Writer's Weekend--Day 3
Aug. 1st, 2004 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperMuch more of a belated post than I thought this would be--but this is what I get for being up to my neck in moving! At any rate, this is the account of what happened for me at Writer's Weekend on the third day of general activities, which was Saturday the 24th. This, of course, was the day that I found out that lodestone, the former primary server of murkworks.net, had gotten hacked. So that kind of put a damper on some things for me--but only to a degree. Some pretty cool things happened during the course of this particular day, regardless!
I wanted to get up for Rebecca York's "39 Steps to Suspense" panel--but neither![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jesshartley nor I pulled it off. Both of us were up too late the night before--she hanging out with folks, I with editing Faerie Blood. I felt vaguely guilty for not showing up--but then, it occurred to me, it was ALL RIGHT to miss a few things. I did come in on the very tail end of the panel, though, just in time to get Ms. York's handout with 24 of the aforementioned 39 steps. I still don't know why the handout had only 24 steps--perhaps that's part of the suspense. ;) (That said, I recognized several of the pointers, and giggled at others that were new.)
The first full panel I attended that morning was Jessica Faust's "Making Sense of Rejection" panel. And one of the first things she told us was that you can't really make sense of rejection per se--take it with a grain of salt. And you can get rejection letters for reasons that have nothing to do with you--so unless you're getting specific feedback, don't worry about it too much.
Since this lady is in fact an agent, she approached this topic from an agent's perspective. But a lot of what she had to say would, I think, apply well to the editor perspective as well. And a lot of her panel wound up almost more about interacting with agents than dealing with rejection letters. Some of her tips included:
1) Just because one agent suggests a change does not mean it's right for YOUR book. You should learn and understand your own strengths, and decide if you can actually write the way that's being suggested to you.
2) Something I'd already rather figured out--your query letter, whether sent to an editor or an agent, is a resume and you should treat it as such. Here, again, the theme of Be Professional comes into play.
3) Remember, when finding an agent, that you need to sell yourself to them and convince them that you have written a marketable book--it not only has to be good, it has to be marketable. There has to be some sort of hook there to draw in readers. And at the same time--don't listen to absolutes. Even if someone says your book won't sell, that doesn't mean that it will never sell. If you have written something not 'hot', you'll need to be that much better, but don't be focused on a trend. Don't think you have to try to write a given kind of story just because it's the current hot thing.
4) What makes a good agent query letter? It is the equivalent of the back cover of a book--you need to sell the agent like you would sell a reader. And this is a place where Liz Wolfe's panel on how to write a synopsis came in hand--you can use the one-paragraph blurb version of your story to go into the query letter. The trick is writing the good blurb. And Ms. Faust recommended asking people to look at your query letter--but to get people who have NOT read your work. You want them to have the same viewpoint an agent would. And naaaah, I wouldn't know anything about THIS, either! (HImizkit! ^_^)
5) Do research--find out what specific agents favor. Yet another thing I'd sort of already picked up on, just trying to read agent bios on web pages I've already visited, to make certain that I wasn't going to try to send something off to an agent who didn't actually favor that genre. And in this vein, Ms. Faust also strongly recommended that you DO NOT try to forcibly alter your book to target an agent who just doesn't do your genre. If the agent doesn't do romantic suspense, don't try to change a science fiction novel to be that genre instead.
6) She, too, stressed that you should not try to write in a genre that you don't read. You should read your favorite books and learn about the craft from them.
7) Regarding pitch sessions--as your query letter is like your resume, think of a pitch session as a job interview. Ask questions. Find out directly if the agent/editor is actually a person you want to work with. Don't try to force your whole synopsis on an agent in a pitch session! Take notes if you have concerns raised to you.
8) Remember--you are hiring the agent, NOT the other way around. But be professional--if you do get a call from an agent, and you go with someone else, TELL THE FIRST PERSON.
9) Don't try to pitch an agent over the phone.
10) Realize that the title you give your book might not be the one it would get published with.
11) Another issue with first person: a reader still needs to learn who the character is even when they are put into the character's head.
12) Avoid contracts with an agent that don't have an easy out clause.
