Do You Need (Or Even Want) An Agent?

(More to the point, do I?)

Frances Garrood raised this question over on the MNW blog. Frances has two fine novels to her credit, and, of course, "two" is the magic number for the Macmillan New Writing imprint, the number beyond which you must move to another imprint within the Pan Macmillan family. On the other hand, if you make that move, it's expected that your editor will go along with you, so the net change may not be all that great.

Back in the golden age of publishing (back when all editors were Maxwell Perkins and all authors were Hemingways, Wolfes, Fitzgeralds, or similar cultural icons; back when 'advances' were just that--a way to keep a writer fed and out of the rain while they finished their latest opus), an author's primary relationship was typically with their editor, and there were many cases of author's moving with their editors, not only between imprints, but from one publishing house to another. Editors nurtured their writers, acting as guide, confessor, friend, drinking buddy, banker, and, I gather, sometimes even doing a spot of editing on the side.

That's the legend (and, like the Arthurian legends, it's more fun to enjoy it without looking too closely into the specifics). Certainly editors dominated the literary landscape and agents played only a minor role. For those of us who have worked with a good editor, this would seem to be the logical state of affairs; after all, if an editor is doing their job, the editor has the most intimate relationship with a novel of anyone excepting the writer.

So, if you're lucky enough to be published at a house where you have an ongoing relationship with a good editor, do you really need an agent?

I'd answer with a definitive maybe yes, maybe no.

When do I think an agent would be useful to someone who has a good editor? Under any of the following circumstances, an agent might be in order even if you're already happily published:

1. You wear many writerly masks. Editors have many jobs beyond gently pointing out our more egregious blunders. One of them, crass as it may sound, is to develop writers as saleable commodities for their publishing houses. Sure, Iain Banks may be able to maintain an identity in two unrelated genres, but I'd bet no editor encouraged him to "branch out" into a wholly new identity. (Ken Follett has said that be received stiff resistance from everyone in publishing when he decided to switch away from his thrillers and write his first historical novel. Hardly surprising.) An editor needs to convince a house to publish a book in the first place, and then needs to cultivate that writer’s success (if any) by building their brand. Encouraging a writer of, say, military fiction to try their hand at a Harlequin romance doesn’t really make much sense for the house, the editor’s career, or most probably for the writer’s career.

Now, to be fair, no agent is likely to greet a writer’s desire to adopt a second genre with cheers of encouragement—unless the writer’s career in their first genre is flagging. But the agent is more likely to be able to go along (perhaps quite grudgingly) with the writer’s mulish, wrong-headed determination, because the agent is in a position to select from all the possible houses and imprints in the wide world to place the book (possibly under a pseudonym); the editor has no such luxury.

So, if you’re foolish enough to have novels in more than one genre, you most likely will need to seek an agent.

2. You have a novel you believe in that has been rejected. If your editor has said no to a book, that doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t be published. It might mean that the editor can’t convince the house of its commercial prospects; it might mean that it doesn’t fit with the way they hope to build you as an author; it might mean that the editor is simply wrong about the book. The why of it doesn’t matter. You have three options open to you: a) Forget about it; b) Get an agent to shop it elsewhere; or, c) Send it over the transom to another publisher.

Forgetting about a book you think deserves a chance is an uncomfortable decision to live with. Tossing it over the transom is fine, but there aren’t many publishers who are open to unagented submissions. If you believe in the book, getting an agent is probably the best course.

3. You need more guidance. The MNW crowd is lucky in that Will Atkins is a flexible, generous editor who is willing to kick around ideas and even offer advice about what you might try next, but he still has to view matters from the perspective of what is possible within the (admittedly large) Pan Mac empire. An agent can take a broader view of your career…if you are so lucky as to acquire an agent whose perspective harmonizes with your own. (Good luck on that.)

4. You just want someone else to talk to. Hey, it’s a lonely business.

5. You want to be able to drop the phrase, “I was talking to my agent the other day…” into conversations. In Southern California, this hints at a connection to the movies and makes you seem more glamorous. In other parts of the country, however, people will probably assume you are talking about your insurance agent.

Note that I prefaced this with “even if you're already happily published.” If you aren’t happy with your publisher, or you feel you could get a far better deal that you are receiving, then you probably need an agent--if nothing else, as a reality check..

In my case, if I wrote only thrillers, I’d be only too happy to avoid the process of seeking representation; so far I’m an instance of Case #1, above—though, living here in the Belly of the Beast as I do, #5 has some appeal.

I’m sure I’ve overlooked some perfectly good reasons. Feel free to supply them.

Yesterdayville, Todayville

A minor if rather surreal moment from yesterday. An intern from a well-known literary agency (both the intern and the agency shall remain nameless) called, wanting to know my current e-mail address, as they were getting bouncebacks on the address they were using.

Since I haven't been fishing in the agent pool in a great while--we're talking years, here--I was somewhat nonplussed. And I remained utterly deficient in plusses as the intern explained that they had on hand a 50-page partial for my book Tomorrowville, and were wondering if I'd like to send them a full manuscript.

When I expressed some surprise, she informed me the 50-page partial was from 2002. Now, I'm pretty sure this agency is located in New York City, not in the Devil's Triangle, but you have to admit that's a long time for a partial to sit around in a slush pile in any location.

Insofar as I can figure out the situation, I sent the partial to an agent who used to be a partner in the firm but since left...leaving behind my submission. ("What's this thing they've used to level the legs on this table? Hey, look, guys--it's the opening chapters of a novel!")

What is weirder is that I am scheduled to have lunch with the publisher of a small press...who has been reading Tomorrowville and wants to chat with me about the book. Tomorrow.

What is weirder yet is that the literary-agency intern wants me to send them the full manuscript even if it isn't available for representation, "just to see if I might be a good fit for the agency." And, sure enough, after the phone call, an e-mail from the Managing Director of the agency arrived, at my current e-mail address, asking for the full.

As long-time readers of this blog probably recall, I have rather mixed feelings about agents, and have enjoyed being agent-free for the last year-and-a-half.

On the other hand, I have some books that are unlikely to ever see print unless I have an agent pushing them.

On the other other hand, even if I decide I need an agent, do I need an agent in the US, or should I look for one in the UK?

(NOTE: That last question isn't rhetorical.)

Dismal Math

For those who are feeling too perky because of the holidays, here's an antidote to all that cheer. Over on Jamie Ford's blog (which is always worth visiting) he cites some truly depressing numbers: His agent's record of queries, requests for manuscripts. number of authors taken on, etc.

You can also click on through to his agent's original post on the topic. Kristin Nelson was an occasional contributor to Miss Snark's blog before the Snarky one stepped down, and now she's the leading agent in the blogosphere. The number of queries Ms. Nelson receives makes it clear why the Snarkster kept her identity a secret.

Slush and the Numbers Racket, Part II

Some folks don’t like the term ‘slush.’ I don’t find it all that unattractive, perhaps because I’m a fan of the Patrick O’Brian novels, where ‘slush’—the fat that floats off dried and salted meats as they are steeped and boiled to make them edible—is a valued commodity: used as the key ingredient in puddings, employed as a lubricant for gears, and desired by sailors as something to eat with crumbled biscuit.

As I understand it, Macmillan New Writing has received about 7,000 submissions so far, and has published or plans to publish in the neighborhood of 30 of these—about one-half of one percent. (The numbers are easy to quibble about: at least two of the MNW books were preselected from the “long list” of the Richard and Judy competition; and at least a few books scheduled are second novels from authors already published by MNW, so they represent new books but not new, over-the-transom manuscripts.) Depending on how you fiddle them, the numbers suggest about three to five out of every thousand manuscripts over the transom are accepted.

MNW is in a unique position. There are, of course, other imprints that still accept over-the-transom submissions, but MNW is the only imprint that relies exclusively on the slush pile of unpublished novelists for its initial supply of material. It can’t really be viewed as the slush pile in this case, since it is the only pile.

In my previous post, I described how MacAdam/Cage could toss half the novels they received over the transom simply because they were in the wrong category. Obviously MNW can’t do this, since they accept submissions in all genres. This means the pile stays higher longer—but, looked at the other way round, it means that there are also more possibilities in the pile. Few imprints can state their requirements as simply as, “We’re looking for good novels.”

The fact that MNW asks for full, finished novels also adds another hurdle. At least in the US, there are a distressing number of nutjobs who believe that their idea for the story is so irresistable that they need not complete their novel before shopping it around--hell, they don't even need to be able to write with any competency! So they send in a hastily prepared fifty pages--the first fifty pages they ever wrote--and a cover letter (usually announcing that their book is the next Da Vinci Code), assuming that the publishers will be so excited they will buy the unfinished manuscript and even hire a ghostwriter to do 'the technical stuff.' For these folks, needing a full manuscript to submit is more like a mountain range than a 'hurdle'.

