Pitching to an Agent

Publisher's Weekly has a good article on querying an agent, including some helpful links.

If you're at the stage where you're querying or about to pitch to an agent, check out DIY: How to Pitch an Agent.

Keep Your Day Job

Julie Barer has opened her own agency, Barer Literacy. In an interview on Galley Cat, she talks about her agency and what she represents, e-books, and how to pitch her.

Here are a few snippets from the interview:

For me, it's about more than just making the deal, or getting the most money, it's about the author's career.

This means helping get the work in the best editorial shape before it goes out on submission, finding the right editor and the best house for each individual project, and working with the author on every step of the publication process from jacket copy and website development to publicity, social marketing, paperback publication and beyond.

The smaller my list, the better able I am to help my clients work with their publicity and marketing departments to ensure that their books are published as successfully as possible.

… the harder you work with your publisher to promote the book by publishing stories or nonfiction essays to raise your profile, by blogging and keeping your website active, by thinking outside of the box in terms of marketing and publicity, the better your book will do.

Barer represents fiction and loves historical fiction and international fiction. (She also loves karaoke.)

Barer had many years of experience before she opened her own agency. When you query, are you put off by a new agency? Or do you look, not at the agency as a whole, but at the individual agent you’re querying?

Writing Query Letters

If you want to learn to write winning query letters (and by winning I mean ones that will catch an agent’s eye), start following a blog called QueryShark.

Janet Reid, an agent at FinePrint Literary Management, reviews query letters that readers send in (and by “review” I mean, and I’m quoting her, “eviscerate.”) You send them in; she, with no punches pulled, tells you what you’re doing wrong. Okay, she rips them apart.

She does occasionally come across a winning query and she links to those in her sidebar.

It’s definitely a blog to read for research on writing or improving your own query letter. I wouldn’t recommend submitting to QueryShark until you’ve read and understood her eviscerations and have worked and re-worked your query, then had others read and critique. And then, submit only if you have a thick skin.

Ding-Dong The Slush is Dead

According to The Wall Street Journal, and folks they talked to, the Slush Pile is dead.

We all recognized that your chance of getting “found” in the slush pile was small, but it was a tiny candle of hope. Now most publishers (not counting small, regional or university presses) won’t read anything that doesn’t go through an agent, not even book proposals.

Part of the reason is that publishers were getting so many over the transom manuscripts, they were spending too much money hiring reader to cull through them. Part of the reason is also publishers having to fight plagiarism suits. Now you have to find an agent to represent you and be the go-between between you and a publishing house.

But today, writing talent isn't necessarily enough. It helps to have a big-media affiliation, or be effective on TV....

"These days, you need to deliver not just the manuscript but the audience," says Mr. Levine. "More and more, the mantra in publishing is 'Ask not what your publisher can do for you, ask what you can do for your publisher.'"

The article gives 5 pieces of advice in this era of the dead or dying slush pile:

1. Find an agent who's hungry—and "monetize."
2. Don't be a barista waiting for someone to stumble upon your genius.
3. Find another way in
4. Contests!
5. And buck up.

Are any of you still submitting directly to a publisher? Are you getting responses? Or does it feel like tossing paper into a black hole?

She’s Herrrreee!

Long ago there was a movie, Poltergeist, I think, that had a memorable promo. In the commercial, a little girl sits on the floor and stares at a fuzzy TV screen. After a few seconds, she turns to the camera and says, “They’re herrrreee.” Whatever she sees on the screen that we can’t, is here, coming to get us.

I’m not coming to get you, but I could easily be the little girl who turns from her computer screen and says, “I’m herrreee!” Because today, I appear to be everywhere.

First of all, I’m here -- to tell you briefly about a workshop I attended this past Saturday. The Heart of Texas chapter of Sisters in Crime had a fundraiser/workshop led by author and former NY editor, Russ Hall. It was a great workshop. Russ talked about the opening pages of your manuscript and how important they are. He handed out examples of published openings and analyzed them for us. He broke down the query letter, then had us write our own sections of a query letter and read them aloud. After which, the group discussed what we’d done. He went over the synopsis, from the one sentence elevator speech to a longer synopsis. At the end of the day, he did one-on-one consulting with each participant, discussing material -- a query, a synopsis and the opening chapter of a work in progress -- we had each submitted prior to the workshop. As I said, a great workshop by Russ.

While I’m here telling you about the workshop, I’m also over on The Blood-Red Pencil. I’m one of the editors who post advice on that blog. This month, the BRP is trying something new. In among the advice, we’re posting book recommendations. We each picked out a book or two we thought would make good Christmas presents - ones that you might not have heard of or thought of before. Today, I’m recommending Five Years at Sea by James V. Lee. The book is a memoir/travelogue/diary of the years James spent aboard Navy ships as a civilian teacher of English. From 1989 to 1994, he traveled the world, visiting nearly forty countries and going on 16 deployments with various ships. Even if you’ve never served on a ship, you’ll enjoy the first-hand look. And if you like to travel, James takes you to places you won’t find in a travel book, complete with pictures.