Hard on the heels of the Jessica Faust panel, Evan Fogelman and Helen Brown of the Evan Fogelman Literary Agency had their panel, which I was very pleased to attend, as it gave me my first introduction to an agency I got a good feeling about possibly wanting to work with--one of the good benefits of actually talking with people face to face. This also was the first clear opportunity to learn for the first time what an agency actually does. Which is to say:
1) Editorial contacts--finding the right editor for the work. You can do this yourself by looking in the acknowledgements of books you like and looking for the agents and editors mentioned.
2) Business management--this begins with the contract, what is your advance and what is your royalty rate? Books are sold to stores on consignment... and you get a percentage of the retail price of the book; note that new authors get almost no promotion! Also, what is done with subsidiary rights? E.g., film or overseas markets.
3) Career development--and this is where an editor can call up an agent and say "I want to see foo, call your client and get her to send me a few pages." But this is more likely for more established writers.
If you aren't sure these areas are worth an agent to you, you probably aren't a good candidate for an agent.
Some things to remember about agencies and publishing companies:
* Even if two companies are actually owned by the same parent company, they will compete with each other
* Remember that advances come out of your royalties! You don't get another penny till your royalties exceed that amount--and earning your advance has NOTHING to do with the profit the publisher makes
* "Performance bonuses"--more common these days, even for new authors... and this is ideally based on number of copies shipped!
* Some more on query letters: include your CONTACT INFO! This agency does NOT want extra stuff until they ASK for it. So be damned sure the query letter should sell your work WELL. Include the summary of the book, and cover any relevant experience--even if it's 'writing with intent to publish' or how many books of the genre you've read. Include email address if you have it.
As a general point of reference the Evan Fogelman Agency does take email queries, but if you email, these folks will not answer you unless they are interested, so if you want an answer either way, mail a hard copy. They also do take SF/fantasy, but Mr. Fogelman stresses that if you are more in love with your world than you are your characters, they aren't the agency for you--no techo-heavy SF. Target Mr. Fogelman specifically on the staff for SF/fantasy... he likes to see the problem of your protagonist up front... consider adding some flavor from the book, to add something of the book, less interested in mechanically professional letters.
A good way to go about getting an agent: go to aar-online.org--get its member list. Look in your genre--cross-reference with SFWA, maybe? Then winnow it down to the folks who handle authors you like! THEN, whittle down to ones you've made personal contact with if you can.
One more thing was covered during this panel that got previously mentioned: edit your work beforehand! Make sure it's clean and without typoes!
The next panel I wound up attending was the one on Presenting Yourself (as in, in a pitch session or a query letter, to an editor or agent), given by Anna Genoese, one of the editors at Tor Books. (The place to which I sent Faerie Blood, it must be added, though I didn't target her for the submission.) She gave a very focused talk, though, touching on four main ways to present yourself and your work.
1) Personal contact at conferences and such.
- At such events, look out for whether the badge is on, or visible--if they don't have a badge on, don't bug them!
- Remember to keep a hold of your common sense! And they don't want to just like your book, they want to like you and be able to work with you--so BE PROFESSIONAL.
- DON'T tell an editor that "I'll think you'll love my book!" This strikes me as exactly the same advice as not telling somebody reading your @description on a MUSH that you are instantly attracted to them. ;)
- The bathroom is NOT a good place to try to talk business with an editor.
- Don't grill an editor! Let them get words in edgewise!
2) Cover letter.
- Do NOT bother to try to make jokes unless you know without a DOUBT that you're actually witty.
- Do not tell the company they publish crap! (Somebody actually did this in a query letter to Tor, apparently! My jaw physically dropped when I heard this; they said, or so Ms. Genoese informed us, "I think you'll find that my work is a cut above the crap Tor usually publishes." I mean, JESUS!)
- Do NOT tell them "I know I'm not a good writer, but I think you'll like it anyway..."
3) Agent.
- Bad agents RUIN CAREERS.
4) And last but not least, the "secret handshake": YOUR WRITING!
- Reality doesn't always make good fiction!
Two other random things that came up:
* Ms. Genoese does take fantasy, but only dark fantasy, and she is also adamantly against simultaneous submission even if you've only sent a partial manuscript. She very forcibly covered this in the panel.
