Getting Published

I am currently finishing my second mystery novel while I try to get an agent for the first one. I have submitted the query letter and various materials to over 70 agents and generated interest in only one, who promptly turned me down. Is my book unsaleable? I don't know. I know I'm a good writer. I'm a skilled writer. But will I sell? I mention my abilities because the first requirement in getting published is a good, solid sense of your own abilities. Because you will get pummeled. Severely. So if your writing ego is fragile, you will die the death of a thousand stings.

Anyhow, the rejection letters I received tell a story that may help out the next writer who looks at these pages.

First, the ways to get published, in order from easiest (and most likely to succeed) to hardest (and hardest).

1. Move to New York and make friends with some agents and editors. Note: even if you get an editor interested, you will still likely need an agent. Only a miniscule number of publishers will bypass an agent.
2. Find an author who will let you say you have been recommended to her agent. She doesn't have to actually know you, let alone your work, as long as she lets you say you've been referred by her. Many agents will only take writers who have been recommended by one of their current clients. Which gives you some idea of the incestuous nature of the business.
3. Query agents cold. And get pummeled.

There is a fourth way that agents recommend: go to a writers conference and talk to agents. A friend found a very big problem with this: the agents will probably not remember you nor inviting you to submit your materials. And they are dumb enough to tell you they don't remember. This is a double pummeling.

Querying for Fiction

There are also three parts to the query package for fiction (spooky, huh?):

1. The query letter. And you better believe it's a bitch getting that thing into one page without making it a single paragraph. But it needs to be one page. You should tell the important things about the book, usually plot and characters, depending on which is the strongest feature of your book. And you have to make it sparkle. (Yeech!)

   You also have to tell about your writing/field-of-expertise credentials. And agents want a paragraph, not presented as a list of published works, nor as a resume. They don't like bulleted items that make things easier to read. They are not about easier to read. These weird people require you to waste their time, and then they whine because they have too much work. Why? Because...they actually believe they can judge your novel writing skills by reading a marketing/advertising piece. The poor things don't understand that these are two entirely different writing types. (I made a list once of types of writing, and there are over 2000 distinct types of writing.) I can't do poetry, and I can't do advertising writing even if someone holds a gun to my head. When I market my own business, I do it with informational writing—giving my target market of executives information they probably don't know, such as—“a sentence should begin with a capital letter.”

   The third item in this one page letter is how you plan to sell your book. That's right...how you plan to sell it. The publisher has virtually no function in today's publishing world except handling fulfillment and putting your book on its publicity list, and having its editors drive you nuts with contracts and changes, and then the editor flies away to another publisher, and you begin all over again with a new editor who wants different changes. And the agent won't even go over and punch the editor out. I mean you're paying the agent 15% of your gross, and the fool won't even kick a little editorial ass.

   Also somewhere on that one-page query letter you've got to tell them that you write like best-selling author, XXXX. Because they are looking for the next XXXX, not for a new YYYY.

2. The synopsis: This is a two page, double-spaced condensation of the novel (500 words). Naturally, when you condense a novel, you take all the juice out. Just ask Cliff Notes. And they get lots more than two pages for their condensations. Plus, again, it's a different kind of writing, and if you don't have any talent for that, well, then you obviously can't write a novel. Some agents will look at four pages, but the vast majority of agents don't want to see a synopsis at all.
3. An SASE: Publishing-speak for a self-addressed, stamped envelope, so they can send the rejection letter to you. Except that several agents have stolen my stamp. One replied by e-mail, and many did not reply at all. They have my damned stamps, and I want them back. And one agent requests a self-sealing etc. (SSSASE). Her complaint is she gets tired of licking so many envelopes. Lady, you ever heard of a wet sponge?

The Agents

Now the table. I put the names and addresses of agents into a merge table and converted it to a pdf file. It's in order by the first word in the business title, which is the only option available in a basic sorting program like Wordperfect. So look around if you don't find a name where you expect it. I built this list from some lists I found on the Internet, a little information from the Association of Authors' Representatives (AAR) which is sooo out-of-date, and a book. One of the rejection letters advised me to get the AAR list. This is a strike against that agent for not knowing how out-of-date it is. I used the addresses on that list (which doesn't have any information at all except name and addresses) for two queries and both were returned to me with no forwarding on file, meaning that the addresses were over a year old. Conversely, you do want an agent who at least subscribes to their ethics code. Otherwise, you could could fall prey to an agent who wants money just to read your stuff. Avoid these “agents.”

The book I used is 2005 Guide to Literary Agents by Kathryn S. Brogan, Editor. Get it. Don't bother with Writers Market or Literary Market Place. You can check these out at the library if you want to. There aren't that many agents in Writers Market because agents know that new writers usually use this book, and they don't want new writers. Literary Market Place has more agents listed because professionals use it a lot, but there isn't much about each agent. Plus these books cost a lot of money, particularly Literary Market Place. If you use them at the library, you need to photocopy the index-by-speciality, and then use that to look through the agents. If you actually buy it, you can just tear the index page out. I was looking for agents who represent mysteries, and this is another problem. Agents are sent response forms from the editors of these books, and the agents tend to check all the boxes (types of books represented) even if they've never represented a writer for that genre because they think they might want to represent that kind of book...maybe...if they really like the book. So they check the box, and you waste some stamps and paper, and take another pummeling.

Some agents insist on being the only one you query (no simultaneous queries). They take two months to reply, but they want exclusivity. And if you look at my table, several agents never replied. So how could you guarantee anyone exclusivity of the query? When, and if, you send the whole manuscript, it should be sent to one agent only, but for the query...well I wouldn't recommend you query 200 agents at a time, because when the rejections come in there is no more hope. I query about four at a time to sustain my hopes with the knowledge that there are still some unqueried agents on my list.

I queried one agent twice by mistake, and they never noticed. And I lost the replies of three or four agents. But compared with the number of agents who didn't reply to my query, I win with fewer goofs. The topper (which also happened when I was job hunting many years ago): I got a rejection card from an agency not on my list. Arcadia. Nothing else on the postcard: just Arcadia. These things are freaky.

In the comments area of the table, I wrote my impression of that agent/the rejection letter. A few are annotated “avoid” mostly because they seemed to be not working on all cylinders. The reasons are in the comments.

A lot of the agents can't write a simple sentence or a cogent paragraph, which is also scary. Some agents just wrote a note on my query letter and sent it back. I didn't hold that against them, but I would never do it: It's just unprofessional.

At least one agent I queried, and I suspect more, may not even have a computer. Another one can't seem to get the full text alignment to disengage in the word processing software.

But a few agents really expended some effort to avoid bruising the author's ego, and for them, I am grateful.

Do buy 2005 Guide to Literary Agents. It has lots of valuable information, but it isn't updated every year. Notice also a nice little thing called the agent's website. Do what they tell you to do on their web site, that is if their website is still available. And they will get, oh, so detailed about what they want. Why they want it a particular way, I'll never understand, but the little darlings must be kept happy, mustn't they? The agent's website is valuable for everything except whether the agent is accepting new clients. For some reason, some agents can't seem to master the concept of electronic information. Apparently every time they change something (such as no longer accepting new clients), they feel that they would have to call in the web designer to change the site, so they don't change it. HTML ain't all that hard, people.

Some of the things I've noted in the comments, such as “postcard” are fine with me. I can understand the benefits of a postcard when stuffing 800 envelopes a month.

And finally, agents move a lot, which adds to the fun of finding one. It also adds credence to my belief that the only office equipment they have mastered is the pen.