And lastly and bestly, I’m over at Karen…following the whispers. This past Friday, I posted on her blog about things I’m seeing repeatedly in manuscripts I edit. Karen, being the wonderfully crazy woman that she is, invited me back. So, I’m over there with a few more problems I encounter. The best thing about these “problems” with your manuscript is that you can correct them. They are not insurmountable and correcting them can make a big difference in your manuscript.

Remember to come back here tomorrow. I'll be introducing you to guest blogger, Dr. Norman German, who's going to tell us about the four years of research he did for his third book, A Savage Wisdom.

As you travel the cybersphere, watch out. I’m herrreee! And there and there.

Some Fun News

All the business news lately has been about price wars and e-readers. So I decided that today I’d link you up to some fun news. Here are four that you might find interesting:

1. Over on GalleyCat - How to Break Up with an Agent
Just in case you were wondering the right way to do it!

2. In the Philadelphia Business Today - an article on video blogger Gary Vaynerchuk who blogs about wine and as a result welcomes his first book in a 10-book deal.

3. Another success story - Lisa Genova sent queries to 100 agents. Four asked for the manuscript. Three rejected. The fourth never got back to her. She self-published. She's also now on the NY Times Best Sellers list.

4. And, finally, The Wall Street Journal touts a new author from Australia and asks, Is she the next J.K. Rowling? She's got a background similar to Rowling. And, get this, her manuscript was pulled from the slush pile.

Have Fun and Have a Great Sunday.

Be An Agent for a Day

Curtis Brown agent Nathan Bransford is holding a contest. He calls it the “Be An Agent for a Day” contest. If you’re a writer who struggles with writing the query letter, you’ll want to zip over to his blog and track this contest. Today at 8 a.m. he starts posting the entries. You don’t have to be one of the contestants to win since you get to read the entries and see what the Agents for a Day say about them.

For those participating as “agents,” here’s what they have to do:

You will read and respond to as many queries as you can. You will have one week to respond to all 50 queries. You can draft your own rejection letter and manuscript request letter (personalized or non-personalized, your choice), which you will paste in the comments section of each query. You might even provide some specific feedback to try and help the author if you're feeling extra conscientious.
You may request no more than five manuscripts, because hey, you're not going to have time for your clients if you request more than five manuscripts for every 50 queries.

They have one week to respond to 50 queries (chosen from hundreds and hundred and hundreds submitted). Those people who have submitted queries that Nathan chose to use will get to see what is said and what their requested/rejected stats are.

And Nathan has thrown in a bit of a twist. Some of the queries are for books which actually sold. We’ll get to see how the “apprentice” agents responded to those.

So zip over and see the queries rolling in over the day. And then bookmark Nathan’s site so you can track this contest.

Some Real Punchlines

One agent, Colleen Lindsay, with FinePrint Literary Management, has started what she calls “Queryfail Day” on Twitter. Other agents and editors have joined up. The plan is to tweet, once or twice a month, the worst lines they’ve received in queries. The first tweeting of bad query lines took place on March 5. You can read the list of participating agents and editors at http://theswivet.blogspot.com/2009/03/queryfail-day-on-twitter.html.

I either missed the tweets, or I’m not following any of the participants, because I didn’t know what was going on when I started seeing other Twitterers tweeting about #Queryfail Day. The people I saw tweeting about it seemed to think the lines were hilarious. But I’ve heard others who thought it was wrong and a bit cruel.

In Lindsay’s intro to Queryfail Day, she wrote:

What is #Queryfail Day, you ask? * rubs hands together gleefully * A group of online agents, book editors and periodicals acquisition editors are posting about their queries in real time. The idea is to educate people about what exactly it is in a query that made us stop reading and say "Not for me." We're being very careful not to include personal identifiers of any kind. The idea isn't to mock or be intentionally cruel, but to educate.

I don’t know, but the “rubs hands together gleefully” seems to contradict “the idea isn’t to mock or be intentionally cruel, but to educate.”

As I said, I didn’t see the first go-round of bad lines, but here’s a few that The Guardian put in an article:

"My book is differentiated from Twilight because the vampires have wings, and are half-breed angels"
"My book is about a friendship based upon mutual vomiting practices in high school"
"This book is The Notebook meets The Lord of the Rings"
"43 years of toiling within my own mind have come to an end with this manuscript!"

