Posted on - No Comments on Fee-charging agencies, Part IV: non-charging agencies that charge fees

Fee-charging agencies, Part IV: non-charging agencies that charge fees

For the past few days, I have been examining agencies from the other side of the looking glass: not in terms of the well-advertised ways that an agency can help a writer make money, but instead how some agencies (and “agencies”) make money off writers by not selling their work. Today, I am going to discuss ways that ostensibly NON-fee-charging agencies charge their clients money, over and above the standard 15% of eventual book sales.

Some of you who went running to the standard agency guides after my last couple of posts were a bit startled, weren’t you? “But Anne,” I heard some of you out there murmuring, “I’m interested in an agency that the guides say charges for certain things — postage, for instance, or photocopying. Does this mean that I should avoid them?”

No — but this is an excellent question, one you should definitely discuss with any agent who offers to represent you. Hang on a moment, though, while I bring the folks who haven’t taken a gander at a guide lately up to speed.

The standard guides — the book ones, that is; the online guides tend not to — ask agencies point-blank whether they charge their clients any additional service fees or ask for upfront payments. (In the extremely reliable Writer’s Digest guide, the answers to this question are found under the TERMS part of each listing.) Pay attention: they are asking for YOUR benefit.

Most of the time, when non-fee-charging agents charge their clients, it is for office expenses: photocopying, postage, courier fees, and occasionally even long-distance calls, although this last practice has declined as long-distance calls have become cheaper. The AAR allows this, for much the same reason that the IRS allows writers to take query postage, letterhead, and printer cartridges as business deductions — these are all legitimate costs associated with selling a particular book.

Typically, these costs are deducted from your first advance check, but some agencies ask for office expense money up front; if you’re asked for hundreds of dollars, start asking very pointed questions about what they intend to do with it. However, the vast majority of agencies that charge these fees genuinely do try to keep the costs as low as possible. They just want you to pay for them.

Don’t be shy about asking — if your agency charges for such services, the costs should be spelled out in your representation contract, and you should discuss the details with your potential agent BEFORE you sign. Sometimes, the terms are negotiable, believe it or not. If the per-page photocopying charges seem excessive, for instance, it’s often worth your while to ask if you can make your own copies of your book and mail them to the agency; it’s usually cheaper per page.

For tips on how to go into the particulars of a proffered contract without offending anyone, see tomorrow’s blog. For now, let’s keep moving through expenses and tackle the upfront or reading fee.

The upfront fee is precisely what it says on the box: the agency either charges writers a fee for screening their submissions, as I discussed yesterday, or charges an advance against the advance, as it were. Again, the AAR frowns upon this, so if you are asked for such a fee by a member agent, feel free to report them.

Sometimes, though, the question of upfront fees is not so straightforward. There are agents who are technically non-fee-charging agents (i.e., they do not charge for an initial read) who nevertheless ask potential (and sometimes even current) clients to pay them for editing services. These agents will find a query they like, respond enthusiastically, ask to see the manuscript, THEN ask for a critique fee in order to get the manuscript ready for publication. Sometimes, they even sign the client BEFORE asking for the critique fee, so it comes as something of a surprise.

Usually, these fees are not very much — $50-$100 seems to be the norm — but essentially, such an agency is asking the author to pay their in-house editor’s salary. And yes, Virginia, some of the agencies that do this are indeed members of the AAR and thus are listed as non-fee-charging in the standard guides.

How can they pull this off? Because less than 2% of these agencies’ income, ostensibly, comes from providing such services. (Or they are lying about it in the guides. If neither the AAR or a standard guide receives a complaint that an agency is charging clients fees, the chances they are going to be caught in the lie are slim to none.)

Thus, a request for a critique fee from ANY agent should prompt you to ask some questions IMMEDIATELY, such as how much of the agency’s income is generated by critique fees rather than by commissions (it should be under 2%), whether the fee will be refunded after your first book is sold (this varies), and whether any and all fees are spelled out explicitly in the agency contract (they should be). If the answers seem at all odd, or if the agent hedges, PLEASE report it immediately to the AAR (if the agency in question is a member), Preditors and Editors (so other writers may be warned), and me (ditto).

As with a reading fee paid to a fee-charging agent, bear in mind that ANY upfront fee does not necessarily guarantee that the agent will sign you. In fact, with an officially non-fee-charging agency, paying an upfront or editing fee COULDN’T be a precondition for representation; it would be false advertising.

Again, all a critique fee EVER guarantees is that you will get feedback on your manuscript. This can vary from an array of simple summary statements (“The murder is believable, but the manuscript begins to drag when the posse of nuns arrives”) to very specific, concrete revision suggestions (“Switch chapters four and five, and lose all of the semicolons.”)

Don’t let the power differential blind you to the sensibility of doing a little comparison shopping before you agree to see if you can get the service they are offering cheaper elsewhere. If the agent suggests that your work needs hardcore editing before it is sent out, check out what local freelance editors would charge before you agree to pay their in-house editor.

Also, be aware that the quality (and quantity) of commentary varies WILDLY amongst agents who charge critique fees — just as it does amongst agents who don’t charge for feedback. As I believe I’ve mentioned roughly 200 times in the last four months, over and above certain technical matters, an agent’s response to a manuscript is largely subjective. I’ve known agents to give five single-spaced pages of specific guidelines on revising a manuscript, and ones who scrawled two lines on the back of the title page, handed the MS back to the author, and called it good.

Familiarity with the current publishing market is also quite variable; as anyone who has ever attended a large writers’ conference can tell you, MOST agents speak about the market in general as though they were intimately conversant with every aspect of it. This is just not how the industry works: agents specialize.

