traditional publishing
Three years ago, in mid-August, my first historical novel debuted in the summer of lockdown. The launch situation was far from ideal, and those of us who were published that summer did the best we could with bookshops closed and no in-person events. When August 2021 rolled around and my second novel was released along with the paperback version of the first, my expectations weren’t high. Another eerily quiet summer, another novel comes out into the world with a whisper.
The summers of 2020, ‘21, and ‘22 were all about book release and promotion, so there was some structure to my writing/author life. It’s late August 2023 as I write this. Things are better now for publishing authors, and though I don’t have a novel in the pipeline, through two launches I’ve developed a community of fellow writers and supportive readers. I’m celebrating friends’ book launches and live events, and sometimes speaking, mentoring, and teaching.
While my first two novels were coming out into the world, I found it tough to begin a new draft. Here, I should qualify that when my manuscript sold in a two-book deal, I had a completed draft of the second and it was a stand-alone sequel. I have real admiration for authors who crank out a book a year. While promoting a recently published book, I needed to keep that set of characters fresh in my head so I could talk about them when questions were asked (even though all authors answer the same questions multiple times). We hone our sound bites, quips, our interjections of humor, and (especially with historical fiction) we can recall historical dates and events at the drop of a hat. It’s tricky, when you’re interviewed for 45 seconds on live radio and the DJ poses questions like: So, who stars in the movie? The clock is ticking while you hem and haw, trying to remember the names of any under-thirty actors. So I was reluctant to try to bring a new set of characters to life. Plus, the pandemic sucked the creativity from my soul for a while.
For the past year, I’ve been working on a third manuscript on and off. The most recent (fifth) draft is, at present, with an editor. So there’s that waiting-to-hear-comments time, which I am now really good at enduring, as well as the sense of relief that comes with completing specific goals. The fine-tuning of this novel has been slow going, and that’s fine. There’s no deadline. I’m surprised by how nice I’ve been about it—to myself, I mean. I’ve felt fortunate that I’ve been able to move at my own pace with this project. While I work well under the pressure of a deadline, I know now that I couldn’t have written this book in one year. The story needed time to germinate and develop. I like to leave room for historical research to shape my plot, and for my characters to surprise me. Don’t get me wrong, I do still feel a strong drive to get this novel to the finish line. I’ve learned—with no deadline—what my own writing process is, and also, that I need to trust it. That’s worth something, isn’t it?
When asked to choose, I’ve considered myself a hybrid Plotter/Pantser. […]
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Permit me a moment of apostasy.
I realize it might seem perverse to pursue this topic in light of Jim Dempsey’s far more sanguine post from just this past Tuesday (“How Books Can Change Lives”), but for some time, I’ve had the uneasy feeling that the merits of storytelling have been oversold. The use of the mercantile metaphor is deliberate. In any ever-increasing number of realms, the “craft of narrative” is being used to justify the unjustifiable—the dishonest, the trivial, the crass, the sanctimonious, the unnecessary, and all manner of other dubious ends.
Tell the story has become the hallmark of the hustle. Give the folks a convincing, compelling tale and they’re yours, facts be damned.
We’re even told that facts are meaningless outside a narrative—an approach that turns scientific theory into a kind of fable.
A particularly compelling example of this appeared in an article from late last year in the open access journal Natural Sciences. The article was titled, “Pseudo-embryology and personhood: How embryological pseudoscience helps structure the American abortion debate.” It opens with this:
Scientists have identified more than one possible point at which an individual life, personhood, with its own identity, and defined in various ways, begins. There is no consensus among biologists as to when an independent human life begins. Those people who invoke the scientific community to justify the idea that fertilization is the unequivocal moment of independent identity for the human embryo are expressing mythological and political ideas, not contemporary scientific facts. These mythologies have deep and powerful roots, and they are hard to leave behind. We often look back on how eugenics distorted American politics a century ago, how women were being sterilized in the name of science, and we congratulate ourselves, thinking that such distortions could not happen again. They have.
