The Rejecter

BEA 2011 Post

2011-05-24T23:32:00.002-04:00

(I'm only "semi" retired)

My trip to the BEA is over. I generally do everything I need to do in one day, the first day of the floor exhibitions. The BEA is really too exhausting to me to go back. Observations this year:

(1) The digital printing booths were slightly more centralized and slightly less deserted, but they were still pretty deserted because they didn't have cool books to look at and most people don't need to talk to them. Also exactly what each company does is confusing, because their posters just have a bunch of buzz words on them, so you have to ask, "Do you publicity?" or whatever you want and they tell you yes or no. They are very polite, though.

(2) Google Books had a funny sign, like "Check us out!" or "Come and join us!" or something like that, as if we're all afraid of them rather than mad at them for massive copyright infringement. Then I could not actually find the Google Books booth.

(3) I still have no idea why self-published authors buy booths to promote their book. It's got to be a ridiculous amount of money (a badge to get in was something like $400 for authors - my publisher paid my way), like thousands of dollars, and it's not as if publishers are wandering around, looking at booths and saying, "I want that. That thing that no publisher picked up if the author even tried." Seriously, if you are a self-published author and you want to promote your book, save your money and buy a publicity package from Lulu or CreateSpace.

(4) As usual, the only Jewish presses had titles I had never heard of or only heard of via Amazon recommendations, and their books had no Hebrew in them. Serious Judaica (not general Jewish books that are published by imprints) is a specialized market sold to Jews by Jews in Judaica stores, syangogue gift shops, or online. Artscroll has no reason to be at the BEA. Either I'm going to buy the new English translation of the Talmud Yerushalmi or not; no serious promotion is needed there, or needs to be done within the general industry.

(5) That guy who likes burning Qur'ans? He has a publisher, and they had an abandoned booth with a manniquin wearing a burqa. The sign on her chest said, "Hello, my name is Zahra. I have to live in this cage in Afghanistan. Can you ban it in America?" Which, you know, has part of a good cause (international women's rights) mixed with a healthy dose of racism.

(6) Chinese presses are always a little creepy because they're government controlled unless they're outside the mainland, and their material basically says, "Everything is awesome in China. There are definitely no problems you've been reading about in other sources." The Beijing Review magazine was especially bad - nothing but positive articles about how amazingly cool everyone is doing, especially those victims of the Sichuan earthquake who are now totally over it and they love their new housing. Also, definitely nobody was arrested for trying to publish the names of child victims, especially not an important artist. I am not really exaggerating here, just using different language than the magazine used. It's a shame, because there are a lot of good books released by these presses in English, but you have to wade through disquieting stuff. I mean, there are definitely a lot of countries with major human rights problems, but very few of them are at the BEA, on a full-scale offensive of promoting how there are no human rights problems in their countries.

(7) I picked up 2 books. One was actually not a giveaway - it was one of the books on display, and I told them it was on my Amazon wishlist for a long time, and they gave me their extra copy, which was very nice. The other was at a press where I'm published and they were doing a signing and I felt compelled to support the author. But my apartment is getting pretty crowded and I really don't need piles of fiction I don't want to read and couldn't sell for serious money even if it's signed.

(8) There's always one Buddhist monk wandering around. This year he was Tibetan (and he was white). Last year, a Japanese nun I think? Or maybe Korean. I don't remember.

(9) Small presses really shine at the BEA. I only say this because from my perspective, the big presses are booths I don't really need to visit, because I know what they do and I know their titles, but the small presses who might actually have decent sales I would never otherwise see. And their representatives have time for you and are as under-dressed as you are.

(10) Did people see that company that reproduces medieval manuscripts using the same materials? That was amazing! I couldn't believe they actually let us flip through their books, which were really creative masterpieces even if they were copies. Must cost a fortune, though. I didn't even ask.

(11) My business card which was a rushed job on ugly paper last night while I was recovering from a sore throat was so bad that people loved it. Someone said, "I think I would end up paying an ad company $200 to come up with this."

(12) If you are going tomorrow, bring a sweater. The exhibition floor is freezing.

Retirement Post

2011-03-30T14:59:00.004-04:00

A number of people have emailed me to ask me where I've been, which I think is really sweet, especially when they implied something might have happened to me. The truth is the more obvious: I've been really busy. I have two novels coming out over the next 4 months, both of which had major revisions recently, and I'm working on a proposal for a non-fiction book. I also got another job (two wasn't enough) with another agent, and now have two part-time bosses on top of my writing career. I am proud to say that in the years since founding this blog, I've gone from unpublished writer to someone who supports herself mostly by her writing, albeit not very well. There are only so many words in me a day, and since most of the questions I've gotten are repeats, I don't feel the desperate need to post constantly, or at all. So I'm going into a state of semi-retirement. I'll keep this blog open, as your question has probably been answered already, and I may post from time to time, but otherwise, don't expect a lot from me.

I will answer a final question which I get constantly: "How do publishers feel about eBooks?"

I may not be a publisher except for a small press I ran for two years, but I also work for two agents, have an agent, have worked with three different publishers, and attend conferences on eBooks, so I think I can safely answer the question.

Ready? The answer is: We don't know.

The eBook market (and thanks to adjacency, the self-publishing market) is a constantly-evolving new market based on technology and social media which did not previous exist. It's one where the store, not the publisher, determines the retail price that's listed on the back of a real book. Stores are experimenting with how to price and promote books, publishers are demanding higher prices and percentages and getting ignored, and authors and agents are depending the same from their publishers and similarly getting ignored, because no one knows how it's going to pan out, just that at the moment money is being made and it is going disproportionately to the retailer. Except when the retailer sells at a loss, of course, to undercut other retailers, which Amazon constantly does to make sure people buy the Kindle and not the Nook or the Sony eReader. This is why I have about 200 books on my Kindle and have paid for two of them, and one of them was .99c.

What we do know is it does not spell the end of print publishing. I have a Kindle, but I do most of my reading on Shabbos, when I can't use electronics, so it's not as helpful as it could be. I also buy a lot of academic books (which are usually not tremendously marked down in their Kindle version if it's even available) on the used market, where things are tremendously cheaper, or at Salvation Army and other shrift shops, where books are like a dollar. So my buying habits have not changed tremendously as a result of owning a Kindle, but this is not true for a lot of Kindle readers.

What does the future hold for publishing? Self-published authors insist they are the future, and that the big houses will be crushed under the weight of the awesomeness that is their 400,000 word fantasy novel that's the 1st in a trilogy that was rejected last year. I can't imagine this is so. The publishing industry provides an essential service to the book industry: it separates the wheat from the chaff, finds good material, pays authors for it, then edits it and produces it in a neat little package for the consumer. Doing this without the help of the publishing industry is actually tremendously time consuming and generally difficult. Sure, sometimes publishers miss big hits (especially since they're currently so unwilling to buy anything), but most times when they reject something, there's a good reason for it. The same goes for agents.

For all of the doom and gloom, what we're in is a transition period without a clear end in sight, but things will eventually pan out. The industry will look different, and the way money flows will change, but it will be an industry that is at times marginally profitable. The good news is that more people are reading more books, as anyone who drops down enough money for an eReader will tell you. Making books more available at lower prices to people who've dedicated themselves to reading more by plunking down hard-earned cash for a reader can only result in more people reading more in an increasingly literate society, and people will always seek to profit from that. I could imagine a point in the future where the agent/publisher has merged into one stop shop for aspiring authors as software makes it easier and easier to put a book together and promote it, but we're not there yet. Stop holding your breathe. Exhale, and let life resume its natural flow.

And to all my readers, the aspiring authors, the published authors, and the industry insiders: So long, and thanks for all the support. But not the fish. I hate fish. Gross.

So You Want to Write a Novel

2010-11-28T18:28:00.003-05:00

I can't believe I didn't write this myself.

"How many editors do you think Random House will assign to my novel?"
"Minus 13."

The Wait

2010-11-15T15:02:00.002-05:00

Hello Rejecter,

On average how long does it take for a publishing house to determine a book is to be published or rejected? I have one out to a publisher over a year and no response. I sent a follow up with an additional submission two months ago and still haven’t heard back. Any idea of an average time frame allotted?

Let me give a more complete answer than just answering your question about publishers.

(1) Unsolicited manuscript to publisher - This is a long wait. Sometimes a year or more at the worst places. Publishers will post times on their website and then not keep to them, and may not respond at all. Check with the publisher - you can even call and ask how long the response time is, but don't bother them by pitching your novel on the phone.

(2) Unsolicited query to agent - If you're going to hear back at all, the time is 1-2 weeks, maybe 3 if it's by mail. Sometime it can be instantaneous with an e-query, if the agent's assistant is just sitting in front of the computer when it comes in. I only am in the office about once a week (thanks, economy!) so most of the queries get done whatever day I'm in, so some people get instant replies and some people have to wait a few days for e-queries.

(3) Unsolicited manuscript to an agent - Don't do this.

(4) Agent sends the manuscript to a publisher - One to two months. A good agent will pitch the book to a bunch of editors they know, see who's interested, then send the book in and give a "closing date." Then, knowing the industry, they'll bug the editor politely a bunch of times until the closing date, then continuing bugging and the replies will float in over the next few weeks. You're not involved in this part of the process, though a good agent will keep you posted.

Audio Books Follow-up

2010-11-01T12:24:00.002-04:00

Why do publisher buy audio rights if they find it too expensive to actually have one produced? Wouldn't it be better to not buy the rights and leave it to someone who actually wants to create it, so they can also drive more people to buy the paper version?

At the contract stage, the publisher might have a decent idea of how much they're going to put into the book (money and time-wise) and how it's going to do, but also they're secretly hoping they're wrong, and the book might become wildly successful - in which case, they're going to want those seemingly-irrelevant rights because they'll be worth a lot of money. This is why it's the publisher's job to hold on to as many rights as possible, and the agent's job to argue the same on your behalf.

Audio Books and Audio Rights

2010-10-27T14:25:00.004-04:00

Dear Rejecter,

I found your blog via Nathan Bransford's and Eric of Pimp My Novel fame.

As a yet un-published writer and an entrepeneur considering a small press venture, I found your blogs on money and royalties extremely useful.

Something I did not see addressed, however, was audio books. I have several friends who cannot or have difficulty reading - I myself prefer to listen to a book in the car on a long drive. Unfortunately, not every book published becomes an audio book so I have to assume that there exists audio book making companies and the rights to do produce these are sold separately.

Is this correct or am I making things up? Any information you could share about audio books 'from the inside' would be very much appreciated. I am just beginning my own research now, but your insight would be invaluable.

When a book and a CD player love each other very much...

Seriously, this is how audio books happen: When you sell a book to a publisher, they will specify what rights they're buying, and the overwhelming majority of the time that will include audio rights, followed by a royalty percentage that's generally higher than royalties on book format. I'm sure they exist, but I've never seen a contract that didn't include audio rights.

This means it's the publisher's responsibility to find a company that will produce the audio book, if they feel that it would be worth their investment - and for most mid-list authors, it won't be. For those that it will be, major publishers generally have an in-house production group responsible for it, while others might hire out. Someone will be in charge of setting it all up, especially if a celebrity needs to be hired to read it.

The author actually can't make the audio book themselves because they've sold off the right to do it to the publishing company, so if the publishing company decides, "Hey, not worth it," then they're probably right, and also no audio book for that particular book. If the small press didn't buy audio rights (which is weird, but OK), the author can hire a company to do it and distribute it, but it will be wicked expensive.

When the Kindle first came out, it had a text-to-speech option, which was quickly disabled because it violated the copyright on audio rights held by publishers (Amazon was doing it without permission). Or maybe it was another e-Reader, but I'm pretty sure it was the Kindle.

EDIT: The above paragraph is disputed in comments. Other people are probably right.

We're On To You

2010-09-28T20:23:00.002-04:00

(Not posting much recently has been largely due to the Jewish holidays. Longtime readers probably guessed that)

In your query letter, if you describe a novel with an obvious sci-fi premise, and then write, "But it's not science fiction!" you either don't know what science fiction is or you are deluded into thinking we're really, really dumb.

And having "Book 1" in the title of your book - not the subtitle but the actual title - is pretty much an instant reject. Or, I've never seen a case where I didn't finish the query and immediately reject it.

Follow-Up on Writers Earning Money

2010-08-31T21:53:00.002-04:00

I didn't think to include this in the last post, which is OK because it's needlessly complicated, but another way writers make money - sometimes, how they make most of their money - is in foreign rights.

Remember that when a publisher buys your book, they don't buy the physical book. They buy the right to copy the material in the book and then resell it. Different companies will ask for different rights, and it's a good agent's job to negotiate what rights you give away in the initial offering and what rights you hold on to.

For example, a publisher will ask for world rights. These are, obviously, the rights to publish anywhere in the world in any language. The publisher has total control over your book. Agents don't like to give this away, or not unless the publisher actually has the ability to publish the book all over the world and is willing to pay a lot of money.

The stage below that is generally considered to be English-language rights. This means everything but translations, so you can still sell to foreign companies that intend to produce your book in another language. It's still a major rights grab, though.

What an American agent would probably prefer you to sell is North America & UK rights. In other words, the English-speaking and easily-shippable world (Australia and India, two big English markets, are far away). So they get the US, Mexico, Canada, and the UK, and possibly Ireland depending on some fine-tuning of the language.

Why would you want to keep as many rights as you can? Because if you have a good agent,t hat agent will have contacts with foreign agents around the globe. If the book even moderately successful, the agent will then take the books to the other agents and say, "Shop this in your country." Hopefully, the foreign agent will succeed in selling it to a local press, and there will be another contract for you with another advance (meaning $$$). Then rinse, repeat.

It is common practice in the publishing industry for agents to take a higher commission on foreign rights sold, say 25% instead of 15%, because they did more work and the foreign agent also has to get their cut. My boss, who does a lot of work in foreign rights, has probably 30 agencies she works with. I'm just guessing about that based on the amount of addresses I've had to write out on customs forms, some of which had characters I've otherwise never had to write (Thai is really hard). Some she hasn't spoken to in years, some she's in constant contact with, but they're all there, and if my boss is lucky she will sell the book an additional 5 times after the initial sale to a US publisher. And that means more money for her - and a lot more money for you.

How Much Does a Writer Make?

2010-08-20T16:24:00.003-04:00

I have read through several years of your back posts and I have a quick question for you as an assistant agent with inside knowledge and also for you as a published author in your own right.

You mentioned in a couple of your posts that it is common to see advances for new authors in the 5000-7000 range but I can't find any information about royalties. You do mention in an almost off handed way that each time you sell a book you receive about $1.12. What sort of annual income is typical for a author that publishes one book every other year. I think I could write a book a year if not more but I know the editing and everything else can drag out the process. I have no idea what typical sales for a book are. I understand that it is completely dependent on how well the book is received, I'm just looking for averages here.

Making money is complicated. Let me explain as best I can.

(1) Advance. This is an advance on future royalties. It is usually lower than it should be. It used to be new authors would make at least $5000-$7000, now it could be lower than that. Publishers don't like to spend. Repeat authors in the same company will make more and more on each advance. Ten years ago, if you were an established fiction author, you would be making around 30K a book in advances, so if you produced a book a year, you were doing well. These numbers are generally not maintained for mid-list or anyone below mid-list.

Non-fiction is an entirely different story. There is a huge range in advances. Most I've seen are above $20K.

(2) Royalties. The royalty rate for fiction is, at bottom level, 7.5% off LIST price, meaning the price they print on the back of the book, regardless of what the store sells it for. 7.5% is considered the bottom; more reputable places will give 8 or 10%. Then there's something called "escalation" where if your book has sold a certain number of copies (say, 20,000) the royalty rate will rise because at that point the publishers have earned back all the money they spent on producing the book and are willing to give you a little more. A nice escalation is to 20%, or in the case of a ton of books, 30%. Escalation rates vary hugely from company to company and also based on expectations of how much the book will sell.

From what I've seen, e-book sales have their own rate (which should be higher, like 20%, but publishers are working to keep that down), or they're a higher rate off NET prices, which is a percentage of what the book is actually sold for and what the publisher gets back from the bookstore. Net royalties are usually in the 20-30% range, but I've seen them higher. We expect e-Books to move up and down in terms of royalties as publishers and e-Book sellers figure out what the hell is going on.

(3) Payment of advance. Payment of advance occurs before the book sells any copies, though sometimes it's split up so the publisher can hold on to their money longer (publishers have a lot of tricks to do this). For a smaller press with a small advance, full payment can be upon signing, meaning a month after you sign the contract and it goes back to the publisher and it goes through accounting, then to your agent, then gets back to you. Some publishers split it to two dates: (1) Signing of the contract and (2) delivery of the completed manuscript to the publisher. Additionally, it can be split up as (1) signing, (2) delivery, and (3) publishing date. If you get a $500,000 advance, your publisher is going to pretty eager to split up payments, because it could be a year to a year and a half between signing the contract and publishing the book.

(4) Payment of royalties. After you earn out your advance, you will see royalties based on how well your book is doing. If the advance is high, you may not see royalties for years and years and years or never see them at all. The publisher is still required to tell you what you've been selling (a royalty statement) during one of its pay periods. It used to be quarterly, but now some publishers have moved to fall and spring, meaning I'm paid my royalties in November and April. If the number is below a certain amount (say, $50), the publisher may hold onto it until it earns that amount. Publishers don't like writing $4.00 checks. If it's within the first 6 months of publication, the publisher may stipulate that they can hold back 50% of your earnings against returns of the books by stores, which will then subtract from your future earnings, and if there are no returns, they will release your earnings the following year. The following year, they can then take the amount they owed you the previous year that they held against returns and split THAT in half, and hold that half against more returns. In other words, if your book does well, publishers will perpetually owe you money because they will find ways not to pay you.

The only advice I can say when planning a writing career is: don't. I make most of my money from books, but I'm never sure when the next book will sell, the next contract will be signed, and for how much. I don't know my royalty earnings until I earn them. It's like having a job where sometimes you earn lots of money and sometimes you earn none, but most of the time you're lucky to earn just enough to say, "There's no reason to get a real job. I'm building my career." Or that's what I tell my parents.

Inside Agenting

2010-08-04T23:22:00.004-04:00

One reason it's a good idea to belong to the AAR if you're an agent, aside from it being the ultimate stamp of legitimacy, is you get to go to AAR meetings. They're hit-or-miss, but there's usually drinks.

The last couple have been either about e-Books or social media outlets for authors like Facebook, Foursquare, etc. They basically boil down to this:

Social Media Presenter: This program is totally awesome and unless your author is a complete shut-in, incapable of communicating with the outside world, they have to have it YESTERDAY. Let's look at some totally cool statistics about user traffic!

Agent: ... How does this translate into sales?

Social Media Presenter: Funny you should ask that! I have no idea! But if your author doesn't do it it's definitely lost sales, right? So they should do it. They should spend way too much time on it, if anything. By the way, as an employee of this company or someone who's hired by authors to do this sort of thing for them, I have no stake whatsover in what I'm talking about!

Man, I have so many authors as friends on my author account on Facebook. They all make irrelevant posts and I tune them out. That's why I rarely post; I don't want to be tuned out. I don't really want to know about their cats or that they like the group "Reading" or that they just got out of a mental institution, which might be why they post "I AM THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST THE SAVIOR" roughly once every ten minutes, in caps, and sometimes with a long exposition. Dude, I am starting to not believe you are a legitimately published poet who has won many awards.

Authors: If you make a page specifically for your writing and author information, please stop posting meaningless crap I will instinctively tune out. Post about, I don't know, your writing. I must have some interest in it - I friended you. That or we're both on Farmville.

MA Degree Questions

2010-08-03T16:56:00.005-04:00

Dear Rejecter,
I have been writing novels since I was about seven. I literally think about it all the time. However, try as I might I have never been able to get beyond the 40,000 word mark before losing the plot and momentum of my story and deciding to start something else entirely. I'm a journalist on a big women's glossy in the UK so it's not getting the words down on paper that's the problem, it's rather getting my plot from A to B that stumps me.

I'm currently looking into doing a part time MA in creative writing in the hope that following a structured course might help me complete a first draft, but it's a lot of money - over £6,000 for two years of study. The course I have in mind gives you the opportunity to showcase your work with literary agents towards the end of the two years. Which sounds great, but I'm unsure as to how much value the course itself would be.

My first question is aimed at you as a published author yourself, the last two as an assistant to a Literary Agent:
a) Do you believe there is any value in doing a qualification such as an MA in Creative Writing if you can already write but are struggling with plot?
b) In your experience, how many published authors have completed these kinds of courses?
c) How valuable would the contact with literary agents through the course be? Ie would they take you more seriously/ more likely to consider your novel?

Things may be different in the UK, but here are my answers for the US:

a) You get what you put into any creative writing course. Meaning, if you write a lot you'll probably get better. You could also do that without the course, but some people need structure and some people are convinced they need feedback. I got little to no useful feedback in my MFA prgram.

b) Very few. Very to none, really. Unless they went on to teach. Then they needed the degree to do that, but preferably an MFA over an MA.

c) Little to no value.

Also, $11000 (by my guesstimate of the exchange rate) for a two-year degree is insanely cheap by most American standards, unless you are earning a degree from online colleges and universities, they are significantly more affordable.

Note: I should clarify that if taking a course makes you go from a bad writer to an insanely good writer, it has tremendous value. I've never seen that happen, but that doesn't mean it hasn't.

Rejections!

2010-07-27T21:51:00.003-04:00

Hello Rejecter,

I just came across your blog today and found your honesty refreshing.

Speaking of honesty, I'm trying to decipher some agent rejection letters. They say many positive things about the story and writing followed by:

Agent 1: "After long consideration, though, I have to say I am just not enthusiastic enough to offer representation."
Agent 2: "I'm afraid, however, that I simply didn't fall in love with the work as I would have to, to take on a new project. "
Agent 3: "Unfortunately, however, I am being extremely careful about taking on new projects, and while I admired this a lot, I fear I didn't feel as enthusiastically about the manuscript as I need to in such a challenging marketplace.