So while it is obviously in your best interest to make sure that the agent representing you has strong connections in your chosen genre, it is doubly important that the agent who is charging you for feedback has firm basis for telling you what aspects of your book will and will not fly in the current marketplace. Emphasis on CURRENT, because this is an industry whose tastes change on practically a monthly basis..

Before you lay down a single nickel or invest significant amounts of time in following the advice you receive in return for a critique fee, do your research, to make sure that the critiquing agent does indeed have a good grasp of your market. Checking the Publishers Marketplace database to see if she has sold anything like it within the last two years would be a good place to start, as would asking for a client list. Ask if you can talk to another client, preferably a published one, who has used the in-house editing service with success. Ask what about your book WILL sell; ask for comparisons to other books on the market.

And no, to a credible agent, these should NOT be offensive questions. If an agent who has already made a representation offer (or with whom you have already signed) is serious about feeling that your book needs in-house editing before he submits it to publishers, he should be able to give you concrete reasons why, not just platitudes about how tough it is to sell a book these days. Because, as many of us know from long, hard experience, manuscripts that aren’t already technically close to perfect very seldom receive representation offers: it’s not as though you would need to pay your agency to have someone switch the book into standard format, after all, or to make it coherent.

A good place to start the questions might be, “If you charged for this service, why didn’t you say so in your listing in Guide X?” Because if the agency is charging clients for services and not telling the standard guides about it, that should raise all kinds of red flags for you.

You need to be able to trust these people: if everything works out as it should, they will be handling the bulk of your income for years to come.

One final caveat about agents who charge this kind of fee: some of them do make good sales, but bear in mind that any agent who spends a significant proportion of his time critiquing the work of potential clients must necessarily spend a lower percentage of his time selling the work of his existing clients.

This is true of non-fee-charging agents as well, of course. So when you are searching for agents, give it some thought: do you really want to be represented by someone who spends half his time reworking his clients’ books. Or traveling around the country, teaching classes for writers? Or who spends a quarter of every workday maintaining a fabulous blog?

The answer may well be yes — these sorts of activities do undoubtedly add to an agent’s prestige. But there are necessary time trade-offs that will have an effect on you.

And at the risk of repeating myself, despite the glamour of having an agent go through your work with a fine-toothed comb (ostensibly) and the burgeoning market of increasingly spendy products and services available to the up-and-coming writer, it is possible to navigate these waters on the cheap. A good writers’ group can provide you excellent feedback for free; libraries tend to stock the newest writing books rather quickly, and it costs you only time and effort to research agents.

If you are willing to pay for services, do so for the right reasons, and not in the hope of jumping ahead in the agency queue. It may well be worth it to you to pay a freelance editor, rather than investing a year in a writing group to get feedback on your book, or to take a reputable weekend seminar on how to polish your novel, rather than reading all of the books available on the subject.

It’s up to you. Just do your homework, double-check the credentials of everyone who wants to charge you money, and try to avoid buying the proverbial pig in a poke. And, naturally, keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Fee-charging agencies, Part III: the reputable ones

Fee-charging agencies, Part III: the reputable ones

I’ve been talking for the last couple of days about the loathsome species of self-described agencies that bilk writers out of their hard-earned dosh by requiring “Independent Evaluations” and similar expensive services as a condition of representation, as well as practitioners of another kind of lower-level predation on aspiring writers, selling lists of those who query them to editing services and magazines or tucking brochures for such services into rejection packets. Generally speaking, you cannot run far enough from agencies that operate in this manner.

Are you wondering why I keep harping on that advice? The reason is alarmingly simple: in this industry, writers are discouraged from asking too many questions. We’re just supposed to be able to find our way around the biz.

By instinct, perhaps. Or some highly specialized sense of smell. Maybe agents and editors think we writers have some additional internal organ that extrudes bile whenever our work is near a poor agent and spurts perfume near a good one. Or a unique brain synapse formation that gives us an electric shock every time we even consider placing a book proposal in a non-black folder or going for broke and using a typeface other than Times, Times New Roman, or Courier.

In any case, they certainly do seem to think we know a whole lot about the industry without being told.

The question of who is and is not a reputable agent is almost never discussed at writers’ conferences or in writers’ publications, so pretty much the only way you are going to find out about this sort of trap is from other writers. In the business, knowing about such pitfalls is assumed, in much the way that conference cognoscenti assume that every writer present already knows that a submission NOT in standard format will be rejected practically every time or that advances are typically not paid in one big lump sum, but in installments.

It’s yet another instance of knowledge equaling power in the industry, and I, for one, don’t consider it fair. One of the reasons that I started this blog was to give isolated writers — and aren’t all writers isolated, to a certain extent, by the nature of the process? — a place to learn the facts behind the assumptions. (For example: if any of the statements about proposal folders, typefaces, standard format, and advances in the previous paragraphs were mysteries to you, please check out the relevant categories at the right of these page.)

Since it is not an issue you are likely to see discussed elsewhere, then, let me be the first to confuse the issue by telling you: there are a few fee-charging agencies that are perfectly reputable. Which is to say, they are agencies who sell actual books to actual publishers, but who derive some significant portion of their income from other services they offer to writers.

Portion is the operative term here. To be considered non-fee-charging, an agency must generate more than 98% of its fees from its 15% share of their authors’ royalties. The AAR will not admit (or retain) agencies that rely more heavily upon other sources of income than that — on the grounds, I believe, that agencies that charge for a first read are essentially requiring writers to buy what most agencies offer for free. For this reason, fee-charging agencies are seldom listed anymore in the standard guides.

I have to say, I’m with the AAR on this one: I don’t think that a writer should ever have to pay an agency for a first read. Finding new writers is an integral part of how agents make their living; if they pick up the writers they have charged to submit material, they are being paid twice for the same work. It tips the already-stacked balance of power still farther in their favor – causing writers already reduced to begging for their attention to paying for it as well.