* She strongly recommends checking out Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's blog!
More tomorrow as I can, to cover the rest of Day 3 of the conference... it's getting late, and I'm tired from a long day of moving!
I wanted to get up for Rebecca York's "39 Steps to Suspense" panel--but neither
jesshartley nor I pulled it off. Both of us were up too late the night before--she hanging out with folks, I with editing Faerie Blood. I felt vaguely guilty for not showing up--but then, it occurred to me, it was ALL RIGHT to miss a few things. I did come in on the very tail end of the panel, though, just in time to get Ms. York's handout with 24 of the aforementioned 39 steps. I still don't know why the handout had only 24 steps--perhaps that's part of the suspense. ;) (That said, I recognized several of the pointers, and giggled at others that were new.)The first full panel I attended that morning was Jessica Faust's "Making Sense of Rejection" panel. And one of the first things she told us was that you can't really make sense of rejection per se--take it with a grain of salt. And you can get rejection letters for reasons that have nothing to do with you--so unless you're getting specific feedback, don't worry about it too much.
Since this lady is in fact an agent, she approached this topic from an agent's perspective. But a lot of what she had to say would, I think, apply well to the editor perspective as well. And a lot of her panel wound up almost more about interacting with agents than dealing with rejection letters. Some of her tips included:
1) Just because one agent suggests a change does not mean it's right for YOUR book. You should learn and understand your own strengths, and decide if you can actually write the way that's being suggested to you.
2) Something I'd already rather figured out--your query letter, whether sent to an editor or an agent, is a resume and you should treat it as such. Here, again, the theme of Be Professional comes into play.
3) Remember, when finding an agent, that you need to sell yourself to them and convince them that you have written a marketable book--it not only has to be good, it has to be marketable. There has to be some sort of hook there to draw in readers. And at the same time--don't listen to absolutes. Even if someone says your book won't sell, that doesn't mean that it will never sell. If you have written something not 'hot', you'll need to be that much better, but don't be focused on a trend. Don't think you have to try to write a given kind of story just because it's the current hot thing.
4) What makes a good agent query letter? It is the equivalent of the back cover of a book--you need to sell the agent like you would sell a reader. And this is a place where Liz Wolfe's panel on how to write a synopsis came in hand--you can use the one-paragraph blurb version of your story to go into the query letter. The trick is writing the good blurb. And Ms. Faust recommended asking people to look at your query letter--but to get people who have NOT read your work. You want them to have the same viewpoint an agent would. And naaaah, I wouldn't know anything about THIS, either! (HI
mizkit! ^_^)5) Do research--find out what specific agents favor. Yet another thing I'd sort of already picked up on, just trying to read agent bios on web pages I've already visited, to make certain that I wasn't going to try to send something off to an agent who didn't actually favor that genre. And in this vein, Ms. Faust also strongly recommended that you DO NOT try to forcibly alter your book to target an agent who just doesn't do your genre. If the agent doesn't do romantic suspense, don't try to change a science fiction novel to be that genre instead.
6) She, too, stressed that you should not try to write in a genre that you don't read. You should read your favorite books and learn about the craft from them.
7) Regarding pitch sessions--as your query letter is like your resume, think of a pitch session as a job interview. Ask questions. Find out directly if the agent/editor is actually a person you want to work with. Don't try to force your whole synopsis on an agent in a pitch session! Take notes if you have concerns raised to you.
8) Remember--you are hiring the agent, NOT the other way around. But be professional--if you do get a call from an agent, and you go with someone else, TELL THE FIRST PERSON.
9) Don't try to pitch an agent over the phone.
10) Realize that the title you give your book might not be the one it would get published with.
11) Another issue with first person: a reader still needs to learn who the character is even when they are put into the character's head.
12) Avoid contracts with an agent that don't have an easy out clause.
Hard on the heels of the Jessica Faust panel, Evan Fogelman and Helen Brown of the Evan Fogelman Literary Agency had their panel, which I was very pleased to attend, as it gave me my first introduction to an agency I got a good feeling about possibly wanting to work with--one of the good benefits of actually talking with people face to face. This also was the first clear opportunity to learn for the first time what an agency actually does. Which is to say:
1) Editorial contacts--finding the right editor for the work. You can do this yourself by looking in the acknowledgements of books you like and looking for the agents and editors mentioned.
