Category Archives: Professional

career, outward projection of you and your works

How To Find An Agent or Editor Without Making Yourself Insane

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Cassie Alexander is an active registered nurse. Nightshifted is her debut novel, coming out through St. Martin’s Press on May 22, 2012.

You’re done with your book, you’ve edited it tons, other people (not your mom) have looked at it, and you’ve taken their input into account, and you feel deep down in your gut that you’re done… what next?
Someone posed this question elsewhere, and I teasingly said they needed to start stalking agents — which got me to thinking of what you really need to do, how, and why.

First things first — become a member of Publishers Marketplace for a month, and use their deals search to figure out who is repping/selling your type of material. If you can afford to keep your membership, read the deal list every day for your genre just to keep a toe in the water. If you can only afford one month, pay for it, and then use their deal search to make a massive list of possible agents and editors who might be interested in your stuff.

There are agents who are too cool to publish their sales in PM, but for the most part if you plug in epic fantasy, or inspirational romance, etc, you’ll get a skad of hits.

With that info, you can start checking out agent websites and reputations. By virtue of them already being on PM, you know they’ve made pro sales (sales to reputable publishing houses) so there’s that. From their # of sales to how $$$ those sales were, you can get a good feel for how much of a player they are, and how accessible they might be.

Start with the big dogs first — google search away. Depending on who they sell too, how much they sell, how often they sell, or if they rep someone whose work you love, or whose work you think yours matches up with, make an list in order of interest. This part is a little hard, depending on your familiarity with names and faces in your chosen market. Hopefully, you’ve got an idea of what publisher matches your work — because you’re reading their books all the time — or a certain author you want to emulate, etc, so you can start off with that place/person. Most writers list their agents somewhere on their website, or the info’s on the internet.

If they keep a blog or twitter feed, you can stalk them that way to see if they seem up to date and sane. (You can also drop info from their blog into your query in a completely-non-stalkery way. Only do this if you know you can do it right. “I love it when you post cute pix of your dog, Boo” is one thing. “I will come and slaughter Boo in the middle of the night if you don’t ask for my full, j/k!” is not.)
If they’re too busy for blogs/twitter things (my agent is) then you just look at who else they’ve sold, and go on reputation.

Another place you can get a feel for agent reps is in the Absolute Write forums. People there have their ears to the ground, and often seem the first to know when someone’s gone from intern to agent, and what material they’re looking for now, in a way that that person’s blogs might not say, and PM sales data might not make clear. Some agents have open windows, and then close when they get too full — AW is a great place to keep track of that. If you sign up with them (it’s free) you can do a search, and see what people are saying about particular agents and agencies. People are refreshingly honest on there about things, which is nice.

Perfect your query letter and synopsis. Query Shark and the Miss Snark archives are great for this. Also bounce them off a few pro friends, if you can. (Synopsis writing is its own torture, which deserves a separate post when I’m more coherent.)

Send your query, plus synopsis (if they ask for it!), plus pages (if they ask for them!) to the first 1-5 agents on your wishlist. Send them only what they want.

It is a huge pain. Each agent wants different things — some want the first 3.5 pgs of your manuscript pasted into your email with your cover letter attached in comic sans font. Okay, not really, but it feels like that, after awhile. But if you want to seem professional, you’ll keep jumping through all the hoops they present, and do things exactly how they want them. Use the last line/paragraph of your query — before the Best Regards, YOUR NAME HERE — to say, “My first ten pages” or whatever precise thing they want “is attached.” This is your one and only chance to prove that you can follow instructions. Use it wisely, do it well.

Hold off for a week, then send out five more. And five more, the week after that. No matter how many email addresses and PO boxes you’ve got raring to go. Eventually, you’ll start getting feedback. Either requests or rejections. If it’s straight rejections, rethink your query. This is why you didn’t send everything out all at once — if your query stunk, you have a chance to change it, now, and fresh agents to show it to.

Wash, rinse, repeat until you have some responses — in which case do something celebratory! and continue to follow instructions precisely as they’re given! — or some outstanding queries.