What’s next, rolling over? Fetching the latest copy of Publisher’s Weekly? Bringing them dead rodents as gestures of affection?

If a writer has been querying well-established agencies for a long time without garnering any positive responses, it might well be worth her while to run her query and chapters past more seasoned eyes, but those eyes can easily be found in a writer’s group that is free to join, or in a freelance editor who charges a flat rate per page or per hour. (See “How do I find an editor?” link at right.) With both, the writer never has to worry that there are hidden costs down the line.

However, if you do decide that you are willing to pay a fee-charging agent for a first read — and can accept the fact that his charging at all indicates that he either doesn’t sell enough of his clients’ books NOT to charge or doesn’t like writers much — make sure that you know in advance with which kind you are dealing, to avoid disappointment and unexpected bills.

How does one go about this, now that fee-charging agencies are no longer listed in the standard guides? Well, the most straightforward kind of fee-charging agent will tell authors up front on its website and in its literature that there is a cost associated with sending them a manuscript. Called a reading fee, the cost can run anywhere from $25 to $500.

To put this in perspective, a written manuscript critique without line editing, which is what the reputable fee-charging agencies provide, will usually run about $150 – $250. (If you are looking for line correction or substantive editing as well, the costs will be higher, of course: this is just for a basic read-and-advise.) But at least with an editor, you can negotiate up front precisely the type of feedback you want.

With an agent who charges to consider manuscripts, you have no such leeway. A higher price tag on a reading fee, alas, is seldom a guarantee of either eventual representation or more substantial feedback. Or, indeed, of any feedback at all: what the writer is buying here is simply the agent’s promise to have someone in the office read the manuscript to consider whether to sign the author, not advice on how to make the book more marketable.

Which is, I reiterate, a service that non-fee-charging agents provide for free, when they are interested enough in a manuscript to request it. Admittedly, though, fee-charging agents tend to be open to a broader array of manuscripts than their non-fee-charging brethren and sistern. Why not? They’re making a profit, and they will only pick up what interests them, anyway.

With few exceptions, the reading fee is nonrefundable, so do make sure that you understand clearly what you are being offered in exchange for your money. Look for a written critique, with no further commitment on your part — basically, what you would get from a freelance editor. Do some comparison shopping.

And don’t forget to use the same judgment you would use for any other agent. Ask what books the fee-charging agency has sold in recent years before you put dime one into the process. If your work is similar to someone the fee-charging agent already represents, it might be worth your while to submit a manuscript. If not, try non-fee-charging agents who represent work like yours first.

Had I mentioned that I would HIGHLY recommend that you stick with the non-fee-charging ones altogether, and go to a writing group or a good freelance editor for feedback? Either of the latter is FAR more likely to give you concrete advice (everything from “Did you know that your slug line isn’t in professional format?” to “Why does the protagonist’s sister’s name change from Gladys to Gertrude halfway through?” to “It pains me to say this, mon ami, but that scene with the hippopotamus on the carousel simply doesn’t work.”) rather than the generalities associated with manuscript reviews (“Your pacing needs to be tighter” or “Your protagonist should be more sympathetic.”)

Did I just hear a chorus of gasps out there?

That’s right: a fee-charging agent’s feedback on a rejected manuscript is not necessarily going to be any more substantial than that in any other rejection letter. If you honestly long to have a professional tell you, “I just didn’t fall in love with this book,” I assure you, there are PLENTY of agents out there who will diss you for free.

Which is precisely why the querying and submission processes are so incredibly frustrating, right? When we submit a manuscript over which we’ve slaved, we writers (unreasonable beings that we are, the industry thinks, with all of those strange internal organs and oddly-arranged brain chemistry) want to receive in return, if not an acceptance, than at least a brief explanation for why the agent is not picking up the book. That way, the submission process could be progressive: with professional feedback on what is and isn’t working, our manuscripts could be better each time we submit them.

Ah, we can dream, can’t we?

What we want, in other words, is for rejecting agents to give our work an honest manuscript critique: a once-over without suggesting line edits (although that would be nice), but giving us written feedback on how to make the book more marketable. What agents ACTUALLY give submissions, unfortunately, is manuscript reviews: a quick read purely intended to judge whether the book is marketable and if it is something they would like to represent. And that differential in expectations leads, in my experience, to a whole lot of heartache, second-guessing, and a horrible, creeping feeling of futility on our side of the Rubicon.

Obviously, no sane person would set up a talent-finding process this way, but if we want to get published, we do need to work with the status quo. So while I can utterly understand longing enough to receive professional feedback on why your work is not being picked up by agents to be willing to pay for it, I think that if you’re going to pay an agent to read your work, you ought at least to be guaranteed a manuscript critique, not merely a manuscript review.

Ask a whole lot of questions before you plunk down your cash. Including: am I really going to get anything out of this that a writing group or freelance editor could not give me? Because, hype aside, you would be paying a fee-charging agent who does not sign you for precisely the same services.

The moral of the day: you should be every bit as careful in dealing with a fee-charging agency as you would be in dealing with a freelance editor. Both are providing you services that should help you get your work published; as in any other service industry, there are good ones, and there are bad ones, and they tend to look as similar as good and bad orthodontists do. Do a little background checking — and make sure that you know precisely what you will be getting out of the exchange.

And, as always, keep up the good work!

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Is anyone looking for a writing internship?

Hey, college students and anyone else who would like to get college credit while learning a heck of a lot about how the publishing industry works: FAAB (Friend of Author! Author! Blog) Phoebe Kitanidis is seeking an intern to help her with research for her forthcoming book. As anyone who has ever tried to get an internship with a writer can tell you, they are EXCEEDINGLY rare, but an unparalleled way to learn a whole lot about the industry VERY fast.