Though quite technical, the piece is highly instructive on how embryology does not fit neatly into the stories various camps want to tell about when “life begins”—conception? The quickening? Birth? (Interesting aside: in many traditions, soul and breath are the same word, implying the newborn does not acquire a soul until it draws its first independent breath. And since reading this article, I encountered still another account of when a newborn acquires personhood, this one from Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. He recounts that among the Osage Indians, a child is not considered a person until he or she is given a name, which symbolically includes him or her in the social fabric of the tribe.)
The point: stories that masquerade as scientific truth (or any truth) betray the motives of the teller—to persuade without the messy, complicated, often inexplicable evidence that an honest inquiry requires.
It’s not just swindlers and ideologues peddling narrative snake oil, of course. Some genuine heavyweights have opined on the matter.
Camus famously remarked, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” And Tim O’Brien, whose “How to Tell a True War Story” should be required reading for anyone who intends to put words on a page, defined the purpose of fiction as “getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.”
Back in June, 2019 (four years ago—Holy Moly, where did the time […]
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My book has been out in the world for a few months, and they’ve been a whirlwind of signings, panels, interviews and blog posts. Parts of it were absolutely amazing, and at times overwhelming. I haven’t had much time to reflect on any of it until now. I was warned about what to expect, but other lessons still surprised me.
Here are 8 things I learned as a debut author:
If you ever have a marketing and PR question, feel free to email me – am@getredpr.com – or drop a comment in the Writer Unboxed Facebook Group and tag me @Ann-Marie Nieves. I’ll do my best to answer in future posts. This question was posed by Leslie Budewitz last week and it’s a great one. Let’s unpack.
Last month’s post on book bans opened with a quote from historian Thomas Zimmer, which I’ll repeat here for reference:
There is indeed something going on in America, and it does make a lot of people…really uncomfortable. We are in the midst of a profound renegotiation of speech norms and of who gets to define them. And that can be a messy process at times. But it’s not “cancel culture.” From a democratic perspective, it is necessary, and it is progress.
I believe this is an accurate statement of where we are culturally, and that one of the most apparent arenas undergoing renegotiation is publishing. One specific example of that is the increasing role of sensitivity readers, especially in YA fiction, though the practice is extending to adult fiction, film, and TV.
The major impetus behind the implementation of sensitivity readers was publishing’s recognition of the obvious fact that it was overwhelmingly white—and that white writers, in the wake of the social justice movement that emerged in the wake of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, wanted to address that imbalance by writing across racial and ethnic lines.
The results were, shall we say, mixed. White authors were taken to task for patronizing, stereotypical, or harmful representations of minorities or for resorting to racial tropes in their work.
In September 2015, author Corinne Duyvis created the hashtag #OwnVoices as a way to recommend books on Twitter that featured authors who shared the diverse identity of their main characters. At the same time, publishers and agents began subtly (or not so subtly) discouraging white writers from “straying from their lane” in writing about protagonists or even secondary characters outside their personal realm of “lived experience.”
The sensitivity reader emerged as a possible solution to the problem of authors needing input into the lives of members of diverse communities different from their own race, ethnicity, gender identity, faith, and so on. This was done to help prevent any more representations deemed “problematic,” a euphemism that rather quickly became a new term of art.
The Term “Sensitivity” Itself is “Problematic”
In a Writer’s Digest article titled, “The Problem with Sensitivity Readers Isn’t What You Think It Is”), author Anna Hecker remarked:
“Sensitivity” … is a loaded word if there ever was one. It suggests thin skins and easily bruised emotions—a potentially dangerous combination if one perceives these readers as the gatekeepers to publication (which, it should be pointed out, they are generally not).
No wonder the censorship watchdogs are wringing their hands. The term “sensitivity reader” may be triggering to the very people who loathe the term “triggering.”
Consequently, some have chosen to use the terms “authenticity readers” or “diversity readers” instead.
There. Solved it.
If only.
For a distinctly contrarian view, we can turn to author Larry Correia, self-described “Writer, Merchant of Death (retired), Firearms Instructor, Accountant.”