It’s tough, because you don’t always know if silence is a no. Sometimes agents really do take half a year to get to things. (I know. It’s painful. I so know.) BEFORE you requery them — check back on Absolute Write to see what’s going on for other people who have queries out with them. Or, go to querytracker.net (also a free sign up to search) — it’ll have a ton of people tracking queries they’ve sent to that agency too, which’ll give you a feel if the wait’s a good thing, if they’re being slow, just had a kid, or if that’s just that agent’s way of saying no. If an agent’s website says they respond to everything within a certain time period, go ahead and re-query, but doublecheck using the other websites if you can first, you can save yourself some time. (Keep the requery polite, too. For all you know, your original one got missed. The agent doesn’t owe you anything.)

Publishers Marketplace will give you editor info too, so you can repeat all the steps above with editors, should you choose. And then you’ll recognize names for all the people to watch out for at conventions, to go to their panels, or try to chat up at the bar.

So! There. You can do all that with much less stalking and worry than I did. There was this one weekend when, after requesting my full and sitting on it for 3 months, A Certain Agent tweeted that they’d be clearing their inbox decks over the weekend. I made myself crazed that weekend, dreaming of them signing me and my book. They didn’t wind up getting through everything that weekend, and then they made snarky comments on twitter about not getting through stuff and jeez guys, would you all stop bugging me — because many people who didn’t get a response assumed that agent had lost their stuff, and emailed to ask. I had the wisdom not to pester, but it really lowered my estimation of that person for not following through on their public promise, and/or not updating to say, “You know what, I screwed up, sorry about that.” Apologizing should have been the way to go there, not mocking people for caring about their books so much. (That agent wound up dropping out of agenting all together, heh.) All the worry of that weekend — it was worthless energy that I wish I hadn’t spent. I don’t recommend doing that to anyone. So know your limits, don’t get too involved. Your best use of energy — apart from sending off those five queries like clockwork — is in writing your next book.
Be patient, and good luck!

Horse Magic

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Lucia St. Clair Robson’s best-selling debut novel, Ride the Wind, won the Spur Award for best historical western of 1982.  Since then she has written  Walk in My Soul, Light a Distant Fire, The Tokaido Road, Mary’s Land, Fearless, Ghost Warrior: Lozen of the Apaches, and Shadow Patriots, a Novel of the Revolution. Her  most recent novel, Last Train from Cuernavaca, won the 2011 Spur Award for Best Western Long Novel.  Robson lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

The Chiricahua Apache chief, Victorio, called his sister Lozen his wise counselor and his right hand. He said she had the “strength of a man” and was “a shield to her people.”

General George Crook wrote, “The Apaches are the tigers of the human species,” but even in a society possessing extraordinary courage, endurance and skill, she was unique. The Apaches believed that when she was young, the spirits blessed her with horse magic. They also endowed her with the gift of healing and the power to see enemies at a distance. In the Apaches’ thirty-year struggle to defend their homeland, they came to rely on her strength, wisdom, and supernatural abilities.

Because of her gift of far-sight, she rode with the warriors and fought alongside them. After her brother Victorio’s death, she joined Geronimo’s band of insurgents. With Geronimo and fifteen other warriors, she resisted the combined forces of the United States and Mexican armies, and

the heavily armed civilian populations of New Mexico and Arizona Territories. She and the sixteen warriors, and seventeen women and children held out against a total of about nine thousand men.

Lozen is the heroine of Ghost Warrior, my seventh novel. I’ve been researching people and events from history for thirty-three years now, and a thought occurred to me as I started writing this about Lozen. It’s a thought that gives comfort in troubled times, and let’s face it, all times are troubled thanks to our species’ capacity for mischief and mayhem.

The thought is that even in the worst of situations, individuals with extraordinary strength of character appear and leave a legacy that persists. How fortunate we are that other people made note of them and left a record for the rest of us.

The Apache Wars certainly qualified as the worst of times. Many of the names of the leaders who waged those battles are familiar — Geronimo, Cochise, Victorio. Lozen was as exceptional as any of them. One Apache I spoke to referred to her as their “Joan of Arc.”