Seriously, if you are even thinking about writing YA, you should consider applying for this. Here are the specifics:
“Hi! I’m writing a book on middle school girls’
friendships, and I’m looking for an intern to help me
interview girls on issues like peer pressure,
friendship, and popularity.

This is a great project
for someone who’s passionate about writing and
publishing in the children’s or YA market. The
publisher’s happy to fill out paperwork for college
credit, and I’m willing to help you craft your pitch
or query letter for agents, and to answer any
questions I can about the publishing industry. Not to
mention, the project is a lot of fun!”

Anne here again. The job would be 5-10 hours per week, starting October 5th, and will be based in the Seattle metropolitan area. That’s not a big time investment for all you could learn from this opportunity.

If you are interested, tell me so via the comments function, below, and I’ll pass your info along to Phoebe. (Don’t worry; I won’t post the replies, so your e-mail address will not be spread all over the net).

Posted on - No Comments on Fee-charging agencies, Part II

Fee-charging agencies, Part II

Yesterday, I raised the red flag about the kind of “agency” that exists primarily not to sell its clients’ books to publishers, but to profit on writers’ frustration with the difficulty of landing an agent. There are many self-described agencies out there that apparently operate as fronts for high-priced editing services, tell writers that their work has promise, but that promise can only be fulfilled by enlisting the services of a specific outrageously expensive editing firm – which, of course, pays a kickback to the agency.

Sometimes, these kinds of agencies can be tough to spot, because it’s actually not unheard-of for perfectly credible agents to tell authors, “Gee, this could really use some professional editing,” and recommend a couple of good freelancers. I’ve gotten clients this way, in fact.

However, there’s a big difference between an agent’s giving a general piece of advice after reading a manuscript and agencies that either sell their query lists to editing companies (yes, it happens) or who include an editor’s brochure as part of their rejection packet in exchange for a commission.
This is a more subtle way to profit from querying writers, but to my mind, it’s just as ethically questionable as a specific referral + kickback. It’s using the power of rejection to make a sales pitch. Often, such agencies will have asked the writer to send an entire manuscript before suggesting the book doctor, which can make the referral seem very credible. The implication is, of course, that if the author hires that specific editor, the agent will offer representation at a later date, but these agencies seldom put that in writing.

No matter how complimentary a referring agent is about your work, such a referral is still a rejection, and you should regard it as such. Don’t assume that anything that’s typed on letterhead featuring the word “agency” is necessarily good advice on how to succeed as a writer.

Why should you be a tad incredulous? Well, when such a recommendation is made by an agent who allegedly knows the market, about a manuscript that he has ostensibly read carefully, it sounds like well-informed advice, but think about it: how do you know that the agent DID read the manuscript carefully — indeed at all, before recommending that you seek out a particular editor? Perhaps the agent automatically refers EVERY manuscript he rejects to that editing agency. Perhaps he gets a nice, juicy referral fee for each writer he refers.

Other soi-disant agencies take the scam even farther, demanding that writers obtain a so-called objective evaluation (with a price tag that can run upwards of $100) of their manuscripts before even considering them for representation – and the fees just keep mounting after that. Typically, these “agencies” rush at writers with too-eager offers of representation, then after a contract is signed, billing the writer for every so-called necessary service the agency provides.

Rule of thumb: legitimate agencies don’t ask for your credit card information.

To add insult to injury, these pseudo-agencies typically do not send out their clients’ work at all. However, they have been known to sign a writer to a long-term contract that grants the agency 15% of any future sales of the book in question — without having done any actual agenting work on its behalf.

Obviously, such agencies should be avoided like the plague that they are, but unfortunately, they specifically prey upon writers unfamiliar with how the industry works — ones who do not know, for instance, that the Association of Authors’ Representatives will not admit agencies that charge such fees, and are always happy to tell a curious author whether they’ve had complaints about a particular agency. Or ones who do not know that the standard agency guides (Writer’s Digest’s yearly GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS and Jeff Herman’s GUIDE TO BOOK PUBLISHERS, EDITORS, & LITERARY AGENTS, also updated yearly), don’t list this sort of agency at all. Or ones who do not know that Preditors and Editors routinely lists all of the agents and agencies in the country, along with indications of whether they are reputable or not. Or ones who are unaware that in a legitimate agency, novels are virtually NEVER accepted for representation until the agent has read the entire book. (The fake agencies are notorious for asking to see a few chapters, then offering representation right way.)

These unscrupulous agencies, in short, prey upon the ignorance and hope of nice people new to the biz, and there is no pit of hell deep enough for those who prey on the innocent.

The moral: do your homework. Any reputable agency worth its salt should be willing to show you its client list before you sign, for instance, and it’s perfectly legitimate to ask if they ever charge their clients for services. Ask the offering agent point-blank if s/he is a member of the AAR, and request a schedule of any fees he charges.

It’s also a good idea to limit your search to recognized agencies. Check the agency guides. If you are absolutely committed to finding an agent online, be wary of an agency that seems only to have a website, without being listed in any agency guides. If you feel absolutely compelled to answer an ad (not a good idea, as established agencies simply don’t advertise), triple-check with independent sources before you sign ANYTHING.

There are some things for which reputable agencies do charge, however; I shall go into some of these tomorrow. In the meantime, remember that this is an extremely competitive business, the odds of which are not all that different per capita than getting admitted to an Ivy League school. Wouldn’t you be suspicious if someone on the street offered you admission to Harvard, if you paid him a fee, even if he is wearing a crimson sweatshirt?

