Fiction

Again the query letter should be no more than two pages. Trying to distill all the plot and characters of a complex novel down to a few paragraphs can be agony. But again, everyone is in the same boat. So don’t worry if your first draft doesn’t read quite right.

The fiction query is tricky because you want to show the creativity of your fiction writing—and make a sales presentation to the editor at the same time.

You need to get the reader’s attention right away. Perhaps pose a question: “Have you ever wondered what a near-death experience really feels like?”

Then, summarize the characters, plot, and theme.

Þ Emphasize the challenges the main characters face, and how they overcome them.

Þ The protagonist/antagonist conflict. Drama is conflict.

Þ “Put the characters up a tree, throw rocks at them, bring them back down.”

Remember that memorable books have memorable characters.

“Character drives plot, not the reverse.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

You also need to describe the genre the book fits in (romance, chic lit, mystery, mainstream, literary). Tell who the audience is for the book. And of course include the word count.

Describe your writing background, publishing credits, or educational level. Along with any specific reasons you are the best person to be writing this particular book.

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Dee Power with Brian Hill are the authors of The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories From Authors, and the Editors, Agents and Booksellers Behind Them, Attracting Capital From Angels, Inside Secrets To Venture Capital and the novel, Over Time. You can reach her through her website, http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com

To Be or Not To Be: Published

Writer’s Digest estimates that there are 24 million people in the United States that consider themselves writers but less than 5% are published. Published? What exactly is published?

With the advances in technology these days, print on demand specifically, anyone can become “published;” if published is defined strictly as written material that is accessible to the public.

Many authors who have chosen the publish on demand (POD) route, insist on sharing the title of published. It’s true their books can be bought on internet sites, can be ordered in bookstores, although they are not, as a general rule, stocked by bookstores, and are available as bound physical copies, mostly trade paperback.

But isn't there more to being published than being available to the public? Are these authors really published or have their books just been printed? After all, no third party has objectively reviewed their work and deemed it marketable. No publisher has risked their resources, through paying an advance, printing several thousand (or in the case of a small press – several hundred) copies, and devoting marketing efforts to promote the title.

The publishing industry seems to consider publish on demand books second class citizens as well. Many newspapers will not, as a matter of policy, consider POD books for review. Quite a few authors' associations, The Author's Guild to name one, don't accept POD books as qualification for joining. Acquisition editors at publishing houses and literary agents don't consider a publish on demand book a writing credit.

Many bookstores including Barnes and Noble will not stock POD books. Yes, you will find a few copies in bookstores here and there. Bookstores want to support local authors.

I asked Michael Powell Will books published by POD publishers ever reach the mainstream of the bookstores?

Michael’s answer: “No. While the physical appearance of these books has improved over the last few years, the quality of the inside content hasn’t. There’s no recognizable imprint of a house, you don’t know what you’re getting. There is no editor to vet the book, there is no sales staff in place, no catalog, no distribution system, the sales terms aren’t the norm. I don’t think those types of books will ever make it outside the ‘local author’ or ‘regional book’ arena.

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It’s not that I begrudge the status of published to any other writer. Or that I believe there are only so many publishing slots available, and I have to elbow the other writers out of the way, a dance of musical chairs for books if you will.

Just because a title has been accepted by a commercial publisher doesn’t mean that it is necessarily better than any other specific self published book. And not all good books eventually find a publishing home.

There is almost a backlash from publish on demand authors, a bitterness, or jealousy, of commercially published authors. I’m not sure why.

What is the definition of published?

Dee
http://www.BrianHillAndDeePower.com
Co-author of The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories From Authors and the Editors, Agents and Booksellers Behind Them and several other books.

Literary Agents: All You Need to Know (well almost)

Part One

Every day for the next two weeks there will be an installment. Questions about agents are encouraged in the comment section. If I don't know the answer I'll try to find out.

The Probability of Publishing

Traditional publishing houses include major players such as Warner Books, small publishers such as Algonquin Books, niche publishers, and regional publishers. Traditional publishers pay the author, usually an advance and royalties based on the actual sales of the book. There is a range between small and large publishing houses as to these payments. But the key is the author gets paid. The author has no upfront fees to pay the publisher and isn’t under any obligation to purchase any books.