Query Letters

Oh, the dreaded query letter. Even after slaving away for months or years on a book, writing, editing - you’re still not finished. Now you have to write a query letter to send to an agent or editor. And everyone tells you (‘cause everyone knows) the query has to be perfect. You should spend weeks massaging the words, writing and re-writing until it’s perfect. If it’s not, the agent will trash it after scanning the fist sentence. One mis-spelling, one misplace comma, or, heaven-forbid, stating your credentials before giving the word count (!!!) and zip your letter is shredded, stamps steamed off the SASE and added to the agent’s growing pile of stamp-booty, and your name branded onto the Unacceptable list.

Let’s get down to reality. There’s really no reason in this day and age of computers with spell and grammar check to have mis-spellings and undecipherable grammar. And you should spend some time working on that query letter. You can also make it easier by following a set layout in your query letters. One I teach in my workshop is: Look, Hook, Book, Cook. You can come up with your own way of writing a query. Knowing what you want to include in the letter makes it easier to write the letter.

But let’s not go into hyperventilation at the thought of having to write one. And let’s not spend as long crafting the letter as we did writing the book.

Stephen Barbara has written an article in Publishers Weekly about how’s he’s rather tired of all the perfect query letters crossing his desk. Read it. It might make you feel better.

Making Contacts in the Publishing World

This past weekend, the Writers’ League of Texas held their annual Agents & Editors Conference. Although I’m sure the conference was a huge success, I can’t tell you that from first-hand experience since I didn’t attend. I did a little volunteer work for them, in that I drove agents, editors and authors to and from the airport on Friday and Sunday, though.

I had two different kinds of experiences. Twice I drove a car-full and once I carried just one person. It was always interesting. When it was just an editor and myself, we talked the whole way. When my car was full, mostly my riders talked, with me occasionally chiming in. I got to hear what they were reading, what they thought of different authors, and a little about their lives.

I didn’t pitch anything to them. But if I ever did pitch to an agent that I drove or ask an author for a blurb, I would remind them that I was their driver.

Which makes me wonder why other authors pass up opportunities like this. It could be because it costs you – you pay in time, gas, parking – and you can’t flake out and not show up. But it could pay off in other ways, like an intro to an agent or author or editor.

Yet, I know from my own experience when I was the Executive Director of the Writers’ League, it’s not always easy to find reliable drivers for the conference. And I know from being a chair for the Texas Book Festival, that it’s not always easy for that Chair to get author escorts.

And that’s sort of surprising since it’s a wonderful opportunity for writers.

Recipe for a Great Query Letter

Writers have to put a lot of work into their query letters. It makes sense to do so. Why spend months or even years working on a manuscript, then only allot an hour to write the letter that you hope will sell an agent or editor on your work? That would not make sense.

But even writers who work for days (or even weeks) on a query letter often aren’t sure what to include in the letter.

The secret to the perfect query letter is that there’s no secret. That’s because there isn’t a “One Way to Write a Query Letter.” There is, however, a recipe. But like any good chef, you change the ingredients so that the dish, or query, becomes your own.

First step in the recipe is to gather your tools. Use good quality paper, like 24 weight. Make it white (you can choose beige, but don’t go for odd colors like pink or blue or anything other than white or at most beige). Stick with black ink. Limit yourself to one page. Set your margins at one and a half inch (you can go out to one-inch, like on your manuscript if you need the space, but no more). Single-space. Avoid fancy fonts – go with Times New Roman or Courier New. You don’t have to, but it’s a good idea, to put your query on letterhead – you don’t have to spend money on having a stationery shop print some up; make your own on your computer.

Now for the ingredients – and this recipe only has four:
Look
Hook
Book
Cook

You can change the order on these, add some spices of your own, give it your own spin, but start with this lineup, then think about changing things, if you feel the need.

LOOK:
If you have any connection to the agent, put it upfront, first thing. If you’ve met at a conference, or even heard him/her speak, say so. Definitely say so if she told you to query or send a partial. If you have researched him/her and you see that you have something in common that is relevant to your book, say so. If one of his authors recommended that you contact him, definitely say so. If a big name author, although not one of hers, recommended you, say so. If your manuscript won a contest in which he was the judge, say so.

You get the idea. This opening paragraph is your way of saying LOOK, here’s a reason not to automatically throw my query in the trash pile.

HOOK:
Now it’s time to start talking about the book. Start with a hook, something to entice the agent to keep reading your letter. I suggest your logline -- that one or two sentence exciting summary that makes your book sound like one she’d want to read. Or, if you know the agent is a World War II buff, or a train enthusiast, etc. and your book is set during WWII or the plot hinges on the theft of a valuable model train, you can play up that angle in your hook. Hook the agent.

BOOK:
Now you move into a paragraph about your book – a summary of your 300 page manuscript into one paragraph. Easy,huh? Get books off your shelf at home and read the back covers. How do they describe the plot and characters? Notice they pull you in, make you want to read it. Now look at your book and write a cover blurb.