Not only are the pickings richer for MNW, but the imprint also has a rare freedom in that it was never expected to be a money-spinner. I’m sure money is always welcome, but the fact that MNW started as a break-even proposition means that the imprint can afford to take risks with novels that don’t fit neatly into marketing categories, or books that hybridize or straddle genres.
With this richer field to draw upon, how many books does MNW find that are publishable? Mike Barnard, in Transparent Imprint, says

I have often been asked how many I think could have been published if we had a free rein…I can probably best answer it by admitting that there were at least a dozen novels I would have published if I had not already had enough material in hand for the period we were working through.

In other words, the number of additional titles he would have liked to have published (about twelve) was only slightly less than the number they did publish (fourteen). Had they published all twenty-six, the acceptance rate would still have been well below one percent. Barnard goes on to add

Like all editors, I am asked whether I think we might have missed any gems that could have become bestsellers. That is an easy question to answer: yes, of course…[W]e all have good days and bad days. We all suffer from colds, headaches, hangovers, distractions of one sort or another. It is probable that something really good has slipped through the net.

Even if we allow for those possible omissions, however, it seems unlikely that adding them to the totals would mean that more than one percent of the manuscripts received were 'desirable' by MNW criteria.

Macmillan’s experiment has demonstrated that there are good novels out there going unpublished. But the numbers also suggest there isn’t a tidal wave of good novels out there waiting to inundate the market. Even with Macmillan’s open system and ability to take risks, only a few of each thousand are considered publishable.

These may seem like dismal numbers, and I suppose they are. Facing the market today, the unpublished novelist is told to find a good ‘hook,’ to stay ahead of market trends, to be prepared to rewrite from an adult novel to YA as needed, to practice laying out a logline, to have an elevator pitch ready at all times, to pay for workshops on writing a killer query letter, to attend conferences and hunt agents somehow without appearing to be a stalker, that physical appearance matters, that you’re better off with a platform even for fiction…It's all politics, we're told, and there are a million things you need to do to give yourself that extra 'edge'.

There's no obvious extra 'edge' to be brought to the slush pile as managed by MNW, and some may find this frightening. Yet it's also liberating, as it puts the whole problem solidly back in your lap. It isn't how you cut your hair, or how well-rehearsed your pitch is, or how you look in a sundress, or whether you can schmooze with Binky Urban. It all comes down to that one hard thing, but the only thing over which you have real control: Write the best book you can.

I presume (or hope) that's why we wanted to write in the first place, so I guess that can be counted as good news.

Slush and the Numbers Racket, Part I

Editor Pat Walsh (see earlier post on his book) claims that at presses where both slush and agented submissions are read, the slush gets short shrift. (Try saying that last bit aloud several times.) In addition to his dictum that bad manuscripts diminish the chances of the good ones in the pile (“One fresh clam will not undo the ills of a platter of bad ones”), he also claims that even when a gem is found in the slush, it is treated with little respect.

Now, it might seem that finding a gem in the slush would be an opportunity for celebration. Chances are it can be acquired for a very modest advance, be contracted for without conceding many subsidiary rights, and, all-in-all, be published at very little risk. But for an editor to push a slush-pile gem means putting his or her reputation behind the book—behind a book that no one else has recommended. This just isn’t how deals are done. Strange as it may seem, it is safer careerwise to get involved in an expensive bidding war for a book that ends up losing money—after all, how can you be blamed when you bought a book sponsored by an uberagent and fought over by your competitors? You may have been wrong, but so was everyone else…

Walsh gives some other insights into how slush works. He claims that at MacAdam/Cage when they get together to go “slush-diving,” the pile of submissions can be reduced by half just checking to see if it fits one of the categories they publish; they don’t typically publish romance, science fiction, Christian, or New Age fiction. (Though one is tempted to note that their best-known book, The Time-Traveler’s Wife, would have to be described as both science-fiction and romance, and therefore doubly not on their category list.)

So, the list can be cut by 50 percent just through sorting by category. Walsh claims the pile then gets reduced to 10 percent of its original height by reading no more than a page or two for basic competence and interest. MacAdam/Cage receives about 3,000 over-the-transom manuscripts each year; already, with only a superficial look, the pile is reduced to three hundred. These three hundred (which are usually submissions of the first three chapters) are looked at more carefully, and reduced to “a handful.” It is out of these that full manuscripts are requested.

What is perhaps more interesting is that Walsh claims the company receives about a thousand manuscripts a year from agents. MacAdam/Cage typically publishes around 26-29 books annually (they are still growing), so this is a very interesting statistic. Even if MacAdam/Cage published nothing from the slush, this means less than three percent of the submissions they receive on a referred basis are selected. But, looking through their backlist, about twenty percent of their books are additional books from authors they’ve already published.

Subtract books submitted from their current list of authors (and perhaps a tiny contribution from the slush pile), and his figures suggest that, even with an agent submitting your book, MacAdam/Cage has only a two percent chance of taking your debut novel.

Under this arrangement you are far more likely to be accepted if you have an agent; but even with an agent, your chances (two percent is, what, one in fifty?) can’t be described as high.

And, of course, most agents reject 99 percent of the submissions they receive. All in all, looking at the numbers, I couldn’t advise anyone to take up the fiction habit in the expectation of publication.

Lucky for all of us who read, then, that writers aren’t a terribly rational bunch.

Getting an Agent, V (and final): The Differences Between Your Agent and Your Mother

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Yes, there are differences, even beyond the twenty-five pounds and the fuzzy bunny slippers…

According to prevailing thought, publishers, left to their own devices, would pay authors miserable royalties (or perhaps none), keep all proceeds from subsidiary rights, grudgingly spend money printing your books, and then dump those same books onto the street without any effort to sell so much as a single copy. It seems all that stands between you and this terrible fate are the brave, lonely efforts of the literary agents. And the great thing is that your agent’s interests are perfectly aligned with your own, right? After all, if you don’t get paid, she doesn’t get paid, and the more you make, the more she makes... right?

In the case of money, your interests and your agent’s interests generally coincide, though not always perfectly (more on this in a moment). But some people confuse what is a business relationship with a personal relationship, and assume their agent always wants what’s best for their client. Well, they might--but that doesn't mean that what's best for you is a priority.

The Big Advance

Big advances are good for both the author and the agent--if the book goes on to sell well. If the book doesn’t come close to earning out, though, your career may be in trouble—especially if the book in question was your debut novel.

Bad news for you, but for your agent it may be considerably less troubling. There’s no doubt that your agent would prefer your career to skyrocket. But if it stalls…well, there’s plenty of writers out there trying to find an agent, and thank heavens she was able to get her 15% upfront rather than having to take 15% of the pitiful royalties your overpriced, poorly selling book actually earned.

And, yes, you got the other 85% of the money the publisher paid, so both you and your agent benefited. The difference is that she still has a career. You might not.

(It's odd that agents are renowned for their big-advance deals, yet the industry doesn’t seem to hold it against the agent if the book loses money. Big-money agents are celebrities, and editors establish themselves as real players in the industry by making deals with these uberagents. It doesn’t make sense, but neither do the lyrics to most Top 10 songs.)

Hit-and-run

A novelist I know (who’s been publishing fiction for about 30 years) says, “There’s a new breed of agent out there--people who are only willing to bat if they can hit home runs.”

The “throw it high, throw it hard, and see if it sticks” philosophy of agenting is spreading. Yes, there are still agents who will help you build your career, and will suffer through rounds of rejections until at last you place your book with a publisher somewhere. But there are also some young agents who say, “I’m not really interested in any novel I can’t take to auction,” and there are many more who will give up on your book after ten rejections or less.

Publication versus money

In general, an agent’s goal is to make money from your books. This, of course, is in your interest, too.

But legitimate publication can have an influence on a writer’s life that has nothing to do with advances or royalties. Publication seldom makes a writer rich or famous, but it does improve the writer’s status in many ways. A published novelist can teach writing classes, or run workshops, or speak at conferences, or sell articles to, say, Writer’s Digest. A published novelist can join professional societies which offer many benefits (some offer low-cost health insurance), but are closed to the unpublished. A published novelist will have an easier time getting his or her foot in many doors.

True, many novelists find their first publication anticlimactic. Many people find that getting a college degree feels about the same, especially if they discover that a degree doesn’t guarantee a good job, or any job at all. Both are often cases of reality not living up to unrealistic expectations. This doesn’t mean the college degree is worthless, and being published even to small acclaim isn’t worthless either.