Traditional houses are very selective when acquiring books. While 172,000 new books were published in 2005, estimates have been made that only 1 out of 1000 books written gets published. Writers Digest has said that there are 24 million people in the US who describe themselves as creative writers. Less than 5% of these writers have actually, ever, been published.

Publisher or Literary Agent?

Literary agents represent the author’s work to publishers for a percentage of the author’s earnings, both the advance and royalties. An agent is up to date on which editor at what house is interested in what subjects, or in the case of fiction, which genre. Agents act as a screening device for editors at the publishing houses, filtering out the uninteresting, badly written or boring manuscripts and only presenting the professionally polished saleable works to the appropriate editor. Or that’s how it works in theory. A (good) agent can quickly get the attention of book publishers. They spend time and energy developing relationships with publishers.

The agent negotiates the contract between the publisher and the author. There's more to it than just the size of the advance and royalty percentage. There are foreign rights, television and movie rights, audio rights, syndication rights and more. The payment for those rights are split between the publisher and the author. The payment to the author can go against the advance or can be in addition to the advance. In other words, if an advance of $25,000 was paid for the title, the author would have to wait until the sales of the book earn the amount of the advance before any additional monies are paid. Or the payment for the sold rights can be paid immediately. The agent can negotiate which.

The agent receives the entire advance from the publisher and deposits it into an escrow account set up for the author at the agency. The agent then subtracts their commission, usually 15% and writes a check from the escrow account to the author. any additional royalty checks over and above the advance are treated the same way.

Do You Need An Agent?

NO

All three of our nonfiction books were placed by us directly contacting the publisher.

Small publishing houses and niche publishers are more open to being contacted by an author.

An entertainment or literary attorney can negotiate the contract for you, or review it for far less than the 15% agent’s fee.

Editors at major houses attend writers’ conferences and will consider pitches by authors at those conferences.

Romance publishers will often accept queries from authors directly.

YES

An agent can guide you in putting together a book proposal.

An agent is a buffer between the editor and the author during negotiations and throughout the publication process.

An agent knows what is reasonable in a contract and what isn’t.

An agent knows which editor has changed houses or is looking to broaden a list or add a new category to their list.

When there is a disagreement between the editor and the author, the agent can step in and resolve the differences.

Concerning fiction, nearly every major publishing house says they work only through agents. Unsolicited manuscripts are often returned unread.

Even bestselling authors still require an agent.
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Come back tomorrow and we'll cover Finding An Agent.

Dee Power is the co-author, with Brian Hill of Inside Secrets To Venture Capital, Attracting Capital from Angels, and the novel Over Time. Her latest book, The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories from Authors and the Editors, Agents and Booksellers Behind Them, includes extensive research on the publishing industry and interviews with bestselling authors, editors, agents and experts.

How to Find a Literary Agent: Use the Write Bait

Most aspiring authors begin their careers with little or no understanding of how to go about finding an agent to represent their work. They quickly learn that most major publishing houses only accept submissions through literary agents. So, they begin sending query letters to agents and, usually, meet with a cool reception, or even hit a high, solid, impenetrable brick wall. We surveyed over 60 literary agents, from both large well-known agencies as well as smaller “boutique” agencies, to get a perspective on how authors can improve their chances of attracting an agent, and to find out the outlook for new authors trying to crack into the publishing industry.

We asked the agents:

In attempting to find an agent, how much competition does a new author really face?

What is the most common reason you decline to represent a writer?

What is the most critical mistake writers make when approaching agents?

Where do agents find clients?

In the next 12 to 24 months do you see the publishing industry becoming more or less favorable for new (unpublished) authors?

In order to obtain the most candid comments possible, we told the agents their responses to our questions would not be attributed to them (and as a result they were even more candid than we expected).

How Much Competition Does A New Author Really Face?

Unfortunately, the response was: a tremendous amount. The agents reported that they receive, on average, 90 unsolicited submissions per week. Out of these more than 4,500 submissions that come in each year, the agents, on average, took on 11 new clients. This means that the typical agent agreed to represent a little more than 2 out of 1000 of the authors that contacted them with unsolicited submissions. Regarding the 998 authors who did not receive a contract, we asked the agents:

What Is The Most Common Reason You Decline To Represent A Writer?

Poor writing 60%
Book was outside the agent’s genre 17%
Agent’s client base was full 10%
Writer’s work and agent don’t click 8%
Other 5%

The good news is that the top two reasons given are factors that are under the writer’s control. Most authors develop and improve their craft over a number of years, and even bestselling authors say when they were first starting out their initial literary efforts left something to be desired. A dedicated writer certainly doesn’t have to remain in that “poor writing” category.