COOK:
Here’s where you tell about yourself. What makes you the only person who could write this book or especially qualified to do so? You’re a police officer like the protagonist. This book takes place on a movie set and you’ve been an extra in twenty-eight movies. Do you have other books published under this name? Have they sold well? Have you been published in magazines or anthologies? Make sure they will recognize the names of the magazines or newspapers – if they don’t, they’re liable to google the title and you don’t want to get caught fibbing. Has your writing won major contests – don’t bother with the really small ones they won’t recognize. Do you already have a platform to sell your book? Mention that. You have to remember that you’re selling not just your book, but yourself.

Work on your query. Start putting the ingredients in the letter in that order – LOOK, HOOK, BOOK, COOK. There’s a good chance you’ll keep them in that order, but you can always mix things up a little, just don’t leave out any ingredient.

Book Marketing: Asking for Blurbs

One of the great things about getting an agent or selling your book to an editor is that you're finally through with having to write those aggravating query letters. Wrong!

You still have to write them, but now it's to other writers or experts in your book's field. You need blurbs.

Sometimes your agent or editor can get you humdinger blurbs from other writers in his/her stable. There's a good chance, though, that you'll be expected to solicit endorsements.

The first people to turn to for endorsements are the authors you know on a personal basis. Those are easy. There's a good chance you can ask them in person or via the phone or email. They're friends, and you can, therefore, probably count on a positive, enthusiastic quote. (Or they’ll politely tell you “no.”)

But what if all you know are local or beginning authors like yourself? Not to say there's anything wrong with getting blurbs from less-well-known authors, but it's always nice to have a quote from some big name. Readers who pay attention to blurbs can be swayed by a positive quote from Mr. or Ms. Big Name.

If you don't have best-selling authors in your circle of friends, then move to the next circle. That's people you have an acquaintance or some tie with. Maybe you attended a workshop with, or took a class by, or ate lunch at the convention with, or are good friends with the first cousin of ... some name author.

Now you're in the area where you need to write a query letter asking if they would review your book with an eye toward offering a blurb. Don't send the book unannounced. Query first. Make sure you mention that "tie" you have with them, however tenuous.

Consider querying authors who write in the same genre or on a similar subject, even if you have no tie with them. It's still just a query letter. And you've done tons of those, right?

You can also solicit blurbs from non-writers. Maybe they're an expert on your subject matter; they have a name that readers will recognize.

Of course, now you're moving even farther away from your inner circle of friends. That probably makes it a little more intimidating and perhaps less likely that you'll be able to get an endorsement, but if you never query, you'll never know.

Why query first instead of just taking your chances and sending the book unrequested? First of all, that could get expensive. Books and postage add up. Secondly, a query letter is more professional. And thirdly, you're not making a good impression on that author or expert if your book is one of ten that lands in his or her mailbox that week. That author is liable to feel "spammed" and toss your book in the trash.

Now, you might be wondering how many people you should try to get quotes from. You think, hey, I only need one or two for the cover, so I'll query two at a time. If you do that, by the time you gather two suitable quotes, your book could be dead on the shelves. I'd say, send out five or seven at a time.

From that batch, you might get three who'll agree to read the ARC. Send it to them. In the meantime, query another batch. The original three may not all come through. One may decide it's not a book he could enthusiastically endorse. One or both of the other two could give you a review, but nothing you could really pull from for a cover blurb.

Ah, but you say, what if they all love it and wax poetically about the merits and voice and melodious writing? What then? How would I decide which to put on the cover and which to disappoint by leaving out?

Your publisher can always insert a page(s) that lists all the blurbs and put the biggest endorsements on the cover.

Not every browser in the bookstore pays attention to blurbs. But having an endorsement by another author or expert that the reader recognizes does sway some people. And even if they don't know the person who wrote your blurb, having an endorsement tells them that someone other than you and your family liked the book.

Publishers Weekly

If you’re a writer, you most likely know about Publishers Weekly, THE magazine about the publishing industry. And if you’ve read this blog or my newsletter, then you also know I’ve often recommended unpublished authors keep up with PW. Either by going to the library and reading it, subscribing, or checking out the online newsletter.

You can keep up with where agents are coming and going in the industry and what is selling and to whom, by whom. In my newsletter, Doing It Write, almost each week, I quote from PW to let my readers know when agents are changing agencies.

Now comes news that Publishers Weekly, part of Reed Business Information, is likely to be sold.

This should be of interest to writers because there has been talk that perhaps PW will become an online-only magazine. This would make it more difficult for writers who can’t afford the print subscription, let alone the online subscription.