2) Business management--this begins with the contract, what is your advance and what is your royalty rate? Books are sold to stores on consignment... and you get a percentage of the retail price of the book; note that new authors get almost no promotion! Also, what is done with subsidiary rights? E.g., film or overseas markets.
3) Career development--and this is where an editor can call up an agent and say "I want to see foo, call your client and get her to send me a few pages." But this is more likely for more established writers.
If you aren't sure these areas are worth an agent to you, you probably aren't a good candidate for an agent.
Some things to remember about agencies and publishing companies:
* Even if two companies are actually owned by the same parent company, they will compete with each other
* Remember that advances come out of your royalties! You don't get another penny till your royalties exceed that amount--and earning your advance has NOTHING to do with the profit the publisher makes
* "Performance bonuses"--more common these days, even for new authors... and this is ideally based on number of copies shipped!
* Some more on query letters: include your CONTACT INFO! This agency does NOT want extra stuff until they ASK for it. So be damned sure the query letter should sell your work WELL. Include the summary of the book, and cover any relevant experience--even if it's 'writing with intent to publish' or how many books of the genre you've read. Include email address if you have it.
As a general point of reference the Evan Fogelman Agency does take email queries, but if you email, these folks will not answer you unless they are interested, so if you want an answer either way, mail a hard copy. They also do take SF/fantasy, but Mr. Fogelman stresses that if you are more in love with your world than you are your characters, they aren't the agency for you--no techo-heavy SF. Target Mr. Fogelman specifically on the staff for SF/fantasy... he likes to see the problem of your protagonist up front... consider adding some flavor from the book, to add something of the book, less interested in mechanically professional letters.
A good way to go about getting an agent: go to aar-online.org--get its member list. Look in your genre--cross-reference with SFWA, maybe? Then winnow it down to the folks who handle authors you like! THEN, whittle down to ones you've made personal contact with if you can.
One more thing was covered during this panel that got previously mentioned: edit your work beforehand! Make sure it's clean and without typoes!
The next panel I wound up attending was the one on Presenting Yourself (as in, in a pitch session or a query letter, to an editor or agent), given by Anna Genoese, one of the editors at Tor Books. (The place to which I sent Faerie Blood, it must be added, though I didn't target her for the submission.) She gave a very focused talk, though, touching on four main ways to present yourself and your work.
1) Personal contact at conferences and such.
- At such events, look out for whether the badge is on, or visible--if they don't have a badge on, don't bug them!
- Remember to keep a hold of your common sense! And they don't want to just like your book, they want to like you and be able to work with you--so BE PROFESSIONAL.
- DON'T tell an editor that "I'll think you'll love my book!" This strikes me as exactly the same advice as not telling somebody reading your @description on a MUSH that you are instantly attracted to them. ;)
- The bathroom is NOT a good place to try to talk business with an editor.
- Don't grill an editor! Let them get words in edgewise!
2) Cover letter.
- Do NOT bother to try to make jokes unless you know without a DOUBT that you're actually witty.
- Do not tell the company they publish crap! (Somebody actually did this in a query letter to Tor, apparently! My jaw physically dropped when I heard this; they said, or so Ms. Genoese informed us, "I think you'll find that my work is a cut above the crap Tor usually publishes." I mean, JESUS!)
- Do NOT tell them "I know I'm not a good writer, but I think you'll like it anyway..."
3) Agent.
- Bad agents RUIN CAREERS.
4) And last but not least, the "secret handshake": YOUR WRITING!
- Reality doesn't always make good fiction!
Two other random things that came up:
* Ms. Genoese does take fantasy, but only dark fantasy, and she is also adamantly against simultaneous submission even if you've only sent a partial manuscript. She very forcibly covered this in the panel.
* She strongly recommends checking out Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's blog!
More tomorrow as I can, to cover the rest of Day 3 of the conference... it's getting late, and I'm tired from a long day of moving!
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Date: 2004-08-01 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 01:32 pm (UTC)