Author friends tell me I should continue to contact agents but I'm wondering if the above replies are code for: "Give up now, you'll never get this book published."

Thoughts?

Flattered but Confused

Unless the agent mentions specifics about your novel, there is no reason to believe it's anything but a form letter. If you get a reply letter that looks like it might have been photocopied 100 times, it's definitely a form letter.

Rejections are really frustrating. I get them now, but mostly from publishing companies, and sometimes they are personalized (depending on how well the agent knows the editor) and sometimes they are not.

A form letter means the following things:
(1) Your book is bad.
(2) Your book is good, but not really good enough.
(3) You submitted the book to an agency that doesn't handle that genre.
(4) Your book is too long or too short.
(5) Your book is thinly disguised Twilight fanfic. Hell, some people don't disguise it at all. They understand nothing of copyrights and we don't amazingly compelled to try to explain it to them.
(6) The agent you queried is not taking new clients.

For the most part, you're not going to know what it is (unless it's that Twilight fanfic thing). So send to every possible agent, and if they all reject you, take it as a sign that it's time to write a different book.

The Sky Is Falling (No It Isn't)

2010-07-19T21:54:00.002-04:00

No doubt you're hearing about this from all quarters.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/07/kindle-sales-outpace-amazons-hardcover-book-sales.ars

Does that bring on any changes to your thoughts about ebooks? I'm sure hard covers haven't been a big seller for a long time now. This must be some kind of sign of sea change tho :)

Have you read a novel on an iphone yet? (I quite enjoy reading in bed w/iphone - great after my wife is asleep. Easy to hold, and no light required :)

I'm wondering if Agents will become Reviewers - if writers all become self publishers, Agents might be better at playing curator. And Amazon just rakes in the bucks.

(tho' they've recently become more generous if I hear that right - reduced their cut to 30%)

I'll answer your questions in order.

(1) Taking into account that Amazon is an internet (technology-based) bookstore with the largest share in the e-Book market, it's still slightly surprising. Not that surprising, though. Remember to take into account that most people who bothered to buy an expensive Kindle did so because they read a lot - more than the average person, and almost everyone with a Kindle I've spoken to has said the amount of books they buy has gone up considerably since buying the Kindle because it's so easy and cheap to buy. So that's skewing the statistics a little. But yeah, e-Books is a market growing by leaps and bounds while books ... are pretty much still books.

(2) I don't have an iPhone. I'm a writer. I'm poor. I have a much cheaper phone with a much smaller screen and I only read my email on it, and I totally hate reading my email on it. I also have a Sony e-Reader that I never use because I find the screen irritating.

(3) E-Book selling really well to everyone self-publishing is a huge leap. Huge. I'm going to guess that most e-Books sold are still published by traditional companies, even if they're small companies. Yes, a lot more people are self-publishing, but it's not necessarily good. Traditional publishing works hard to only publish good books, and if they're not good, to at least edit them well. With very, very few exceptions, almost all of the self-published books we receive as submissions at work or I buy online are terrible in some fashion. It's actually getting frustrating with Amazon, which makes it so easy to not only self-publish but also to hide that you're self-publishing, because I'm running into more and more books that have poor layouts and copy-editing and then I look the company up, find out it's owned by the author, and say, "Oh, it was self-published. That explains it."

(4) Amazon is probably trying to keep competitive with the other places to buy e-Books.

If You Have An Offer...

2010-07-15T22:12:00.004-04:00

Question:
I'm in process of sending queries out both to agents and publishers (the few that still take unrepresented queries).

Let's say there is an offer on the table from a publisher, but I want an agent to handle it. I would imagine there would be some urgency about getting a deal sealed (of course, I have no idea, this is just how I dream it). I have heard that an author with a deal already in the works has a much better chance of getting an agent's attention. If that were to happen, would I still go through the regular query process? Just change my hook to "I have an offer from Insertnamehere publishing house"? Even so, would it be so sure of a thing (of course, provided that the agent represented similar work -- I do do my homework and don't just spam queries)?

If you answer this question, great. If you don't, it's all good. It's sort of a random question and really, just me procrastinating from editing for a contest.

I got my agent this way. I had partials and fulls out when I got the offer from the publisher. Two situations here:

(1) If you don't have anything currently sitting at an agency, including a query, query them by email or mail but put that offer information at the top. Include your phone number and email.

(2) If you have things at agencies, even queries, email or call (seriously, call) the agencies and tell them, "Hey, you're looking at something. There's an offer on the table. Here's my number." Then wait for the calls. Most of them will not have read your query/partial/full and beg for 24-48 hours to read it before getting back to you. Enjoy the attention while you can, because it's rare in publishing.

For Your Information, Again

2010-07-01T19:11:00.002-04:00

If you've self-published several terrible books in what's probably a mystery/adventure/YA series, complete with your self-drawn cover, it's really only necessary to send one unsolicited book with your query, not all 3 plus some soundtracks you've composed. Be assured that if our socks were knocked off by the first poorly-edited book with its hilariously bad cover art, we would request the rest. Until then, save on postage.

I'm always in favor of people saving on postage, and yet ...

Money for Reviews

2010-06-29T15:18:00.002-04:00

Dear Rejecter,

Having recently completed my YA novel and believing it to be original, inventive, yadda yadda, I'll be sending my query letters out to potential agents soon. My question to you is: We Book's Page to Fame, good idea or not?

https://www.webook.com/poll/raters.aspx

The premise: for $9.95 a writer puts up the first page of their novel. It's then anonymously rated by other writers participating in the program. If the page is rated highly enough, it passes to the next level where the next few pages are put up and rated, and so on. At each level, the novel page or pages will be rated by at least one literary agent, and, if the novel "wins," the writer will receive exposure, potential offers of representation and whatever other good things may follow.

Good idea or not?

In general, I am against authors spending money. Aside from that whole "money flows to the author" principle, we live in an age where pretty much everything that a potential author could possibly want is online and free. Sure, if you want to develop your craft, it might not be a bad idea to take a course or buy a book on craft that's well-reviewed, and a grammar book wouldn't hurt, but really, save your money. Even if you get published, the money won't be rolling in anyway. $9.95 will probably cover all of the stamps for your queries and SASEs and partials if the agencies don't accept email queries, but especially when you send a requested manuscript.

As to the program itself, I've never heard of it, so that may say something about the exposure you'll be getting. Agents don't regularly kill time on the web looking at the work of unpublished authors. As for feedback, is it from other unpublished authors? How good is that, anyway?

If anyone knows more about the program, post it in the comments.

Revising Your Word Count

2010-06-27T01:18:00.003-04:00

What if you rejected for no other reason than a too-low 50k word count?(though -oops-the author-doesn't know for sure it was this, God forbid an agent give feedback) would a revised 70k get the auto-dump as well?

There's a short answer to this, but I felt it deserved some discussion anyway.

At my agency, 50K will make me suspicious but I will not immediately throw it out, even though maybe I should. It depends on the genre; my boss is a little looser about word count. I know of at least two other agencies that absolutely would throw out a 50K novel, so maybe it's not a great thing to be pitching.

On the other hand, padding your novel doesn't make it good. It probably makes it bad (or worse).

There was a case a few weeks ago where someone sent in a query saying she had revised her novel to our specifications and now would we please look at it? As best as we can figure, she had originally sent a query (a partial or full we would have remembered) that one of us rejected, but written "too short" on the side or as a PS. Some agencies do this sometimes, if the writer needs a leg up, but in this case it came to bite us in the tuchus, which it usually does. She assumed this wasn't the only problem with the novel and spent a ton of time revising it, then resent the query. Rejected again - it was still a bad novel idea. I guess our (I don't know if my boss or I did it) helpfulness was misleading, making her think she had a chance if she added 20K of blather, or simply lied about the word count and hoped we really, really loved the partial.

I really hope, as a person, that she hadn't pinned her hopes on us. As I writer, I know she probably did.

For Your Information

2010-06-20T20:29:00.001-04:00

My boss requested I make the following post:

If you send a query, don't send the same (or similar) one three months later. We will totally know you did it and just reject you again. My boss is sick of them.

Thank you.

Web Content

2010-06-09T17:48:00.002-04:00

Hello Rejecter,

I just found your blog today and am hoping you can answer a question that I have been trying to find an answer to for a while. I've heard many writers mention recently that they have been asked by agents and publishers to have a blog and an established web presence before submitting for publication. I assume this is because you then have a pool of people who are already interested in your book.

My question is where does the line fall between developing a web presence and self publishing? Could having a blog and posting some of your work end up hurting a writer's chances of publishing their first book?

Harlan Ellison is very against this, but publishing today involves giving away a lot of things for free. He went on about this for five minutes or so in the documentary on him, Dreams with Sharp Teeth, but Harlan lives in a world of his own - specifically, the world of a well-published, extremely well-established and respected sci-fi writer who can demand money for things the rest of us give away for free.

Aside from Harlan's rant, I've never heard anything bad about publishing online first. I did it, and even kept the stuff up when it was published. I have heard a lot of great things about web presence, so that's something you should get behind. Web presence. Media presence. Facebook. Other words that sound important and justify blowing an afternoon on Facebook instead of getting work done. Hopefully my Farmville friends will start buying my books soon.

The only problem that comes along is when you sell the book to a publisher. The publisher then has the right, if they've bought digital rights, to ask you to take down you content. See, they own it. That's what you sold them - the right to copy and distribute your own work - and that's why they gave you money. Until the contract lapses, it has to stay down so that they can distribute it for a profit instead. My experience with publishers, though, is that they're not necessarily strict on enforcing this, depending on the publisher and the nature of the content. And the fact that some people plain old don't like to read books on computers.

Obligatory BEA Post

2010-05-26T19:21:00.005-04:00

My feet are screaming even while I'm sitting down, so I must have spent the day at the BEA, picking up too many free books I'll never read and going back and forth between the same 5 stands trying to find the editor I wanted to talk with. This time, at least, I had enough water, or could have bummed some bottles off at least one of the two publishers whom I have books with.

In summary:

- No drummers this time. Yay!

- Free champagne, beer, and in one case, popcorn, comes out about 4 pm, and not a moment too soon at that. The best way to get it is the same way you get in anywhere - you just act like you belong there.

- The daily PW gigantor edition for the BEA had article on Sylvia Browne called "helped by angels." Apparently she's written that despite her angel spirit guides, she's been through three disastrous marriages where she was beaten, stolen from, and cheated on. Sylvia, first of all, WE ALL KNOW YOU'RE FAKING IT. Second, if you have deluded yourself into thinking a spirit guide is telling you what to do in life, you might consider the idea that he has given you some terrible advice over the years. I mean, if I was marrying a guy, and I had an angel spirit guide helping me out, I would at some point ask him, "Hey angel, should I marry this guy?" and if he said, "Yes, it's totally cool" and then the guy beat me and stole from me, I would question the integrity of my spirit guide's judgment.

- If you are a Jewish Press and I've never heard of you, you are probably run by crazy people and that's why legitimate Jewish booksellers won't stock you in their stores. Hell, you probably shouldn't even be at the BEA. The major Jewish publishers who aren't trying to branch out into other markets pretty much don't waste their time with the BEA. They don't need networking and social media. Either I'm going to buy their English edition of the Talmud Bavli with the Rashi script converted into normal block print or I'm not. No amount of press changes that.

- United Arab Emirates, you cannot buy my love with an outrageously fancy stand. Same thing to you, Saudi Arabia and the CCP Press. (To be fair, Xinhua's stand was not very extravagant).

- Scientology booth, I am not fooled by you. Hubbard was a terrible sci-fi author and you push his stuff as a front for the giant corporation we call a cult and you call a religion. Considering how many people regularly buy and read Hubbard's fiction (the numbers have to be dismal), you stole a ridiculous amount of floor space from publishers who needed it. Also, what was with the African-American guys in pirate costumes? Because there were like 3 of them and that's bucking the odds in colorblind casting.

- Wow, there sure were a ton of content-less booths for various e-publishing companies, weren't there? I should be less surprised, really, but they were like, a whole SECTION. A section that was pretty empty. We need shiny books to attract us, even if we know they're not galleys and we can't take free copies.

- A bunch of people asked me what I did for a living. I thought the "EXHIBITION AUTHOR" tag on my badge would have given that away.

- If you are looking for an editor you've never met in real life in a gigantic corporation's booth, all of the name badges will inevitably be turned around so you can't scope out people's names from afar and have to interrupt their conversations to ask them. It's like, a thing.

- One of my publishers claimed they didn't have any copies of my book on display because the one copy was stolen (which happens), but I'm on to them. C'mon, it was two hours into the convention! On the other hand, if people were racing to steal a copy of my book off a stand and clearly put it ahead of any other thing they might have had to do on the first day the convention floor was open, I might not be in such a bad situation as an author.

- Man, a ton of people lined up for author signings with authors I'd never heard of. Some of that's got to be getting caught up in the moment or hoping for a good resale value, though to be fair I did not hear anyone say, "Make it out to eBay."

Update from the Rejector

2010-05-18T18:42:00.002-04:00

I haven't been posting a lot, mostly due to a slow pace of questions, a lot of which I've answered just by replying via email, since the question was already asked at some point on the blog. I've still got a few in my inbox, including one mythical one I thought was awesome but read at some time where I couldn't respond, and then it disappeared. Seriously. I have no idea where it is, but it was so wonderfully smug.

I'll be offline for the next week (combination of Shavuot/camping), but back for the BEA, provided my publisher finally coughs up that author badge. I won't be live tweeting from it or anything, mostly because those posts would be along the lines of, "It's really hot and loud in here" and "Four dollars for a water!? Damn you, Javitz Center!" If those drummers come back, I may renew my vow to find acid and throw it in their faces, and then not do it, not entirely because of the non-availability of acid in the Javitz Center.

You can leave a comment, but it probably will not be approved until Sunday. Until then, enjoy!

Self-Publishing Credits

2010-05-03T19:17:00.002-04:00

I teach a writing class at my local community college and got a question from a student -- would an agent consider representing someone based on a self-published novel? Should the student mention that what they're submitting has been self-published? My immediate answer to the student was no, but then they said that it's sold pretty well. Does that make a difference?

The unwritten "rule" (though some have written it) is that a self-published book should have earned at least 3000 copies on its own steam to be considered a "success." I don't know where the number came from, but I've heard it many, many times and read it on agents' websites. So no, if it's below that, don't count it as a publishing credit and don't mention it.

However, we're seeing more and more people who self-published their novel first, then were shocked to find out how little they sell and how costly the process is (usually for the readers, because the books are a little more pricey than mass-produced books), decide they want to get published traditionally. If you're pitching a manuscript to us, and for some reason you want to send it book form ("I had it printed by Authorhouse), we're not going to be doing a lot of complaining. It's one of those things that doesn't help and doesn't hurt.

Trade Shows

2010-04-22T16:57:00.003-04:00

First, I wanted to say that I love your blog. Thank you for all you do to help out everyone in the blogsphere. Second, I had a question about trade shows, namely BEA. If an agent goes to the show, is it appropriate for a writer to approach them and introduce themselves? Maybe talk to them about their novel? Or is this considered rude and annoying?

The answer is complicated.

There are trade shows where unpublished authors are allowed in - and trade shows where they are not, the BEA being one of those. Three years ago, when I attended my first BEA, this was not being well enforced. If you paid the money to register as a publishing company - whether that company existed or not - you could get a badge and access to the floor. Since it was an internet registration, you didn't have to show your credentials, be it a small town rag or Simon & Schuster. Agents, however, had their own tables in a segregated area to meet with clients so they wouldn't be bothered, and the guy at the door was pretty strict about who he let in (I had to argue to go in to speak with my boss because I was not registered as her assistant).

According to my boss, they're trying to crack down on that at the BEA because editors and agents are sick of dealing with unpublished authors pitching to them. It's not that they don't want new authors, it's that it's hard to say "No, go away, I seriously have a meeting with buyers right now" to someone looking desperate. The BEA is, primarily, a show for publishers, agents, and industry people to do business with one another, in a limited space and a limited time, especially if they have to man a booth for the next 6 hours, then be on a panel, then attend a wine-n-cheese, then spend $4.00 for a friggin' bottle of water (THANKS, Javitz Center), then stumble around from author event to keynote speaker in the haze of someone who has been awake way, way too long.

There's that motorcycle Zen guy who tells the story of pitching his book at a trade show and getting a million dollar deal (I'm sketchy on the specifics here) and that started the whole business, but really, please don't do it. If you happen to be at the trade show for trade show reasons and you happen to be talking to an editor whom you know is currently buying the type of book you are trying to sell, "Can I pitch my book to you?" is not a bad question to ask. In all fairness, that's how I got my first book deal, so I can't totally write it off. That said, don't crash the BEA and chat up every agent who happens to be in the bathroom line with you. That's tacky.

The 4 Questions

2010-04-22T16:27:00.002-04:00

I have spent too many unhealthy hours reading blogs and websites filled with advice on queries for far too long. From what I have learned, everyone wants something different but they wont all tell you what it is that they want. So I have a few general questions. 1) If you have a website for your book or work is it appropriate to give them the address in the query?

Put it in, but there's almost no chance we'll look at it. Still, it doesn't hurt.

2) On some sites I read queries where it looks like the first half of the query is sucking up to the agent and has nothing about the book. If I am querying an agent they should know what I am after. Their approval. Is it necessary for me to try to tell them why I want to work with them and list all of the books they have published that I have read?

Throwing in a reference to a book the agent represents isn't considered bad. It shows you did research on the agent and are not just mass-querying. In some agencies it gives you points. Honestly, I see it so much I just ignore it and focus on the book that's being pitched, but again, it doesn't hurt your query, so you should do it.

3) Early on I was over excited and sent out a query to an agency I quite desperately wanted to work with. They rejected me because they didn't feel a connection, but said it was a great concept. This prompted me to reevaluate the query and the book which turned out for the best. Is it ever appropriate for me to resubmit to them? If so, how long must I wait?

A couple months, but don't expect anything. It will probably be rejected again. There was a reason the first time and it may have been unrelated to the format of the query letter. Like "Ugh, I've seen too much of this lately" or "I'm not taking on new clients now unless it's specific genre."

4) I have no credentials that relate to my writing. I don't feel I should have to tell them anything about my self if my writing conveys that I am the best person to write this story. It takes up more of their time and they don't care who I am, I don't mind that. I'm arrogant but not egotistical. However most agents websites say "tell us about your self" in their criteria. Do I have to if they request it?

When they say "tell us about yourself" it means "tell us what writing credentials you have, and if you've written non-fiction, what credentials you have to write this specific book." You don't need to put in any other biographical information. By the way, I can't stress that last part enough. If you have written non-fiction (other than memoir), you should have some credentials proving why you're qualified to write a book about your subject. You know, degrees you might have, research you might have done. That sort of thing. We don't see enough of that in non-fiction proposals.

Trilogies. Or, Potential Ones.

2010-04-19T23:18:00.002-04:00

My boss is NOT one of the many people who planned to go to the London Book Fair and has lost out on their deposit. Of the international fairs, she usually does one or the other - Frankfurt or London - and it was Frankfurt, which is in the Fall. It did create a panic in the industry last week when the volcano-related news came out, but the London Book Fair is going forward anyway, as most people in Europe can take buses or trains to get there.

Anyway:
Hi Rejecter. (I'd rather spell that with an Or, sort of like a Terminator!). This question may suck, but I'm asking it anyway: It seems like nearly every fantasy or scifi book that comes out now is part of a trilogy (or longer in some cases). Is this because publishers mostly want trilogies, or is it because the writers can't get Lord of the Rings out of their minds and think everything needs to be a trilogy? If I have a novel I want to pitch, should I be telling publishers "This is Book 1 of a Trilogy", in the hopes of more interest?

I don't have a straight answer for you here. Publishers in certain genres, specifically fantasy books and mysteries, do like multi-book series of an often unspecified number at the time of the buying of the first book. That said, they don't love them from new, untested authors.

As for agents, I don't think it would hurt your query, but I don't think it would help, either, unless your book has a stupid fantasy name like "Book 1 - The Prophey" because if you don't mention there's more books we'll just be wondering. The thought, when publishers buy a book, is often "Will this book succeed?" way before it's "How many of these can the author pump out and how fast can they do it? Because George R.R. Martin is screwing us over. I mean yes, we're still making tons of money off it, but we're really wondering if he's going to finish the series before he dies or some relative will have to pick it up and it will be lame."

Keep your focus on the first book. Getting one book published is really, really hard; many of my readers would be more than happy to tell you that. This is the book you want the agent to love and the publisher to buy.

I don't know whether other people who handle more fantasy hold the "unpublished author with a trilogy" against the author in the query or not. I just see it so often I ignore it, whereas if it was in a non-trilogy-friendly genre I would definitely hold it against the author (like, say, memoir). So, leave it out unless you can't, in which case just give it a line.

Responses to the Previous Post

2010-04-07T18:32:00.003-04:00

Where has the Rejector been? The answer, you clueless goyim, is Passover. It's not a place so much as a concept of a holiday that eats up space and time for way longer than it should.

Comment from a previous post:
Rejecter, I was surprised by your answer.

Including quotes, praise, etc. from professors -- even famous ones -- in a query strikes me as incredibly amateurish and unprofessional. I know lit mag staff laugh at this. And it's something that always shows up in letters from MFA students.

Now, Rejecter is the expert here. I'm not an agent, and since Rejecter reads queries and she thinks it's okay, then obviously she wouldn't have a problem with it if your query crossed her desk. But I have a really really really hard time believing that the majority of agents or publishing professionals who see this in your query will take it seriously.