Whether it continues to come out in print form or not, it may change in another way that affects writers. If you’re familiar with Publishers Marketplace, then you know that it posts deals. You can see what sells, which agent sold the deal and which editor bought it. If the book is in your genre and sounds similar to yours, then you have a clue that perhaps the agent or editor would also be interested in your book. You can compile your list of possible agents and track if they continue to sell your kind of book. Then you can see what other authors they represent and check out if they are authors you admire. You can find out what the books sold for. Then you can decide if you want to query that agent.

Problem is that some writers don’t do their research. They see that an agent sold a book, any book, and they send an email query. Some agents are not happy, reports Media Bistro.

"Everytime I list a deal on Publishers Marketplace, I get a flurry of really stupid queries from people who are clearly just querying anyone with a live email address." (She claims she isn't alone, and that more and more agents have stopped including their email addresses in deal announcements because of all the useless queries.)

If more agents are unhappy because of this, PW may stop the practice of giving out email addresses. Or they may change who has access to the information.

"What PW has is exclusivity," she says. "If they had a deal database available only to the magazine subscribers, it would be a huge success, because to have a PW subscription means you're not a one-horse operation... I'd love to report deals to the trade only."

And then we’re back again to the high cost of the subscription.

Querying Agents

When your book is written, and re-written, and then re-written multiple times more, and you feel it's ready to submit to an agent, should you call, write or email?

First of all, do your homework. Research agents. Go online, refer to the Literary Market Place, consult books on publishing, talk to your friends and local writers' organization. Make notes.

If you've done that, then, at the least, you have names and addresses. You should also know whether they prefer snail or email queries.

As to the address of the agency and the name of a particular agent there who looks at your kind of book? Just because you got the info from the Internet or a book, don't count on it being correct or up-to-date. Agents switch companies. Even whole agencies up and move to different streets or suites. First off, check the agency’s website. That’s better than culling the information from a book (already out of date by the time it’s published) or other secondary sites. If you’re still not sure, call and double-check the address, as well as the spelling of an agent's name and the correct procedure and person to send your query. Of course, you can always take a chance and send it off.

If you do call, then while you've got that agency receptionist on the phone, ask if the agent you're interested in accepts email queries. Some agents now prefer email. It's fast, easy, and saves on paper cuts. Either way, though, whether you snail or email, odds are your query won't actually get to the agent. It'll be read by someone lower on the totem pole. Someone whose job it is to screens queries for the agent.

But what about really cutting through the red tape and just calling and pitching to the agent directly? Don't count on it. Don't even count on getting to him unless you have a good reference or recommendation. He (or she) is busy on the phone or at lunch with an editor, trying to sell someone who is already a client, or they’re actually reading queries or they’re reading the queries that the first-line readers have passed on to them. And, after all, that's what you would want him to do if you were his client, right?

This is not to say it can't happen. So be prepared. You may call to get contact information and find yourself talking with the agent. Be ready to pitch. You want to sound intelligent and enthusiastic about your book, not like a blithering idiot. (Been there, done that.) Have notes by the phone, if that will help you remember your plot and characters, as well as your two-sentence logline.

What day of the week should you call? Hey, you can phone any day of the week you want, but if you want to increase your odds of getting through to a live person, possibly even an agent, here are some general guidelines:

Avoid Fridays. They're most likely not there. And you can probably forget Mondays; they're trying to catch up on what they missed on Friday. Pay attention to the time zone -- don't call too early. You'd have a better chance of catching an agent in the early evening.

Those guidelines usually hold true for New York agents, but are good ones to keep in mind no matter where the agent you're after is located.

At least, that's been my experience.

So, should you call, email or snail mail? Make use of all three methods. Use the one that best fits each particular agent, though. You want to get her attention, not her ire.

Guest Author: Sylvia Dickey Smith

Our Featured Author this month is Sylvia Dickey Smith. Sylvia is the author of the Sidra Smart Series, set in southeast Texas. She’s also a talented teacher and workshop leader. She has a whole series of workshops she leads called the “Creating” series, with topics like Creating Credible Characters, Creating a Plot That Won’t Stop, and Creating Fiction From Real Life.

Sylvia will be giving away a copy of one of her books to a Straight From Hel reader. You can find out how to put your name in the hat for the book at the end of this post. Good Luck!

Welcome Sylvia! I know you’ll have a lot to share with Straight From Hel readers. I’m very happy that you’re here.

SFH: In your Sidra Smart/Third Eye mystery series, you've pulled together memorable characters, vivid settings and plots with twists and turns. Tell us about the series and anything you have in the works.