Reading about what Lozen and her people endured puts my petty problems into stark perspective. And it strikes me as amazing that the spirit of someone who died 120 years ago can influence what I think and feel now.

Buying Books That Are Finished

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Larry D. Sweazy is a commercial indexer and novelist. He writes a series of Westerns for Berkley Books featuring Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger.  The series starts with Rattlesnake Season and continues with the fifth installment, The Coyote Tracker, forthcoming in August of 2012.  Sweazy’s first mystery novel, The Devil’s Bones, was published by Five Star in March of 2012. 

Long before I was a writer, I was a reader.  A voracious reader.   I picked my books because of cool, artistic covers that caught my eye, because of genre, because of a writer’s reputation, and countless other reasons that I’m probably not even aware of.  The biggest reason I bought a book was, and is, a writer’s reputation.  If I’d read one book by a certain writer and loved it, then I wanted more of the same—but different.  Whether it’s an eBook, or a real book, that I’m buying, my criteria for the purchase hasn’t changed now that I’m a professional writer.  But I’m not so sure that’s true of the world of books, at the moment, in 2012.  It seems everything is changing, including books themselves.

I’ve bought countless books off the rack at the drugstore, online, at book stores, independents and chains, and in the end, after I’d read the book, it didn’t matter where I bought it.  I have hundreds of books on my bookshelves.  I can’t tell you by looking at them where they came from—but I can tell you whether they were good or not, whether they satisfied me, whether the stories took me away, whether I got my money’s worth.

Now my choices for eBooks are different.  The locations are fewer, on one hand, but much easier to get to on the other.  And eBooks change.  If an author, or company, doesn’t think the book is selling as much as it should, the price changes, or the cover changes, one day it’s free, the next day, it’s not.  Does the text change, too?   Can I, as a reader, really trust the quality of the eBook?  Everything changes with the press of a button, on a whim, or after a day or two of dissatisfaction of no sales, or the lack of blockbuster numbers. Really, it’s like a book is never finished now, like it’s OK to put a book out into the world as a beta test.

I can see the allure of the never-ending book as an author—we don’t think a book is ever finished.  But as a reader, as a buyer?  No.  I’m sorry, I don’t see the allure of buying a book that’s never finished.  I want to buy something that’s final. Done. Completed.

After a book is printed there are no second chances.  Yes, there are second editions and beyond, but they’re announced on the cover.  The buyer, the reader, wants to know what they are getting.  If I buy an eBook by an author, read it, like it, comment on it, write an Amazon review, then two weeks later discover said author has completely changed the eBook to drive more sales…then I’ll remember that, and most likely, never buy another book by that author again. I’ll feel cheated.

Once an eBook is published it should stay published in its original form.  Some books take time to find.  The Internet and eBooks allow for that more than ever—if a book doesn’t change.  So my advice to writers, traditional or self-published, is to publish your book when it’s finished and not before.  I don’t want to read a first draft or a tenth draft.  I want to read a book that is the writer’s best effort.  I want to buy a book that has been published well.  I want to read a book that’s done, that has a good-looking cover, professional editing, and a great story.  It doesn’t matter where I buy the book (though there will be those that argue that it does—and they may be right, that’s just not the point of this posting).  It does matter whether the book is finished or not.  Final, completed, professionally published, no matter where it was published, or who published it.

I love buying books.  A majority of readers are collectors of one sort or another.  I have some books that I will take with me wherever I go, because I’ve been moved to tears by them, and changed and entertained by them.  I want to keep those books close.  To read again, to hold, if just for a moment, to recapture that moment… of completion.  But if I feel like I’ve been had, just marketed to, sold a bill of goods, and bought an eBook that is ever-changing, well, I’ll leave that book behind.  Or I’ll hit the delete button.  That book will have no place in my collection, or my heart.

It Never Rains But It Pours: Boosting Your Signal In A Saturated Market

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Congrats! You’ve gotten an agent, sold your book to the publisher of your dreams, and received a tidy little advance.