Plus, I worry what your professors are thinking telling you they are so confident this will be published when it's a 40,000 somewhat quirky or experimental novella. I even question whether they could truly understand the publishing world if they are telling you they expect to see it on the shelves. Unless they are talking about small, independent university presses (in which case you probably wouldn't be seeking an agent right away anyway), they are insane or, at best, misguided. Publishing companies are barely buying many literary novels these days, never mind experimental stuff from unknowns, and especially not 40,000 word novellas. I'm not saying give up or don't try -- just that it's ludicrous that your famous professors don't understand that this is not something that a New York house is going to buy right now.

I am not trying to be harsh. I'm just a little worried for the person who asked this question because I fear these professors have gotten his/her hopes up for absolutely no reason.

I got praise - not a lot, because I kept on submitting genre fiction - in my MFA program and I kind of ignored it. Then when I became successful in publishing, my professors actually remembered me and said, "Of course I remembered you! I meant what I said, you know. About having promise." And I thought they just said that because what else are MFA professors supposed to say? They're not going to get tenure if they be honest and tell half the class to give up and go to refrigeration school.

Anyway, I was a little easygoing on the "put in quotes" thing, but my first boss (who kind of mentored me on the art of query letters) and my current boss both put some stock in having quotes of praise. It depends on the sources, of course - your aunt who is an English teacher is not a good source - but I don't necessarily laugh at a professor's praise. I do laugh when the query letter contains a copy of a rejection letter from a publishing company the author previously submitted to with the form response lines of praise highlighted. That's always funny.

And yes, 40K is too short. If something drops below 70K there had better be a good reason for it.

Hi rejecter,

Great blog! I was wondering though, what is the minimum word count for a collection of short stories?

p.s. If these professors are actually famous, then their praise might be worth something if they convince THEIR agents to read your stuff and sign you. This is the most promising angle and is completely different than you writing down their praise in a query letter sent cold to other agents. Even if your professor's agent did sign you, I have to wonder what they expect to do with a 40,000 word novella?

I don't know the minimum word count for a collection of short stories. I'm guessing it can be less than 80K, because a lot of the short story collections I've seen and read have been pretty slim. That said, unless you've had the majority of your short stories published in major magazines/journals, you shouldn't be submitting a short story collection. They don't sell well and we don't like them. Not for a first-time author.

To answer your second sort-of question there, famous writer-professors don't necessarily have agents, or maybe have agents who don't accept new clients, or maybe have agents who are not interested in the professor's students getting recommendations for them all the time. I have an agent and I've almost never said to a friend with a novel "send it to my agent and tell her I'm recommending you." It's not because I don't like my friends. It's because I don't want to bother my agent with my friend's bad novels that I know she's going to reject. That's just mean.

Novels, MFA Programs, and Other Troublesome Things

2010-03-22T15:14:00.003-04:00

I have been working with two famous and critically respected authors in my MFA program who have been more than enthusiastic about my quirky literary manuscript. One of them said that "it was simply amazing and I need to find an agent immediately and get this thing published!" The other teacher says he has no doubt that this will be on the shelf. Should I mention this in my query letter? I must say that I am not confident about the this book being marketable as it is basically a novella at 40,000 words, although my teacher calls it a novel and it is a bit unusual with regards to language and form. I wrote it because it was what I needed to write and when I began I wasn't thinking about publication although now I am very excited about the prospect! Should I send it out as is or try to make it longer or a bit more traditional?

Addressing the issues one-by-one:

(1) You have two famous and critically-respected authors in your MFA program? Seriously? Are you in school in Iowa?

(2) OK, being serious, having an author's recommendation in your query letter as a sentence or two is almost never bad, provided that author was not self-published, because then it doesn't count. So yes, you should put that in your query letter. Specifically, you should put the good things they said about your manuscript in the query letter, not the fact that they said it should be published.

(3) 40K is a novella. You can send it out, but it will probably get knocked out of the running on that alone. On the other hand, you may get lucky. If you're prepared for a slew of rejections, you can give it a shot. Most published authors have rejections from other manuscripts under their belt before they get an acceptance.

Things I Thought Were Obvious File #127

2010-03-15T16:52:00.003-04:00

Be nice to your agent.

Seriously.

My boss acknowledges that a lot of writers, particularly career ones, are inherently weirdos. She doesn't outright say it, but when writers are unreliable or obsessive or can't seem to grasp the world beyond their work, she's not surprised. I'm not surprised; I was a weirdo growing up and I'm a weirdo now. My publication record is just confirmation of my right to be one. That said, it's important to maintain a professional working relationship with the people around you, and in this case, your agent or potential agent.

There's been a few cases over the years I've known her where my boss has declined a potential client, or cut lose a former one, because of their behavior. Mostly the former, but there was even a case where a potential client came in with an offer from a publishing company with a huge advance attached to it. In other words, free money for my boss, whose job becomes to look over the contract and pretty much nothing else, and then receive a significant check for her work. Agents love these clients. That was actually how I got my agent; various agents were considering my work and at the same time I landed an offer from a company after I pitched to the editor at the BEA and I called around to the agents considering me, said I had an offer on the table, and waited for them to call me back. Within the first 24 hours, three did. Another begged for an additional 24 hours to read the manuscript, and a fourth was vacation and still asked about it when they got back 2 weeks later. One person did say "OK, I read it, I'm legitimately not interested" but otherwise I had my pick. It's a pretty awesome position to be in.

Back to my boss. She got this offer, which really a lot of money already on the table, and she was still debating it when I last spoke to her. The author, when she spoke to him, was pushy and demanded things of her like lowering her industry fees (which is not a negotiable topic), made comments critical of her other clients, and didn't get back to her when she emailed him basic questions that would be crucial to the agent/client relationship. It really came down to "Do I really want to work with this guy?" Knowing her, in the long run, the answer will probably be no.

So if you're working with your agent, or trying to get one, be polite. Promptly answer emails if you're available to do so. Don't ignore questions. In short, don't be a douche. We don't like working with them.

For Your Information

2010-03-05T01:15:00.003-05:00

If you are, say, an unrepentant child molester serving out his latest jail sentence (this one just for owning a considerable stash of child pornography), and you're pitching a novel, it's best to leave out everything I just said in the query letter except the part about having a novel. Sure, once we get over our revulsion at your page-long, off-topic discussion of how history justifies your obsession with pre-teen boys, we'll find it amusing in an extremely dark way and laugh about it. But then we'll reject you.

I know, we shouldn't judge the author, just the novel, but there are exceptions. After all, if we took you on as a client, we would have to work with you, and if you're given to rants that make us uncomfortable, that's not a relationship we're interested in having.

Follow-up on Previous Post

2010-02-23T18:49:00.002-05:00

I'm stuck on the fact that an agent may like the writing and story but pass because of the ending. Isn't that something that can be fixed easily with the writer?

and

If an agent likes an idea well enough to request a full but doesn't like the ending, wouldn't a request to rewrite be called for?

I feel like this is a question I should answer before more people ask it.

First of all, I slightly oversimplified in my answer. There was probably a massive problem with the ending. My boss, if she likes the manuscript a lot, will devote some time to asking for a rewrite (a major thing to ask of a non-client) and working on those edits (a major thing to do for a non-client) and has lost lots of (wo)man-hours on them. They have still not resulted in taking the client on, because either the writer didn't want to edit or simply couldn't edit, something I'll get to in a second. Some agents are really willing to work on potential manuscripts because they're fairly sure the manuscripts can be fixed and sold, and they're usually right. One of the current bestsellers on some list, I think it's Amazon, was a book that I remember working on for my former boss. It arrived as a really good idea for a book that was mostly done, but had some narrative problems, and 3 years ago I was asked to read it and give my advice. I then went to work for someone else, and though I had my doubts about it, obviously the book was fixed because now I've seen it reviewed across the web and shows up on bestseller lists. I also remember that my former boss really, really loved this book. She didn't just think it was a great manuscript; she had personal attachment to it. Agents don't feel that way about every manuscript. My current boss has two bestsellers on the list, both non-fiction, at the moment, though she's had others since I've been with her, but not things I've worked on for the most part, or saw when they when they arrived as a potential client.

Now, onto the the writers. My former professor once said, "Writing is easy. Editing is hard." It's probably the only thing ever said that I completely agreed with in my MFA program. For most writers, editing is hard. For me, it's particularly unbearable, and as a published author I dread it and fear it and still do a lot of it. First my agent asks for revisions, then the publisher does. Last week I submitted a book to my agent that I've been editing for a year now. It took me a month to write and a year to edit, and it's still not in the best shape it could be, but it may be in the best shape I'm capable of making it. I'm really attached to this project, and I want it to sell and succeed, but in my mind I always imagine a book that's much better than the one on the screen, and despite many rewrites I can't see to get there. I honestly don't know if she'll ask for another revision, which I'll do if she asks, or do some minor touch-ups and send it out and see if it sticks. At this point to her I'm a proven seller, and I've made her some money, so I'm worth the risk, but it still might not sell and won't look good for her or me if it doesn't. It's depressing for writers to not have their books sell, but it's also bad for agents, in terms of their crucial relationships with editors, to keep sending the editors things they won't like.

Endings aren't easily "fixable." For some writers, any revision is impossible. These are writers who either have such a name for themselves that anyone will publish them or they never get published because no one wants to work with them. For other writers, it's simply a matter of ability to craft a story properly, and they don't have it and may not be interested in the implication that they need to acquire it. Other people will never be great writers, and may succeed in one genre and fail in another, which is probably my slate in life, as I can't seem to get published in science fiction but have two other genres under my belt. Agents know all this, and it's hard for them to invest time in someone who, honestly, may or may not be able to produce the work that the agent will then try to sell, and may or may not succeed in doing and only for very little money.

Agents are accused of not nurturing writers, but a lot of agents are very up-front about not being the right person to do this. I was at a WorldCon where an agent gave a panel, and he said outright, "I will not hold your hand. I will not revise your work. I will try to sell work for my clients for the highest amount possible, and then I will make sure the publishing company does all that it can to promote the book. That's what I do. If you don't like it, find another agent."

New Novel, Old Agent

2010-02-23T15:41:00.002-05:00

I chalked my first YA novel up to experience but only after I made it to the point that two (out of seven to whom I sent queries) agents asked for the complete manuscript. One of the agents never wrote me after requesting the complete manuscript--I just had to assume she/he was declining, based on no response.

My question: I am now getting ready to query a second YA novel. Can I start at some better place with these two agents--mention that they had expressed some interest in my first? Or do I just start from scratch on their agency web sites, since they didn't like the first enough to sign me? I am especially leery of the one who did not respond, although the correspondence up to the final interaction was cordial and even enthusiastic, and he/she is a reputable agent from a respected agency.

Sure, what the hey. If they liked your work the first time around, mention it but don't bank on it. It might help, it might hurt, but in the large scheme of things, there are so many agents out there that if your book is good, someone will pick it up. Probably.

As to people who get to fulls and don't like them, not responding is rude but sadly not uncommon. My boss requests a lot of fulls but very, very rarely accepts one, especially in fiction and usually, she says, because she really likes the writing or subject (the reason she got past the partial stage) but didn't like the ending. It's surprising hard to bring a book to a good ending. I know I was rejected for many years for "structural problems" and still have that issue with some of my work. So the agent might say, "Hey, this is a person whose writing I liked, but the last novel just didn't work. Maybe experience has gotten them somewhere."

Or they may not remember you at all. There's always that possibility.

Online Publishing

2010-02-16T00:05:00.002-05:00

There are a lot of websites like bookrix.com and inkpop.com (run by HarperCollins) that allow you to submit and "publish" your creative work online. Does this count as publishing work?

Only if you get paid. In actual money.

(Some contests require that you only submit unpublished works). Also, do you retain copyright on the stories you submit?

If it is a legitimate, paying online source, they will ask to retain the copyright for a certain amount of time (usually a year or two), after which rights revert back to you. If you don't know their policy, ask.

Does publishing yourself online adversely affect your chances of being published legitimately?

No. But it might not do anything good, either.

An opinion on e-Readers

2010-02-05T15:45:00.004-05:00

My boss said something interesting that I think bears repeating. She does not own an e-Reader (I do) and she really feels that publishing companies are shooting themselves in the foot in a variety of ways in getting in these huge, confusing fights with Amazon, Sony, and Google over eBook rights.

Until the technology vastly improves and the price drastically drops, she doesn't see e-Readers as a viable format and therefore a threat to publishing as we know it. Amazon claims to have sold 500,000 Kindles, a very impressive number until you realize there's 308,618,000 people in America, so if my math is correct (which it rarely is, so double-check), only one in every 617 people own one. The main reason, though, is the price tag. The huge purchase of an electronic reader serves as the gateway to eBooks, which then have to be paid for individually - as opposed to people simply buying the book they want. It becomes an entrance fee to books, which previously had none. Are only rich people going to be buying books? Because you have to have a decent income to afford one of these devices (I got mine for my birthday). Do we really want a culture where information is available primarily for the wealthy?

Putting out an e-Edition of the book also messes with sales projections, as a ton of people buy it the day it comes out, and then interest drops tremendously, it drops tremendously in rank, and it's hard for word-of-mouth to build on a book with a small opening. I can't plot out all of the economics here, but it's not a good buying trend.

I've felt for some considerable time that the answer to publishing is libraries. Publishing needs to put huge money into supporting and promoting libraries. You may think that's crazy, as libraries lend books out for free, but where do you think they get those books? Libraries serve as huge buyers for books, and in the case of many academic books are the bulk of sales. So really, if someone could get cracking on making libraries not seem like the most depressing places on earth, that would be great.

Foreign Authors, Local Agents

2010-01-27T12:58:00.002-05:00

I'm in the process of finding a suitable agent for my completed novel (and hopefully my future career as a writer). I was wondering how important location is.

My predicament is that I am Norwegian living in Norway, but my novel is written in English (having lived overseas most of my life, this is my preferred language). Finding an agent in Norway is futile (writers go directly to publishers here and there is no real market for Engish books). To complicate matters further, I expect to relocate overseas again within a couple of years (location unknown). My question then is: should I seek representation in the UK (i.e. closer to me at the moment) or USA (where the storyline of this first novel is set)?

Also, is the fact that I am "overseas" a discouraging factor for literary agents when considering to take me on as an client?

No. To be fair, yes, there are a few who will say no on that basis, but I can't think of any agents I know off the top of my head. My boss certainly has a lot of overseas clients. The most important thing is to get across that you are fluent in English, as we get some people who aren't completely fluent and an occasional person who thought running their book through Babelfish would be fine. Then email the agents with your query letter and see what happens. Email agents in both the UK and US to widen your prospects, not because of the location of the novel setting.

Cutting Down a Book

2010-01-20T21:01:00.004-05:00

I'm back from what was a ridiculously prolonged illness, not helped by a lot of traveling. Also, I don't get a lot of emails asking questions, or not a lot of emails asking questions I haven't answered already in the blog, so that cuts down on the posts.

I wrote a YA/Paranormal novel, but am having an issue with it's length. I know the accepted length is around 80K-100K words for this genre, but the readers who have read mine say it reads well and should be left in tact. The novel is well over twice the accepted word count, though. Is it in my best interest to cut the book down before I seek an agent or leave it as is, seek an agent now, and work with an editor to scale it back?

So from your email I don't know exactly how long it is, but the general rule is that if you can find things to cut, you should be cutting them, and if you can't find anything to cut, then the novel really is that long and agents will have to deal or you'll have to write another novel. If your YA novel is 200,000 words as it sounds like it is, that's just too long for a first book. Go write another, shorter book while this one is on the shelf. When you're published you can get away with crazier stuff.

Disregard this if you're in India, because from what I've seen the Indian English-language fiction market makes for like, crazy-long novels. Or many books that are one novel because the binding was just getting too big. I remember being in the Delhi airport and deciding, sadly, not to plunk my money down on a historical novel because it was ten books long and I was fairly sure I couldn't obtain the other nine books outside of India. I have enough trouble getting stuff from the UK and Australia.

Vacation and Oh Yeah, the Industry's Collapsing

2009-12-28T22:10:00.002-05:00

The title of this post may be exaggerating, but I am going on vacation and disabling comments as a result. I'll be back in mid-January. Here are some random articles on the industry crisis - eBooks are selling and no one knows how to make money off it so they sue Google instead. Google settles, continues doing what they're doing, that Amazon guy gets really rich as people continue to underestimate him. Enough said.

E-Books blah blah blah industry being inane blah blah blah Kindle will eat us all blah blah blah.

E-Books Spark Battle Inside the Publishing Industry

E-Books Beat Regular Books on Xmas

The Impending War Over E-Book Publishing

Book Publishers Go Stupid

I Stand Corrected

2009-12-15T22:08:00.002-05:00

My boss has informed me that she really likes getting cards in the mail. My previous boss was the one who didn't care for them. So, take that into account. It couldn't hurt, but again, it's not expected. But it's nice.

Holiday Etiquette

2009-12-09T13:56:00.003-05:00

A little review for people who currently have agents:

(1) Holiday card/gifts are by no means expected. They are simply what we like to call in the business "nice." If you are cutting back on things, by all means, skip the agent holiday card.

(2) If you do send a card and are wondering what denomination your agent is, go for a generic "holiday card." If you can't find one, Christmas is fine, unless your agent's name is Hebrewburg and she only represents Jewish fiction. Then Channukah is a pretty good guess. Or their name is Fatima al-Islam, in which case I wonder if they make "You don't have any holidays coming up that I know about because your lunar calender is on a different cycle this year but have a good time!" cards. (Is the Haj over? Does it apply to people not on the Haj itself or just make them feel guilty about not going on it?)

(2) If you are sending a gift, do not send perishables. Your agent may be out of the office and the fruit will rot. It's better not to send food at all, in case your agent is kosher/vegan/halal/Jain.

(3) If your agent has done a lot for you in the past year and/or you have a lot of upcoming projects they will be working hard on and you feel compelled to treat them to a gift, a Barnes & Noble or Amazon gift card is what I go with as a gift-giver myself, as I know my agent will definitely come up with a reason to use that.

How Good is it? Good enough?

2009-12-07T14:29:00.002-05:00

Dear Rejecter,

I have sent my novel to thirty agents and publishers and counting, and obviously all have rejected it or I wouldn't be writing to you! A lot of the rejections say the same thing. They compliment me on my writing, tell me the novel is "evocative", "atmospheric" and "page turning", but none of them know who would publish it so they pass on it. The novel is set in the music industry of the US in the 80s and 90s and I am wondering if this is the problem. There don't seem to be many books published using the music business as a setting and I am wondeering if there';s a reason for it.

Any light you can shed on this perplexing topic would be very much appreicated.

I would definitely say that the topic is not the problem. If anything, I'm slightly interested by the idea. And clearly your query letter isn't the problem if they're complimenting you on your writing, which I'm going to take to mean that they asked you for partials and fulls.

My only conclusion that can be drawn without reading the manuscript itself is that it's not quite there. Maybe the plot needs tightening, or has a weird ending. Maybe the writing isn't good enough to hold up the material. A lot of novels don't end well - this is a comment complaint of my boss, who requests a lot of novels and represents very, very few. This doesn't mean happy vs. sad, this means there's something in the last 1/4th of the book that doesn't work, often because the author has trouble with climaxing the story. I'm not saying that's your problem, but there is a problem. If an agent requested a full, and rejected, it is fair to email them to ask them what they didn't like.

Getting a higher degree for the sake of a book

2009-11-20T01:10:00.002-05:00

Hello -

I have a question about the kind of experience, academic background, etc. required for book-length nonfiction writing. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on post-apocalyptic literature and recently wrote an article for a popular sci-fi blog on why we like the apocalypse, which got something like 20,000 views and has helped make my blog (which has other nerdy apocalypse stuff) pretty popular. A lot of commenters have been asking for my thesis and encouraging me to publish it, which is flattering, of course, but who wants to read a book by someone who only has a B.A.? As a reader, I would definitely be suspicious of the author's credibility. Obviously, if I went off for 8 years, got a PhD, and came back to the topic, anything I'd write would be much better, but I don't think what I have to say now is valueless, either - I think it's pretty cool, actually, and I know that there are some science-y writers (like Mary Roach) who've successfully built a career without an advanced degree. So my question to you is: would any publisher look twice at a proposal by someone like me who's armed with such a short (but focused) resume?

Here's how I look at a query in terms of higher education credentials:

(1) Fiction - no credentials needed if book is good

(2) Memoir, "learn from experience"-type non-fiction - no credentials needed if book is good, but probably shouldn't come out of nowhere (i.e. you should have some real-world credentials of some kind, even if they're not academic)

(3) An academic book - requires some credentials. These are not necessarily "PhD in your area." You don't need a PhD in international relations to write about international relations; you need some experience in the IR field, maybe a posting or a job or field work combined with publications in journals. If you're writing about an area of medicine and it's not your medical memoirs, you should have some kind of medical credentials, preferably an MD in your field, but we do get a lot of submissions by social workers, nurses, and medical professionals who did not attend a full course of medical school. In other words, if it's a highly technical book, you need some excuse to have the authority to write it.

If your thesis is good, and you felt compelled to turn it into a book, I would look at it if the query letter was good. I'm not clear on your field here, but I'm not even sure you can major in the apocalypse, much less get a PhD in it, but I guess my answer is yes, I would look at your query and not toss it because you don't have a master's.

One area where people generally do not have academic credentials is historical fiction. I have a BA in history but decided not to pursue a masters or PhD because of the nature of academia. Though many writers have some sort of "background" like the one I've described, the majority of their material is derived from private research, scouring libraries and interviewing experts, not sitting in a PhD program preparing a thesis that by definition has to be as boring as possible (I was once graded down for my paper being "too dramatic). If it sounds like they know what they're talking about, I don't look for historical fiction authors' credentials at all.