Think about it: should you really be any less suspicious of an agency that offers to sell you your dreams on a similar basis?

Keep up the good work, my friends!

Posted on - No Comments on Fee-charging agencies, Part I: what actually occurs

Fee-charging agencies, Part I: what actually occurs

A reader who wrote in to say that she had direct personal experience with the fee-charging agency mentioned in the last post, the New York Literary Agency, has been kind enough to provide the bulk of her correspondence with them people to Author! Author! I am posting it here, in the hope that when writers do background checks in the future, this correspondence will pop up in a web search.

It is rather lengthy, but please, if you are considering working with this agency, I would urge you to read it all, so you may judge for yourself. It makes for some pretty fascinating reading.

I am presenting this without comment. Naturally, I have removed the name of the author and her book, and eliminated as many of the names of persons as possible. All typos were in the original documents.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri,” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2006 3:47 PM
Subject: NY Literary Agency: Thank you for your query.

Thank you for your query to the New York Literary Agency. Based on your query form information we would like to see more.

1) Would you please send us an electronic copy of your work for further evaluation? Please email your manuscript to (e-mail address)

2) Would you please answer these 2 questions in the body of the SAME email? (Just copy and paste the questions).

A. How long have you been writing, and what are your goals as a writer?

B. Do you consider your writing ‘ready-to-go’, or do you think it needs some polishing.

You may send either 3-5 chapters or the entire manuscript, whichever you are more comfortable sending. Your manuscript is completely safe within our company. We take care to properly manage all access and if we don’t end up working together, we delete all files.

Please DO NOT include any questions with your manuscript submission. If you have a question, please send it to question@newyorkliteraryagency.com where the proper people may address your question. Most of the questions you may have are answered on the website and at the bottom of this email. Pleasesee the FAQs below.

Our preference for receiving your manuscript is via email.
===========================================
If the file size is greater than 5 megabytes you can mail it to us on CD,
but please only send it once, either by email or snail mail (we prefer
email). Our mailing address is: The New York Literary Agency, 275 Madison Ave., 4th Floor, New York, New York 10016. If you decide to mail your manuscript please be sure to INCLUDE your email address (very clearly) so we may reply and process your manuscript. Mailed manuscripts may take up to 30 days to reply/process. Emailed manuscripts are processed much more quickly. (If your filesize is over 5 megs we also just recently found a free service that will move large files. Take a look at www.yousendit.com. We’ve used it successfully in the past. Just use my email address as the “send to” address.)

We believe we are very different than other agencies.
===========================================
We believe that we are unique in that we are willing to develop an author and their talent. We like the metaphor of a business incubator as a description of how we will take time to bring an author’s work to the proper quality level, even if it takes months to do so. We take pride in the fact that we answer every email personally within 2-3 days.

Also, you may understand how a Literary Agency works, but many authors don’t, so please excuse me while I take a minute and let you know how the process works. As your Literary Agent, our mission is to assist you in finding a publisher and to coach you along the way in various options available to you. We don’t edit, we don’t illustrate, our mission is to sell for you. As for compensation, get paid on success only, meaning we only get paid if you get paid. Typically we will receive 10% of what you receive.

We do not charge fees, so our compensation is based on success only. Along the way, we may suggest that you continuously improve the quality of your work and or how it is presented. Once your work is deemed ‘presentable’, then we’ll start shopping it to publishers. We never promise a sale, but we can tell you that we have a model that works.

We look forward to receiving your materials.

Best regards,
“Cheri” – V.P. Acquisitions

PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM BLOCKERS. We do not click on whitelist links

p.s. You might as well get used to these long emails. Part of our filtering process is to see if you actually read them. Why the long emails? I spend my time doing two basic tasks, 1) managing submissions and evaluations, and 2) answering questions. If I can answer your question BEFORE you ask it, then the entire process will proceed much more efficiently. As a corollary to that, if you want long-winded, personalized emails where we dicuss politics, the weather, and how your day went, you will probably not enjoy our process. If you are as busy as we are, and you pride yourself on operating efficiently (it is a business after all), then you will enjoy how efficiently we focus on the point, and that is, whether we can work together based on your writing and attitude.

Typical Frequently Asked Questions
=============================
Q) Do you return manuscripts?
A) Sorry for the inconvenience however, WE DO NOT RETURN MANUSCRIPTS or MATERIALS due to the volume of submissions we receive. Please do not send us anything that you can’t replace easily.

Q) Would you prefer me to email or mail my manuscript?
A) WE MUCH PREFER EMAILED MANUSCRIPTS.

Q) How should I attach my manuscript?
A) PLEASE DO NOT PASTE YOUR MANUSCRIPT INTO THE BODY OF THE EMAIL. Please send it to us as an attachment, otherwise it hangs up the mail system. If you can’t create an attachment, please get a friend to help you do so. I think we have every software program known to man (except Mac). However everything works easier if you have a pdf, .rtf, or .doc filetype. We also support Word Perfect and MS Works.

Q) Is my manuscript safe with you?
A) Your materials are safe within our company. If you are uncomfortable sending your entire manuscript, please only send 3-5 chapters. If we do not end up working together we will destroy and delete any copies of your work that we have. Furthermore the idea of people stealing someone’s work is a bit of ‘urban legend’. It really doesn’t happen.

Q) How long does this review take?
A) About 7-10 days. We’re faster than most other agencies.

Q) Why is there no phone number? I want to talk to someone…
A) Quite frankly, we are deluged with submissions. It is our policy to provide a contact number later in the process, assuming we would like to proceed with you. If you would like to talk with someone for the reassurance of hearing a voice, just email me and I’ll connect you to the proper party.