A Sensitivity Reader is usually some expert on Intersectional Feminism or Cismale Gendernormative Fascism or some other made up goofiness who a publisher brings in to look for anything “problematic” in a manuscript. And since basically everything is problematic to somebody they won’t be happy until they suck all the joy out of the universe. It […]
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When this article, The Ten Awful Truths About Publishing by Steve Piersanti of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, landed in my inbox, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Warning: It’s a positively frightening read that will make you want to hide underneath your covers… or hurl a glass across the room. If there is bourbon in that glass, down it quickly, read the article, and then throw the glass across the room.
So why did I breathe a sigh of relief?
Because someone else far more important than me said it – all the things I’ve been thinking, saying, that have made me change the way I work. A publisher said the things. The things about the many, many books on the market; how they sell or don’t; and the constant change due to disruptors (TikTok) and disruptions (supply chain issues).
So now we know about The 10 Awful Truths about Book Publishing. And now we understand that we have to think differently, reset expectations, and get to work. But first, we take inventory:
What’s the key takeaway for you in Steve Piersanti’s article? Are you ready to take inventory? What are […]
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After the excitement of a “yes” from a publisher comes the job of assessing your publishing contract.
Facing down ten pages of dense legalese can be a daunting task, especially for new and inexperienced writers, who may not have the resources to hire a literary lawyer, or have access to a knowledgeable person who can help de-mystify the offer terms.
And it is really, really important to assess and understand those terms, because publishing contracts are written to the advantage of publishers. While a good contract should strike a reasonable balance between the publisher’s interests and the writer’s benefit, a bad contract…not so much.
In this article, I’m going to focus on contract language that gives too much benefit to the publisher, and too little to the author. Consider these contract clauses to be red flags wherever you encounter them. (All of the images below are taken from contracts that have been shared with me by authors.)
Copyright Transfer
Unless you are doing work-for-hire, such as writing for a media tie-in franchise, a publisher should not take ownership of your copyright. For most publishers, copyright ownership doesn’t provide any meaningful advantage over a conventional grant of rights, and there’s no reason to require it. Even where the transfer is temporary, with rights reverting back to you at some point, it doesn’t change the fact that for as long as the contract is in force, your copyright does not belong to you.
Copyright transfers usually appear in the Grant of Rights clause. Look for phrases like “all right, title and interest in and to the Work” and “including but not limited to all copyrights therein.”
Watch out also for contracts where a copyright transfer in the Grant of Rights clause is contradicted by language later on–such as requiring the publisher to print a copyright notice in the name of the author (which shouldn’t be possible if the author no longer owns the copyright). For one thing, you don’t want your contract to be internally contradictory, which could pose legal issues down the road. For another, such contradictions suggest that the publisher doesn’t understand its own contract language, which is never a good thing.
There’s more on the not-uncommon problem of internal contradictions here.
Life of Copyright Grant Without Adequate Reversion Language
Big publishers routinely require you to grant rights for the full term of copyright (in the US, Canada, and most of Europe, your lifetime plus 70 years). Although they’re more likely to offer time-limited contracts, many smaller presses do as well.
Contrary to much popular belief, this is not necessarily a red flag…as long it’s balanced by clear, detailed language that ensures you can request contract termination and rights reversion once sales drop below specific benchmarks: for example, fewer than 100 copies sold during the previous 12 months, or less than $250 in royalties paid in each of two prior royalty periods. Publishers like to sit on rights, because they can make money from even low-selling books if they have a big enough catalog. Authors, on the other hand, don’t benefit from a book that’s selling only a handful of copies and getting no promotional support. At that point, it’s better to be able to revert your rights and […]
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It’s been a while since I’ve shared thoughts here, my dear Unboxers. I took a sabbatical last year for a chance to catch up on a deadline that I was horribly behind on after covid and a major family emergency. Ironically, the time off allowed me to enjoy so many more of your posts. You really are a brilliant bunch of writers. There are as many thought-provoking comments as there are posts. This community is so special and I feel lucky to be among you. But I digress. All is well here now. It’s well…except for January.