Yes, yes, I know you mean Twilight

2009-11-16T23:39:00.003-05:00

Also, I am deeply sorry, I feel as though I am pestering you, yet, since you are an agent...what do you see in this paranormal trend for young adult novels? That is the manuscript I have been sending out since April.

I would think it would be easier now, considering the fame of a certain book. Yet, almost all the rejections are automatic. I know, certain agents have their areas, but even to agents who have represented young adult/paranormal, I received form rejections. (And I am not even writing about vampires, werewolves, ghosts, or faeries!)

Do you think that agents automatically reject these queries because they hate the trend?

Just to clear things up, I'm an agent's assistant, not an agent. I don't represent any clients or make any deals.

As to the paranormal YA trend, it's still going strong. I'm sure there's people who are sick of it, but I wouldn't reject a good query because of a trend being overdone. A good book is a good book. What we do know is that publishers are still buying paranormal YA and adult, which is what we really care about, because it's the job of an agent to sell a book to a publisher. It's the job of a good agent to know which editors are particularly interested and/or don't have too many vampire/zombie books on their list already to justify another buy and then to get cozy with those editors. But that's on our end; your job is to write a great book.

I was at an AAR meeting last week to discuss the convention at Frankfurt, which for financial reasons a lot of people who normally attend didn't attend this year. In discussing what people were buying, two things were agreed upon as being hot:
- paranormal romance
- Scandinavian literature

I don't know the reason for the second one.

Google Books Ducks Copyright Law, Sort of

2009-11-14T18:10:00.004-05:00

I thought this was an interesting article. It reminds me of a case I once heard about from a copyright lawyer:

A publishing company decided to republish a book that was on their backlist. The original contract of course stipulated that the author had to be paid royalties, something they hadn't had to worry about for some time because the book wasn't in print. Most contracts say that if the book goes out of print for a certain amount of time (usually 5-10 years), the rights revert entirely to the author and the author can republish the book with a new company if he/she chooses to, or can negotiate a new contract with the old company if it wants to keep the rights to the book. In this case I don't remember if the publishing company still had partial rights or not; the point was they wanted to publish the book and they had to alert the author.

The problem was they couldn't find him.

The author had vanished without a trace, leaving no living relatives in charge of an estate that would manage the book rights. Living relatives can only get book rights if the will stipulates it; in this case the author had no will and couldn't even be proven to be dead. The publishing company hired the contract lawyer, who went to the judge with all of the documentation. The judge ruled that they had to do a certain amount of regular attempts to find the author - hiring private investigators, posting in newspapers, etc - and if nothing came up, they could republish the book without the author's permission. If, however, the author then reappeared or the author was proven dead and a will surfaced granting rights to living relatives, the publisher would then have to pay back-royalties to the author/author's estate.

I thought this was a very interesting case. A week after I heard him speak, I got my first offer from a publisher. It's been a few years now and I have two books published and a couple in the can. On the way home from shul on Yom Kippur my family happened to walk home with our lawyer/accountant, and I mentioned to him that I should write a will soon because I now have a literary estate that will last for 70 years after my death. It might be a minuscule or nonexistent estate, but it will be there. In fact it will probably be longer than 70 years, as they keep extending that number whenever Mickey Mouse is about to go into public domain, and books I publish in the future may fall into a later time-period extension.

I'm actually against the extension of copyright laws to the point that it has now reached for the written word. Works in the public domain are more published and better-read as a result, and if an estate is large then children are likely to squabble over it, sometimes preventing a book from being republished long enough for it to disappear entirely. Do my potential, currently non-existent heirs need to benefit that badly? If I were to live another forty years, which is extremely possible, my current books won't go into public domain until 2119. Does that sound ridiculous to anyone else?

A rare reason to make a call

2009-11-03T16:29:00.003-05:00

Dear Rejecter,
I moved this past summer. Before I moved overseas, I sent a query to an agency that doesn't have a website or e-mail address. My relatives in the US informed me that the said agency replied asking for a full. I sent the full from my current country of residence in September. (The letter for the full came in July). My question is, should I call the agency to know the status of my manuscript? I know this is a no-no, but I did not send the package as certified because it was going to a PO Box, and for the past month, many letters have gone missing in the post offices around here.

I really want to make sure that they received the manuscript since they are the only agency to ask for a full. Thank you in advance.

The agency has no email whatsover? Check that it's a legitimate agency at Preditors and Editors, do a web search again for the email, and if you find nothing, I think you're justified in making a call. On the phone, be brief. Just ask them if they received it and if they have an email address, not whether they've read it or not (they probably haven't).

Non-Platform Fiction

2009-10-31T20:41:00.002-04:00

I'm a completely non angsty person, so feel free to punch as hard as you want on this one.

I know that most non-fiction depends on a great platform; either you are famous already or you are writing about something insanely compelling(you accidentally spent a magical summer with chairman mao.). With that said, and while I acknowledge that this is a completely logical and fair way to do business, is there any space for someone with an interesting non-fiction concept, written with humor and wit?

I'm talking about something without historic signifigance or tear-jerking poignancy, but still a concept which an average person might find interesting and amusing. I'm purposely leaving out my concept for two reasons: you don't want to waste your time reading it, and I want more of a general industry answer than a specific acceptance or rejection of my ideas.

David Sedaris makes a pretty good living talking about wacky neighbors and childhood memories, which would make a terrible platform if you pitched it like that, but he's actually really funny and, I think, deserving of his bestseller status. At least for When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

In short: My answer is yes.

I Should Finally Say Something on E-Books

2009-10-16T16:21:00.002-04:00

Since I got a Sony e-Reader for my birthday, my parents have been utterly dedicated to cutting out clippings from newspapers about e-books and either mailing them to me or leaving them on my desk when I come home for some family event. When I came home last night I was met with about 7 clippings, and there was a front page article in today's New York Times that was already highlighted for me before I came down for breakfast. They all pretty much say the same thing, which is that e-books are new and awesome and libraries are using them to reach digital readers and Sony and Amazon are lowering their prices to battle for the market in e-readers (finally). A lot of the articles have noted that people can't get library books or Google books on the Kindle, which is exclusive to Amazon and the reason I got a Sony. Very few articles have much to say about the publishing industry other than this must be good somehow, because all things internet are good until they're bad and destroy industries (music and, slowly but surely, movies).

I would have reported on my e-Reader early but honestly, I don't use it that much. I own a lot of books. Way too many books. I have too much to read in book format at the moment, and I haven't been on any vacations where carrying 503 books around in one slender case in my backpack would have been helpful. That's how many books I have on my e-Reader, by the way - 503. How much did I pay for them? $0. I read a lot of public domain books - classics, translations of classics where the translation is in public domain, and non-fiction books that were written earlier than 1932. Google Books could literally provide me with millions of these if I could afford that many memory cards. Oh, and that's just if I stay legal, and don't take advantage of the fact that people have been massively digitizing their private collections (mostly sci-fi) for years and posting them as torrents. So far I've had no reason not to stay legal, but to be honest, sooner or later some book is going to come along and it's going to be overly expensive and a used copy isn't going to be available, the library copies are not going to be available, and because I hate the author or something I'm going to download it to read it.

There are some kinks to the e-Reader. The version I have seems to drain its battery if you don't use it for awhile, so when you turn it on after a couple weeks it barely has enough life left start up. Sony's having some software problems with the book version of iTunes, and the books won't sync properly to my computer and I have a lot of doubles on my memory card. Books scanned by Google instead of being designed for the reader can be hard to read, as in the text will be small and up in the corner of the screen if it's a .pdf or if it's an .epub, not all of the text will translate. The software that translates it will pick up some old fonts as different letters and some dirt on the ancient pages of a library book as marks so the text you're reading is only 95% there and your mind has to make some jumps. And frankly, I'm not as impressed with the e-Ink technology as I first was. It looks a lot like text, but the screen is still glass/plastic and therefore there's a glare from bright lights or sunlight. It's obviously not a book. Still, 503 free books on a single device? I'm going for it.

This device will not destroy publishing, but it will reshape the industry as we know it.

The biggest issue I see here is the market for classics. Publishers make huge amounts of money on public domain books, and once the e-Reader becomes advanced enough to feel more like a book (like they finally decide to put in a second G-ddamn screen so you can open it like a book) and becomes cheap enough, the market for classics and other public domain works will fall out. Not entirely, but it will take a large hit. Some imprints dedicated to these books will fold. Also once publishers digitize more of their own books, more will be leaked (I've never heard of drm technology stopping anyone) and you'll be able to download thousands of current books with torrents or whatever the next generation of downloading software is. Current publishing (new books) will take a hit. Textbook publishers, who have been screwing over students for years by publishing a new edition of everything every year to make sure nobody just hands over their old copy to a new student, will insist that schools only have licensed copies of their e-versions, and charge a lot for the licenses. Like, thousands of dollars, like Adobe does for photoshop. After many years of enjoying the program, I actually went to buy photoshop in gratitude, only to discover it was a thousand dollars. How the hell was I supposed to buy that? How was anyone who does photoshopping for fun?

In the end, the book market will survive because its essential medium is not something that cannot be digitized, unlike music, tv, and movies. It's paper. In your hand. But man, will it take a hit. And from the looks of all of these articles, nobody's ready for it.

(PS I'm out a lot this weekend so on top of Shabbos, most comments won't be approved until Sunday because I won't be around to approve them. But by all means, leave them for approval)

Misleading Demographics

2009-10-13T14:41:00.003-04:00

Dear Rejector,
I have written a memoir about my experiences as a military brat living overseas (Vietnam). I've been sending out query letters and receiving mostly rejections (got one request for a MS from BIG NY AGENCY -- they passed), but I haven't been including any demographic info about my primary target audience: the approximately ten million former US military brats living around the US and world today.

These brats (sometimes called Third Culture Kids) form a large, but mostly invisible sub-culture that has gotten little attention in the literary world. It seems like every week there's a new book about heroin addicts and child abuse victims. I know that I would love to read about the experiences of other military brats, but the shelves at B+N never have such books.

Question: Should I include this demographic info in my query? It seems to me, that if an agents is looking for something to sell, it might be good to make them aware of the huge, mostly untapped market for this type of memoir. On the other hand, I don't want to oversell the MS.

If even one half of one percent (or so) of the former military brats still living wanted to read this particular book, the sales would be in the 40-60,000 range. Does that make sense to you?

A lot of people like to put demographic information in their queries even when they don't belong there. In one case, someone had written about driving around in his RV and said that all 3.4 million (or whatever the number is) RV owners would obviously want to buy his book and that's why it would be a bestseller. That's something not to put in your query. That's something that's so funny that I might mention it two years later in a blog post.

In your case I would say giving a statistic isn't bad. Statistics are good if they're not well-known; I didn't know how many army brats there were before you told me despite knowing a couple. Other cases include rare diseases and other things we might have heard of but not know a lot about. However, it deserves a line and nothing else. It's not a selling point so much as useful information for us.

The reason it's not a selling point is that we know that 40,000 army brats aren't going to buy your book. The truth is some people don't like reading about things they already know; it's a turn-off. I don't care for reading about Crohn's Disease. Someone's saga of doctor visits and bowel resections and screaming, "$39 a pill for Zofran?!?" isn't news to me. People for the most part read books because the things contained in them are new and interesting. In the case of non-fiction it's usually because the topics are things they want to know more about. True, some army brats would probably buy your book, but not a whole lot. We wouldn't lean on that demographic for sales. We would lean on a demographic of people who want to know more about army brats, and off the top of my head I have no idea what that demographic would be.

The story sells your book, not the demographic. Exceptions are made for doctors writing books for patients and the like.

Also, Zofran is worth every penny.

Questions I decided to answer because they were easy to find in my overflowing email account

2009-10-07T01:09:00.004-04:00

Questions for The Rejecter...

1. Is there a support group for people with completed manuscripts and six rejections from agents?

Only six? Definitely not. You need like 50 rejections to qualify for terminal depression - for several manuscripts submitted over many years. At which point the support group would be called, "How to Find a New Hobby."

2. How many rejections received would be the equivalent of a “universal hell no” ?

I have no idea. Less that 40%. I'm just throwing out a number here, but most are just average manuscripst that don't sound compelling or wouldn't sell as a book or are the wrong genre for the agent. There are much less that are really, really terrible.

Edit: IF you meant how many rejections from an individual writer would be a universal "hell no" form me, the answer is probably infinity because if you submit another book a year later and don't mention the previous one I probably won't remember you.

3. What percentage of literary agents attempted writing and after receiving a barrage of rejections, changed careers and became the rejecter.

Very few. A lot of people in publishing are aspiring writers, but most of the agents I've met are not. Agenting is a sales position, with pitches and finances. That turns a lot of writers off. I know a lot of editors who are also writers, but no agents that I can think of.

4. If you trash 95% of the submissions, does it really matter if my Query Letter sucks?

If your query letter sucks, you will get rejected. If your query letter is awesome, it will earn you a request for a partial. It's that simple. The 95% is just the amount of people who send in query letters that are bad, not your chances.

5. Do literary agents where black sunglasses with black suits like in The Matrix?

No, they dress normally. Kind of office casual when they're not meeting with clients or editors and standard office suits/skirts/pantsuits when they are.

Any direction on the support groups would be appreciated, If I can’t find one I was thinking about starting one. Do you have any suggestions for names of my support group?

Writers.net's forums are pretty good. Both budding writers and hopeless cases there.

Established vs. Less Experienced Agents

2009-09-17T15:06:00.003-04:00

The subject line should really be something like, "Less Experienced vs. Established Agents" but here's the question.

A lot of never-published writers, myself included, think maybe I'm more likely to get a hearing -- a reading, really -- from a younger, less experienced agent, that someone still building their list is more likely to take a chance on an unestablished talent than a well-established agent with a big backlist who can pick and choose very selectively who he/she takes on.

But then we think, a more established agent is more likely to have better contacts among editors, more likely to know which editors can be persuaded to buy the book.

The question really boils down to this. Since agents are to some extent competing with each other, how collaborative are agents in one firm with another? Is the young and inexperienced agent who takes on my book going to get a lot of help and advice from senior agents in the firm or will they be reluctant to be too helpful in steering the young agent towards the right editors, since that might make it more difficult for them to sell a potential project of their own to the same editor (siincd there's a limited number of books any publishing house can buy). Do the agents within a firm really work as a team towards the overall success of the firm, or are they really lone wolves who do enough, but just enough and no more, to help the overall effort?

To break down a couple different issues here:

(1) Older agents do take new work if their old work isn't selling. Agents who have some huge estate and aren't actively agenting don't accept new submissions and sometimes don't bother to appear on agent rolls, except when someone hunts them down and puts their email up on a website. If an agent is accepting new material, send them new material.

(2) I can't speak for every agent team that has younger members, but my agent (my agent agent, not my boss who is an agent) is part of a team, and she is very young in the field, but the senior agent clearly has a hand in the financials of the business and hired her because he trusts her judgment and would help her out if she needed it. I used to work for an agent who had two sub-agents, and one was more independent than the other, but both could ask the top agent for advice.

Then there's groups of agents and there's agents with sub-agents. An agent with a sub-agent takes a cut of the sub-agent's earnings while the sub-agent learns the trade and uses the head agent's resources, so the head agent has a huge stake in the success of her sub-agent. My boss used to be a sub-agent, and when she had enough clients she split off and now has her own successful agency, but some older business still goes through the old agency she worked for because of contractual issues. For multiple agents working together, they do tend to share things - that's why they're working together. That or to save on rent on office space, which is a huge deal and a good reason to join a large agency in NYC. Either way, people in the same office have a vested interest in seeing the others thrive, so if you are applying to a sub-agent or a new agent under an older, more experienced one, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over their age or experience.

A page count? Really?

2009-09-16T14:43:00.002-04:00

Dear Rejecter,
I've gotten past the query letter stage and now they want a book proposal package. This is my first so when they ask for a projected page count, are they asking for the manuscript page count, or the final, bound book page count which I assume (yikes) will be standard 8x5 paperback?

Also they don't ask for autobiographical information, but most resources on proposal packages say to include this Do most publishers assume this is standard and I'll include one or should I eave it off?

(1) I'm not 100% sure here what they're asking, but I'm going to have to assume that they mean word count, and an estimated page count of the manuscript based on assuming 250 words a page. I wouldn't ask for page count myself, as it varies wildly based on layout, but that's their thing. It's not a huge deal. Guesstimate.

(2) In the standard proposal laid out on tons of websites, it says to include autobiographical information. That's why they didn't ask specifically for it. They expect it to be in the standard proposal.

Authors and Publicity

2009-09-14T17:36:00.004-04:00

Dear Rejecter,

My manuscript has made it to the desk of a large NY house. Not one of the big 5 (or is it 3 or 4 now?) but still a large and well-known house.

I have no agent and followed up with the editor’s assistant after 3 months with an email. He informed me he has given the ms and a “report” to the editor and I should hear from her when a decision has been made.

Obviously, this is exciting since I’ve made it through the query and first full review stage.

Now it’s on the editor’s desk I am wondering if I should follow up and let them know a couple of things.

From what I understand this house encourages its writers to publicize their books and take ownership of pushing the book.

I work in the software industry, have a degree in computer science, develop web sites and have a good idea on internet promotion and using the internet as a useful sales channel.

My question (finally!) is this: should I follow up with the assistant and let him know I have this background and am willing to throw myself 100% into helping promote the book using my skills?

Would this sound desperate or amateurish? Or would it help possibly sway a 50/50 decision?

Amateurish. If you made it this far I don't think they would toss the book just on that, but they will laugh at you behind your back.

Many authors put this sort of thing into their initial query, and unless you have big media connections, it's irrelevant. Yes, you're willing to do publicity. Yes, we want you to do publicity. Guess what? If minimal publicity is actually budgeted for a first author, we expect the author to participate in publicizing their book. I think there's a line in the contract about how the publisher will do all it can and the author will do all they can to promote the book. Today, in the world of tight publication budgets, this generally means the author being asked to make a website and write up guest blog posts. Publishers will help the author do this if they are inept. I was recently offered web space for my books on the publisher's site, and I told them thank you, I already had a site. Then they made recommendations for mine.

Publishing companies expect that the author, if required, will be part of the publicity. They often won't contractually require it, especially if it involves traveling a lot, and the author can always turn it down, but authors generally don't. I did everything my publisher asked of me, and then some, but they don't expect you to go door-to-door with copies of your book. At most that would sell a couple dozen out of guilt, and publishers think in the thousands, or tens of thousands.

Also, while it really helps if you can launch some national media campaign, it doesn't mean that the book is good. And, at least on principle, we don't accept books that suck, even if Oprah is on your speed dial.

Dumb Things Said In Query Letters

2009-09-03T14:19:00.003-04:00

Here, severely paraphrased, are some things I've encountered recently in query letters.

"No one has ever written about recovering from sexual abuse before."

"After sending the first 3 chapters when requested and getting universally rejected, I've decided to send two later chapters unrequested in hopes that they will make a better impression."

"Frankly, this book is exactly what the world needs right now."

Think before you speak.

The Art of Craft

2009-08-30T01:09:00.006-04:00

As I've said before, the frequency with which I update this blog always falls short of the mark, though there's not really a mark for these things. I prefer meaningful posts or touches of humor, or avoid posting altogether. I'm not holding back so much as I have other things to do. In the past month my health has been poor in a particular way that I've had trouble concentrating, a particularly problematic ailment for someone who does a lot of reading and writing. My scheduled projects have fallen behind, except for the ones that simply were due to the publisher's, and had to be finished on time.

I dedicated a book to a former teacher, and I met with her on Friday. She mentioned to me that if I did marry (as I've come to the age where older women start dropping hints about marriage prospects on any occasion) a rich person, I could sit at home and practice my craft without the financial worries that being a starving writer/artist comes with. If you think there isn't a woman artist or writer out there who hasn't had the stray thought, "G-d, if I just married a rich guy, I could focus on my art," I'd like to inform you that you're wrong. In the end our feminist ideals usually win out, but the idea pops up from time to time.

I answered her not that I was against marriage but that being free from financial worries would not necessarily improve my craft. Very much the opposite; rather than spending years obsessing over a single manuscript, trying to make it a perfect work of literature, I have to produce. It used to be that an established author could produce about a book a year and earn a $30,000 advance, and provided they could keep that pace they could pay their bills. Now advances are lower and bills are higher. You have to already be thinking about the next idea while you're writing your current book. You take pay-to-work jobs to write tie-in books to TV shows, novelization of crappy movies, or young adult series crap because there's a check involved - and it stretches you. While this is not true of everyone, I've met many, many writers who are obviously hyperfocused on getting that one perfect novel just right. While publishing is famously littered with examples of famous one-book authors (or authors where only one book became a classic), there's no way of counting the number of wannabes who, having spent a decade perfecting a novel only to discover their writing has changed so much that they can't look at it, should abandon the project and write something new but don't know it. Sitting on my C drive are about 6 novels I wrote in the last 8 years that came close to publication, but were not 100% there, and weren't accepted. Now that I have an agent, she tells me to revise, but some of them I can never seem to get right. One novel she did send out and it didn't sell. We were hoping there was enough there, but the metaphors were too obscure and I understand I was asking the reader to handle too much. In other words, it wasn't good enough to be published. I dropped it and moved on. Since then I've written four novels in a series, the first of which might be good enough to publish with enough revision.

In short: When you have to pay the bills with your writing, you have to write. The constant pressure to perform results in more writing than you might have done in a stress-free environment. This isn't true for everyone, but it's true for a lot of working writers, and it's definitely true for me.