Q) Where are you located?
A) We maintain executive suites on Madison Aveneue in New York, NY where we meet with buyers. Other than that, we travel extensively and we have the good fortune to live in Florida, North Carolina, and California depending on the time of year. Sometimes we think that we live in airports. In today’s connected world, our physical location is meaningless.

Q) Why aren’t you in the Yellow Pages? I can’t find you listed?
A) Yellow Pages are ‘old technology’, and they cost money. We use toll free phone numbers and cell phones. Those simply aren’t in directories. We haven’t been in Yellow pages for 10 years. Buyers certainly don’t go to the Yellow Pages to find authors , just nervous authors.

Q) Are you a member of AAR, BBB, Alphabet Soup…?
A) We have chosen to belong to industry associations where the buyers are, such as the Publishers Marketing Association (PMA) through our parent company, The Literary Agency Group. We spend our money going to the big book tradeshows in the US, England, and Germany. BBB, AAR, and other organizations of that type mainly exist for nervous writers, and frankly, we have too many applicants as it is, so we choose not to spend time and money on those organizations. I hope that helps you understand why we belong to associations that help us sell your work, not organizations that help us recruit more writers. We prefer that you judge us on the professionalism of our communications and not whether we belong to an organization. In other words, we ask that you judge us based on our interactions together, and that you can make up your own mind based on our professionalism and courtesy not whether we belong to some organization.

Q) Tell me more about your company.
A) We are bigger than a small agency and smaller than a large agency. We have about 15 people total and as of 2nd quarter, 2005 we have over 60 active conversations ongoing with buyers and 3 option agreements in negotiations in our screenplay division. We just sold our 4th book deal (to a publisher in England) and we are confident of more success later this year. (A 5th deal is being signed as we speak). We market to the larger and medium sized publishers and producers. We have had 5 successes now in the last 2 years (fyi: most agencies only have 1 or 2 deals every couple of years, if that.). We’ve been around the block enough to have people that love us, and people that hate us. We will never ask you for money, so that’s one way to judge for yourself. Our commitment to you is that we believe that we should get paid only if we sell your work. Your commitment to us is that you will do what it takes to make sure your manuscript is the best it can be and that it meets or exceeds industry quality standards.

Q) You’re not a vanity publisher or a self-publisher are you?
A) No we’re NOT A VANITY OR SELF-publisher in any way, shape or form. We DO NOT sell to vanity or self-publishers. Our mission is to sell your work to TRADITIONAL publishers who will pay you (and us). And, that’s how we get paid. If we sell your work to a publisher, then and only then do we get paid (usually 10% which is the industry standard for Literary Agencies).

Q) What are you looking for during your evaluation?
A) We mainly look for COMMERCIAL VIABILITY in the work coupled with good solid writing skills. “Is it something that will sell?” is of paramount importance to us. (We ARE NOT scrutinizing every word, spelling, and grammar usage. There’s plenty of time later for that.) We believe that great writers are made, not born at least 99% of the time. But if a work doesn’t have commercial potential, then we want to let you know as quickly as possible. Being willing to grow talent, we believe in the old adage, “luck is when opportunity meets preparation and hard work”.

Q) How can you evaluate work so quickly?
A) Our mission in the Acquisitions Department is clear. We answer 3
questions:

1. Will the subject matter sell? Is it commercially viable?
2. Is the writing good enough, or would it be good enough with some degree of assistance?
3. Did you as the evaluator like the work and would you believe in it if you were selling it?

If we get the “3 yes” designation then you pass. The next item we look for in our filtering process is your willingness to listen or whether you are a prima donna who wants it ‘their way’. We will very quickly wash out a great writer with a bad attitude. Life’s too short for drama or problems.

Q) What if you find errors or problems with my manuscript? Should I spend time revising now, or later?
A) We receive very few ‘ready-to-go’ manuscripts. We believe we are unique in that we are willing to work with our authors along the way. Most manuscripts that we receive need some level of polishing before we can submit them to buyers. Some need very little polishing. Some need a lot. Over the years, we’ve learned that it is worth our time and effort to do what it takes to develop new talent. We’ve learned that incubating new talent makes good business sense.

Q) My manuscript isn’t finished….
A) As long as there is enough finished to determine your skills as a writer we are willing to look at your work. As mentioned previously, we take a long term view and we are willing to develop talent.

Q) Who are some of the authors you represent? Why aren’t they on your website?
A) We are proud to represent a very diverse group of authors. Our roster of authors includes authors with the following occupations:

* Doctors
* Lawyers
* Entrepreneurs
* Journalists
* Professors and teachers from universities, high-schools, and elementary schools
* Coaches
* Accountants and bankers
* Advertising Executives
* Stay at home moms… students, etc.

Here are just a few bios:

1. The author was born in Baltimore, Maryland and is a Professor at a major university. She is an author and editor of 16 books and 12 proceedings and monographs. She has written 50 chapters and 100 papers, and given more than 150 presentations nationwide. She has graduate degrees in Music, Science, and Education. She and her husband are now living in the British Virgin Islands, where her time is spent sailing and writing. She has published scientific articles and written more than a hundred concert reviews as a freelance music critic.

2. The author is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of Edinburgh, and of Canada, and a Member of the American Societies of Hematology,Clinical Oncology, Blood and Marrow Transplantation and the International Society for Cellular Therapy. For the year 2004-5 he was a scientific advisor to the Cancer Vaccine Consortium. He was a past recipient of the Elmore Research Scholarship of the University of Cambridge.

3. The author has also won numerous awards honoring him as one of the top sportscasters in the country. He has been richly honored as a professional speaker as well, thrilling audiences with his career highlights and inspiring messages. He has a rich history of being on the air in radio and TV for a quarter of a century, working in major markets such as Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Cincinnati and now Dallas. Before settling in Dallas, he lived in London doing on-air work for both the BBC and ESPN.