But you shouldn’t count on your agent pushing your book through to publication as a matter of principle. Submissions cost her money, both directly in terms of copying and delivery costs, and indirectly in terms of time and goodwill expended. Don’t be surprised if publication doesn’t matter as much to her as it does to you (why should it?). Don’t be surprised if she decides to give up long before your book goes to the Naval Academy Press (Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October) or Louisiana State University Press (James Lee Burke’s Lost Get-Back Boogie). Those were long shots, and a lot of agents today wouldn’t bother.

Don’t Beware, But Be Realistic

The cautions above certainly don’t apply to all agents. Some are genuinely interested in building an author’s career, and hope to be in partnership with the author for the long haul. Some may love your book nearly as much as you do. Some will fight to place a manuscript long after it is in their economic or career interest. But even the best agent is unlikely to share all your priorities.

Your agent isn’t your mom. Even if your agent wears fuzzy bunny slippers.

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Getting an Agent IV: Commandments (Part 4 of 4)

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and, the last 'Do's":

6. Do say thank you if you receive a personal reply. Any personal note from an agent—even one scribbled on the margin of your query letter—deserves a thank-you letter in response. Reading time is at a premium for agents, and writing time is an indulgence that most of them expend only with reluctance. Thank them for it—after all, you may be coming back to them some day. Thank them for it despite the fact that their comments seem off-target, wrong-headed, or even on the nasty side; in fact, you should thank them especially if their comments are on the nasty side. This puts you in a position of moral superiority. Novelist Carolyn See calls this response “emotional jiu-jitsu,” and she’s right; it gets that oppressive feeling off your chest and, with a little luck, dumps it back on its source with interest.

7. Do get involved with the literary life, such as it is. Don’t let classes, workshops, or conferences become substitutes for writing, but don’t avoid them, either. Even if you live in Elk Snout, Montana, population 9, you owe it to yourself to saddle up ol’ Bess and ride off to at least a few conferences where you can talk to people—agents, editors, and fellow writers. Meeting agents face-to-face improves the chance that they’ll bother to read your query letters; and editors sometimes invite you to submit directly to them, bypassing the entire agent system. (You may still want an agent—but it’s easier to get one if you’ve already got a publisher.) Fellow writers are an underestimated resource; they can give you leads on agents, and they can also warn you which folks to avoid. Get embedded in the writing community.

8. Do build up your fiction resume. Win awards, contests, prizes, or fellowships, if you can. Publish short stories, or, if you can’t manage that, publish magazine articles. Attend retreats, or, if you can, get into a writer’s colony. These things may or may not help your writing, but they do add to your credibility. As John Gardner observed, what people in publishing really want is to be able to claim they discovered someone, while simultaneously betting on a sure thing.

9. Do stay optimistic. This is far, far easier said than done. Rejection is to be expected—relentless, ego-crushing, soul-draining rejection. Unless you’re psychotic, it’s hard to avoid despair. Give in to it if you must, but don’t send out queries when you’re at the bottom of the pit. Few people in publishing respond to a cry for help, and everyone in the business can smell despair the way dogs smell fear, and that scent makes them back away lest they contract your disease. Wait for your brief psychotic breaks, those moments where you are nutty enough to believe there’s hope, and send your queries out then.

10. Do move on with your writing. This is what distinguishes a writer from someone who has written. There are a surprising number of people out there who finish their first novel and then spend years trying to market it, assuming they shouldn’t move ahead with their writing until they’ve successfully marketed their first book. The truth is, most ‘debut novels’ aren’t first novels, though they are often presented as such; there are usually two or three earlier works stashed away in drawers. Hemingway said the way to learn to write was to “Write a million words.” (That’s ten to twenty novels-worth.) Even Stephen King, who seemingly can sell anything up to and including his grocery list, completed four novels before he managed to get one published. “Courage,” Rollo May says, “is not the absence of despair; it is the courage to move ahead in spite of despair.” If you want to be a writer, write.

Somewhere out there, I’m sure, is someone who, in recent years, wrote a good novel and then found an agent and publisher on the basis of nothing more than a solid query letter; someone did this without awards, or a publications list, or recommendations, or contacts, or even good research on agents.

Somewhere out there, too, is the winner of the State Lottery. For most of us, it’s more complicated than that. The rules presented above will at least keep you from getting in your own way. The rest is up to your writing…and a whole lotta luck.

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Getting an Agent IV: Commandments (Part 3 of 4)

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Ah, at last--the Do's. And, hey, guess what?--there's ten again! This post will cover the first five...

1. Do have a reason for writing to each agent…and tell them. “I’m a writer and you’re an agent” is an insufficient motivation, like trying to get a date by observing that the two of you have compatible body parts. Mention any point of contact (“We met at the Hog Wallow Writer’s Conference…”) or recommendation (“John Grisham and Susan Sontag both insisted you are the ideal agent for this novel…”). Referring to the agent’s client list helps, but you should go deeper if you can: mention deals the agent has done, interviews they’ve given, articles or books they’ve written (but keep it down to a sentence or two; how's that for an impossible task?). An agent is more likely to take you seriously if you show you’ve done your research and have solid reasons for contacting them; and even agents are not immune to a little intelligent flattery.

2. Do try to figure out what the agent wants in the query package. In a reasonable business, this would be easy. In publishing, this is hard. Some agents do indeed itemize (on their websites, or in interviews, or in guides to agents) what they would like to see in a query package, ranging from query letter only to query plus synopsis plus sample chapters plus notes on the suggested audience. Some even tell you what your query letter should and shouldn’t contain. But the majority of them are silent on the subject; apparently they like their clients to be endowed with telepathic powers. (Don’t assume that what you hear about ideal query packages from speakers, or articles, or workshops, will suit everyone. These are good starting places, but try to find out what your target agent prefers.)

3. Do keep professional and organized. I treasure two form rejections from major New York agents where the form has been photocopied off-center, and is so light that the print can hardly be read. The fact that some agents are unprofessional and/or incompetent doesn’t give you the license to behave likewise; unfair as it may be, they’re the ones with the power. Unpublished writers need to make everything as perfect as possible in their submissions. Track your submissions—keep a spreadsheet of what was submitted, to whom, and when; tabulate the responses; keep your rejections for a while, especially if they are personal notes. If nothing else, all the mailing and e-mail addresses will be useful to your writing friends.

4. Do learn to pitch—even if it’s abhorrent to you. Most authors hate pitching. If they’d wanted to be carnival barkers and sidewalk shills, they would have taken that as the easier career path. Yet be prepared: I have heard too many agents say, “If you can’t grab me and hold my attention for five minutes of speech, or for the length of a query letter, then why should I assume that you can write a good novel?” Now, that makes no sense at all, like judging Van Gogh by asking him to paint a street sign. It’s an intrusion of Hollywood tactics into the world of literature, and tends to bring with it the same high level of intelligence and quality that we’ve come to expect from the movies. It’s a spillover from the age of the sound-bite in politics, and we’ve seen what that has done for statesmanship and political discourse over the last few decades. Pitches, high-concept log-lines (“It’s Bridges of Madison County meets Jaws!”), and sales handles (“It’s Thackeray with a Gen-X spin”) are at best stupid and annoying, and at worst are probably corrosive, eating at the foundations of the novel. Tough. You’d better learn to do it anyway. Oh, I know: Thomas Pynchon managed to be one of our most influential and widely read literary novelists while remaining a total recluse. But I also believe that there’s no way that Tom Pynchon would find an agent or publisher if he were starting out today. Not a chance in hell.

5. Do avail yourself of advice or help offered by agents. As mentioned in the Don’ts, you shouldn’t immediately start revising based on observations made by an agent (especially if they haven’t asked you to revise and resubmit); but if they’ve taken the trouble to offer advice or observations, you should certainly try them on for size. In addition, if they say admiring things about your work—especially if they’ve read an entire manuscript—but say that it’s outside the list of what they think they can sell, feel free to write back and ask whose list it might be right for. (I did this with one agent, and she actually told me to write to three other agents and mention she was recommending me. One was in the process of retiring, another had closed her doors to new clients indefinitely, and the other sent one of those cherished off-center photocopied rejections—perhaps she had her four-year-old do it, which is sort of touching—but the recommendation was a lovely gesture nonetheless, and might have turned the trick.)

Numbers 6-10 coming soon.