January.
It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year.
-Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
As I stare out at yet another gray day, I’m wishing for a snowy winter day with bright skies rather than the gloomy rain that has plagued New England this year. The dreariness, in fact, has me popping vitamin D and looking for ways to put a little more pep in my step. To self-soothe. So I started thinking about ways I self-soothe and there were a few immediate obvious answers. I bake. I read poetry. I rewatch historical flicks and romcoms. I exercise. (Shortly after writing this article, I’m going to make oatmeal cookies. If the aroma of cinnamon and sugar can’t make you feel better, nothing can.) But I also pace and doom scroll and have a glass of wine, preferably with friends, and suffer anxiety dreams.
This got me thinking more deeply about those habits and my subsequent needs, and most importantly, what they’re connected to. I didn’t have to look far. If you opened my calendar, you’d see this:
There’s a lot of good stuff here for sure, but it’s still quite a lot to manage in a short period of time. Ultimately, my self-soothing underscores what my calendar tells me: I’m stressed and I’m stewing over a few things. 1.) I really want more time to put in on another full draft of the WIP before I submit the “completed” revisions, but it’ll be really tight and I’m worried it’ll make the book too thin; 2.) I’m hoping my students feel like they’re getting something out of the class and that I’m giving them enough material to challenge themselves; and 3.) the largest among them, a struggle related to being a midlist author at mid-career with a publisher on strike. Numbers are everything and if sales on the book are mediocre, this affects the possibility of another book contract which in turn affects whether or not I’m picking up more jobs to pay the bills which in turn affects how much I can be around for my kids who are extremely needy at the moment for various reasons.
And now we’re at the heart of the […]
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Therese here to introduce you to our new monthly columnist, Densie Webb! Densie had been working as a vital part of WU’s Twitter team for quite some time, gathering links to share there on the business of fiction. She’ll now bring that valuable knowledge to WU-blog — sharing some of the best, most pertinent links on the business here every month in Getting Down to Business. Please join me in welcoming her to this important beat for us all. Welcome, Densie, and thank you!
While we all want to stay on top of what’s current about craft, be alerted to the latest conferences, and connect with fellow writers on social media, staying informed about the business side of writing and publishing is some (or many) might say, a necessary evil. To save you from spending hours scrolling through websites to find insights into the business side of writing, we’ve curated a list of recent posts for you to dig into or peruse at your leisure. We hope you’ll find value in these and share the links with anyone else who might want to keep up with the latest.
Book Defenders
There are forces trying to limit what we can read and that will undoubtedly affect publishing. But on the other side are forces fighting hard to keep reading rights intact. Here are some notable examples to cheer on and follow.
AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Okay, so this might seem like it belongs in a post about writing, rather than publishing, but trust us, the topic of chatbots and AI-generated stories, will definitely affect publishing. Most likely sooner, rather than later.
https://www.thepassivevoice.com/a-new-chatbot-is-a-code-red-for-googles-search-business/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/could-an-ai-chatbot-rewrite-my-novel
TikTok
While the White House has banned the use of TikTok on any device used by federal agencies, it’s alive and well in the book world, with publishers working both directly and indirectly with TikTok influencers. It’s a major driver for young(ish) readers. And it looks like TikTok may be venturing into the book selling business. Stay tuned.
https://www.thepassivevoice.com/how-will-booktok-change-publishing-in-2023/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/17/tiktok-to-sell-books-directly-to-users-via-marketplace
https://www.thepassivevoice.com/when-it-comes-to-tiktok-authors-must-manage-their-expectations/
https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/2022/11/27/global-publishers-social-media-is-not-your-enemy/
Bookstores
Barnes & Noble is alive and (maybe) well, while indie bookstores are trying new growth strategies, including mail order, forming new partnerships, participating in book fairs, and even using GoFundMe campaigns to keep their doors open.