As I was driving home from the chat with my old teacher, I realized how many times in the conversation I had mentioned money - how much I had received for some book or what the work-for-pay offer was and such and such, while she was talking about craft. There's a saying in the publishing world that I heard for the first time at Worldcon: "Wannabes talk about craft. Writers talk about money." This is not meant to imply corruption. Very few people go into writing strictly to make money because there isn't a lot of money to be made. It's something you have the talent and patience and passion for, but when it becomes your main source of income, it is your source of income. You have to produce. And to quote Dilbert's boss, "Pressure makes diamonds." I can't remember Dilbert's witty follow-up to that (Scott Adams loves bad analogies), but in this case, it can actually be true.

Multiple Projects Submitted

2009-08-14T19:03:00.002-04:00

I'm wondering if you have any advice on how to write a query letter when
A) You have a completed short story collection. Many of the stories have appeared in good journals; a few have won awards.
B) You have the first sixty pages of a novel and a full synopses.

How do you combine both projects in a query, when you're looking for a two-book deal? Or do you just plug the novel, and then tell the interested agent the novel isn't finished yet, but...?

When we receive multiple projects from a new (as in, not published) author, we tend to treat the projects separately unless they're books in a fantasy series published by Lulu with a self-drawn cover (in which case, we reject). Maybe we'll want one project and not be interested in the other(s), though honestly I can't remember a new client my boss has taken on who had multiple projects presented. On the other hand, she does reject well over 99% of her applicants, so maybe it's just the way things played out.

Of your two projects, which I would examine separately:
a) Short story collections are bad. They're hard to publish. Very, very rarely do I put a short story collection in the maybe pile for my boss, and that's usually because the author says that every story in the collection has been published, and I recognize the names of the publications as being major places for short fiction. As for "awards" I've grown cynical about them, because there are, it seems like, an endless amount of writing awards someone can win if they just send the story around, as a large percentage of queries mention writing awards even if the writing is terrible. But you've got a decent pedigree there; it's worth a shot, but don't get your hopes up.

b) The manuscript should be finished before you submit it. End of story.

I'm sore, but I'm back. Stupid armor, biting into my neck.

2009-08-08T23:58:00.002-04:00

Need an agent to read MS. Topical, antic murder mystery (7-2009, topical). Unlikely to be viewed sympathetically by PC person. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Well, this is just my advice, but you could try writing a query letter and submitting it to prospective agents. That might get you somewhere.

You're welcome.

I Disappear

2009-08-02T00:35:00.003-04:00

Not one of Metallica's better songs, but not one of their worst. It was decent.

Yes, I haven't been updating much as of late. This blog is a side thing, not my life. It's not only the only blog I keep - there's my author blog, the live journal for friends, etc etc. Sadly, it's one that gets shoved aside when I'm in rocky health seas. I'm not sure that allusion made sense, but the point is, hopefully you can find your answers in the archives when I can't get out of bed.

I'm feeling better, but I'm disabling comments while I'm away this week, taking my frustrations over my health out on whomever gets in my way on the battlefield at Pennsic. I'll be back next week. Until then, surf the archives for your answers, and good luck!

Editing Questions

2009-07-23T16:41:00.005-04:00

I have just spent the past five years perfecting a manuscript that is a love story which takes place in New Orleans. I have sent it to 8-10 agents for a "Sample test" to see what the responses were. I received some very kind praise from many agents, including good atmospheric description, but still received rejection letters. A lightly famous film producer looked at it and thought that it had enormous potential as a film project, but that it needed some more editorial consultation to "harness all of the creative energy". Do you think that these rejections are matters of taste, or is it worth a second look to iron it out?

So there are two separate issues here, the film producer's comments and the agents' comments. The two are not as related as you think. I don't know much about the film industry, but I do know it involves a lot of lying and false praise and then crushing disappointment, or so all my screenwriter friends tell me. If you didn't write a screenplay, I don't know why you're talking to a film producer (are you friends?) but getting it into a screenplay you would want to sell is a whole different genre and industry in writing and something that's beyond my abilities to really judge.

Except in rare cases, movie rights to a published book are sold by the agent to the film company. When a book is bought by a publishing house, they do not buy the film rights unless that's specified in the contract, and it would be weird for a publishing house to ask for film rights and then something the agent would immediately demand to be deleted from the contract. A lot of money is to be made from film rights to a book, provided your book goes to film, but that rarely happens.

EDIT: Look in the comments, where someone in the film industry has written a long and instructive post that is better informed than mine.

As for the agents, if they wrote personal, descriptive comments and didn't send a form letter, that's pretty awesome. It's still a rejection, but you're close. Revise the manuscript based on their comments if you feel their comments are worthwhile and keep querying.

My other question is, how do you know when a manuscript is ready to sell?

It's done to the best of your abilities as a writer and editor.

And would your recommend me spending an extra thousand dollars to have it professionally edited before sending it out?

No, absolutely not, unless you are completely inept at grammar and spelling. In which case, buying a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style is much cheaper.

I feel that the manuscript is completed to the best of my ability, and thought that the kinks could be ironed out by a publishing house editor. I have heard mixed reviews about this-- some people say that they don't spend as much time as they used to on editing manuscripts, and that the industry is more about business. I was wondering if you could comment on this aspect in your blog.

How much editing gets done at the agent stage and/or the editor stage often depends on several factors, but the two biggest ones are (a) the time people have to put into it, (b) how much editing it actually needs. Speaking as someone who helps edit client's manuscripts, I say that you really shouldn't be submitting something you feel needs tremendous editing. You should be doing the editing yourself, then submitting the manuscript that you feel is as good as it can possibly be within your abilities as a writer and then if people along the way have comments, you work with them. Speaking as a writer, I can say that I feel your pain, in that I am always terrified that my work isn't good enough and that the editor didn't catch mistakes they should have caught that I never should have written, and that I'm going to get slammed for it in reviews. I live in constant fear, but publishing is terrifying. However, most things worth doing are a little terrifying, so get a prescription for a tranquilizer/SSRI combo and throw your stuff out there.

Conservative Follow-up

2009-07-20T13:49:00.002-04:00

I attempted to reassure our conservative writer friend that the publishing industry loves those books, despite his initial bias.

Yes - but unfortunately - since the process requires an agent - the bar is still very high for a first time author to get a fair assessment. I have sent out quite a few query letters to agents who specialize in non fiction and virtually all of them respond with a form letter and of course they do not bother to ask to read a chapter or two to evaluate it. So until agents wise up and make the connection that a lot of conservatives buy books and publishers like to make money - I guess they will continue to represent authors who sell those wonderful and very important works on specialized topics that no one wants to buy!

I would like to assure you that agents buy books they believe will sell, at least to some degree to make their effort worthwhile. It's true that agents will often not take on a book they don't care for - which can mean a lot of things, but also they feel goes against their own personal beliefs. This isn't wrong; it means they're not the agent for that work. Someone else is.

If the work is great and has something important to say, someone will pick it up. If you've gotten no hits on your query letter, it's time to vastly improve your query letter. That or you've written a bad book and blaming the "liberal bubble of New York" is just the beginning of your problems. Either one. Glenn Beck would probably get going if I had a chance to prod him on the liberal media bias and NY liberals, but Simon and Schuster publishes him without batting an eye and damn, does he sell a lot of books.

Conservative Political Books and Their Non-Existence

2009-07-19T17:00:00.004-04:00

I just finished a conservative political non fiction book and after a great deal of effort put together a pretty good query letter if I do say myself. Of course, the real problem was the fact that it was a "conservative" book in the world of a very liberal publishing world. Do you honestly think that a first time conservative writer will get a fair shot in the very liberal world of publishing unless of course, he's got a major talk show?

With a straight face - tell me how the publishing world can ignore the fact that the mega hits of non fiction have come from conservatives - without a NY Times book review. Don't tell me that you have to be a major talk show host or big time blogger to write and sell a conservative political book because I think that's just a convenient excuse.

Regnery is no longer the only game in town anymore for conservative publishing - so I know liberals enjoy making money too. Here's a fact that the liberal publishing world cannot seem to deal with: Conservative books, like talk radio, resonate with the rest of America that doesn't live in the bubble of New York or a few other cities - and hold your breath - there are more of us than you!

I couldn't find "Regnery" in the dictionary, but apparently it's a conservative press. Why I didn't think of that first, I don't know.

I won't address the poster directly here, as I don't want to start I fight. I will say that a simple look on Amazon will assure him that there is a huge audience for books by conservatives and the publishing industry knows it and regularly publishes and promotes these books. Glenn Beck's book on common sense (insert your own 'does he have any?' joke here) is currently number 1 on Amazon, which means it sells about 300 copies an hour, and it's been there for 45 days. Mark Levin's Tyranny or Liberty: A Conservative Manifesto is number 9, and number 2 on the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction (Bill O'Reilly is number 13). This is not unusual; the bestseller list on Amazon is generally made up of fiction that's doing insanely well, books by angry conservatives, and a slot for "flavor of the week" (the Jackson unauthorized biography thing). And this is Amazon, which ranks solely by copies it sells, as opposed to the New York Times, which is ranked in some mystery way no one knows, but does somehow reflect national interest in books. There's very few political books that are bestsellers that I would consider "liberal," though occasionally a book by a Bush staffer makes it up there. My boss handles a lot of "liberal" books that are quite good, and I say that not because of my political affiliations but because I've read them, and they're not rants but summaries and interpretations of things that have happened or are happening in the world, and only one them cracked the NYT and only for a week.

I will add an interesting side note here, which is that a lot of these conservative-rant books (as opposed to books written from a conservative viewpoint discussing history or a particular issue by examining it and drawing conclusions over the course of the book) get some nasty tags on Amazon. Ann Coulter is pretty much the queen of getting bad tags, as every one of every edition of her books was tagged by a ton of people as "stupid" and "evil" and "waste of a good tree." If you are an Amazon junkie, I encourage you to explore the tag system, an entirely impartial (as much as it can be) and spontaneous way that viewers can express praise or criticism of book.

For "waste of a good tree" here are the top 10: (meaning, they got the most of those tags)

Anne Coulter, Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America
Katharine DeBrecht, Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!
Bill O'Reilly, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity
Paris Hilton, Confessions of an Heiress
L Ron Hubbard, Dianetics
Alan Sears, The Homosexual Agenda
Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans (paperback)
Bill O'Reilly, Who's Looking Out for You?
Ann Coulter, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans (hardcover)

So, conservative books and Scientology. That's what internet shoppers don't like. For fun you can also try the tags "evil" and "Keeping America stupid" and get mostly the same results.

The Infamous Synopsis

2009-06-23T22:35:00.002-04:00

A lot of recent questions seem to be synopsis-related, so I figure I'll go over this once and for all so that it can settle the issue until a few months bury it in the archives and someone new comes along and answers the questions because they don't know how to use the "search" function on the blog.

Writers are irrationally scared of the synopsis. How long is it? Does it have to be really good, or is it just a summary? Should it have the character's name in bold? How is it different from an outline? I remember being terrified of the idea. I'd already gone through the manuscript, the editorial phase, then perfected my query letter - and now I had to write more? Holy shit! This just goes on and on and I could screw up at any time! And I went to write a synopsis for a novel that was rejected, though I assume it was because the novel didn't make much sense and not because of the synopsis. This happened again with a different novel a few years later, and when I did eventually get accepted and get an agent, I was thrilled to be done with the synopsis - or so I thought.

After my first book did well, my editor requested a synopsis of the next two books before she bought them. In a panic I asked my agent what to do, to which she said, "Summarize the books. It's not a big deal."

Which it isn't. Really, the synopsis is straightforward. The agent is asking you for a summary of the events that occur in your book, over about 1-2 pages. I say "1-2" because less than one is probably not descriptive enough in my experience and three is generally too long. Some agents do specifically ask for more, and you should give them a more detailed synopsis. If they ask for it chapter-by-chapter, write a paragraph for each chapter.

While the synopsis can be very important when we're trying to determine if the book is going in a solid direction and has a good arc without reading it all, it lacks a certain formality that squashes the query letter. We're also not as serious about formatting like we are in the manuscript itself, where we really, really want you to use the manuscript format described on every single writing website ever. Why? Because manuscript format is specifically designed to be easy on the eyes - spaces between the lines, large font, page numbering - and we need things to be easy on the eyes because we're going to be spending hours reading your manuscript. The synopsis? Not so much. Twenty or thirty seconds, maybe more. Presentation is not so important. Double-spacing, 1.5, single, whatever. Font? It should be readable. Should the characters have their names in bold? Uhm, if you want, sure.

The only important things are to (a) cover the important events in your manuscript, including the ending, and (b) not go on for too long. Seriously, no 80-page synopses. If we can't tell the difference between a chapter-by-chapter synopsis and actual chapters, your attempts have gone horribly awry. (And yes, this happened) So, 1-2 pages, maybe three if it's a long book with a lot of intricacies and you just can't fit it onto two pages. Only do more if it's requested.

As to an outline, it seems to mean a lot of different things to different people, but to me it means "a synopsis with a lot of structure to it." Really I'm not the person to ask about outlines as I never bother to distinguish them from a synopsis. Follow the agent's instructions and you should be OK.

Publishing will provide you with plenty of chances to stress out over real and imagined crises. The synopsis doesn't have to be one of them.

Don't Go All St. Elsewhere On Us

2009-06-22T23:10:00.002-04:00

I've heard conflicting things about submitting a synopsis. Some say tell ALL (the plot twists, surprises, even the ending) and others say allude to those events but don't necessarily tell exactly how everything is ironed out. Which is it?

Basic answer here - give away the ending, be it in synopsis or outline form. We want to know that the spy thriller doesn't end all crazy with everyone riding off on a magic unicorn.

Small Press vs. No Publication

2009-06-11T19:40:00.002-04:00

I have a novel submitted all over the place and have a few requests for fulls. I also have a bite from a very very small press that usually only sells between 100 to 500 copies of a book and usually poetry.

My question is: if the big/medium presses don’t come back with a contract, should I pursue the small press. Knowing I’d have to do all the publicity etc. I think I could sell 500 books easily.

Im working on my next novel which I think will be much better than my first.

Should I shelve my first novel or go with the small press? If I go with the small press and only sell 500 copies, will this hurt me if a I look for an agent for my second (and better) book?

If you get no hits from the big presses, go with the small press. You don't have to take my advice here. It's not a hard-and-fast rule I'm laying down. But I am saying that it is awesome to be published, especially for the first time. You don't know when the next time is going to come, so shoot for the stars. If the small press is your only offer, you should go with it.

The other legitimate option is to shelve it and focus on your new work. I've certainly shelved a lot of work - in fact, most of my work - either to revise it later or never to look at it again, but usually I shelved it after it was turned down everywhere, a surefire sign that something was wrong with it. Some people are not proud of their early stuff. Some people believe that a small press is harmful to your resume. This is not true, necessarily, it just isn't as helpful as you would think in comparison to having a shorter piece published in a major magazine.

A lot of people talk about waiting to have written the "right" book which will land them a good advance at one of the big 5/6 publishing companies. These people generally do not get published.

BEA Roundup

2009-06-06T21:42:00.005-04:00

Officially, I did not go to the BEA. I went into the building on Sunday, the only day I was available because of Shavuos, but I didn't have a badge and I went to meet with my editor, who was in town for the convention and pre-scheduled it. At that point I could have gotten a free badge from her, but the convention was over in about an hour and I have no more room in my apartment for free books. From my editor and my boss (who attended on Friday), I learned the following things:

(1) There were less people this year. Some booksellers didn't show up at all, or sent very few people. It was not a wasteland, but it was no 2007.

(2) There were a lot of panels on e-books, as nobody knows how to price them and is mad at Amazon for arbitrarily deciding how books should be priced for the Kindle. Whatever the price is, in the publisher's opinion, it's always too low. About a year ago I went to a talk where I publisher said he thought e-books should be priced the same as regular books because they were the same, which had to have been the stupidest thing that came out of anyone's mouth that evening. Obviously they're not the same, and the lower price is a discount because of the production saved in creating a physical book and the money spent on the reader.

(3) Whatever company that decided to send drummers and dancers to promote their new e-Book deserves to die a fiery death of flames, or at the very least get some acid in the face. In other worsd, the people who had to be at the BEA for 3 days (or even 3 hours, really) did not appreciate their ear-pounding presence.

If you have interesting tales from the BEA, feel free to share them with the other readers here.

Travel Writing

2009-06-02T19:08:00.005-04:00

I'm back. You probably figured that out from, you know, a new post being up, but I feel like it's the thing to say. For years I haven't traveled abroad because of illness, except to go to Israel, but this year I said, "Screw it, I'm doing okay" and went to Asia, and surprised everyone by not getting sick. Of course I mainly ate trail mix, so that probably contributed to it.

If you're a writer, you should really travel. If you've been saving up for years and you're not dipping into that savings to pay rent, do it now. My plane ticket was cheap, my tour was like half their regular cost, and there were all kinds of free upgrades at hotels because they were deserted. Of course now I have to be really careful with my spending, but I'll manage. As they say, "You can't take it with you." But really, it's important to get out and see something completely foreign, which opens your eyes to so many different things that contribute to the creative process. Man, I hope this is the last time I ever use the words "creative process."

Every once in awhile we get a travel memoir at work - today was one of those days - where the traveler is obviously racist. You can tell because they talk at great length about how open-minded they are and how they're really throwing themselves out there, and then go on to say how like every Middle Eastern guy tried to rape them. You would think that extensive international travel would broaden horizons, not limit them. Of course stereotypes are based on fact, and there is horrible shit out there that will harden your stance on things, but usually if you come out of a place with no respect for its culture and a bad opinion of its people, it's justified because something bad happened to you.

For example: I have friends I met through the SCA who were shot at by a Palestinian sniper on a regular basis, and knew people who had died because the windows of the car weren't bulletproof. They could point to the sniper site, actually, from their backyard. The problem was, they lived on the border with Gaza (a lesser border, with just some chicken wire up), and a blue-topped UN car would drive up and down the road every once in a while to make sure that the Jewish townspeople weren't violating Palestinian territory by, say, arresting or killing the one sniper. Or just destroying his nest. Nope, the UN is there to safeguard the Palestinians. Thank goodness.

Now obviously that's an isolated situation, and the politics are vast and complex and the Palestinians are really suffering, not entirely but mostly because of Israel, but I would see a lot of situations like that, and they would harden me, whether I wanted them to or not. Like seeing a blown-up bus or having a friend who was on a bus that blew up, but she got off just in time because she was in the back. These things are events that shape your perception because they're just so terrible, and if you happen to write about them, you should probably do so with every attempt at perspective (that sniper felt the Israeli community had stolen his home even if it wasn't true, he was given a gun by the government but not food, he sincerely felt that the situation was desperate enough to call for violence, and if he had his own home and good plumbing and and a job, maybe he wouldn't pick off kids walking from the school building to their houses with a rifle, i.e. some of this is our doing for not helping him). People have called me a racist for telling the sniper story, though people have also called me a racist for saying that Scientology is a dangerous cult, so I feel that word is just thrown around a lot. Also, Scientology is a dangerous cult.

It bothered me that this writer, who was talking about the 1970's when she traveled around Asia Minor and the Middle East, discussed her various fears based on ignorance (she wouldn't be allowed in mosques, she would be raped, she would get involved in some Arab honor killing somehow) and then described a trip where none of those fears manifested into reality, and she had no attempt to justify her early assumptions or say something like, "How foolish I was to think that all Turkish men are gay." It just astounds me that a person could be that way, and then have the gall to write about it as if she did a great thing by traveling to these horrible countries where the food was all bad because she didn't know what it was and so she ate bread and onions the whole time.

So, travel. Then consider what you actually want to say before you write about it. We will judge you.

Note to commentors: I am not interested in turning this into an Israeli-Palestinian political discussion; I was just using that as an example. I will reject comments that are about that and not writing or travel writing and instead are attempting to inform me of how racist I am.

It's About Time Is All I Can Say

2009-05-10T02:11:00.004-04:00

Despite the current economic crisis and the size of my royalty check, I am going on vacation. I know it seems like I take a lot of breaks because of writing or the constant barrage of Jewish holidays, but now I am seriously taking advance of the excellent airfare available and going away. I will be not near my computer or updating this site for about three weeks.

While I'm gone, I'm disabling comments so I don't have to approve anything in the few stops I will be making to internet cafes. Take some time to enjoy the many other publishing blogs out there and then when I return you can complain about how we give contradictory advice and have typos in our blogs.

Be well!

The Earth Takes One for the Team, Again

2009-05-06T23:15:00.003-04:00

Hi Rejecter,

Why do agents still go from a five-page sample with a query, to a partial, to a full? I understand the wisdom of taking samples and partials when submissions arrive primarily in dead tree form, but in this day of electronic submissions and vast inboxes, storage doesn't seem like it would be a problem. What other function does the system serve for agents?

I'm to combine the answer with an answer to this comment by someone else:

Yes, Priority + DC is what I use. I was callling that "Express," without realizing that express actually means overnight.

So, when facing a dinosaur (i.e. they insit upon snail mail), then I respond with Priority mail + DC. There is never a reason for overnight. If they want it that fast, I'd say they need to accept emailed attachments.

Furthermore, it's becoming an environmental taboo to use paper and fuel-hogging snail mail--I don't want to be repped by an environmentally insensitive company, so if they don't take e-mail, they're probably not going to work out for me, anyway.

Mionions, I have spoken.

So this may be shocking to some people, but some people have problems reading manuscripts on a computer screen. The computer screen was not designed to be easy on the eyes and e-Readers are still ludicrously expensive. So is printer ink and paper and we don't like spending money on a client until they are actually a client, because then it's just lost money. So, when we ask for something in hard copy, it's so we can read it without our eyes starting to burn. Granted I'm on the internet a lot, I do read things online, but if I had to do it all day every day for novels, I would be wearing glasses a lot sooner. Yes, it's not environmentally friendly. You know what's not environmentally friendly? Basically everything we as human beings do on this planet. So until they invent an e-Reader that's like $20 and everyone in the publishing industry buys one to save paper, deal with it.