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Getting an Agent IV: Commandments (Part 2 of 4)

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Continued from the previous post: Yet more presumptive, pompous, proscriptions:

6. Don’t respond with hostility. At least not overtly. At least not to the agent. No matter how whacko their response may be, do not respond with anger. It may be true that the agent couldn’t piss their initials into the snow (an unfair demand of nimbleness in the case of women anyhow) and wouldn’t recognize quality if it jumped into the shower with them. So what? Kick the wall, rant to your friends, and then write a nice note thanking the agent…and move on with the intent of making them regret unto their dying day that they rejected you. Do your best to make them feel like the Decca Records executive who rejected the Beatles in 1962. (“We just don’t like their sound. Guitar groups are on their way out.”) But keep it to yourself.

7. Don’t make yourself crazy with the synopsis. Some agents don’t want them at all. If great works of literature had to be sold on the basis of their synopses, then no great works of literature would ever have been published. True plot synopses are pathetic things to behold. Fortunately, few agents really want them. What they want to see is something very much like the back-cover blurb of a paperback—something catchy that tells them why they should read the manuscript; something that offers them a sales handle for offering the book. Don’t give them three or four pages of detailed who-did-what-when unless specifically asked. Don't deliberately withhold details, but focus on giving them two or three clean paragraphs that sketch the throughline and make the book sound interesting.

8. Don’t be desperate, and don’t settle for something that feels wrong. If someone says they might like to represent your book, but you feel a lack of enthusiasm or commitment from them, stop and think. Get back to them later (or don’t). Refuse to let the if-I-don’t-marry-Bob-no-one-else-will-ever-ask-and-I’ll-die-a-bitter-spinster syndrome rule your life. Your book is your baby. Don’t hand it over to someone you suspect is a child abuser.

9. Don’t take what one agent says as representing the viewpoints of all agents. One agent will say, “Your query letter needs to reach out and grab me by the throat!” Another will say, “Don’t engage in hype and hyperbole. Give me the facts and can the hysteria.” One says, “Your query letter should tell me something about yourself, your life, your history,” while another has stated, “Anytime I start getting biographical info not related to publication history, I stop reading.” An agent I’ve talked to even says, perhaps not unreasonably, “I throw away as a matter of principle any letter that says, ‘My new novel is the next Da Vinci Code.’” What one agent will hold up as an example of a perfect query letter, another will hurl to the floor.

10. Don’t blindly accept what established authors say about the process of getting an agent. Doesn’t matter if it’s Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block or Martin Amis: the business landscape in publishing was dramatically different when they were getting started. The whole process looks a lot like getting married, and there aren’t any experts on the subject: how often does someone get married, and do they know more about it, or less, because they’ve been married ten times? Some of these folks started back in the days when agents still represented the sales of short stories to magazines…you know, back when they did dental work without novocaine. Back when you could drink the tap water. Back when there was a demand for fiction.

Coming soon to this space--the Ten Do's

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Getting an Agent IV: Commandments (Part 1 of 4)

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These might seem a bit, well, prescriptive, being commandments and all. So? If you don't like these, make your own list. Heck, I'll even post it here!

There's ten of these Don'ts, just like the Sephiroth on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, but I'm putting only the first five in this post (as it gets a bit too long)...

1. Don’t spam the universe with e-mail queries, or query too many agents at once. To be truthful, I’ve seen the mass e-mail approach work for authors in terms of getting several requests for manuscripts; some writers I know have even acquired agents with this approach. But only rarely does a writer acquire an agent they keep through a mass e-mail query. In terms of how many agents you should query at once, I’d recommend no more than a half-dozen to a dozen. This is self-protection—it allows you to adjust your query tactics based on the responses you receive.

2. Don’t ask your friend/teacher/mother-in-law to recommend you to their agent. Ask them for advice on getting an agent, but don’t push to be put in touch with their agent. Because writer-agent relationships are often complex, asking to be recommended to someone’s agent can be one of those awkward questions, on the order of, “Do you mind if I start dating your ex?” Leave it alone. If your acquaintance thinks it’s a good idea, they’ll bring it up.

3. Don’t assume that a bad agent is better than no agent. A bad agent can put your manuscript in limbo for months or years. A bad agent can annoy editors so that they never want to see a word of writing from you again. A bad agent can give you stupid, career-wrecking, block-inducing advice. A bad agent can get your manuscript turned down at every possible house, so that no good agent will take it on (what’s the point in marketing a manuscript that has already been shopped all over town?).

4. Don’t believe everything agents say about themselves or about what they represent. Like corporations, many agents like to present themselves as something slightly different from what they really are. You know: MegaChemical Corporation—Working for the Environment. This isn’t evil (at least in the case of agents). If hypocrisy is the Astroglide® of social intercourse, then self-deception is what allows us to sleep at night curled up beside our own conscience. The most common of these little deceptions by agents is claiming to represent, say, “Time-travel Romances, Romantic Suspense, Cookbooks, and Literary Fiction.” (Or, “Serial Killer Novels, Soldier-of-Fortune Novels, True Crime, and Literary Fiction.”) Perhaps they’re afraid that their former Sophomore Lit professor will read their webpage and be disappointed if they don’t include ‘literary fiction,’ or don’t claim to be searching for ‘original, distinctive, edgy voices.’ But check their client list, not what they say about themselves. (And don’t look so smug, especially if you’re telling everybody you’re writing ‘a literary novel about a plot to kill the President.’)

5. Don’t read too much into rejection letters. If an agent takes the time to correspond with you, be grateful—much of the time it will be form letters, badly photocopied—but don’t automatically assume that what they say has much more insight than what you might get from Aunt Sally. Remember: these people are inundated with paper. They’re exhausted and snowblind. If you hear the same thing from several agents, then give it some credence; but don’t start rewriting because one agent, on one day, possibly having just separated from their spouse or entered the early stages of food-poisoning, suggests that your plot is overused, or outre, or puzzling, or should be set in another century.

Don'ts 6-10 to follow soon...

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Getting an Agent, III: Internet

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Internet Resources

Everyone Who's Anyone

Gerard Jones is a bit of a nutjob, in my opinion, but an admirable nutjob nonetheless. Adnirable enough that I even sent money to support his massive, incredible website.

To give the site its full name, Everyone Who's Anyone In Adult Trade Publishing, Newspapers, Magazines, Broadcasting, and Tinseltown, Too is an astonishing effort that covers the US, Canada, and the UK. It lists the contact information for--well, almost everyone. In many cases, it also prints out Gerard's correspondence with the agents/publishers/editors/whatevers while he tries to get his novels published. (Since he doesn't own the agents' side of the exchanges, over the years he has been forced to expunge much of the material, thereby eliminating much of the fun.) If you need Binky Urban's e-mail address, look here.

The site isn't organized the way you'd like it. Tough. Jones is an uncompromising sort of guy, and you can take it or leave it. I'd take it. It's useful and it's free. But I wouldn't recommend Mr. Jones' approach to dealing with agents.

AgentQuery

For folks in the US, I'd say that overall this site has become the first place on the web to look for agents who are accepting clients. AgentQuery has a clean format, a nice, searchable database, and a number of little extras in the forms of articles. It gives concise details on both agencies and the agents inside them, and gives good background on who is looking for what. In the US, it has expanded rapidly until it has pretty much overtaken Everyone Who's Anyone in coverage. It isn't complete, or one hundred percent reliable, but neither is anything else when it comes to agents.

Preditors and Editors

Dave Kuzminski's long-running site is dedicated to sorting out the real folks from the hoaxers. The entries are short, but cover an amazing number of agents, publishers, etc. The details note only the contact info and whether or not the person/business is legitimate. Those who engage in shady practices receive a *NOT RECOMMENDED* rating (sometimes with an explanation). In the case of agents, there is also a "$" mark denoting whether or not the agency has made verified sales.

The coverage is intended to be global, but is slanted toward the US. But, then, we have the greatest number of scammers. P&E is a great site.

Agent Research & Evaluation

AR&E is a unique service. It tracks the details of sales made by agents (and by agencies as a whole), and then sells them as profile information. But it costs you--as little as $25 for the goods on an agent with a limited history, and more for the big sellers.

How do they get this information? The same way anyone else would--by scanning the press (especially Publisher's Weekly), and asking around. So why should you pay for what is essentially public information? Well, you don't have to. But most of us haven't been tracking all the reported sales in the industry for years and years. If you are ever in the position of choosing between offers of representation from two agents, you might find it worthwhile to shell out the cash.

AR&E also has one service that is free--their "Agent Verification" service . If you log in there, you can type in the name of an agent, and they will tell you to the best of their knowledge if the agent is legitimate. In other words, if the agent has made sales AR&E has recorded, and has no known history of disreputable conduct, they will tell you the agent is legitimate. However, they have much better data on sales history than on disreputable conduct, so they will sometimes give you a 'legitimate' reading on someone who has made sales but is also a known scammer.