Publishers
A publishing merger fall through, a publishing CEO steps down, COVID consequences are felt in publishing, a Swiss publisher of children’s books enters the US and Canada, and midlist authors are here to stay. Read all about it.
https://www.thepassivevoice.com/a-case-for-the-midlist/\
https://publishingperspectives.com/2022/12/prh-ceo-markus-dohle-stepping-down-end-of-year/
Diversity
U.S. bookstores are going to expand their Spanish-language offerings and two reports from the BookTrust, a non-profit based in the UK, addresses the question of diversity of authors and illustrators of children’s books within the UK market.
https://publishingperspectives.com/2022/12/authors-of-color/
Have you come across any opportunities or news dealing with the business side of publishing? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
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When I first decided to write a series — in this case, the matriarchal fantasy series The Five Queendoms — it was an easy choice. I wanted to create a rich world too complex to fully explore in just one book, and I wanted to follow the course of characters’ intertwining lives over many years, so a series was the most logical option. Genre, too, factored in. When I was writing historical fiction, standalone novels made the most sense, but fantasy readers love a big juicy series. I decided I was ready, and leapt in.
And for two novels, it all went according to plan. But as most of us know, writing and publishing are overlapping pursuits that don’t always line up perfectly. And I have a contract that only accounts for three novels, even if I feel like I could write novels set in this world I’ve created for years and years and years.
So my third book will be the end of a trilogy… while leaving a number of doors open for following these characters and others through an ongoing series of events, and hopefully, books.
Let’s just call that a bit of a challenge.
After writing a 90K-word draft that treated the third book as a continuation and not a completion, I had to step back and reconsider my options. I could submit a book that didn’t end a trilogy, and almost certainly have it rejected by the publisher, which would lead to a whole other set of ramifications and decisions. I could rewrite it completely to tie up all the loose ends and close out the trilogy in a final sort of way, which definitely flew in the face of what I wanted artistically. After considering both of those options thoroughly, I did what I so often do: I chose the middle path.
(The hard one, let’s be clear.)
Here’s what finally helped me figure out how to do it: I put myself in the shoes of a TV writer. I imagined my task as writing the season finale of a series that might or might not be renewed. It happens on TV all the time, right?
So: no cliffhangers. (Books one and two, though each resolved the main conflict of a self-contained story, also introduced the main conflict that the next book in the series would address.) Book three had to have a satisfying ending that followed naturally from books one and two, in addition to resolving its own self-contained story. My rule for standalone and series writing alike is this: the beginning of any book makes a promise that the end of the book must keep.
But there are ways to end without ending. Books one and two both planted seeds that haven’t yet grown to full fruition, and the trick of the “season finale” approach is to avoid disappointing readers with what you choose to leave unresolved. You can’t make every reader happy with every decision. But I’m hoping that the way I’ve chosen to resolve book three will thread that needle.
How would you solve the dilemma of ending a story for now without ending it forever?
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Photo by author
Recently, in his writer’s newsletter, Story Club, George Saunders wrote about packing for a move and completing what he called a “death cleaning”, which is not his concept, but a Swedish one, he explained, where a person edits their belongings before death, in order to simplify things for their survivors.
I’ve been doing some of my own death cleaning lately (I’m just fine, BTW, nothing dire to see here), and I admit that just maybe, there is a little teensy smidge of avoidance behavior going on. I tell myself it’s a good time to set my novel-in progress aside for a bit and then go back to it with fresh eyes after the holidays. Anyway, I started the Big Clean in my studio (see above), which was originally built in the 1920s as a bunkhouse on our farmhouse property. It might have held two sets of bunk beds in its prime, and originally had a wood stove. It has no central heat, air conditioning, or plumbing, but it is MINE—my she-shed, or whatever. Honestly, I hate that term. But I digress. For the twenty-two years I’ve lived here, it has been my place. I began by sorting a bin of tangled needlepoint yarn in a mélange of harshly bright 1970s shades. There were four unfinished needlework projects—two by me and two I inherited from a friend of my mother’s when she died, comprising one knotty, half-finished, floral pillow cover and a just-started monogrammed tennis racket cover. I’ve no idea whose monogram it is (was?), and the cover is small enough to fit a 1970s-era wooden racquet. Toss!