4. This author started singing professionally with the singing group The Montells in her early teens. They later signed with Golden Crest Records & then went to Atlantic Recording Studio were they recorded, Under The Broad Walk with The Drifters & Gee Baby. In 1997 she was elected into The International Poetry Hall Of Fame with her Award winning Poem. She appeared at The Crossroads Theater in 1998.

5. The author is a retired veterinarian living in Bethlehem, South Africa. He was in rural private practice in various towns before settling down in Bethlehem where he practiced for 35 years. For ten years or more he had a monthly column in Veterinary News. He also was the script-writer for the SuperSport TV series The ABC of Golf.

We DO NOT give out names or contact information except to qualified buyers.(If you’ll think about it, if you were one of our authors, you’d feel the same way. There are a lot of wierdos on the Internet. Sometimes we think that there is a higher incidence of psychosis among writers than any other occupation.)

Q) Is this an automated email? Is there a real person out there?
A) Yes, and yes, and yes… We personally review each query form that we receive for sentence structure, basic spelling and grammar, and whether the story idea/synopsis sounds interesting. This tells us which manuscripts we would like to receive.

Then, yes, we do use a form to provide these FAQs. Can you imagine typing this time and time again? We pride ourselves on using technology to be as efficient as possible. This allows us to work with authors from anywhere in the world. By automating certain elements of our communications we can spend more thoughtful time on your questions that are specific to you andyour situation.

—————————————————————————

Thank you again for your time in reading to the end of this email. I hope that you have a better feeling for our company and our acquisitions process.

I look forward to receiving your materials. And please pardon one more request.

IF YOU EMAIL YOUR MATERIALS TO US WE WILL ALWAYS NOTIFY YOU WITHIN 2-3 DAYS OF RECEIPT. Please refrain from asking “did you get it?” for at least 3 business days. If you haven’t been notified of receipt within 3 days, then by all means resend it (don’t ask, just resend it to the email address above. If it won’t go through, just ‘reply’ to this email and attach it.)

IF YOU SNAIL MAIL (POST) YOUR MATERIALS TO US, PLEASE ALLOW UP TO 2 WEEKS FOR NOTIFICATION OF RECEIPT. Why? It has to be forwarded to a special evaluator that handles ‘paper’. And remember, we cannot return materials, so no need for a SASE.

Whew! Thanks again and we look forward to hearing from you and looking at your work.

Best regards,
(Name omitted) – VP of Acquisitions
We Grow Talent

—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri,” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 9:24 PM
Subject: NY Literary Agency: Thank you for your submission.

Thank you for sending us your work for evaluation. It has been received successfully and it is now being sent to our evaluation team.

We have NOT reviewed it at this time. The review process takes about 1-2 weeks.

Also, we ask that you please see the list of Frequently Asked Questions at the bottom of this email. Our goal is to answer every question you may have BEFORE you ask it. We try to be as efficient as possible so that we can review your work more quickly. (We know you will appreciate this too!)

Please do NOT send us any additional work during the review period. We wish to complete our review of this work and then, if appropriate, we can discuss your other works.

We expect it to take about a week to get back to you with our evaluation. If you haven’t heard from us in 2 weeks, please get back in touch with us because perhaps an email has been missed.

We take pride in the fact that we reply more quickly than most agencies.

Thank you for sending your materials electronically, that’s one of the reasons we can work so quickly to reach a decision. We believe you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how quickly we can reach a decision. (However some authors hold this against us, can you believe it?)

Best regards,
“Cheri” – VP Acquisitions

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
============================
In an effort to save time, here are answers to a few questions that we typically receive at this stage. I think we are doing something right, here’s a comment I just received and I think it nicely states my goal of efficiency.

********************************************************
I do like the way you have organized your acquisitions process. It is efficient yet personal, answers almost every question that could be asked, and reflects your agency’s experience with the business. Your prompt responses are impressive, although I have learned to be very patient with certain publishers. I always try very hard to meet deadlines, because I know how much it is appreciated by those in the business. I think I would be very comfortable working with you.
********************************************************

(REPEATED FAQ FROM LAST E-MAIL)

Here is a quote from one of our clients that we assisted with improving
their work.

********************************************************
“I just wanted to thank you for your critique of my manuscipt. Not only was it completed in a timely manner but you also provided me with some very useful advice in regards to how I can improve my writing. You were very professional and honest, which is a privilege to experience. My sincerest gratitude for your help and guidance.”
********************************************************

I didn’t send my entire manuscript, don’t you need the entire manuscript to make a decision?
—————————————————————————-
By combining your synopsis and query form with the writing you sent us, we can determine if the synopsis is adequate and interesting, and whether your writing style and skills are capable of being brought to professional industry standards. In other words, what we have is enough for us to determine if we want to work with you. (The ugly truth is that we can usually determine if we like your writing and writing style within the all-important first chapter.) After that, the rest of it is about your attitude. We like to work with pleasant people.

We like to work with pleasant people in a professional manner.
—————————————————————————-
We are absolutely committed to a professional relationship and professional communications. As you may have noticed, we have included that as one of our top 4 signature items. We sincerely ask that you hold the same professional attitude in our communications as well. If we make a mistake, or if you don’t like the way we do things, you DO NOT have permission to flame me. People describe me as ‘laid back – with attitude’. Any snippiness on your part and I have the full support of my managment to fire you on the spot, and I will, and it’s irrevocable. I’m sorry for the hard line, but we’ve been around the block enough to try and get rid of the bad apples as early in the process as we can. We very much look forward to a great relationship, over the long term, together. Thank you for understanding, we hope you feel the same way. Life’s just to short for mean people or drama.