Absolute Write

AbsoluteWrite.com is an amazingly active forum/bulletin board. A number of established writers post there on an ongoing basis, and even act as moderators. (The composition of authors seems more than a bit biased toward the Science Fiction and Fantasy crowd, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that.) There are lively (sometimes overaggressive) discussions on every aspect of writing. And, unlike many websites, AbsoluteWrite is useful to folks on both sides of the Atlantic (and elsewhere).

The most useful aspect of the fora from our perspective here is the Bewares and Background Checks Forum. The massive Index steers the user toward threads on every agent, agency, publisher, or editing service that has ever been examined by this hypervigilant community.

A problem I have with AbsoluteWrite, however, is that many of their most active members have 'scam' on the brain. Anything that deviates from standard large-house New-York practice will be jumped on, condemned, and dismissed. There are even a few published writers who loudly and pompously insist on the tautology that everything publishable gets published, and that the existing publishing system works with Panglossian efficiency.

With that lengthy caveat in mind, AbsoluteWrite can be an invaluable resource. Their backlog of info on agents is massive (though some of the threads say very little of substance), and many of the questions tossed around in the various discussion groups are entertaining. In addition, if you join, you can ask questions about agents, and someone is bound to reply--even if only to let you know that no one knows more than you do already.

AGENT BLOGS

Plenty of agents (and even some editors) have started their own blogs, anonymously or otherwise. These tend to come and go; most agents are busy folks, are drowning in words already, and lack the stamina to stay in the blogosphere for long.

There is one who breaks all the rules, one who is always there, and the only one who is a must read--the inimitable Miss Snark. She is funny, smart, to-the-point, and, over time, damned helpful. (She is also far more of a pussycat than her monicker would suggest.)

Miss Snark is the one whose mantra is "Good writing trumps all." She's a writer's dream. All she really asks is that you write well and tell a great story...and not act like a complete ass in the meantime. All the heterosexual male writers I know are in love with her, and several of the heterosexual female writers I know have considered switching their orientation, but unfortunately La Snarkalita's heart belongs to George Clooney. (Even though From Dusk Until Dawn is the classic case of aliens arriving at the farm in Chapter 14. If you had read her blog regularly, you'd understand what I mean by that.)

Most agents aren't anywhere near as sensible as Miss Snark, and she seems rather sweetly unaware of this fact, despite her snarky posturing. It must be an act. She seldom knocks other agents; she won't assert that an agent is a moron (and an active opponent of the nature of literature) for reading query letters only, without any sample pages. This has to be a strategic position; she knows damn well those agents are idiots.

If all editors were Maxwell Perkins, and all agents were Miss Snark, the life of a halfway decent writer would be a beautiful thing.

(Breaking news: As Eliza suggests in the Comments trail below, then confirmed by the comment from the Howes, Miss Snark just retired from the business. A sad day indeed. The good news, however, is that the blog, and it's massive archives, will stay in place for the forseeable future. So, you can't ask questions any more, but almost any reasonable question has been asked before--so I'm still recommending her site as a major resource.)

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Getting an Agent, II: Books

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Okay. This may seem irremediably remedial to some of you, but if you happen to be starting out down this path, these are some resources you need to know about. I apologize that almost everything I have to say is focused on the North American market—I invite my UK colleagues (and “imprintmates,” as Faye Booth calls us) to contribute.

To find an agent who is a good fit, you will have to do a great deal of research. This is harder than it ought to be.

Books of Listings

There are a few standard guides you need to consult. They are not reliable, consistent, regularly updated, or properly vetted, but there you have it. Be aware that some of the best agencies have no more than a paragraph in these books. Some of those best agencies frankly don’t want to hear from anyone who hasn’t been properly introduced, and that most likely includes you, you smelly little pest.

Guide to Literary Agents (Writer's Digest): This is the standard annual reference, with much the same material showing up in several incarnations (Writer's Market, etc.) It tries to cover everything, but sham agents constantly show up in its pages. Still, it's a basic resource.

Jeff Herman's Guide To Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents: Less than annual, but updated with some frequency. Herman goes into more detail than other guides-- when possible--but this makes the whole book quite uneven. If the agent you're interested in happens to be one of those who really went into detail when Herman interviewed them, you've hit the jackpot. But some of the agents are ditzy, and it shows. I don't blame Jeff.

Agents Directory by Rachel Vater: This one is unique in that it tries to list only those agents who are currently seeking clients, as opposed to the exhaustive, but-not-answering-the-doorbell-yet-still-listed approaches of the others. Rachel Vater is an agent herself (formerly with Donald Maass, now at Lowenstein-Yost). [She is also the agent of record for Elaine Isaak, who is no relation to yours truly. Rachel blogs, too, and her stuff can be great fun.]

Writer's Handbook and Writers' & Artists Yearbook: These are roughly the UK equivalent of the Writer's Digest Guide (or Writers' Market), though they tend to have higher-profile editors than their US equivalent. Short, informative entries, but little of the rambling detail one might like. I'm sure there are other publications in the UK, but I've never seen them--anybody in the Isles care to comment?

Literary Marketplace: Usually--even on its own cover--abbreviated to LMP, the LMP is a sort of annual Yellow Pages of the publishing industry. It's designed for people in the business, not for writers, and it's $300 price tag reflects that (though I understand you can pick up used copies of last year's edition for under $20). Sometimes when you have found the name of an agent but can't find them on the web, the LMP is where you must go (or, in my case, the LMP in the library is where I must go). There is bound to be a UK equivalent, but I am ignorant on the topic.

Books By Agents

Every so often, an agent will write a book where at least some of the chapters focus on how to go about winning the attention of themselves and their brethren. (Or, usually, given the gender makeup of the vocation, their sistren.) Back in 1999, Lori Perkins' wrote a very successful book called the Insiders Guide to Getting an Agent, and was promptly buried under a tidal wave of queries. Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages acheived the same result, with Mr. Lukeman closing his doors to queries for a while. More recently Ann Rittenberg (agent for the estimable Dennis Lehane) co-wrote Your First Novel (with one of her clients), and I suspect poor Ann is now somewhere beneath six feet of SASEs.

These sorts of books can be instructive and entertaining, but there are now enough agents blogging on the web that it isn't really necessary to buy books to get an insider track on how agents think. There is one exception to this rule, and that is Donald Maass' The Career Novelist. This book (now ten years old), which I cordially dislike, talks about your career as a writer as though it were a business proposition. It talks about name-branding and positioning. It talks about genre, bestsellerdom, and career rehabilitation after disappointing sales. It talks about all of the things that are fundamentally opposed to the spirit of writing fiction, but are so much a part of the process of publishing fiction. It's a philistine piece of work. It's a total downer. I recommend it.

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Getting an Agent, I: Everything I Think I Know

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I'm being published by Macmillan New Writing, an imprint that accepts unagented manuscripts. And, in my discussion of giant advances and their effect on the publishing industry, I may have given the impression (or hope I did) that I think the advent of the uberagent was a disaster for writers everywhere. So who am I, you ask, to hold forth on the topic of agents?

As it turns out, I'm someone who has dealt with about 70 agents, been represented by one, and had offers of representation from others. I have friends who have been through an even-more-lengthy hazing period, and I know a writer who has been through at least three agents over as many decades. So, even though I'm not agented at present, I know more about agents than a sane person ought. I can even imagine working with an agent some day in the future.

The question I am most often asked is, "Do you work here?" and the answer is always, "No." The second-most asked question is, "Where did you get that cool fedora?" and if I'm in a charitable mood I might tell you.

But the question I'm most often asked by other writers is, "How do you find an agent?" The answer, of course, is "Go to New York City and roll a quarter down the sidewalk." (The ones chasing it who are also wearing nice shoes are probably agents.) The reason this gets a silly answer is because it's a silly question.

The question these writers ought to be asking is, "How do I find a good agent who is likely to want to represent me?" and the truthful answer is, "God knows."

Over the next few days, I'll be laying out everything I think I know about the getting of agents. (Those of you who are happily agented, or don't give a damn, may want to tune out). The reasons I am undertaking this task are:

1. I'm going to be at a writing workshop all week and need something easy to post about, and


2. Some of the things I say will probably annoy some people and thereby steer more traffic to this site, and


3. In the future when I am asked The Question I can refer people to this blog, and


4. I don't want to tell the "Roll a quarter" joke ever again.

I know that many of the regular visitors to this blog have as much or more experience in this area as I. Some of you will probably feel your eyes glaze over; but feel free to jump in with corrections, addenda, or anything else that comes to mind.

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The World's Most Boring Post? You Decide

I'll warn you upfront: It's about manuscript formatting.

I have opinions on the topic that deviate from conventional wisdom, but, even then, it's hard for me to maintain that this will be a dramatic, suspense-filled post. (Look, guys--renegade formatting! Shall we read about that...or watch the Teletubbies?)