Moving on and assuming the agent asked for hard copy, most agents don't ask for 5 page partials. they ask for at least 30 or 50 pages, or three chapters. I knew an agent who asked for 5 pages, but she made a lot more partial requests than the average agent, knowing the writing would just knock off most of the submissions and she could tell that in 5 pages. It wasn't very paper-efficient and I don't know if she still does that.

If you feel really bad about the environment, watch the show Life After People, which relieves some of the collective guilt by showing just how quickly nature will reclaim the earth after we're gone.

Dropping Off Requested Material

2009-05-01T14:26:00.003-04:00

If you live in New York, any harm in dropping it off quickly and politely, leaving it with the receptionist?

Ask. Agents feel differently about this, usually depending on how often they actually come into the office (as opposed to working from home) and whether they actually have a receptionist. I used to work for an agency that did not have one, and anyone could walk in, and we all want to avoid the awkward conversation with the author we are probably going to reject, statistically. My current boss works in a building with a lot of different small offices and does have a receptionist for the building, so she allows drop-offs, but only when she knows to expect them and ask if there's anything behind the desk for her.

Saving $$$

2009-04-29T23:42:00.002-04:00

Today I opened an express mail envelope that contained a requested partial.

Really, you don't have to do this. Express mail is very expensive. If we request a partial, we expect to wait 2-5 days for it, at least. If we for some reason need it faster than that (if you have a book deal with the publisher and are just agent-shopping before you sign on the dotted line), we'll say so, and then you can ask if you can email it.

If you're querying via mail, you're going to be spending money. You can spend it unnecessarily if you want, but don't think dropping a twenty on express mail will impress us. Your manuscript is the thing that needs to impress us. Save some money and send it media mail or at worst, priority. If you live in a state close the agent, totally send it media mail.

The Agent For You

2009-04-28T21:19:00.003-04:00

Dear Rejector,

My memoir involves my experiences in music. The agent who wants to represent my work is passionate about my book, understands the concept and what I am trying to do, and all of his books are extremely successful. My only concern is that most of the books he represents are mainstream Christian. Although my book doesn’t fit anywhere in that category, this agent seems perfect for me in so many ways. His Christian books are all best sellers, so clearly this agent knows what he is doing in that area. Will he have the same pull with publishers in a book that is off his topic area?

If he's a good agent, he wouldn't offer to take you on without some idea of whom he was going to sell your material to. Ask him where he would try to sell it and what editors he knows. If he has a comprehensive response, he'll be a good agent for you. If he doesn't have a real plan and you have other options, go elsewhere.

Death of a Contract II: The Hypothetical's Revenge

2009-04-24T16:48:00.003-04:00

Dear Rejecter:

How about this scenario: Agent sells author's first novel to a well-known house and a well-regarded editor. Agent then leaves agency for another line of work, and is succeeded by another agent from same agency, who is not nearly as committed and energetic. Editor who bought book jumps to another house without taking the book with her. New editor clearly doesn't understand the manuscript, dislikes it and sends a lengthy letter essentially demanding a stem-to-stern rewrite with major changes to key characters that will destroy intent of said novel. Agent is useless and apparently has not even read the manuscript. After some more dicking around, editor cancels contract.

Heard that one often?

Usually when I'm answering questions, they're not so much theoretical as situations the author is in or heard about. Here we have a situation that's pretty far gone in the theoretical area, but I'll look at it anyway. The situation is: author gets book contract via agent, and then both agent and editor abandon her.

(1) The agent. You can fire your agent if you don't like them. Most agents work only off a verbal agreement with their clients anyway (though a contract is not unusual) so all you have to do is say, "I don't want you to be my agent anymore." The tricky thing here is that the agency's name is undoubtedly on the contract. The agent represents the author, so though the author's name appears on the contract and it requires the author's signature, somewhere in the first few paragraphs of a typical contract is a notation making it clear the author is represented by the agency, and all monies will go to the agency address and not the author's address. If you have a legitimate reason to fire your agent, but their name is on a contract, they may fight to keep it there and collect their 15% on future royalties. I'm not actually sure how you would go about solving this situation if you felt the 15% wasn't deserved, as I've never had this come up before. In this case, though, the 15% is deserved, as the agency did make the deal, even if it wasn't that particular agent at the agency who made the deal.

There's some issues between agents that go on for years, usually not involving the author. For example, my boss used to be a subagent at another agency when she was starting out. Her boss got a cut off her earnings. When the contracts were signed, they had the agency name on them. Now it's been a few years, but there are still some royalties being earned by authors who have followed my boss when she formed her own agency, but as her old boss had a part in the original contract, the money still goes through her old boss and has to be passed on to her. We get a lot of mail with that agency's letterhead on it. You would think agents wouldn't fight over pennies (in this case it's not a fight; it's a completely mutual agreement that does not subtract from the author's cut in any way) but sometimes they're not pennies. You never really know if a book is going to succeed wildly or get a second wind (especially if it's a political book) and royalties are going to be rolling in; the agent and their old boss have it worked out as to who gets what and where before the check is cut to the author, still at the rate of 15% for the agent(s).

(2) The editor. This may be a problem and it may not be. If the book was fairly far along in the process, it might not be a big deal. Editors work on things they don't care for all the time, either because they got handed someone else's workload or because they're an assistant to a bigger editor or a long list of other reasons. Editors are editors; their responsibility is to edit, which can be as minimal as "let's see if there's any huge inconsistencies before it goes to the copyeditor." If the deal is done, and the advance has been paid, and the publisher has already invested money in publicity for the book and hours of editorial, then the publisher has a good reason to go forward with the book and the editor has a good reason to just do their job and push the book to the copyeditor's and be done with it. If the editor decided to kill the book, there would need to be a really legitimate reason to justify all the time/money already spent on it. If the editor doesn't care for working on the book, they'll probably rush it to the copyeditor, who usually has no emotional investment in the book and is simply doing their job, which is to copyedit the hell out of the manuscript before it goes to layout. Once it's in the copyeditor's hands, it's pretty much going to be published unless something unusual happens, like the company goes bankrupt.

EDIT: So I'm now told this was not a theoretical; it happened long ago. Says the person who emailed me:

It wasn't a theoretical situation -- all of it happened several years ago. The book had already been scheduled (as a paperback original) and the cover design was being discussed. The author in question did drop the agency. A portion of the advance had been paid, and the author was never dunned for it. I've had writers and agents tell me this is the worst publishing story they've ever heard.

I'm not going to change whole post around, but yeah, that is a pretty bad situation. It also is very rare, I'm assuming.

The Death of a Contract

2009-04-21T16:32:00.002-04:00

I was expecting to make this post under more depressing circumstances, but I reached an agreement with my editor. I decide to make the post anyway, because it's informative.

Let's say you've got a book deal with a publisher, agent or no agent. You get the long contract in the mail - easily 10-17 pages - and it feels like you're signing away your work. While you are signing a binding legal agreement, you're not actually selling your soul, nor is your publication really guaranteed, though it's mostly guaranteed. Once the contract is signed by both parties, there are three essential ways a contract can be severed:

(1) The author fails to live up to the obligations stated in the contract. The author doesn't deliver the manuscript by the agreed-upon date, the author refuses to revise, the author dies (the company is not obligated to publish the book if the author dies before delivering the contract, though the estate of the author can push for publication if the manuscript has been delivered), etc.

(2) The publisher fails to live up to the obligations stated in the contract. The publisher does not pay the advance money by the agreed-upon dates or in the agreed-upon amount(s). The publisher does not publish the book within the agreed-upon time (usually a year after signing, sometimes two years). The publisher goes under and stops publishing books. Etc.

(3) The author and the publisher do not reach an agreement on the final version of the manuscript. Either party can sever the contract over this, though it tends to be mutual because there's been a ton of fighting leading up to it. Generally editors buy manuscripts that they like, then ask for some revisions to clean up the manuscript. Sometimes the author will deliver a manuscript radically different from the one that was bought (the version that is "delivered" is a version delivered AFTER signing the contract, not necessarily the version the editor read when deciding whether to buy the book). Sometimes the author will refuse to do revisions because they're too radical (in the author's opinion). Sometimes the real life situation the book is based on, especially if it's a political book, will change dramatically and the author will feel that the book is no longer relevant or needs so much altering that it's not worth publishing.

Either way it's a painful process, feeling a tiny bit like a divorce. If the book is not published, any advance money paid must be returned, though if the author decides to just keep it, the publisher has to then sue to the author to try and get it, and if the advance is small enough the legal fees won't be worth it. The author, if they have other books at the same company, may say, "Take it out of my future royalties for book X" so that the author doesn't have to write a check and the publisher doesn't have to process it. Any money not involving the advance spent by the publisher - in editorial hours, promotion, sales, design, etc - is considered lost and the author is not responsible for publisher's expenses.

Publishers try not to let this happen, but it does. Authors die, or disappear, or don't deliver manuscripts. Publishers are bought by other companies and forced to reduce their line. Publishers go under. The editor who bought the book moves to another company and takes the author with them, involving a whole new contract. It happens. It's one of the reasons the contract is so long, covering a ton of possibilities that are not likely to ever happen but occasionally do. The contract is meant to state what everyone's responsibility is in the production of the book and what happens when situation X or Y occurs, and who is responsible for resolving it. Authors and publishers only go to court when (a) huge sums of money are involved and (b) someone is wildly violating the terms of the contract.

There was a case a year or so ago where someone sued their publisher for "failing to promote the book successfully." Essentially she blamed the publisher for the failure of the book and its low sales. I don't remember who it was or how this case turned out, but it would be a difficult case for a judge in my opinion, as nowhere in the contract does it stipulate what the publisher has to do to promote the book, just that it has to do something. The money allotted to publicity and promotion is not a number the author sees at any point, and would look like monopoly money anyway, because it's impossible to tell what those numbers represent unless you work for that particular company's imprint and know precisely what they typically spend on a book in that genre in the area of publicity and what the budget was when they were deciding and how feasible it was to promote this book anyway. In other words, you would have to be the publisher.

Anyone know how that case turned out?

Blogging

2009-04-20T21:36:00.002-04:00

Dear Rejector,

my first question is : do you think that blogging can pay as well as writing novels can?

Yes, if you're the chick who thought up "i can haz cheezburger." Otherwise, probably not. The money to be made in blogs is pretty illusory. I think the ads in my blog have made me about $70 total.

My second question is: how did you become a writer?

I started writing when I was in 3rd grade. As to how or why, I don't really know. As to how I got published: practice, practice, practice, followed by rejection, rejection, rejection followed by a little bit of luck and a decent manuscript after 10 bad ones.

Offline

2009-04-08T16:12:00.002-04:00

Things have been a little slow here at the Rejecter because of Passover/editing book issues, and they're about to get even slower as I log off for Pesach. I'll be back up Saturday night, then down for two days next week, so if you post a comment, it may not get approved for a few days. Feel free to post it anyway, just expect a delay. And if you send a question, it will go in my "to answer" box all the same, so go ahead.

Chag Sameach and Happy Easter to all who celebrate.

The Boundaries of Young Adult

2009-04-07T22:03:00.003-04:00

Hello Rejecter,
I am new to writing and have paged down many months on your blog. I'm not sure if you answer this type of question, but I will ask.

I am at the final chapters of a YA. My question to you is my ms to much for a YA? In brief it takes place in a high school and includes relationships, drugs, sex, kidnapping/torture and murder. It has description to feel the emotions, but not to much depth in the sex and drug portions.

Really, anything goes in YA these days. Basically, don't write smut that has no plot, or PWP as we say in fanfic. (Porn Without Plot or Porn Without Point) And don't be excruciatingly descriptive unless you're being raped and it's an autobiography. Then sit back and wait for the awards to roll in.

Also, do you ever give pro's/con's on query letters?

If by this you mean review them, no.

The Rejecter's Rejections

2009-03-30T20:38:00.003-04:00

So the editorial situation for my third book is still a mess, and has gotten more complicated, to the point where it's really not appropriate for me to continue posting about it on an anonymous public blog, as a lot of specifics are involved. And curse words.

Today I was back in my hometown to give a speech to students in my high school about my book and the publishing process. This was requested by an English teacher I didn't know, which shocked the hell out of me. I babbled for about 45 minutes and I'm pretty sure I might have said something in there about something related to writing. When I do public speaking it's kind of blur. It's good to go into my 10th reunion this fall with a major accomplishment. I looked in my yearbook when I got there to jog my memory of the names of my teachers, as I am especially terrible at remembering names, and discovered that in my senior profile, I asked people to buy my book (the one I was trying to publish at the time) or "a book by me by another title." Actually the English teacher, the alumni director, and the librarian all got copies from me for free, but the principle is there, which is that I had a dream in high school and I've fulfilled it. I need to come up with some crazier dreams.

Also very satisfying: My mother asked me to clean out my desk while I was home, which was filled with old paper and bank statements that needed to be shredded alongside the very important documents to save, like GRE scores and proof of jury duty service. Included in this desk was a huge stack of rejection letters from various graduate programs in creative writing. I was rejected almost everywhere I applied, and I applied repeatedly: my senior year of college, the year I was in Israel, and the year I was home sick after Israel. I applied to Columbia's MFA program three times (and was waitlisted once, but never got off it). My fiction was apparently "too commercial" as grad professors have admitted off the record. Obvious I did get in somewhere, really a middle tier school looking to expand its program with more students, and even there I was ostracized for writing "popular fiction" and one professor threatened to flunk me if I didn't write about myself. Also I probably burned the bridge of being hired as a professor there by calling the head of the department a sadist to his face.

Number of books under contract 1 year after graduating with my MFA: 5

Anyway, I shredded all of my rejections (and the acceptances to the crappy programs). Let me tell you, it was very satisfying. Especially for Columbia. Three times I paid that application fee, which went up from $85 to $120 the final year. Also Iowa, just because everyone applies to Iowa and no one gets in. Man, they rejected the hell out of me.

So, for those you receiving rejection letters: keep at it. Persistence pays off. And shredding is very theraputic.

Editorial Demands

2009-03-27T16:42:00.003-04:00

General notes: We've been receiving a lot of manuscripts from people about how the car industry failed (in their opinion) or from people who worked as investment bankers and want to talk about all of the wasteful spending they encountered. Not a huge surprise. The mortgage crisis we haven't seen so many books on, but I suppose that's not as interesting to write about, or is simply too complicated to write about except by an expert. And if the last few months have taught us anything, it's that nobody's an expert.

On the home front: I've still been focusing every spare second on revisions for my third book. I had an interesting conversation with my agent (the agent who represents my work, not my boss the agent) about editorial demands on behalf of the publisher and what is realistic, and it turns out that what I was asked to do is way out of the ballpark, but as the book was paid for and is slated for the fall release, I can't do anything but tear up my contract (which I can do, if we fail to reach an agreement on the content of the manuscript) and not get the third book published, so the editor has the advantage. Now I've known editors and spoken to editors and done some editing myself, but I've only been an author working with an editor no two previous books, and it difficult to be on the receiving end of comments that you just plain don't agree with and think would detract from the book.

What you should expect: Generally editors are supposed to tighten the manuscript (or ask you to add more material to clarify the plot), find inconsistencies, and discuss problematic scenes. Some editors do little or no revision because they're overworked and leave it to the copyeditor to find inconsistencies, and I have to say my copyeditor did a fabulous job on the previous book, and found a ton of stuff that was easy to correct (a line or two here and there).

What is not the norm: The editor is not supposed to ask you to dramatically rewrite the book. In theory, the editor buys the book because they like it, and the changes they suggest are to make the book better, but the essential nature of the book was already there when they bought it. Or if they bought multiple books at once (which would be my case), they either read them all when they bought them, or they at least read the chapter-by-chapter summation you provided them with before the contract was signed so they knew what they were getting, at least in theory. If an editor just buys a bunch of books because the first one was successful and doesn't look at the summaries and doesn't even bother to look at the book until two months after you delivered the manuscript but a week before it has to go to the copyeditor's, and discovers they hate the plot, both of you are in trouble. Even though it wasn't your fault as a writer, you're going to be the one to fix it or walk away from your contract and return your advance money. This happens on occasion in publishing, though it is rare. It is, however, a situation you never ever want to get into. If you are selling a multi-book series, my advice is to be absolutely sure the editor has signed off on careful summaries of all the books that haven't been written yet. There is an advange to editors buying books blindly - it means you're more likely to to get your first big break. But it has a disadvantage, too, which I've discovered over the past few weeks, as it's come down to my integrity as a writer versus my career as a writer. Trust me, it is not a good place to be.

Frustrations

2009-03-22T16:36:00.003-04:00

So if you think once you get an agent and a contract it's all fun and games, you are wrong. So wrong.

(1) Today I got yet another review pointing out the various historical mistakes that (a) were supposed to be cleared up by copy-editing, but the corrections we agreed on were never implemented into the final manuscript file by the editor, and/or (b) were historical inaccuracies that were not part of the book and were slapped onto the back cover and all the promotional material by an overworked assistant who hadn't read the book. Every single review has hit on at least one of these mistakes, neither of which were my fault. Of course I don't respond to reviews, because as an author you don't do that, but I have addressed the issue on my website and in interviews, which of course means nothing to the person who is a discerning historian and just picked the book up in a store. Eighth month after publication and I still want to hit myself in the face whenever I see a review mentioning them and therefore downgrading my book.

(2) The cover for another book of mine went unapproved to Amazon for the pre-order. Now technically I have no control over the cover, but it is a confusing cover that makes no sense and is downright misleading, and I will have to stamp my feet and be really annoying to the already overworked production department to get them to change it, and even once they do Amazon will not bring the changes up until months after it's published. If I can get it changed at all.

(3) Amazon.co.uk has a funny additude of putting a book into pre-order again instead of admitting that they are out of stock, claiming the book hasn't been published yet and will not be published until whatever the next shipment date is, even if they've been selling it for six months. This wouldn't be so annoying if it didn't automatically delete pre-existing reviews (most of my reviews are positive so I don't want them deleted, or the negative ones either so people know what they're getting), because the website thinks this is a whole new book. I wrote Amazon.uk about this, to which their response is, "Send us proof of the original publication date," as if they can't check their records to show they've been shipping the same book for 6 months, they're just out of copies. So I send them a screenshot of the Amazon.com page with the ISBN and publication date, and they don't do anything about it anyway.

(4) Amazon does not believe I'm the author when I say, "Hi, I'm the author and you're incorrect about the description of the book; you should fix this." Even if my publishing company insists that I am, in fact, the author.

This isn't really anybody's fault in terms of being mean or evil, but more a combination of people who are overworked, people asked to do a job they aren't given proper information about, or companies with better things to do with their time. The manuscript passes through a bunch of hands before it makes it to yours, and any one of those could make a change and either not tell me or tell me well after it's possible to fix it. So next time you're reviewing a book, consider that a seemingly minor mistake it might not be the author's fault.

If Philip Dick was alive I would feel really bad for him, as the current edition of his books has summaries on the back that either give away the ending or are just plain wrong about anything that occurs in the book. And Philip Dick books often have twists at the end, so this is a really big problem for the reader.

Amazon breaks its own bank

2009-03-16T00:47:00.005-04:00

I've been very busy with last-minute edits for my third book, so I haven't had a lot of time to post. But here's this, which I found amusing.

Maybe their discounts are getting a little too deep.

College Credit

2009-03-11T22:35:00.003-04:00

Dear Rejecter,

I have a yes-but question about writing credits. As I understand it, getting published in your college's newspaper never counts as a writing credit. The but is this: But what if your column gets syndicated? A few of the pieces I wrote were syndicated on the website uwire.com. (This is their about page.) Their kind of like the AP wire for college newspapers.

I write fantasy novels so it's not as if a bunch of Anthropology columns are terribly relevant anyway, but I was curious.

College newspapers totally count if you don't say they're college newspapers. The thing that makes it not meaningful is if you've talking about journalism and you've written a novel. It does prove you know how to write, but it doesn't prove you know how to write fiction. You wouldn't believe the people we get who have 20 years' experience working for the AP and can't put together a plot to save their lives.

If you've been published in a college literary journal with a pretentious name, just list the name, not the part about it being a college literary journal. Literary journals prove you can write fiction.

Kindle 2: Escape to Royalty Mountain

2009-03-02T22:42:00.003-05:00

I can't afford the new Kindle, and therefore haven't seen it and can't comment on it, but I can post a funny cartoon someone else made about it.

Note: 300th post!

Essay Collections

2009-03-02T14:30:00.003-05:00

Hello Rejecter,

I often hear that nonfiction is more marketable than fiction. Is that true for all forms nonfiction? My question relates specifically to essays. The Caged Virgin, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was and is highly acclaimed. It's no secret that she's an excellent writer with a compelling story. That leads me to wonder if the success of The Caged Virgin was an exception rather than the rule. Are publishers generally receptive to essay collections?

It's hard to say which is more marketable because fiction and non-fiction have different markets. Though many agents deal with both, editors tend to focus on one or the other. If you're asking yourself, "Should I write a fiction or non-fiction book?" the answer is, "Write the book you want to write, then submit it for publication. When it's rejected, write another book and try again."

As for essay collections, this can be a tricky situation. Generally agents are not incredibly receptive to essay collections written by people who have not had any of their essays published, much like short story collections. And then it depends where they were published, and what kind of essays they are, but generally boils down to, "Do we think anyone would buy and read this?" Because I can't remember the last essay collection I bought and read, and I read a wide variety of things. My dad bought me a copy of "Best Science Writing of 2001" or something like that, and I think I read two of the essays, and that was a "best of" collection. So, don't bank on it.

If people have successful essay collection publishing stories they are welcome to share them in the comments section.