Sylvia: At first, Dance On His Grave was a standalone murder mystery. The series developed after I’d landed an agent for the book. She loved the plot, the characters and the setting and said it would sell better as a series. Then she assigned me the task of writing synopses for two more books! Of course this blew me away. I was excited—yes—but after all the work it took to first learn HOW to write, then write the book, and finally land an agent, I felt mentally spent! Now she wanted me to come up with not one, but TWO more ideas for books in a series! I hustled, let me tell you! I whined, I borrowed, I copied, (and asked for forgiveness for that infraction!) and surprised myself that I ended up with plans for two more books. Then, after I got started—ideas just rolled in on the old Idea Express. Now I have more ideas for books than I have time to write.

So the series will continue as long as fans want it, or until I run out of ideas for the next caper for Sidra to get into. Folks in Orange, Texas have supported me way beyond what I’d ever imagined. They are thrilled to have a series set in their neck of the woods. They love reading about a locale, or a colorful character that reminds them of people they know. And it has been fun for me to return to my roots. I moved away soon after high school. I am convinced almost every person in Texas lived in Orange at one time or another! I meet them everywhere I go—even my hairdresser in Austin was from Orange and went to the same elementary school that I attended many years ago.

Okay, I think I’ve departed from the question about other things I have in the works.

I’m drafting a romance novel and intend to have it to my publisher by the first of April. That is a killer assignment, since I’ve just begun the first draft—but challenges get me fired up. I want to see if I can do it! This will be a stand-alone contemporary romance novel about Azilee Tyler—a young woman who raises Charolais cattle and 57 varieties of pecan trees, and communicates with horses better than she does men.

Another in the works is a standalone novel of a young woman during WWII who has her own war to fight—at home.

SFH: I know you're really good at marketing your books. Do you have a background in marketing or is it something you've learned along the way?

Sylvia: I am? Oh, thanks. No, I don’t have a marketing background, although I suppose being a preacher’s wife all those years taught me something about reaching people, eh?

I just hustle—thinking, always thinking about new and creative ways to attract readers, which results in many sleepless nights, of course. I go to bed some nights and my brain just won’t shut off long enough for the Z’s to catch up. It has been said that I see everything and miss nothing. I guess I do. Maybe it’s that right/left brain connection. I’m left-handed and I’ve read that many left-handers draw from both hemispheres of the brain more than do right-handers. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it sounds impressive, don’t you think?

Seriously, I enjoy marketing. I love meeting people; I love creating an environment at my book signings that will attract readers and be fun for everyone involved. I believe life is too short, and if you can’t have fun doing what you’re doing, then don’t do it. Plus, I see it as another one of those challenges—let’s see how many people I can get to listen to me talk about my book, and us both enjoy it.

The difficulty is that marketing is a process that must involve others, and writing is a solitary activity. Writing a first draft takes lots of focus, and when I get bogged down in the plot, it is so easy to put that aside and do a little marketing—looking for a place to have a book-signing or talk to a book club. Which, of course, doesn’t help me get that first draft written!

SFH: You also do a lot of the more technical stuff on your website and blog. Did you have help with things like the YouTube video for Deadly Sins, Deadly Secrets or the slideshow on your blog? Are these things the average author can learn to do?

Sylvia: Before my first book came out I developed my own site using a template, and did pretty well with it, I thought. But then time started getting more precious and I hired a web maven to help me with it. She’s great, and helps keep things on track. I do my own blog. And yes, these are things any author can learn to do for themselves. They are not really high tech; they just take time to first figure out how to do it, and then time to keep things fresh and up to date. I love working with websites and blogs. It is truly fun to learn. Actually, when I get tired of writing I think I’ll buy the software and learn how to design book covers!

SFH: With two books under your belt and another in the works and much experience at marketing, including an upcoming Carnival cruise where you're a featured author, has anything surprised you along the way?

Sylvia: Yes, that I got my first book published!

The process to having a book published in today’s market is indeed discouraging. The market is tight and difficult to break into. Anyone who doesn’t have to write in order to breathe would be better off finding another way to express themselves.

SFH: You lead a lot of different workshops and you work with aspiring authors. What advice do you have for writers who are struggling to get published?

Sylvia: DON’T GIVE UP—Instead, keep learning new and better ways to both write, and to present your work. Hire a professional editor to read your manuscript and give you honest feedback. Do not be offended by their suggestions. One fantastic woman (a retired English teacher) who has reviewed both of my books told me she’d share her red-marked copy of my ARC with me if I would not be offended. I said of course, that I’d love that feedback. It may sting, but it would make me a much better writer. I strive for perfection, even though I fall far short of that goal.

If you have sent out ten query letters and received rejections on them all, modify your query, have someone knowledgeable about them give you suggestions, make changes, and then send out ten more. Then, with every rejection letter that comes in, repeat that same process. Discontinue that process ONLY when there are no more viable agents/editors that you can find, or at least until you have sent out two or three hundred letters.

AND, learn to laugh every time you get a rejection letter. I got to where I’d announce to my husband, “Hey, look, another neg letter!” Wear them like a badge of courage, because indeed they are.