There's three items I want to touch on, each more thrilling than the one before: Fonts, Margins, and Headers/Pagination. Buckle up, we're in for a wild ride.

DISCLAIMER: If an agency or house declares what they would prefer in terms of manuscript formatting, for the love of Pete (whatever that means) give it to them.

Fonts

There seem to be three schools of thought on the topic of fonts:

Courier Only, Infidel: Many of the Courier lovers are old-school types (or folks who have been associated with screenwriting). Some of them are handy at doing eyeball word counts based on secret whitespace formulas they learned from Max Perkins, though some of the formulas require dragging out the old slide rule. They may tolerate a manuscript in something other than Courier, but they won't be happy about it. Copyeditors tend to prefer it, but when you are submitting for acquistion or representation, the copyeditor is miles down the road (and can usualy print it out to please themself, since by that late date you and your publisher are usually dealing in electronic copy).

Ya Gotta Change with the Times (New Roman): TNR freaks tend to be on the young side (and many agents and editors are). Many of these folks have never seen (much less touched) a typewriter, but they can do 50 wpm on their Blackberries. If you send them a manuscript in Courier, they'll worry you're a fusty old Luddite who won't be able to open e-mail attachments.

The Get-A-Grip School: The redoubtable Miss Snark is the foremost advocate of a philosophy that says a writer has more important things to worry about and that any agent or editor you really want to be associated with won't really give a damn what font you use as long as it isn't utterly frou-frou. (I think she's absolutely right, but I'm going to ignore that fact. Otherwise I won't be able to complete this post.)

Why Courier is great: Courier carries along lots of extra whitespace. That means less words per page. That means that, ceteris paribus, the pages turn faster.

Why Courier is not so great: Aside from the fact that it looks like you borrowed Grandma's typewriter to hammer out your 7th-grade book report, Courier isn't that easy to read. Many people find themselves sort of s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g o-u-t e-v-e-r-y w-o-r-d when they read Courier. Some publishing professionals claim Courier is intrinsically easier on the eyes and quicker to read...but I notice they seldom publish their books in Courier. Don't they care about our eyes?

Why Times New Roman is great: TNR is a clean, no-nonsense, proportionally spaced font. It looks professional, and most studies show it's easier to read, as the words are tied together into packages.

Why Times New Roman is not so great: It's dense. Oh, baby, can it pack the words into a small space. Readable, yes...but you may feel as though the page you are reading was written in the 19th Century by someone who was being paid by the word. Probably translated from the Russian (poorly). Any minute now, you expect itty-bitty footnotes. All things held equal, Times New Roman may be easier to read...but those are lonnnnngggg, dense pages. (If you are worried about minimizing page count rather than word count for some reason, Times New Roman is the way to go.)

Courier moves the pages faster, Times New Roman speeds the eye through each word. It's a tradeoff, but I've got a sneaky solution. Which brings us to...

Margins

The so-called 'standard' margins are one-inch all around. I agree that whatever you do, you should never go narrower than this. In fact, one-inch margins with Times New Roman to my eye look impossibly cramped already, so narrowing the margins would make your text look like the fine print on an insurance form.

Wider, on the other hand...

I use 1.5 inch margins on Left, Top, and Bottom (LTB), and 1 inch on the Right (where the ragged margin contributes its own white space.) It might seem that this would make the text look tall and skinny, but in fact it looks fine, and I've never had anyone remark on how it appears. (Trust me, the crowd I hang with will remark on anything.)

Here's the secret to this manuever: to a very close approximation, in the number of words per page, 1.5" LTB and 1" R in Times New Roman equals 1" LTBR in Courier.

In other words, using Times New Roman and widening the margins to 1.5 inches LTB gives you the same word count per page as Courier with standard 1 inch margins, but the proportional spacing of the Times New Roman draws the eye along more rapidly. I believe the net result is the reader turning pages faster, and feeling less cramped, than under either of the standard approaches.

I started using this format intuitively, feeling that Courier was clunky and outdated and Times New Roman was too dense. How do I know it works? I don't. I only know I've never had any complaints; but I have had many compliments about my page-turning writing. Now, I like to flatter myself that at least some of that is a result of my prose, but I'm pretty sure that going for this best-of-both-worlds' formatting approach has never hurt me.

Headers/Pagination

I can't claim authorship of this last idea, since I outright stole it from Sol Stein, a great writer and a great editor. (He's one of those who asserts, by the way, that an advantage of Courier is that the lower word count per page makes the pages turn faster.)

Stein claims that when the reader hops from the bottom of one manuscript page to the top of the next, anything in the header temporarily distracts the eye. So he makes what he calls a "sly" suggestion: use footers rather than headers. Keep the page numbers and author name down at the bottom. The momentum of the sentence will draw the reader right past the footer and up to the top of the next page without pause.

I think he's right. I don't always do it that way, and it looks a touch odd at first, but when I've done it, it doesn't seem to have perturbed anyone. It seems to have helped preserve continuity, which is a bigger problem when one is flipping loose manuscript pages than when one is reading a printed book.

Okay, Already

I admit that was probably boring. And Lord knows that skillfully deployed formatting in your manuscript will win you no kudos from the critics (who will never see it in any case). None of this matters nearly as much as the writing itself. Agents and editors are schooled in reading past the mechanics of presentation...when they are in the mood. Problem is, it's easy to hit them on a bad day. I think they need all the help they can get. So do our manuscripts.

As more manuscripts are submitted electronically, of course, this will matter less, as the recipients will change the fonts and margins to whatever they damn well please.

Slash-and-Burn Novel-Writing

We were once so close to Heaven
Saint Peter came out
and gave us medals, declaring us:
“The Nicest…of the Damned.”

They Might Be Giants
“Road Movie to Berlin”

Hollywood legend has it that Paul Newman was infuriated by the number of times he was nominated for Academy Awards before winning for Color of Money. While I feel sorry for Paul (who, god knows, deserved it at a minimum for The Hustler and Cool Hand Luke in the early days, and for other reasons since), there are two lower categories of high achievement one can fall into.

Sure, it would be possible to figure out who had the most nominations without winning, but I want to talk about the category of high-level achievement one step down from that. Somewhere out there is an actor who has almost been nominated more times that anyone else. But it’s impossible to know who that person is, since they never even made the shortlist. It’s an invisible achievement.

That’s what admiring rejection letters are like. They’re admittedly better and more encouraging than letters suggesting that you couldn’t write your name in the dirt with a rock, or recommending that you clutch your manuscript to your chest and take a long walk off a short pier, but they aren’t generally good for much. You can’t show them to editors as leverage—here, look at all the great rejections I have!—and you can’t sell an agent’s letter for the autograph. (Okay, you might be able to get a hundred bucks or so for an original Amanda "Binky" Urban, but I’m betting she doesn’t sign anything except contracts and royalty checks.) A pile of great rejection letters reads like the CV of Sir Robin from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “Sir Robin the Not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Launcelot, who had nearly fought the Dragon of Agnor, who had nearly stood up to the vicious Chicken of Bristol, who…”

And what’s my point? I don’t know, but I had fun getting here. Oh, sorry (clears throat). I won’t claim to have a monopoly on admiring (nb: “useless”) rejection letters, but I have some real doozies, and a number of my finest rejections were for my novel A Map of the Edge, which I finished at the end of 2003.

A number of agents loved the opening chapters of MOTE; one lit-fic agent even said “It’s one of the most amazing openings I’ve read…”. But. Ah, yes, but. In the case of this letter, after some other wonderful make-nice sentences, we go on to the middle of the novel, where it becomes, um…well, I see the word “rudderless” here, and “desultory” (both of which are such nicely chosen words that I think he should be writing and I should be agenting his stuff). “Navel-gazing” also pops up, along with the note that he never made it to the end, but would love to see it again if I ever rewrite it.

I had a few of those offers, though I suspect the agents in question aren’t still watching their mailboxes in anticipation four years later.

I’m trying to rework MOTE—well, actually, after leaving it three years in the drawer, I’m edging up to it warily, ready to jump back, like a carrion crow uncertain if the seeming corpse is truly dead.

Now, it’s not as though I haven’t thought about MOTE in all this time. I just couldn’t figure out how to tweak it, how to make a few changes to give it a “rudder”, how to make it more undesultory, more, um, sultoracious, if that’s the word (and it can’t possibly be).

Sad to say, the problem is that it can’t be ‘tweaked’. My evaluation, having stared at it for some time recently, is that the start is good, the climax itself is good, and everything in between has to go. Which is roughly 85% of the words upon the page.