But what exactly is “poor writing”? In the decline letters they send to authors, agents often say they turned the author down because they aren’t enthusiastic enough about the material. A favorite phrase used by agents in turndown letters is, “I simply didn’t fall in love with the writing.” This is probably the source of more author frustration than any other aspect of trying to get published. Success or failure hinges on extremely subjective judgments, and once the judgment is rendered, it is final. Talking an agent out of an opinion is pretty much impossible. Think about your own reading experience. How often do you pick up a novel, read 10 pages, decide you aren’t interested in it, and put it down? Does that mean the writing was “poor”? Not at all. It simply means you didn’t connect with the story, for reasons you may not even be able to articulate. Every individual’s literary taste is different.

One frequently received type of rejection isn’t really ‘rejection’ at all: The agent has all the clients they can handle at the present time, so they really have no choice but to send a decline letter to unsolicited submissions. The agent in this case was doing the author a favor; far worse it would have been to accept a new client that would not get the necessary attention from the agent. Too often, though, authors interpret receiving a decline letter such as this as, “my book must not be any good.” Actually, the agent may not even had time to read your submission package.

Notice that the fact a writer was unpublished was not a significant reason for being rejected as a client.

What Should Be In a Book Proposal

The agent said yes to the query letter! Finding out how to write a book proposal is your next step.

The agent will let you know what they want to see. Even with an affirmative response, they don’t always ask for a full manuscript. A nonfiction book hasn’t been written yet in most cases, so there isn’t a manuscript to send. What publishers and agents will ask for is a proposal for your nonfiction book.

A Nonfiction Book Proposal

Concept:
A brief, no more than one page description about why your book is unique.

Market:
Who will buy your book and why. Include the demographics of your potential readers and how many of them there are. If you can, quote statistics, such as baseball is the most often viewed sport on TV with x million people watching. Or x number of people attend arts and crafts shows a year. Or $xxx dollars of revenues are generated by customers buying garden tools. Whatever is relevant to your book’s topic.

Competition:
Similar books that have been published in the last year or that will be coming out soon. You can get an idea of soon-to-be published books by going to amazon.com, and searching under key words. When you get a listing of books that you think are similar to yours, then rank by publication date.

Include the title, author, ISBN, and a brief description. Then state why your book is better or what your book addresses that the competition doesn’t.

Go to the library and read currently available books you feel are competitive to yours. Again include the title, author, ISBN, and a brief description. Then state why your book is better or what your book addresses that the competition doesn’t.

All books have competitors.

Promotion:
What you will do for promotion. How will you market your book? Be specific. If you are willing to give seminars or speak at events, try to line up a few. Publishers want authors that actively market their own books. This doesn’t mean that you have to spend money, but it does mean you have to expend effort.

About The Author:
Pretty self explanatory. What makes you the best author to write this book. This is not a resume; include what is relevant to the topic of the book. If you have previous books published list them, with a short description.

Media Placement:
Any newspaper or magazine articles you’ve been featured in. Include articles that you’ve written and have published. Offline, hard copy publications are better than online. Online is better than nothing. Plan ahead and in the months while you’re working on your book proposal see if you can get a few articles placed. If you have just a few, include clippings. If you have more than a few, list the publication, date, title of the article. Writing a book makes you an expert in the eyes of the media, but you have to let them know you’re available.

Endorsements:
If you can get a well known authority figure, expert, celebrity or author to give you an endorsement, or to commit to an endorsement, it puts you ahead in the game.

Chapter Outline or Synopsis:
Two to four pages. Each chapter is listed and the subheadings with a brief description, a paragraph or two explaining what will be included in the chapter.

Sample Chapter:
It doesn’t have to be the first chapter. Pick the chapter you’re most excited to write, or that you are the most knowledgeable about. The editor will judge the quality of your writing by this chapter.

The proposal not including the sample chapter can run from 10 to 20 pages.

Discover How You Can Achieve Your Dream And Get Your Book Published. Sneak peek of Dee Power's new book, The Publishing Primer. Get your free chapter. Find out how books get in bookstores. How bookstores select titles. How the bestseller lists work. What boosts a book to the top of the bestseller list? And frequently asked questions about publishing