books & Business updates HERE. Happy Halloween, everyone!
Read MoreLots of industry news this week. First, the winner of the prestigious Booker Prize was announced: Anne Enright, Irish author, has come away with top honors. There are two interesting charity events taking place: All About Romance is holding an auction to benefit victims of Katrina and a bunch of renowned children’s book illustrators are auctioning off hand-painted snowflakes to benefit the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Go forth and bid.
And there’s plenty more to read about on the Google Notebook page (HERE), including who’s a new agent in town, Harlequin’s partnership with Audible (and HarperOne’s union with MTV?), new hope for Triskelion’s adrift authors, and a winner for Project Publish.
But what I’d really like to chat about today is Alice Sebold, who’s getting some serious flack over her latest book, The Almost Moon, her first novel since her mega-best-selling hit The Lovely Bones. Sebold’s Moon has become the talk of the industry, and not for the right reasons. It’s being labeled too gritty. Too gross. Too unkind. Too genre confused. With a heroine that’s too over the top, that no one will be able to identify with. And though I have yet to read Sebold’s novel, I’m feeling a little twitchy on her behalf. Because don’t all these “toos” feel like a box? Too much like the world’s critics were expecting Lovely Bones 2 and are now kvetching because they didn’t get it?
Here, a clip from USA Today:
Read MoreWow. I hope that you all read the latest entry over at Writer Beware about a MegaScam pulled off by “agent” Christopher Hill. You should also check out the original plagiarism evidence posted at Dear Author.
Unbelievable.
And the latest books and business news links are up at Google Notebook. Who won the Nobel Prize for Literature? Who’s on the National Book Awards shortlist? And even Publisher HarperCollins UK is jumping on the you-deal-with-the-slushpile bandwagon. There’s a new imprint for Pocket, and what’s going on with Peter Jackson and The Hobbit? Check it all, HERE.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
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Read MoreLast week in Snippets, we linked to a new opportunity for unpublished novelists to get their work read and possibly published. In the tradition of Gather.com and eHarlequin, Slush Pile Reader aims to let readers determine the next great work of fiction. So naturally, we wanted to go to the horse’s mouth and get more details on the project.
Johanna Denize, on of the founders of Slush Pile Reader, graciously allowed me to pick her brain on letting readers choose which novels should be published, and how bypassing NYC could benefit authors who might otherwise not have a shot at publication. The answers were informative and surprising.
We are pleased to bring you this Q&A with Johanna Denize.
Q. Tell us about Slush Pile Reader. How did you come up with the concept, and why?
JD: I’ll try not to make my answer too long. There are so many reasons but a very short answer would be that first and foremost we love to read, we love books.
A longer answer would be that every year millions of manuscripts make their round from author to agent, from agent to publisher from publisher back to the author. The majority of manuscripts never even get read, especially since most publishers no longer accept manuscripts if you don’t have an agent. Without an ‘in’ to the publishing world it is extremely difficult getting published. Some say, that if a manuscript is just good enough, it will be discovered. But at what cost? How long should an author have to struggle to have his work read and honestly appraised?
Read MoreTherese and I are going to be busy over the next few days tabulating the votes for the winner of WU’s unique word contest, ergo, apologies for a hasty post. But there are a few newsy items of interest to fiction writers that I wanted to highlight, in case you haven’t been skimming Therese’s wonderfully comprehensive Google Notebook tab:
Slushpile Reader is the latest in publishers collaborating with the masses to select the next great works of fiction. They follow on the heels of Gather.com and others who are hoping to break the stranglehold of a few rarefied editors determining what gets published:
At Slush Pile Reader authors’ manuscripts will be showcased to an audience of on-line readers. The readers then get their say by answering a simple question: Should this manuscript be published?
If enough readers agree that, yes, it should be published, Slush Pile Reader will do just that. We will publish the most popular manuscripts.
Latest publishing fad or wave of the future? We’ll be keeping an eye on Slushpile Reader to see how the project progresses.
Looks like James Frey’s out of the doghouse.
Aspiring SFF novelists take note: Neil Gaiman is teaching a workshop at the highly-regarded Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop in 2008. It’s being held in my old stomping grounds of UCSD, which overlooks some of the best beaches in San Diego county. If you can afford it, GO.
Some good news on the e-book front: eHarlequin is now making it’s catalog available solely in e-book format.
We’ll be able to announce the winner of our contest soon. Until then, write on!
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