I couldn’t have made this decision without letting it sit for so long. It was too fresh in my mind, the storyline seemed too inevitable as it stood, the scenes were too vivid, and I couldn’t imagine any other way the plot could have developed. But now I feel kinda good about it.

Excuse me while I go out to the garage for my chainsaw.

And the parts I cut won't go to waste. Expect my novel The Rudderless Desultory Navel-Gazer some time in the near future.

"Dacrygelosis" is a useful word

You are dacrygelotic when you swing rapidly between laughing and crying, or do both at the same time. Fiction Bitch has put me into that condition through a pair of posts which are, sadly, all-too-relevant to us here.

Her first post discusses a hydra of a problem--getting first novels published, following up the first with a second, first novels pushing existing midlist authors out of the game (not least because of unearned advances), and little problems like photogenicity. No summary I give can do justice to the post. Check it out.

She follows up with a post on the topic of looks and publicity, with some links to fascinating articles. One claims, for example, that the deck is no stacked against established novelists in favor of first-timers. (You folks trying to get your first book published didn't realize you were the lucky ones, did you?) This segues into a discussion of photoshopping dead authors--Jane Austen just had a makeover--and then comes to the dacrygelosis-inducing revelation: Apparently a UK reality TV show is planned where new writers are discovered by having them pitch to judges. Appearances count, one suspects.

I'm almost (but not quite) charmed by the idea that TV producers in the UK believe that novels would be of enough interest to the TV audience to draw in viewers. Over here, you'd have a better chance of selling a show where people competed to make the best three-minute sculpture from a wad of cheing gum. So, although I'm amazed that Britain's culture is deemed sufficiently literate to support such a show, it's also probably the single stupidest idea I've ever heard.

It's the logical consequence of the query letter/pitch mentality that some agents have brought to publishing. Who cares if the person can write? In fact, let's judge novels entirely on how well we like the authors when they talk about their book.

Now, I'm one of the lucky ones in this scenario, since I'm devastatingly handsome, and, like Sean Connery, only look better with age. But I'm still a little concerned I might not be ready for prime time...

That settles it. I'm off to the plastic surgeon.

The US Publishing Industry Shoots Itself in the Foot--Repeatedly (Advances, Part IV)

Jump to Part I, to Part II, or to Part III

The topic of advances has come up on this blog before. Without a doubt, big advances sometimes pay off for the publisher—Special Topics in Calamity Physics, for example, seems to be doing quite well.

But all is not so well in a number of other cases. Holt paid debut novelist Jed Rubenfeld $800,000 for The Interpretation of Murder, gave away 10,000 advance-review copies, conducted a major publicity blitz, and did a first printing of 185,000 copies. The book was published almost six months ago, and, at last report, had moved about 26,000 copies. I calculate that Mr. Rubenfeld’s unearned portion of the $800,000 is roughly $732,400.

Gordon Dahlquist’s much-hyped Glass Books of the Dream Eaters was acquired by Bantam as part of a two-book deal for two million dollars. That’s—let’s say it again— $2,000,000. 120,000 copies were printed; so far, over almost seven months, sales have amounted to about 21,000 copies, which means so far the earned royalties are, say, about $55,000 of that $2 million.

Charles Frazier’s second novel Thirteen Moons (following his bestseller Cold Mountain) leveraged the author an $8 million advance from Random House (in an apparent attempt to live up to their name). Eight million dollars. That’s the highest advance ever paid for a novel. After almost five months of sales, the number of copies sold is 250-300,000, which would be an outstanding sales record had the first printing not run to 500,000 copies. Publisher’s Weekly estimates that to earn out the advance will take sales of a million copies in hardback plus two million copies in paperback.

Not all bad bets are accompanied by trumpeting of the advances paid. Random House (them again?) won’t say what they paid Mark Haddon (of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) for his second novel, but they printed 200,000 hardbacks, and, in six months, have moved about 44,000. In a similar vein, see HarperCollins, who printed up 150,000 copies of Vikram Seth’s Two Lives, and moved about 20,000 in four months (though Book Scan figures claim only around 6,000 have been sold).

I’m not claiming these aren’t good books (as it turns out, I haven’t read a single one of them. I dislike having things shoved at me.) Nor am I claiming the publishers can't break even on one or two of these, via paperbacks or rights sales—though it does look to me as though the five deals quoted above might amount to a collective loss of, oh, maybe six or seven million dollars? Maybe more? (Remember that the investment wasn't just in the advances, but in huge print runs and expensive publicity campaigns.) But these figures do raise some interesting issues.

First, when publishers and agents contend that fiction is a tough business these days, don’t they ever ask themselves precisely why it is so tough? Might it have something to do with the immense risks of spending too much money upfront?

Second, why is there never any blowback for the agent? An author whose overpriced book tanks will have a hard time moving into the front row again, but how is it that editors continue to do business with agents who convince them to pay ridiculous prices for books? I know, I know, it’s an uncertain business—but a broker who convinces clients to buy stocks that crash soon finds that no one will deal with him. What magic spell prevents agents from being blackballed?

Third, for those who believe that publicity sells books and that a big push is what determines bestsellerdom and profits—take a look at the situation described here. The publishing houses were solidly behind every one of these novels, and the public responded with a resounding yawn.

I’m not complaining about people earning money. If Mr. Frazier earns $8 million, that's between him and the Internal Revenue Service. But giving him $8 million in the hopes that his book might make money for the company is not just absurd but unnecessary. He would have written the book for $4 million, or $2 million, or, probably, like most authors do (and like Mr. Frazier did with Cold Mountain) for no guarantees whatsoever.

Here's my theory: The editors calling the shots at the big US publishing houses are all in the pay of the US television industry. TV tried to kill the printed word for decades, with a great deal of success, but there was always a diehard core of readers who refused to be defeated. Finally the TV execs have come up with a plan--if the industry refuses to die, it must be induced to commit suicide.

Paranoid, you say? Perhaps. But it's the only theory I can find that's consistent with the facts.

Jump to Part I, to Part II, or to Part III

On Rejection: First of Many

Agents often reply to submissions with printed forms rather than personal notes, not only because it is easier, but because certain writers, like certain desperate drunks in a singles bar, will take any personal words to be a form of encouragement and then send a revision or another manuscript, and waste valuable time the agent could spend playing Minesweeper or Googling themselves.

It’s true: writers do tend to study personal notes from agents (and even more so those from editors) like a haruspex searching entrails for a sign. (I myself practice Gyromancy—divination by spinning in circles—rather than the entrails bit; it’s cleaner, and safer as well, once you learn to avoid crashing into the coffee table.) And if it’s a well-reasoned letter, it’s hard not to take the observations to heart.

One ought to be wary of doing so, however, unless the same criticisms and recommendations crop up again and again. I’ve been pretty lucky (if that’s the word for it) in getting personal feedback in rejections. As an example of why one might not want to start drastic revisions based on the personal feedback from a single rejection, I’d like to share excerpts from some of the rejections (in most cases, from a look at the first three chapters) of my unpublished novel Tomorrowville (yes, there's the origin for the name of this blog):


This has got a good narrative pace, smooth, fluid prose, and outstanding dialogue. The plot is original and unusual. I’m afraid, though, that I felt I needed more characterization—more about your protagonist’s inner conflicts…

I think you have an excellent ear for dialogue and I love your characters. Unfortunately, I found the plot just a touch familiar…

Your plotting and prose are excellent and your characters are well-rounded, but your dialogue has serious problems...

I’m afraid I don’t represent science fiction.

As you are probably aware, 90% of what I sell is science fiction, so political satire is outside my list.

Not my cup of tea; it’s a bit too much of a techno-thriller for me.

I have no idea how to move comedy in today’s market.

I see this as a hip summer movie rather than a novel.


Try revising on the basis of that input. Hence my reliance on Gyromancy, though I’m thinking about taking up Margaritomancy.*

*(No, that’s not divination by drinking Mexican cocktails. It’s divination through casting pearls. Swine optional.)

Do Editors Edit? Part I

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The Conventional Wisdom

If you spend any time listening to talks by literary agents or browsing through books on the writing business, you will soon hear that the days of intensive editing are long gone. No more, the agents caution, will a manuscript less than letter-perfect catch the attention of an editor. Agent (and former editor) Lori Perkins says, “The description of what a good editor once did is now the definition of what a good agent can do.” We are given to understand that if Maxwell Perkins (no relationship to Lori, so far as I can ascertain) were still alive, he would be working as an agent, not an editor.