“So, when’s my book tour?”
“Eh, we’re not going to worry about that. We’ve got this great advertising plan instead. We’re going to advertise on Facebook, GoodReads and Reddit.”
“Um, okay…but how am I going to talk to fans of the genre?”
“What?”
“How am I going to reach into the community that I came from, where people know my name because I’ve blogged for all these awesome sites like Booklife Now and SFSignal and sold stories to all these genre magazines?”
“Well, we’re sending out about 50 review copies!”
“Oh that’s great. Where to?”
“Well, like 10 copies to the New York Times, and 5 to Washington Post and 5 to Times Magazine, and one to the Religion Reporter at–”
“Uh, guys, genre! That’s where people know me and would buy this awesome book!”
“…”

Now, this is based on the experience of two of my clients, amalgamated and exaggerated a little…but not much. It isn’t a hypothetical exercise for my amusement, it’s how the industry works.

Promotions and book marketing are a tricky sport. Profit margins are thin enough when things go well, even for the ‘Big 6’. Publishers need the best possible results for the least amount of money. The best results are, of course, going to be if the New York Times or the Washington Post pulls it out of the towering stacks of submissions and writes a glowing review. That happens just often enough to be worth the resources and effort.

It isn’t just a crapshoot on the higher levels, either. Reviewers and bloggers are inundated with unsolicited copies and requests, and time is limited. Will and skill aren’t always equal, so while there are hundreds of reviewers, not everyone will fit your needs. This is where knowledge and research are vital: Bitten By Books will have no interest in your Sword and Sorcery, while Monster Librarian probably isn’t the best place for your YA fantasy romance. The more you know your market, the better your results will be.

And, too, there is a fine balance between sending out more copies than will be bought, and not sending enough copies out. Send too many out, and you might cancel out your sales. Don’t send enough out, and you may end up hearing ‘wow, I didn’t even know your book was out yet!’. Neither one is desirable.

So, say you’re an author handling your own publicity, or wanting to bolster your publicist’s efforts. What do you do?

1.) Before you do anything, check with your publisher, agent, editor and publicist, or any combination of the above. Every situation varies, but you need to maintain both transparency and communication. Ask your team if you can help, and then go from there.

2.) When you talk to your team, ask them for whatever materials they have: a ‘tear sheet’ with the official info, e-books or NetGalley info, or a press kit. Also ask for a list of places that they are sending your books. There’s no point in sending multiple copies to the same place, it just wastes resources and makes you look sloppy.

3.) Research your market. Tor.com posted an excellent list of review sites, but don’t just go down the list, mailing a copy to each person on the list. Read the requirements. Check the list of books they’ve reviewed.

4.) You should be aware of books similar to yours, and authors in your subgenre. Google reviews of their work, and see who covered them.

5.) If your resources are limited, create a hierarchy. Who do you absolutely HAVE to have cover your book? Who is a potential? Who is just overflow, get’em if you’ve got extras?

6.) Social media is your best friend and your worst enemy. DO NOT follow the advice that so many self-help websites promote. Be genuine. Talk about things other than your book. Limit yourself to, at maximum, two ‘my book is for sale’ posts a day…and that’s your upper limit. Less is more, in this case, and if you power too often, you risk alienating potential fans in a hurry.

7.) Speaking of the ‘learn how to promote your book today!’ sites…avoid. Avoid at ALL costs. Instead, focus your efforts on industry professionals. Do your own research. Don’t fall for cheap mailing lists, or guarantees to get your book on a best-seller list. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Even the best publicist can’t guarantee you a spot on the best-seller list.

8.) And if you do hire a publicist? Make sure you have a good contract. Specify how much you’ll pay, and when. Leave an escape clause. Err on the side of overkill, because it protects both the author and the publicist.

The book industry throws an incredibly steep learning curve at you, as a new author. It’s a learning curve that doesn’t ever level off much, either.

But, just maybe, with a little luck, a lot of very hard work, and copious amounts of alcohol, you can make it through this ring of hell, too.