If you feel like you have a great manuscript, and other knowledgeable people have given you the same feedback (family members and friends don’t count in this equation) then don’t accept no for your final answer. Keep working until you get that YES! And it only takes one.

SFH: Thank you Sylvia!

Sylvia definitely isn’t sitting around or worrying about rejections. She has a whole list of books, both fiction and nonfiction, she’s working on, including more in the Sidra Smart/Third Eye Series.

And she’s in demand for speaking and workshop engagements. In the Fall, she’ll be teaching writing classes aboard a Carnival cruise.

As a wonderful bonus for all the Straight From Hel readers, you can sign up for a chance at a free copy of one of her books. Just email your name and address to her at sylvia@sylviadickeysmith.com. You’ll have through February 29, 2008 to enter.

Also, if you have any questions for Sylvia, post them here in the comments section.

Thank you again, Sylvia.

Rejection Letters

Unless you’re just writing the first draft of your first attempt at a book, you’ve probably queried agents. And unless your first query letter was an immediate success, you probably have your own horror story or tale of woe.

You’ve queried a hundred agents and got a hundred and four rejections. You had six agents show interest and ask for the full manuscript then heard back from absolutely none of them. You sat at your desk and stared at the phone for three days, unable to make your hand pick up the receiver and call an agent who, eight months ago, said they’d get back to you in six weeks. You landed an agent who was enthusiastic about your book and your chances of snagging an editor/publisher, then checked his website, only to read that he’s decided not to represent fiction (or nonfiction –whichever is the one you write) since he’s not having any luck selling it.

Most unpublished authors, if they’ve been in the business long enough, have a three-inch notebook or a foot-high stack of rejection letters/notecards/strips of paper saying “not for me,” or “not right for our agency,” or “loved the characters, hated the setting,” or “hilarious but just accepted another similar manuscript yesterday,” or some other equally obscure, coulda-been-a-stamp comment.

Gina Barreca, in The Chronicle Review, wrote a piece called “Growing Literary Agents from Stem Cells.” It’ll give you a laugh to start your day.

Get out your notebook of rejections. Ignore the recent additions – they’re still too painful to read. Go back a few months or a few manuscripts. What’s your favorite (read: craziest or most asinine) – now that the sting has had time to go away? What was your favorite from the other end of the scale (read: most helpful or informative)?

Maybe it’s time to reorganize your collection. Instead of lumping them all together, make two piles – hurtful and helpful. If you must keep the hurtful comments, pack them away in a box in a dark place. Keep out the helpful ones. You can use those to boost your spirits on a difficult writing day, or to rev your courage up to make a call to an agent, or just to keep you working when you begin to wonder why you ever thought you could be a writer.

Querying Foreign Agents

I was asked a question about querying agents. The writer was from out of country, India to be specific. He wanted to know if he could query American agents.

The answer is yes. You can live anywhere in the world and seek representation by an American agent. Just as anyone here can query an agent in England or Australia or even India, etc.

The question really shouldn’t be, can I query an agent in the States. It should be, should I query an agent in another country.

American agents don’t look at the postmark on a query to see where it came from. They look at the query and sample pages to see if they want to ask for more. And they consider whether they can sell it.

Lately, it seems like there’s been a slurry of books written by authors living in other countries that have become popular here in the US. But keep in mind that an agent in the US is going to be most familiar with publishers here in the US, just as a British agent is going to be most connected with publishers in that country, and so on and so on. So, if your book will most likely sell best in India, then go for an agent in that country. Your agent will have the strongest connections there.

This is not to say that an American agent couldn’t sell your book in whatever country you live in. American agents have some connections overseas and most agencies have an in-house foreign rights agent or they have an agreement with another agent who has those skills. But their focus is going to be on publishers here in the States.

But if you know or feel your book would be a hit in China, but not in France, why go for an agent in the US or in France or in England? Especially if you live in China. On the other hand, if your best fit is with an American agent, even though you live elsewhere, then go for it.

If what’s stopping you is that you think it wouldn’t work since you live so far away you’d never meet your agent, then welcome to the world of a lot of writers. Living in the same country doesn’t mean you’ll become fast friends and coffee buds with your agent. Plenty of authors only know their agents via phone calls or emails.

So, when it comes to looking for an agent, consider where your book will sell and why you’re querying.

The Elusive Agent

One thing I love about blogging and doing my newsletter, Doing It Write, is that it takes this huge world we live on and makes it rather small and intimate. To illustrate: One time I received an email from a woman living in the U.K. who, on the advice of a friend in Israel, had written me here in the U.S.

She wanted to know how to get an agent interested in her books. Her experience in querying agents here in the U.S. and in the U.K. was that, unless you were a big "name," you couldn't get in the door.