Thanking Agents

2009-02-25T19:34:00.001-05:00

Dear Rejecter,
Several agents have requested my full ms, and one of them recently sent me a very kind no. She clearly gave the book a thoughtful, thorough read and her letter to me included encouraging and constructive feedback. I'd like to send her a thank-you note, acknowledging her time and encouragement. Is this appropriate? Or would an agent just think it was weird to receive a thank-you for what was, after all, a no?

If the agent went through all that trouble, you can do it, but it is a pointless exercise for the most part. We do occasionally get thank you's, oddly enough for queries, and they're pointless and we just throw them out. But for what she did, it wouldn't hurt, certainly, if you send something else to that agent sometime in the near future.

In all other situations I would not recommend the waste of paper and postage.

In These Harsh Economic Times...

2009-02-19T17:59:00.003-05:00

Dear Rejector:

The following is gleaned from the latest issue of Publisher's Weekly:

“With bookstore sales falling the last four months of 2008, total sales for the year fell 0.5%, to $16.93 billion.”

“Bookstore sales were off 4.7% in December, an improvement over the 13.0% and 5.6% declines posted in November and October.”

“Sales for the 81 publishers that report their revenue to the Association of American Publishers fell 2.4%, to $10.6 billion, in 2008. . . The 13% decline in the adult hardcover segment was the result of a 5.3% drop in gross sales plus a steep 10.8% increase in returns.”

As you know, Houghton Mifflin has stopped accepting new submissions and Borders is on the ropes.

How is the downturn in book sales affecting literary agencies? Are agents taking on fewer new clients? Are agencies relying more on their existing best selling authors? Are colleagues of yours in fear of losing their jobs? How should unpublished authors trying to break in view all of this? Should we follow in Hemingway's and Poe's footsteps and just do ourselves in? Worse -- get a real job?

Yes, chicken little was right. The sky is falling. Soon people will be burning books for fuel and attaching spikes to their cars. Me, I plan to camp out at Walmart. I think I could last pretty long in a Walmart in some kind of massive global socio-economic destruction. They have food and clothing and camping equipment and generators. I would be fine.

Despite the corporate doom-and-gloom, publishing is actually a fairly stable industry in that people always want/need books. It's either for school or escapism, and it's rather cheap escapism, as most mass market paperbacks are now cheaper than a movie ticket and the book will last you longer. And not all publishing companies are doing badly. Yes, I don't know an editor who isn't under a little extra stress (or a lot of extra stress because half her department was cut and merged with another imprint), but most companies are in the black or near the black, and the ones doing well are being tight-lipped about it, hoping no one will figure out their secret. (Hint! It's probably cheating the authors with low advances and bottom-level royalties!)

The one company that is actually gaining in this crisis is Amazon, despite the rising cost of postage and increasingly slow speed of mail, along with the bankruptcy of DHL (bad for Barnes and Noble). Their used book seller program is probably generating them insane profits, allowing them to slash prices on new books, which then increases buying and gets them more profits. My book was recently reduced by about $1.50 on Amazon and is now selling about twice as many copies. I don't care about the sticker price, as my contract stipulates that I get my royalties based on the established retail price (the price set by the book company), so whatever the stores sell it at, I still get the same $1.12 or whatever it is per copy. Also, another way Amazon is able to offer great deals is that while bookstores have earn 50% of the retail price (the rest going to the publishing company), Amazon earns 55%, meaning it makes more on each book and can afford to keep the prices down to attract customers. Also Amazon sells a lot of other stuff, which just generally keeps the company afloat. I recently bought $35 headphones through a used seller for $4.00 AFTER shipping. And they were new in box.

Will the publishing companies go bankrupt? I doubt it. They may decrease in size, merge imprints, merge companies, or just shift around their lists, but they will survive and then thrive when the economy picks up again. People need books and POD technology is not yet economically viable to produce those public domain classics; you need a real company to do that. When the cost of POD goes down significantly, we will probably see a real restructuring of the industry, but not before.

What does this mean to literary agents? Well, advances are lower and it's certainly a bad time to become a literary agent, but my boss doesn't seem worried at all. If anything, she's rejecting more because we're seeing more queries as people who've been laid off submit books now that they have the time to write them. A ton of queries in her inbox can put her in a rejecting mood if she's just gotten some contracts out for rights in Indonesia and the Korean translation of the newest bestseller on her list just came in. This doesn't affect my work. Actually, it puts you guys at an advantage, as I'm not prone to be busy with another area of the business and reject queries because I'm busy, as my primary (but not only) job is to read queries. So, I'll put the normal amount of maybe's in the pile until she says there's too many, and then I might get a bit more discriminating, but usually not by much.

What does this mean to you? It could be good news, despite what I just said about my boss. (She really is a nice person, and takes on new authors all the time, but a large query pile can be staggering) Even if money is coming in from old backlisted items and current bestsellers, a good agent is always on the look out for new things, and probably on the lookout for more things with the knowledge that the advance is going to be lower for each book. In other words, agents have an incentive to actively look for new clients.

Either way, if you've written a good book, submit it. Just don't expect a big check to come if sells.

Poetry Credits

2009-02-19T16:52:00.004-05:00

Dear Rejecter,

If I'm querying an agent with a novel, and that agent doesn't represent poetry, but my only previous pub credits are poetry, is it appropriate to mention those credits at all? I'm thinking it could go one of three ways:

1. Say that I have previously published poetry, and it has appeared in journals X, Y, and Z
2. Say that my work has appeared in journals X, Y, and Z, but don't mention that said work is poetry
3. Don't mention the credits at all

What's the prudent course here? Is there another option that hasn't occurred to me?

So there's not one answer to your question, unfortunately. Some agents don't think much about poetry credits, but I'm not sure it would really be a negative unless it's not perfectly clear in your query that you're submitting a novel, not a poetry collection (because sometimes it isn't clear). So, I would go with 1 or 3. Either way it probably won't make a difference, but I'm leaning on 1. The importance is that there's a clear distinction between what you've had published and what you are submitting.

Rockstar Agents

2009-02-14T18:59:00.002-05:00

Rejecter, my question is this: say there's a real swanky high powered agent who doesn't accept queries (Binky Urban or the like), however you've actually got something that fits with his/her interests. Say also it's backed with the endorsement of someone equally high powered from the artist's end, someone along the lines of a Cormac McCarthy. What would be the protocol of just sending a note about the situation versus a full fledged query? The easy answer, but not always applicable, might be just have the super-author gives the agent a heads up. But in reality, an author like that can't really be expected to run administrative errands for an unknown, especially if they already did you the enormous favor of reading the manuscript in question. So, what do you think: totally out of bounds, a small but potentially fruitful risk, or no big deal-go for it?

If the agent does not accent queries, do not send queries unless you have a recommendation from someone knows the agent personally (a client, a friend, another agent). Or just do it, and probably get rejected, but who knows? But generally, go with first thing I said. Also, there's no reason for extra fuss over a "swanky high powered agent." Yes, a couple agents have made names for themselves with super deals or by continually getting their clients into the New Yorker, but the agent you want is a good agent who cares about your work the most and can do the most for your manuscript. Of course, you may not get a choice on who that is if only one person takes you on, but you are looking for someone who is (a) good at their job and (a) a fan of your work. There are good agents and bad agents (and scam agents). Good agents have the right connections (for you); bad agents have few or no sales, or are out of the loop, or don't know enough editors. The best agent for you may be someone you've never heard of and isn't even listed on the first major agent listing page. So just query widely, to everyone who accepts in your genre and is either an AAR member or from an established agency but just hasn't been in business long enough to qualify for the AAR.

Literary vs. Commercial Fiction Round 247

2009-02-05T12:51:00.003-05:00

So at this point in the life of the blog I am seriously tempted to just write "go away" to people who send in the usual "why is there so much trash in the marketplace while my literary opus isn't published?" email. I decided to make an exception for this one.

Hello Ms. Rejecter,

The dynamic for agents is to find that compelling work that is salable, not an easy task I'm sure. For me some books that are considered page turners are often so empty and the characters so thin I don't care what they do and the plot so mundanely crime-ridden or romance-ridden or horror-ridden that I don't care what happens. I could give many examples of such profitable books with their suspense page turners in different genres that the only reasonable thing is for the characters to self-destruct. Good luck to those writers. I do not envy or begrudge them anything, for life is too short for that. Maybe these books are a kind of therapy in their escapism for readers and agents are part of the therapy business. However, maybe there is kind of writing that tries to sustain us by illuminating the real world.

Now, the dilemma is, do the vagaries of the the marketplace where escapism literature is easily identified and dominate reduce the marketplace need for compelling stories that deal more authentically with the real world?

First, a confession. I had to look "vagaries" up. I don't know everything. It turns out it means "an extravagant or erratic notion or action" or something like that, which I feel really further obscures the meaning of the sentence than if I hadn't looked it up, but fine. Learn something new every day.

Now, there's the standard argument as to why the market is what it is:
(1) People buy books they want to read.
(2) Publishing companies watch sales and take stock of what was bought.
(3) Editors are encouraged to buy new and exciting things in genres that people are actually buying and reading, plus a little "more of the same" to be on the safe side. The company doesn't want to go under or anything.

In other words, if the public for some reason completely stopped buying books about vampires (in a wildly unlikely alternate universe), editors would be less interested in publishing books about vampires, knowing they wouldn't sell. Eventually there would be no new books about vampires aside from a couple companies hoping to buck the trend, because people don't like to publish books that they know won't sell. Publishing is a business, people. A slightly more altruistic business than, say, investment banking, but nonetheless a business.

From browsing the shelves by yourself, using whatever definition of "literary fiction" you want to use, you will probably come to the conclusion that most people don't buy literary fiction, as most things on the shelves aren't literary fiction. And, by the way, it has always been this way. There has been no time in history where people have only read "great literature."

Now, the dilemma is, do the vagaries of the the marketplace where escapism literature is easily identified and dominate reduce the marketplace need for compelling stories that deal more authentically with the real world?

I want to spend a moment for the good of mankind taking apart this sentence.

I'm going to assume that "escapism literature" means "genre fiction" so we don't spend all day discussing. Normally I would just assume that the latter half of the sentence refers to "literary fiction" and just direct you to the explanation above, which is that the buyers dictate the market, not the other way around, but hold on a second. What are "compelling stories that deal more authentically with the real world?" Because generally in publishing, stories that take place in the "real world" are stories that could possibly happen somewhere at sometime, even if they didn't, and if they actually did it's called "non-fiction." So, that eliminates alternate histories, stories that contain ghosts, stories that contain whimsical creatures who are just metaphors for things, and actually most things that are on the shelves, except maybe romance fiction, because people do occasionally have sex with improbably hot guys. Also thrillers happen in real life, but they usually end up with the protagonist dying in a ditch somewhere or never finding out who was chasing him because that's what happens to most spies.

Your given definition of the literature you want to see more of, if interpreted strictly, would knock out most "great literature." You know, like:

All of Greek literature
All of Arthurian literature
Most Shakespeare
1984
Beloved (though I don't know how "great" it is, in my opinion)
The Old Man and the Sea
And a ton of others I'm thinking of right now because I have to get to work

So, you might want to rethink that.

Non-Fiction Proposals and Unfinished Manuscripts

2009-02-03T22:09:00.002-05:00

Hi Rejecter,

I've been querying my memoir to agents - and one has asked to see it. Now, everything I've read, and published memoirists, have told me that NF doesn't have to be complete to sell. I have 130 pages written. Based on my query, an agent emailed me yesterday and said, "I'd like to see [name of book]. Please send it to me in XXX format."

So, now what do I do? As I write to you, I am cleaning up the chapters (spelling, grammar, transitions) + planning to email to her with the note that this is my "working manuscript." Or should I just hold off, polish it completely + make sure I have a full book before sending it? Or can I send what I have and say this is a partial? My initial instinct was to email her back yesterday and say, "this is a work in progress, I'll send what I have," but I also don't want to waste her time with explanatory emails.

It's true; sometimes non-fiction is sold to a publisher based only on a thorough proposal and sometimes non-fiction is sold when it's a finish piece. The traditional reason that a proposal is submitted is so that the author has the money to go do the research required to write the book, which may involve things like taking time off work or travel or acquiring rights to photos or just, you know, income to justify their time. That's the only reason an editor would put cash up front to a writer, and they would only do it with a VERY thorough proposal unless you're a celebrity, and even then you should have your ghostwriter already chosen.

In your case, you have a right to say "I have the proposal ready but not the book" but obviously you have to be upfront about that. If the book's not done because you just haven't gotten around to writing it all, you have less of an argument for not having written it all and you should finish before you submit. If you need the advance money first (or just want it first), you have to make it clear to the agent that the book isn't done. This should be in the query letter, and if it's not, immediately after the first positive response.

For anyone considering writing a proposal and then going ahead with only a couple chapters, let me give you some advice: getting published is a hugely stressful ordeal. Some people (most people) find it even more stressful if they've been paid up-front for an unseen product. However detailed the proposal was, the fact of the matter is that the editor still has not seen the entire product. The editor probably won't back out of the deal after paying the advance based on the remaining chapters being not what he/she expected, but if the editor isn't happy with the final product, he/she will either spend a lot of time editing it or the company will kind of shove it aside and not put huge publicity money into it. So, if you can possibly avoid that stress by writing the book ahead, do so.

Multiple Agents and Submissions

2009-02-02T15:39:00.003-05:00

Dear Rejecter,

I have a manuscript (full) out with an agent who is due to get back to me soon. Last week my dream agent, to my immense surprise, requested a partial. I’m ecstatic to say the least, but also realistic. Naturally, I sent the partial right away.

According to the letter, it will take a month for my dream agent to get back to me. It wasn’t an exclusive, so I didn’t feel the need to reveal that another agent (a junior agent) has the full. Should I have? Or should I just wait and see what happens with the junior agent, because she might end up passing on it anyway?

While some people do mention in their letters that other people are looking at their work, it's no longer obligatory unless you granted an exclusive, which you didn't. In the old days it was the appropriate thing to do, but today we're just assuming that everyone is mass querying and that we are competing with someone for a manuscript if it's really good. Telling the agent (the second one) that someone else is looking at it is polite, but not necessary. In other words, you don't have to email her and go out of your way to say it (the fewer emails you bother an agent with, the better), but you can mention it in passing in some other correspondence if you have a chance. It may spur them on, or it may do nothing. Either way, not a big deal, no reason to split hairs.

Other agents might not feel this way, but certainly it doesn't really make a difference at my office when we get a letter with something like "other agents have expressed interest."

Don't wait on one agent over another unless you're in the very final stage of deciding between agents and you just need more time to think. Publishing is slow enough as it is. There's no reason here to make it any slower.

Maiden Names

2009-01-30T12:31:00.003-05:00

I'm back from a brief vacation/visit to relatives. I normally don't post on Friday because of the comment approval delays, but here we go.

Dear Rejector,

I'm getting married in a month, but I plan to keep my maiden name as my pen name. When querying (once married), would you advise querying with my legal -- married -- name or with my maiden name? Or with First Maiden Married?

Am I over-thinking this?

Thank you

Yes, you are over-thinking this. The name you use in your query should be the name you want to appear on the check the agency sends you when the book sells - i.e. your legal name. In a case where you have a DBA or multiple legal names, put whichever one you want. I didn't come up with my pen name until the book was about to go from the editor at the publishing house to the copy-editor.

(A DBA is a "Doing Business As" form that allows people to write checks to you in a name different from your own)

Contests and Contracts

2009-01-21T22:23:00.002-05:00

Rejecter, enjoying your responses to these questions. Something similar here: I'm waiting a long time for the results of a contest. It says in the rules that should you become the winner, they have the sole exclusive rights to option the winning novel. (But there are several types of winners in this contest, and the rules don't specify which kind of winner.) In the year I've been waiting for the results of this contest, the novel has been requested by a top editor at a top house. Should I become, let's say, one of the winners of this contest, am I somehow able to get out of the exclusive option should the top publisher be interested in acquiring the book? Thanks a lot.

So I'm not completely sure about contest contracts, as I've never seen one in person and they tend to be such limited deals that I have no reason to, but what you should do is call the people running the contest and ask them. Don't pull out of the contest yet, if you're still in the running, as the editor at the publishing house may very well not buy your book and then you'll be high-and-dry. Just inquire as to what you are supposed to do if you get an offer for the novel during what seems like an excessively long (don't use those words) waiting period. Tell them you really care about the contest the most, which is why you're making sure everything is fine on their end and there's no legal misunderstandings.

If you don't have a phone number, email them. If they are a business or a charity, look up their number in a business directory.

The Waiting Game

2009-01-20T17:18:00.002-05:00

I apologize if I don't seem to be answering old emails in the order they were received while I was busy editing my third book. If you sent me a question within the last three months, you will probably get an answer. If it's been more than three months, you can just resend it.

Dear Rejector:

Two agents have requested to see my novel manuscript. One of them asked for a partial -- in this case 100 pages (i.e., half the 100,000-word manuscript). A junior agent at a prestigious NYC house, this individual requires with the initial query letter the first five pages only -- no synopsis. He still asks that no synopsis be sent with the partial. It took him one month to answer my inital query. Querytracker contributors who've dealt with this agent state that he usually takes 2-3 months to respond to manuscript requests. This agent, who is very polite, strikes me as inefficient: by the time he gets around to possibly asking for a complete manuscript (3-4 months?), he may have lost potential clients; furthermore, he's wasted his own time by reading copius partials -- what's the point of asking for 100 pages? One might as well then ask for the full manuscript. Finally, how many agents don't bother with a synopsis, especially if s/he's asked to see 100 pages? Anyway, am I dealing with someone competent in your estimation, or a beginner who is just flopping around?

100 pages is half of a 100k word manuscript? Are you single-spacing and double-siding your manuscript? Because you shouldn't be doing that. It should be on one side and double or 1.5-spaced.

Again, I'll take apart your questions.

(1) Agents ask for what they prefer to read. Some agents don't care about a synopsis and don't ask for one. Some prefer 50 pages. Some 100. Some have to deal with so many submissions they just take the first 5 pages and a summary first. It's all in what their reading preference is. It doesn't make one agent less professional than the other.

(2) As to his answering your initial query, that's about right. Its' hard to go a lot faster than that in the mail, especially if there's some pile-up from the holidays or some emergency in the agent's life or whatever.

(3) In terms of him taking 2-3 months to answer a partial: Also not unusual. No, it doesn't take him that long to read it, just to get to it, and he may spend some time debating about it before responding. Like any normal human being, he may procrastinate on making a decision by putting it back in the pile, and quite a little "need to make a decision" pile builds up. You have no idea what's going on in his end. He hasn't been on vacation (or maybe he has) but an agent's life is not spent just lying around, watching TV and not looking at submissions unless the agent landed Stephen King and doesn't NEED new submissions - in which case, said agent doesn't have a website accepting submissions. Agents have a lot of work: editing the manuscripts they're preparing to send to publishers, working with authors about those edits, contract negotiations, chasing down royalty checks for the author, making sure the press coverage that was promised by the publishing company happens, going to meetings with the other agents and publishers (networking is VERY important in this industry), reading industry news that will determine where they send manuscripts, and reviewing submissions. Then there's the low-level stuff, liking going to Staples for more supplies, stuffing SASEs, photocopying, making sure there are enough copies of the contract for everyone involved (which may be several foreign agencies), sending ARC copies around, and assorted trips to the post office. Potential authors haven't earned them any money yet, so they can't spend much time on them when there's work to be done for their actual clients. In fact, the time spent on submissions is massive considering how many new clients they may actually take on that year (it could be as low as 1 new client or no new clients). In other words, be patient.

Also, if the agent is a member of the AAR, they are not a newbie doofus. You have to be in the industry for 5 years as an active agent to even begin to qualify for it, and then you have to pay a steep fee to be in it, so it's sort of the seal of quality. New agents often work in groups with older agents who are AAR people until they earn their wings, so-to-speak. My agent (my agent, not my boss who is an agent) is not a member of the AAR, or she wasn't when she took me on. She is, however, a member of an agency run by a man with 30 years experience in publishing and AAR membership, so I had no real worries about her inexperience, as she could always go to him if she needed to.

Second Book Clauses

2009-01-19T22:50:00.003-05:00

Dear Rejecter,

I'm an unagented novelist. My first novel was published by a small press earlier this year. My second is nearly complete.

According to our contract, my publisher has first right of refusal for all my subsequent works. However, I want out--because they haven't promoted my book at all. I've sent out hundreds of postcards to bookstores, done all the press releases, organized readings, and mailed review copies all over the country and the world. When I asked my publisher to help a little--pointing out that our contract stipulates that they are responsible for promotion too--the head of the company responded that the contract actually says they're responsible for promotion 'as the budget allows' and they've no funds for promotion this year.

(And not incidentally I've got some good reviews and press from my efforts!)

I'd like to try and sell my second book to a larger publisher; so I'd like to get an agent. My question for you is: how much of a problem will this first right of refusal clause be for an agent? I fear that a potential agent might be put off by that sort of baggage. Should I approach my publisher now, and ask to be released from that clause before I query agents? Or is it something that a new agent would be willing to negotiate for me?

So the short answer is yes, you need an agent.

The long answer is yes, you can get out of your first right of refusal clause (aka the "second book" clause), though how the clause works is complicated and will vary from company to company. I don't know what it says in your clause, but this is how it generally works in a standard publication contract:

"First right of refusal" means the publisher gets first crack at whatever you write next for publication. Meaning, you can't shop it at other houses before they look at it. The publisher can then decide to (a) turn it down, refusing to make an offer, and essentially letting you go whether you want to be let go or not, or (b) make you an offer for the second book. Let's say for the sake of argument it's a $5000 advance.

As long as you haven't said "yes" to the offer, the offer is on the table until they decide to withdraw it. If you're not happy with your 5K or just upset with the company in general, you can say to them, "I'm not happy with your offer and want to shop it at other places."