Next, I found the accoutrement required to make a smocked infant garment, given to me by a friend who taught me this craft twenty-some years ago, before the birth of my daughter. Back then, I completed one dress and thought I’d rather go through first-stage labor again than start another smocking project.
And so it went.
Bin by bin, I had to decide which things I might use again someday. I still knit obsessively, so my yarn stash and pattern books remain. My newest hobby, originated during lockdown, is knitting little 7” forest animals with clothes, and making rooms for them and telling their stories @tinyfoxstory on Instagram. So there are myriad minuscule fiddly bits to misplace and step on. My three sewing machines stay in use these days mainly for repairing chewed dog beds. I’ll also save craft supplies I hope to use with my toddler granddaughter someday. Pneumatic upholstery stapler? Nah.
From a post on Instagram by the brilliant cartoonist Roz Chast @rozchast, I found an organization in New York called Materials for the Arts, a government-sponsored “creative reuse center.” They are happy to accept donations of beads, buttons, fabrics, art supplies, etc. So boxing up things to mail off kept me busy for a good few days and produced a flattering glow of accomplishment. I tossed! I culled! I donated!
My Marie-Kondo-inspired self (have not read, BTW) was feeling pretty pumped by now—warmed up and ruthless. It was time to double down and tackle the alternate function […]
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The timing for my Writer Unboxed deadline was perfect this month: I just got back from the Texas Book Festival, held this past weekend in Austin, Texas. Much like other book festivals I’ve been to, it was well-attended, well-run, and over too quickly — I would’ve loved to spend several more days meeting readers, hanging out with other authors, and attending panels from both sides of the microphone. But the two days I did get to spend in Austin were very enjoyable. I’d recommend the festival to any author looking to participate.
Attending book festivals can be one of the most enjoyable parts of being an author, but they can also be overwhelming and not always satisfying, even if they’re well-run. I’ve started to keep a few principles in mind as I attend, and figured I’d share them with Writer Unboxed authors looking to make the most of their attendance at similar festivals, wherever they may be located. In this case I’m talking about book festivals aimed primarily at readers, not writers’ conferences. That’s a whole different ball game.
Here are just a few tips to try:
Make a plan. Not only do many book festivals have hundreds or even thousands of readers in attendance, but some also have hundreds of authors, with panels running simultaneously. Obviously you need to attend your own panel or speaking slot, but what else will you do while you’re there? Will you steal some time to work on your own writing? Sleep in to take advantage of the vacation? Make plans to re-connect with friends? Attend talks by authors you admire? You’ll probably deviate from your plan, but if you don’t make one, you may end up not really succeeding at any goal in particular.
Pack a copy of your book. If you’re traditionally published and your book is for sale at the festival, your publisher will generally take care of sending those books, but there are plenty of reasons to bring your own copy. First and foremost, you should have in front of you whenever you’re speaking, either solo or on a panel. It’s also handy to hold up if you’re having your picture taken. Full disclosure: I frequently forget this, and did not in fact have a copy of Scorpica with me in Austin. The moderator of our panel had her own copies on hand to display, thank goodness, but it’s best not to count on anyone else saving our authorly bacon. And if there’s a chance you might be asked to read from your book, you’ll certainly want to have one.
Take something to sign that isn’t your book. You’re going to be meeting lots of people, both authors and readers. You might have business cards or bookmarks, both of which are great; don’t forget to put them in your luggage. (Again, inspired by personal experience here, when I showed up at New York Comic Con last month 100% swag-free.) Having something to hand out can be very helpful if you’re signing next to a more popular author, if the festival runs out of your books, or if you have a conversation with someone and just want to give them a chance to remember you. I threw a pack of playing cards with […]
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“Everyone has to start somewhere.”