I don't know a lot about agents in other countries, but here in the States, she's not far off in her evaluation. It is quite difficult for most writers to find an agent.

Having an agent is pretty much essential in the States. It used to be that you could query the major publishers directly. Not really possible anymore, although you can go directly to most of the smaller presses. In some ways, it’s even getting harder to query an agent! A few of the big agencies won't even read your query letter unless you have a recommendation from an author they know or represent.

As far as a new author finding an agent:
First off, do not pay an agent up-front money to represent you. If he (or she) asks for money to sign you up, run the other way. Chances are, it's a rip-off or scam. It tells you that agent is not making money selling the works of his authors, but on signing up authors. Yes, you will probably have some expenses along the way with a legitimate agent -- mailings of your manuscript to editors, for example. Until he sells you, he's not making any money and he has overhead. He won’t ask for a lump sum of money, though. You’ll get a detailed listing of where the expenses were incurred. And some agents are part of an editing business, but that's separate from their services as an agent and should not be a requirement for him to represent you.

Secondly, don’t be surprised if you don’t make headway with the "big" agents. They represent the major authors and usually don't even consider anyone that's not recommended to them. So, unless you know one of their clients or an established author who will recommend you, look for smaller, newer agencies; they're hungry for clients. Now, I’m not saying never query the big agencies or that agent who represents your favorite author. Just recognize the odds are against you. A safe place to start your search is with those who are members of AAR (The Association of Author Representatives). Members of the AAR agree to a code of ethics and don't charge up-front fees. Choose agents not on that list at your own risk, although there are a lot who are not members of the AAR who are legitimate – but without that “seal of approval,” it’s harder to tell.

How do you find them? We’ll start exploring that tomorrow.

Multiple Hard Copies

Here’s another tip about backing up your work. Don’t back up with more than one hard copy.

I know people who have multiple copies of their manuscripts in storage or on shelves in the garage. They send a copy to an agent, it gets rejected, they put it on the shelf along with the rejection letter. The same thing happens to the next copy and they stack it up. And the pile gets higher.

You only need one hard copy. And I’d make it the latest version. I usually keep a copy saved on a CD or the external hard drive of the original and the latest version. If I make changes, I save over the “old” latest version.

If you’ve only made minor changes, you don’t need to print a new copy. But if you do make major edits or rewrites, then you can consider printing a new hard copy – throw out the old one.

But, seriously, five, six copies of the same manuscript are not necessary.

You can keep those rejection letters if you want. Put them in a folder, under the agency’s name. Or if you’re tracking your queries on your computer, enter the information concerning the rejection in your files. I like to keep track of things like:

• Response time
• Comments
• Requests for more
• Name of who responded (sometimes it’s not the agent)

Always try to make your life easier. And sorting through multiple copies of a manuscript, trying to figure out which was the latest version, is not easy.

Query Letter Basics

Since we’re on the subject of query letters, let’s talk basics.

Print your letter on stationery. I don’t mean you have to have special stationery printed on high quality colorful paper. No fancy colors, use white paper. Not some super thick paper with a linen feel to it. Regular paper. You can make your own letterhead as a template. You can design whatever suits you, but include your name, address, and other contact information. On mine I include phone, fax, cell, website, and blog address. I put all of that at the top. You can divide it between header and footer, if you want. Then, whenever you type a query letter, use your template and print it out on your own printer.

If your printer will print envelopes, then use it. No sin in hand writing an envelope, but there’s less chance of the post office misreading the address if it’s been done on a machine rather than by hand.

Include a SASE. It’s becoming more common for writers to include only a reply SASE when they send in pages. In other words, an agent asks for the first fifty pages. You send it in a manilla envelope, but rather than include a stamped self-addressed manilla envelope for the return of all the pages, you send only a regular business envelope for the reply. If you do that, though, then let the agent know that it’s okay with you to discard the pages. If it’s not okay with you or if you want to have the pages back so you can see if there’s any clue that he/she actually read the pages, then send enough postage and the correct size envelope for all of it to be returned.

Don’t do any overnight or signature-required mailings. No need to do that. It’s expensive, and it marks you as an amateur. It also won’t do anything to speed up the response from the agent.

Do pay attention to the really basic stuff like spelling (especially of the agent’s name), grammar, punctuation, and enclosures. Don’t get so involved in sending out multiple queries that you stuff the letter to agent X in the envelope addressed to agent Y. If you can’t tell whether the agent is a man or woman by looking at the first name, then don’t put Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Use their full name. Or look on the agency’s website to see if there are pictures of the agents. Or do a little investigating on the web to look for articles by or about the agent which might give you a clue. Or call the agency and ask.

That’s pretty much the basics. Oh yeah, don’t forget to sign the letter.