They then have three options:
(1) To raise the offer to something you agree to in order to keep you at the publisher.
(2) To keep the offer the same, but allow you to shop the book elsewhere with the offer still on the table.
(3) To say, "Screw you, we withdraw our offer, have fun trying to get this published elsewhere."

In other words, if you tell them (and you have to tell them) that you want to take it to other places, you risk losing the original publisher altogether and having no publisher for the second book. In your case this doesn't seem like a major problem, but it can be. For example, after the success of my first book, the publisher made an offer that was downright insulting for books 2 and 3. Since in my case the publisher had done a good job with book 1, my agent and I decided not to risk threatening to walk by shopping at other places and stick with the original publisher, even with the very, very low advance for a sequel to a successful book.

So let's say option (2) happens. Then thing can get downright complicated. You shop the book to the other publishing companies, and they make offers. If they make an offer that's equal to or better than the original publisher's offer, you can accept it and walk from the original publisher (5. If they make a LOWER offer (under 5K), the second book clause is still in effect and you cannot walk from the original publisher for a lower offer. In other words, you can't jump ship just because you don't like people; you generally have to do it because there's a monetary justification. Of course the editor at the publishing house could just agree to let you walk for the smaller offer; a lot of this business is done very informally.

This is why you need an agent. The agent can negotiate this for you and gauge what you should probably do.

Excuses, Excuses

2009-01-09T14:40:00.001-05:00

I've been real quiet, I know. It's not because I'm lazy (though that should never be entirely discounted) but because the final version of my third book is due to the publisher on the 15th, and the publisher is great at some editorial, but not consistency, and in an ongoing family saga, consistency is really important and you should spend a lot of time checking for it.

And it's historical fiction, meaning I can tear out all the hairs and read all the books I want, but people are still going to find mistakes and write about them in reviews.

Characters, Sex, and the Characters They Have Sex With

2008-12-30T22:28:00.006-05:00

I'm in the early stages of my first novel and I think that sex is almost needed. Writing about attraction and sexual impulses is just about the only aspect of writing that makes me uncomfortable to me. I don't want it to sounds awkward, out of place, or at all trashy. This fear is especially amplified by the fact that the first part of my novel takes place in a very conservative setting where sex means breeding, not sex. Do you have any advice concerning how I should approach "romance" portions? When do sex scenes make an auto-reject? Could you give source materials of novels that do sex well?

Oh, and do mainstream publishers care about homosexual relationships and sex scenes? I fear my chances of being published might be hindered because the plot currently involves a gay lead character.

I feel concerned about another aspect of the novel. It basically describes the ride and fall of this religion. Parts of the religion are hidden in books that the main character finds and reads. The character knows it's coming, but is it okay that I put what is contained in the book in a chapter placed before he starts reading it and when he is done? How often do you get this? Should I move these sections to the end of the novel?

So I'm going to try to answer this from the perspective of a potential publisher as opposed to the perspective of a writer. I think that would be more helpful to you.

1. As you no doubt have noticed, many many adult (and young adult, really) fiction that is not romance, erotica, or smut often contains sex. If this is a huge shock to you, go read more fiction. Any thriller with a male protagonist who has a sexy woman helping him should do. Publishers are not afraid of sex. The issue is how descriptive the sex is. Does it describe body parts using their proper medical names and in graphic detail, or is the entirety of the scene "he bent over to kiss her as he turned off the light"? Probably somewhere in between. Like in movies, how much sex is too much is generally something that's a judgment call for the editor, not because the editor thinks kids will be exposed to naughty bits (as concerns the movie councils) but because the editor might feel it distracts from the story.

2. No. The answer to your second question is no, we're not against gay protagonists for mainstream fiction. We just don't see a lot of it, because 90% of the country is straight, and straight people tend to write straight characters or disturbing mpreg slash fan fiction. There are a lot of great gay writers, some of whom don't write about being gay necessarily, or don't make it the central focus of the story but one of the plot points. Somewhere on my bookshelf is a set of lesbian detective stories, legitimate ones written by an actual lesbian who wanted to write queer thrillers. But we don't see a lot of these submissions, partially because there are just less gay writers than straight writers, and because it can be a smaller market depending on how central the homosexuality is to the story. I say, if you want to write it, totally go for it. I've had enough of smart academics solving mysteries, aided by sexy female lab assistants. There's no reason not to have sexy male lab assistants helping smart academics solving mysteries - and then, presumably, falling in love because of the intense experience they shared in that chase scene in the ancient Mayan ruins.

3. I didn't entirely follow your third question, but I think you have two potential situations: a situation where the reader knows the same amount as the character and a situation where the reader knows more than the character. (You can also have the character know more than the reader, a nifty dramatic device that can be annoying when done wrong) Whether you want to go in one direction or not is a question of suspense. If the reader knowing more than the character makes the character fall flat, then the reader will be annoyed and just start flipping through. If the reader's knowledge helps us understand the character's quest as they experience it better, go for it.

Holiday Reminder

2008-12-19T15:39:00.003-05:00

I probably should have done this last week, but if you want to get something for your agent for Christmas/New Year/Misc, which is not expected or required but a nice thing to do, do not send them perishables, like a fruit basket or something. they may not be around to receive it and it will spoil or they may not be able to to eat the food and have to give it away in the office.

I give my agent a gift card to Barnes and Noble. A present is not expected, but if you do decide to do that for your severely unpaid agent, a gift card to a store he/she'll almost definitely be at is a good idea.

The Long Email

2008-12-16T23:10:00.004-05:00

Usually I get emails with very specific questions. Sometimes I get these.

Dear Rejecter,

I have some getting-published questions for you, but I feel like you need to understand where I am in order to answer. Thank you for taking your time to read this. I appreciate any guidance you can give me.

I'm working on my first novel. I have about 35k words and an outline I feel very good about for the remainder; probably 100k to 120k words. I have no agent, nor have I ever had contact with a publisher. My only publications are a handful of heavily edited nonfiction business articles--my name is on them but the results do not represent me writing style any more.

Okay, first thing: The novel's not done yet. Go finish it. I mean, take the time to finish reading this post, but seriously, go finish your novel before you start thinking publication.

I'm having a hard time categorizing this novel. It is somewhere near Animal Farm and Gulliver's Travels. Philosophy, philosophy of religion, romance, comedy, tragedy, etc... Most of the conflict is verbal. The little bits of violence are not described graphically. No eroticism. I think that my target audience is High School English Literature classes.

Man, I wish my book was picked for a high school English class. Not because it was a classic of literature (it's not) but because it would mean an insane amount of people would have to buy it every year. Ka-ching!

As you've just put yourself in every genre but not told me anything about the plot, I'm going to say "general fiction unless there's fantasy or sci-fi, in which case, sci-fi/fantasy."

I have 18 other novels in various stages of planning, from 2 to 30 pages. These stories span many different genres: hard sci-fi, historical fiction, mystery, fantasy, and romance. 5 of these are hard sci-fi in a related series. Some of these contain significant sexuality or violence. After collecting ideas for years I decided to focus and try to finish one, and I picked this one to finish because the plot was the most mature.

Deciding to start one at a time instead of 18 a time is probably the smartest move you've made so far.

Writing progress is slow due to other time commitments. I have to take vacation time from the office and hide at the library in order to write. I desperately want to reach a critical mass with writing (read: reliable income) so I can retire from my day job and focus on writing full time.

I hear this a lot, in query letters and from my writer friends. I also say it a lot. Man, I would love to live off my writing. I would also like to win the lottery. The writing's a safer bet, but that's because I don't actually buy lottery tickets.

All of my novels center around moral dilemmas first. I want to challenge how people look at themselves and their place in the world. I want to inspire people to improve themselves and the people around them.

I said that, too. None of the novels I wrote dealing with that stuff got published. The historical romance did. How low I've sunk.

Having said all of that, I'm starting to think about the process of getting published. I understand that I have to get the first novel "done" before I can take the next step. What should the next step be?

Finishing a publishable manuscript. It will probably not be the first manuscript you write.

Should I search out an agent first? Or should I query publishers directly first?

Agents first, though there's no reason not to hit up the few publishers who take unsolicited manuscripts on the odd chance you'll hear back from one in the next century.

I had considered printing a small run on Lulu and giving them out to friends and family to get critical feedback before I approach an agent or publisher. Would this pollute the book--having been printed in any form? Or should I stick with Kinkos? Besides the possible improvements to the quality of the work, would going through this exercise impress a potential agent or publisher?

If you're doing it to get your friends and relatives to read it (none of whom will likely give you a meaningful opinion on it), it depends on how much money you want to plunk down. You can have them print and bound at Kinko's pretty cheap, but Lulu makes THEM pay instead of you. Depending on if they're willing to pay. So, your call. Also: friends and relatives will not be honest with you, and even if they are, they do not work in publishing and probably have little to say that can help you. Or even then, they still might lie. This is why I stopped asking my friends to read my work when I was in high school. It puts both of us in an awkward position.

When querying an agent, do I focus on just the first novel or do I share my larger plans and ideas with them?

First novel.

When querying a publisher, do I focus on just the first novel or do I share my larger plans and ideas with them?

First novel.

How do I find an agent?

Agentquery.com

Do people really send query letters to addresses in Writers Market and sign contracts with people they have never met--or spoken to only over the phone? Would a potential agent be alienated if I wanted to fly out to meet them before signing a contract? Can I ask to see their office and meet their staff?

A lot of people have not met their agents. I live in New York, my agent (not my boss, my agent agent) lives in New York, and we only met once. Everything else has been phone/email/snail mail. Also, agents don't generally have staffs, nor do they have particularly spectacular offices if they don't work out of their home, so if you do meet them, it will probably be in a restaurant.

What is the process for checking a potential agent's references?

Is the agent a member of the AAR? Good, you're done. No? Check Preditors and Editors.

Do I need to pick a single genre to describe my first novel while I talk with potential agents and publishers, even if it is not very accurate? Or should I discuss the genre problem openly?

Yes, sort of, but it can be very, very broad like "fiction" or "fantasy." The most important thing is to distinguish between fiction/non-fiction, because some people leave that line blurry and we find that annoying, trying to figure out if the person wrote a memoir or made the story up.

What am I missing in the process?

The SASE.

The State of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Market

2008-12-11T20:23:00.003-05:00

Anyways, my question: What is your impression of the strength of the sci-fi/fantasy genre? With sci-fi in particuliar, which I think has a more male readership than female, has the readership base been in decline? Sometimes I get the impression that science fiction in a literary form has trouble competing with video games and movies. Maybe I'm totally wrong in thinking this way or maybe this isn't a question you can answer. But if you can, I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.

While this isn't a question I could give you a solid answer to, that won't stop me from posting about it.

Sci-fi/fantasy was my first great love, and still pretty much is, though I mainly read non-fiction these days for work-related reasons. In terms of the literary world, the only world where I can speak with some imagined authority I don't actually have, I would say the state of the current market is as strong as any other market: doing okay considering the economy and YA is really hot, but not as hot as people think it is, everyone stop thinking you can write YA and submit it and it'll be more likely to get published, I'm really sick of it. Sci-fi/fantasy - particularly fantasy - has been trending mainstream for a decade now, though one could easily make the argument that there were other decades in the 20th century where it was so mainstream it didn't have its own section in the bookstore. All I know is, when I was growing up in the 80's and 90's, if you read Lord of the Rings, you were a nerd. Nowadays you barely qualify unless you name your third external hard drive after a Silmarillion character. So, no weeping about the state of sci-fi/fantasy from me.

The market is very tight in this genre, and always has been. There's some argument that it's gotten too conventional. My agent shopped a post-Apocalyptic novel to sci-fi publishers last spring and it didn't sell. We got some very nice letters back about how it was very wild, interesting, etc, but they weren't sure "how it would do in the market." In other words, "We can't predict whether it will sell and therefore can't invest the money in a new author with a risky book; go write a vampire story." I imagine it's worse now than it was in May, but that won't stop sci-fi fans from submitting their crappy fantasy novels to my boss even though she doesn't handle fantasy, and they won't all be exactly the same. In fact, I'm pretty sure nothing could stop the flow of unpublishable fantasy novels into the sludge piles of publishing, and then the one you find per year that's actually great.

So, if you want to write, write. If you want to try to get published, submit and cross your fingers. If you want instant gratification and a genuine, pre-built fanbase that will totally leave you nice comments that will make your day, write fan fiction.

Harcourt and Submissions

2008-12-04T21:11:00.003-05:00

I’ve been reading your blog on and off (congrats on becoming a Real (Published) Writer!) and I am looking at what’s going down in the publishing biz these last few months (never mind the implosion at Houghton Mifflin) and I’m wondering if I should even bother submitting a first-time novel anywhere right now? I mean, are things just too crazy what with a financial meltdown, dropping consumer sales, a lame-duck President who’s more than happy to turn over most of his duties to the current President-Elect, and no one knows if the Boy Wonder will really pull off the miracle everyone’s hoping after the takes office in January? Is any agent (and by extension, editor) going to take a chance on an untried first-time novelist rather than tried-and-true names? Or should I just say fudge it and start submitting?

So before I get to the Houghton Mifflin issue, let me answer the question.

The answer is yes. You should submit your work when it is done and polished and you think it's ready for publication. Agents are always looking for new work unless their website specifically says otherwise. Yes, it's true, it's a time of lower advances and fewer buys, but agents make their living selling manuscripts, and they can't make much of a living if they stop doing that, especially if their big earners decide not to write or write something crappy and the publishers don't buy. If you submit over the holidays, expect a longer response than usual, but the query will be looked at the same way as it would have six months ago.

Now, onto the explosion over at Harcourt Houghton Mifflin. And yes, announcing you are no longer acquiring new books does qualify as an explosion. I don't care how great their backlist is (and it is GREAT), but they are in some serious shit to stop acquiring books. Their Fall 2009 line-up is probably set, but Spring 2009, they're going to be presenting a smaller list. And there's the question of what's going to happen to books currently in the process of being bought (nothing, they said, but nobody's sure) and the senior VP of trade publishing quitting. Nobody knows the whole story, but seems the Irish company that owns them is in debt thanks to poor financial planning. Acquisitions and editorial are huge costs, in manpower and actual physical production, so if you knew nothing about publishing and were looking to shave off some costs, you might suggest halting that part of the process and living off backlist proceeds for awhile, which is a bit like living off army rations. You can do it, but it's a bad long-term plan.

It is usual in hard economic times for publishers to openly or secretly decrease acquisitions, which enables them to fire a ton of people who work on new material. Remember backlist - old material - doesn't have to be edited, copy-edited it, checked for copyright violations in references, or even redesigned in layout. Every once in a while they change the cover art, which is in the design department, but it's easy to hire someone fresh out of school for graphic design with a good knowledge of photoshop and that Mac program they all use (InDesign?) for bottom-level salary. To completely stop acquiring books is short-sited and unheard of.

You should be concerned if you work at Harcourt, in terms of job security, but I would assume if you work at Harcourt and are reading this you know more about it than I do.

Side note: I was reading the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for April 1888 for a research project in the microfilm library today, and saw an ad for a new book, I forget what it was about, published by Houghton Mifflin. The company's got history.

Submitting Short Stories and Poetry

2008-12-03T15:56:00.002-05:00

Here's a question: how do these rules differ for SHORT STORY manuscripts? I heard that magazines still want the older style (Courier, underlines, title near the text not at top of page, etc). And how about POETRY? Scant little current info online about these things.

There are two ways for me to answer your question:

1) If you are submitting your short story or poetry to a magazine, which would be the most appropriate venue for it, carefully read their submission guidelines. If you can't find them, email them and ask for their submission guidelines.

2) If you are submitting a short story collection or poetry collection to a literary agent, don't. Unless you're really sure they accept that. As in, they specifically mention of their website or on agentquery.com that they're looking for short story collections or poetry. In which case, regular manuscript format with the different selections as characters is a pretty good way to go.

Manuscript Format Questions and Answers

2008-11-26T09:11:00.006-05:00

Rejecter,

If you want the best chances as a submitter (and you want to be judged only on your writing, and not the way you're presenting it), you ought to make sure your submission is in standard manuscript format. Sure, that's the rules. But lately I've seen a lot of conflicting ideas (from supposed "authorities") about exactly what constitues this Standard Manuscript Format.

The irony of standard manuscript format is that nobody really agrees on it anyway.

Naturally, these conflicts cause paranoia, because hey -- I want to get it right. I don't want to look like an outsider because of the way I format my chapter headers or whatnot. Could you please clarify these deviations in standard format?

FONT: I know you prefer TNR over Courier, but I'm of the understanding that both are perfectly acceptible and "standard" (or technically, all four variations: Times, Times New Roman, Courier, and Courier New.) I can find examples of agents and editors who prefer one over the other, but I'm of the understanding that both are "standard." Has this changed? Are both still all right?

Both TNR and Courier are acceptable. Fonts that are similar to those but have some extremely minor different are probably acceptable. Other fonts, which are harder to read (arguably) are not acceptable. Arial is generally not acceptable.

ITALICS: I've always seen them underlined in book and short story manuscripts. Some claim that they must actually be italicized now, but the editor in me says, "No way, it'd be too hard to edit the ms."

I very rarely see a manuscript these days that has words underlined instead of italics. If I did it would be annoying because if we accepted the manuscript, the author would have to go back and change all the words.

HEADERS: I've always formatted them as LastName/TITLE/PageNo and set them flush right, for either book or short story manuscripts. Some sources
are saying that they should be flush LEFT, while others say the surname goes left, the title in the middle and the page number on the right. Is there a standard way?

I've always done it TITLE - Page# - SURNAME flushed left in my manuscripts. If you flush it right, or center it, or put your whole name instead of your surname, or flip the order around, it's not a big deal and you shouldn't think your manuscript was rejected because of that. The whole purpose of the header is to tell us what page we're on and what manuscript it is if the manuscripts get thrown in a pile and mixed up.

Also, don't put your phone number in the header. It looks silly.

SECTION BREAKS: I've always denoted breaks with a centered "#" on a line by itself; the end of the manuscript is indicated by "THE END" (or "# # #" if it's a short story). But now some people are claiming that section breaks should be denoted just with a blank line. As a former editor and proofreader, I know that's just bad form.

I've heard this # thing too, but for a manuscript I generally see more regular "extra space before the scene change" that I see in books. I use the #s only when I'm doing short story submissions. I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule on this one because it doesn't affect the way we read the manuscript unless you give no indication that the scene changed at all.

CHAPTER HEADS: I've always skipped 12 lines, given the chapter name in upper-case, and then skipped a line and started the chapter. Now I'm seeing some people recommend the upper-case chapter name at the top of the page, then 12 lines skipped and the beginning of the chapter. Which way's it done?

The way I've always been told to do it is to start each new chapter 7 lines down with the chapter title after the dash for the name of the chapter. Years back, I was told this was so that editors could have a space to make chapter notes. In other words, leave some space before the start of each chapter on the first page of that chapter. We do not count how many lines you give us.

TYPESET QUERIES: While my manuscripts go out in 12-point Courier, I consider that an "editing" font, as something for manuscripts. I'd never send a letter in such a monospaced naked typeface unless I were doing a telegram. So for my query (and all other materials, such as the synopsis), I typeset the contents in the standard roman font. The query goes out on good letterhead (which is Copperplate Gothic, natch). Some people have said that your query must be typeset exactly like the manuscript. That doesn't make sense to me. Why should a letter look like the page of a manuscript?

"Some people" are not necessarily right. Generally the query is good as long as it's clear and readable.

Are the patients now running the asylum?

No, but I hear they have a controlling share in the company.

Thx,

A Conscientious Submitter

NP,

The Rejecter

The Rejecter

BEA 2011 Post

Retirement Post

So You Want to Write a Novel

The Wait

Audio Books Follow-up

Audio Books and Audio Rights

We're On To You

Follow-Up on Writers Earning Money

How Much Does a Writer Make?

Inside Agenting

MA Degree Questions

Rejections!

The Sky Is Falling (No It Isn't)

If You Have An Offer...

For Your Information, Again

Money for Reviews

Revising Your Word Count

For Your Information

Web Content

Obligatory BEA Post

Update from the Rejector

Self-Publishing Credits

Trade Shows

The 4 Questions

Trilogies. Or, Potential Ones.

Responses to the Previous Post

Novels, MFA Programs, and Other Troublesome Things

Things I Thought Were Obvious File #127

For Your Information

Follow-up on Previous Post

New Novel, Old Agent

Online Publishing

An opinion on e-Readers

Foreign Authors, Local Agents

Cutting Down a Book

Vacation and Oh Yeah, the Industry's Collapsing

I Stand Corrected

Holiday Etiquette

How Good is it? Good enough?

Getting a higher degree for the sake of a book

Yes, yes, I know you mean Twilight

Google Books Ducks Copyright Law, Sort of

A rare reason to make a call

Non-Platform Fiction

I Should Finally Say Something on E-Books

Misleading Demographics

Questions I decided to answer because they were easy to find in my overflowing email account

Established vs. Less Experienced Agents

A page count? Really?

Authors and Publicity

Dumb Things Said In Query Letters

The Art of Craft

Multiple Projects Submitted

I'm sore, but I'm back. Stupid armor, biting into my neck.

I Disappear

Editing Questions

Conservative Follow-up

Conservative Political Books and Their Non-Existence

More Formatting Questions

The Infamous Synopsis

Don't Go All St. Elsewhere On Us

Small Press vs. No Publication

BEA Roundup

Travel Writing

It's About Time Is All I Can Say

The Earth Takes One for the Team, Again

Dropping Off Requested Material

Saving $$$

The Agent For You

Death of a Contract II: The Hypothetical's Revenge

The Death of a Contract

Blogging

Offline

The Boundaries of Young Adult

The Rejecter's Rejections

Editorial Demands

Frustrations

Amazon breaks its own bank

College Credit