Move a little further down the food chain, however, and you will be told your manuscript must be polished before it even arrives on the desk of an agent. Agent Noah Lukeman writes, “Agents and editors don’t read manuscripts to enjoy them; they read solely with the goal of getting through the pile, solely with an eye to dismiss a manuscript—and believe me, they’ll look for any reason they can, down to the last letter.” Despite Lori Perkins’ comment above, at conferences every session on getting an agent emphasizes you can’t send a manuscript to an agent if it still needs work.

That any manuscript a writer sends out ought to be close to publishable seems self-evident. Isn’t that the writer’s job in the first place? An agent or editor may make suggestions to make a manuscript a better book, but it ought to be a good book before they set eyes upon it. Right?

When Michael Barnard announced the launch of Macmillan New Writing, he made it clear they would not be acquiring works that required massive editing. This seems in line with the policies of virtually every commercial publishing house—are there any houses that are searching for books that are promising but far from being publishable? (If so, those houses ought to speak up, as agents routinely reject such books. There’s plenty available.)

Tempest in a Thimble

Apparently, many considered Barnard’s observations outrageous. In some places his remarks were willfully misconstrued, while in other venues people put forth wholly imaginary scenarios of what MNW planned to do…and then worked themselves into an apoplectic fit about their own conjectures.

In effect, some folks asserted that Macmillan planned to dump books directly from the slush pile onto the market with hardly a glance at the content. One somewhat hysterical observer argued—on the basis of no discernible evidence—that the MNW process would "take away the exercise of taste and judgment from publishing", as though Macmillan planned to print every manuscript hurled into their offices, and as if the only defenders of "taste and judgment" in publishing were the literary agents. (It isn't explained why any publisher would choose to make huge investments in well-produced hardback volumes without at least skimming the manuscripts before send them off for typesetting.)

At the same time, there were assertions that Macmillan would only publish books where the authors paid from their own pockets for editing services. (I’ve seen some recent bestsellers where someone, somewhere ought to have paid for editing services—and possibly even for remedial classes in composition—but that’s another matter.)

With all this noise over editing—or rather over the lack thereof—I was very curious indeed to see how MNW would approach the editing process on Smite the Waters. Would they demand that jail be rewritten as gaol? (I hoped not, as there are some things to which I will not stoop. Not many, but a couple, and once you give in on gaol, you’ll have them insisting on whisky as uisge, and then they'll be improvising--it'll be whale as uiol, and lord knows how you’ll be expected to render James Joyce. It’s this sort of thing, and not the tea tax, that precipitated the American Revolution.)

I’d never taken seriously the idea that, as some had speculated, I’d be charged for editing services by my publisher, since there was no mention of the concept in the contract. And how could such a thing work? Would I be charged (ka-ching!) every time the editor scribbled awk! or wd chce? or sent frag in the margin of my manuscript? (I’d be in trouble, as I’m known for awk sent frags, and odd wd chces, which together form an admittedly shaky pillar of my so-called style.) Would a single Post-It note reading Unclear Eleanor’s motivation re: speaking Count at manor re: Rudolfo’s parentage cost me fifty bucks (or, even worse, fifty pounds)?

As I waited to find out, I trembled, and not only for myself. No, I feared for Rudolfo and Eleanor as well.

Well, I at least maintained a lively interest. And if you want to know what happens in MNW editing, you’ll have to read the my next post. (And if you figure out who Rudolfo and Eleanor are, let me know.)

Jump to Part II

The Road to Macmillan New Writing, Part I

Jump to Part II

Getting and Losing an Agent

Why is an American publishing his novel with Macmillan New Writing? After all, I reside in the US of A, where we have publishers of our own (Admittedly they mainly sell diet books, with the occasional novel by Nicole Richie or Pamela Anderson, but they are publishers nonetheless. No, really.)

Actually, I’m not the first American to publish with MNW. That would be Michael Stephen Fuchs, whose excellent novel The Manuscript was one of the six MNW launch titles. And it’s been slated for US publication, and UK paperback, and optioned for film, and deservedly so. But Michael lives and works in London, so he’s one of the locals.

So what’s my excuse?

Glad you asked. Gather round, kiddies, and after he secures the perimeter to prevent escape, Uncle David will explain.

In 2004 I completed Smite the Waters, a novel about a group of Americans who decide to fight terror with terror. (Spoiler: Their ultimate plan is to nuke Mecca.)

Now, before you get riled and start sending hate mail, let me note that this isn’t a jingoistic, flag-waving fantasy where untainted, home-bred good conquers unmitigated foreign evil It’s more in the nature of a cautionary tale. I suppose it’s a “thriller,” and perhaps even a “technothriller,” but its ancestors are more Graham Greene than Tom Clancy.

I admit Smite isn’t easy to pigeonhole. There are two protagonists. There are five points of view, and, although there is a noir tone overall, the book also has a heaping helping of techno-candy, and even some caper elements. It abounds in moral ambiguity and nuance, and is more character-driven than most recent thrillers. A description of the story line sounds like (wince) Men’s Adventure, but the embittered female soldier who leads the terrorists is the book’s main selling point. Despite all those facts ("features" to me, "drawbacks" to most of the publishing industry) it wasn’t hard to find representation—two excellent literary agents simultaneously offered to take me on while seven others were still reading. To someone with a couple of previous novels sitting in my drawer (good novels, I hasten to add, but perhaps a touch too quirky for the market), it seemed as though I’d finally arrived.

My agent was a good one—well-connected, and able to go directly to the high-level folks at each house who could flip on the green light.

Those green lights all stayed red. I’d heard of being damned with faint praise, but the rejections we received damned the book with effusive praise. They loved the characters, the plot hook, the prose, the pacing…at any moment, I expected to hear that someone loved my 12-point Times New Roman. There were just two tiny, but fatal, problems.

One editor came right out and said it, after larding on the compliments: “The fact that the bad guys are Americans makes this a hard sell for us.” There were variations on this message, most of them more subtle, but the overwhelming response was that New York was shying away from “9/11 fiction” in “the present climate,” and it was explained that if they went down that road they wanted a “real hero” to “lead the narrative charge.”

Another editor even offered that she was sure she “would be kicking myself for turning this down.” (I haven’t yet checked to see if she’d like me to save her the work by dropping by and kicking her myself, but if she happens to read this—hey, I’m willing.)

By the end of 2005, my agent was giving up on the book. Not on me, bless her heart—she wanted to pick up another of my earlier books and get to work—but after only a handful of rejections, she’d decided that the subject matter and the characters of Smite would preclude publication.

I’d been steeped in the tales of folks like James Lee Burke, whose breakout novel was rejected by 111 editors, so less than ten rejections struck me as barely having begun. Not so, my agent counseled—this was “a big, commercial book” and only a few houses could “give it what it needed” in terms of distribution and promotion. She refused to consider smaller presses; she refused to consider more literary imprints, even though the lack of a “real hero” and the ensemble nature of the book made it a touch more thoughtful than many thrillers.

Fine. Over the years I’d heard of many fine American writers who had to go overseas to publish. John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, now considered a classic, was turned down everywhere in the US before it was published in England; James Purdy’s novels were all considered unpublishable in America until he’d built up a body of work in Europe; folks like Chester Himes and Jonathan Carroll finally moved to Europe altogether because they were appreciated abroad and comparatively ignored at home. More recent debuts by Americans like Carol O’Connell’s Mallory books also found a home in the UK before NY publishers would touch them.

I asked two friends, who are well-established American novelists, if I were crazy to consider publishing in the UK. Neither of them thought it odd—and both of them informed me that their UK sales were typically twice their US sales.

I asked other friends, and they laughed. The general impression they gave me was that “The fact that the bad guys are Americans” would make no difference in Europe, and might even be a selling point.

So, I asked my agent if she would try to sell Smite the Waters to houses in the UK. Her agency boasted outstanding overseas connections, so I expected at least a few trial submissions. Instead, she told me that my book was far “too American” to be of interest to any publisher in the UK

I think there often comes a time for writers—usually long after the process of writing is over—when it isn’t about you, the author, any more, but instead about the novel. What do you owe the book? I thought Smite needed to be given a real chance.

But it’s nerve-wracking for an unpublished novelist to drop an agent voluntarily. After your novel’s been shopped to the top half-dozen NY houses, no other agent is going to want to pick you up. Unagented, you have no track record; agented but unsold, you have a negative track record, because your other agent has already, to use the industry’s charming term, “pissed in all the ponds.”

I contacted my agent and said I wasn’t ready to give up on Smite. She said she understood, added that it really was a good book, and wished me luck.

And so we parted company. Many writers have compared leaving their agent to getting divorced. If so, it’s a strange sort of divorce, as the agent still has dozens of other spouses. It’s more like leaving someone’s harem…except that you no longer have the admittedly limited advantages of your virginity.

Jump to Part II