It’s a familiar truism. And like most truisms, it states a fact so self-evident that there’s no need to really think about it. There’s no start without a starting point, right?
Too often, however, it’s used to dismiss or excuse a lack of skill or training or experience or some other important qualification for doing something that requires expertise.
Because “starting” doesn’t necessarily mean starting from zero. If you start your own law practice, you’ve presumably gone to law school and passed the bar. If you start your own contracting firm, you’ve hopefully apprenticed and/or worked with other builders. If you start your own real estate agency, you’ve taken courses and obtained a license.
Non-zero starting points are just as important for new literary agents and publishers. This may seem obvious—but it’s a fact that writers too often ignore.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EXPERIENCE
Working as a literary agent, or running a publisher, is not an entry-level job. These are complicated, challenging professions that demand specialized knowledge and expertise—not just because skill is needed for success, but because the publishing industry is weird and opaque and clubby and really, really difficult to figure out from outside.
An agent needs—at a minimum–to have contacts at publishing houses and an understanding of publishing contract terms, as well as a nose for marketable manuscripts (not as easy as it sounds). A publisher must—also at a minimum—understand editing and marketing, know how books are acquired and distributed, be capable of creating a fair contract, be able to hire qualified staff–and, just as important, have a business plan.
Such skills don’t come out of the blue. They’re best acquired through training at a reputable agency, or working in publishing in some capacity. Because there are no licensing or educational requirements for literary agents, however, and the easy availability of digital publishing technology makes starting a publisher as simple as setting up an Ingram Spark account, anyone can become an agent or a publisher…even if they have absolutely no qualifications for doing so.
Inexperienced agents and publishers often have unrealistic ideas about what it takes to succeed. They may believe that a love of books and writing is enough to bridge the knowledge gap, or that the scars of a previous bad publishing experience will empower them to do better. They may imagine that publishing is a fun side hustle they can do in their spare time, or that a career in corporate sales gives them skills transferable to agenting. They may not realize the importance of a business plan, and assume it’s okay to skip the prep work—to just jump in and learn as they go.
That’s not to say they don’t have the best intentions. Frequently, they do. But without professional skills and experience, they are at a significant disadvantage, and face a high risk of failure in an extremely competitive industry that’s precarious even for people with substantial credentials.
THE PRICE OF INEXPERIENCE
Brand-new agents and publishers still building their lists offer the possibility of access, in an industry where access is highly restricted and competitive. Along with hope, dreams, and the frustrations of the query process, it’s one of the main reasons why so many writers are willing to give unqualified people a pass.
Failure isn’t the only thing you’re risking […]
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I’ve spent the last several months rekindling an old relationship. We have sneaked off to hotels in Philadelphia and Minneapolis, and to the quiet mountains of Vermont. We’re already plotting another getaway in November.
Before you get too concerned about where I’m headed with this post, please note my travel partner isn’t an old flame — or a scandalous new one. I’m referring to my carry-on roller bag. And those weekend getaways? Think literary conferences.
My no-frills roller bag and I are out of practice after two years of Zooming into literary conferences instead of traveling. We’re both a little older. My needs have changed, and I now expect more out of our 10-year relationship. Covid has altered how I travel, in big ways and small. I’m now obsessed with flying without checking any luggage because of the increase in flight delays, cancellations, lost bags, and missed connections. I want to get in and out of the airport, bus, or train station as fast as possible. And I don’t want to lose my bags.
I’ve assembled a list of my favorite travel hacks that allow me to comfortably pack for at least five days at a literary conference or on a book tour without checking anything. I realize these tips and hacks won’t work for everyone. The types of fabrics, the size of the clothing, and the season will impact how much can fit in any bag. This list is meant to share ideas that work for me. Hopefully, you will find some of them useful. Some items are relatively cheap; others are more expensive. They’d make thoughtful gifts for the writer (or any traveler) on your shopping list — including yourself!
My favorite travel hacks:
All the clothes in this image fit inside the hanging shelves, which compress to fit in a roller carry-on bag.
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