What’s next?
————————-
If we believe your work has commercial viability, we will let you know with a “positive review” and inform you about how we bring your work to the marketplace. Because we are vertically integrated in the publishing world, we have the ability to do more with an author than most other agencies can do.

How long does this evaluation for commercial viability take?
—————————————————————————-
We know waiting is the hardest part and we’ve been in your shoes. We will do everything we can to get back to you as quickly as you can. By now you probably understand a few dynamics of this industry. First, most agencies and buyers are absolutely swamped, and second, this is the slowest moving industry in the world it seems. So, if you haven’t heard from us in 2 weeks, please drop us an email about your status. Our best guess though is that you will hear from us in about 5-10 days. We maintain enough readers and evaluators to keep that level of service.

I Have Other Work, May I send it?
—————————————————————–
Please allow us to decide if we wish to represent this work. Later we can discuss your other manuscripts.

I just made a revision, should I send it?
——————————————————————-
No, please don’t send a revision, illustrations, etc. We have enough to determine commercial viability. Writers are constantly revising their work. If we represent you, we will spend time making sure that everything is just right before we send it out. We have plenty of time.

I Have A Few Questions For You and Your Company
—————————————————————————-
We are happy to answer your questions, however, we would appreciate it if you wait until after our review and notification. At that time we will provide you with quite a bit more information, or we will pass. By waiting until the review period is over to ask further questions we will each save time. However, if you have a burning question, or just want to see if I’m really out here, then email me directly and I’ll get back to you within 2-3 days (excluding vacations, weekends, etc.)

Is my manuscript safe?
—————————————-
Your manuscript is completely safe within our company. We take care to properly manage all access and if we don’t end up working together, we delete all files.

Is this an automated email?
———————————————-
What do you think? Do you think I want to type this every time I receive a manuscript? Really though, let me give you just a bit of indication of how much work this is… first I have to receive the manuscript, open it, make sure the file transfer worked, forward it to a reader, mark it into the database, and then notify you of receipt. Then I have to get it back,see if I agree with the review, mark it in the database, and then let you know our results. All this occurs during a 5-10 day period and at the same time, I’m answering questions and dealing with problem, anomolies, sick days, vacations… (I think you get the point! Anything I can do to save time saves each of us time and money.)

And I do apologize for the form letters, it’s just that well.. I try to be as efficient as possible and I appreciate your understanding that my role with you is pretty cut and dried, i.e. yes/no/maybe. Later, if you work with our company, you will spend MUCH MORE personal time with the Agent assigned to you. In other words, the time for personal time is later, if we enter into relationship together.

Thanks again for your time and your consideration of our Agency,
(Name omitted) – VP Acquisitions

p.s. As we mentioned we pledge courteous, timely, and professional communications… here’s an unsolicited letter from one of our clients that really is what my job is all about.

********************************************************
I have not yet opened the contract email that you sent but I just wanted to reply here and thank you for being so kind to me. I have put my heart and soul into this work and have been written off by a number of agents. With the vast majority of them it seems as if they don’t even look at the work, they simply discard it. You make me feel like you really do care about my writing and about the success of my book. In a world of people who tend to be callous and unfeeling you really do make me feel as if you care about me and my work. I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Thank you so much.
********************************************************

—- Original Message —–
From: “Cheri,” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Subject: NY Literary Agency: Positive Review

Thank you for everything that we have received from you thus far. Our review team believes that your work has commercial potential and we would like to proceed further with you. We believe we would like to represent you.

Basically, we feel that your concept and writing thus far has potential and that if polished and presented properly, we can sell it. To take the next step, please let us take a minute to tell you a little bit about how we think and the way we do business.

Best regards,
“Cheri” VP Acquisitions

p.s. We apologize in advance for the length of this email. This is at the behest of our lawyers. They like it when we say it the same way every time. If this email appears truncated at the bottom, please let me know.

INCUBATING TALENT: We Are Willing To Develop New, Fresh Talent.
===========================================
We did see a few improvements are needed, but don’t worry, we receive very few ‘ready-to-go’ manuscripts. Most manuscripts that we receive need some level of polishing before we can submit them to buyers. Some need very little polishing. Some need a lot. Over the years, we’ve learned that it is worth our time and effort to do what it takes to develop new talent. We’ve learned that incubating new talent makes good business sense.

We’d hate to lose a good writer by not accepting someone who is willing to improve. There are very few literary agencies that will take the time to develop talent. Most barely return emails. We’ve answered every email you’ve sent us, and we’ve kept our promises regarding turnaround times. We hope that you will acknowledge that our level of communication and professionalism already far exceeds that of other literary agencies. We pledge this same level of professionalism and courtesy in all subsequent communications should we work together.

HOW CAN WE TRUST EACH OTHER?
===========================================
You don’t know us, and we don’t know you. We like your work, and hopefully so far, you appreciate that we have treated you professionally and efficiently. Yes, we use forms, but that’s so that we have more time to answer your questions about specific problems or nuances. We are looking for authors that are reasonable in their expectations and in their own evaluation of their work. We don’t want prima donnas.

If we were in your shoes, we believe you should be looking for a professional relationship with professional people who will ultimately benefit your writing career, whether your work is sold or not. We never promise a sale. However we do promise that we will work with you on a professional basis and do what we can to promote you and your work to our buyers.

What do we mean by “Polish Your Work”?
===========================================
As you would imagine, we are very, very concerned about what we present to our buyers. At a minimum they expect the mechanics of punctuation, grammar, spelling, and format to meet or exceed industry standards.

I think you would agree that your work can use some level of polishing. However, we don’t think you should take just our word for it, we would like to have an independent review of your work that shows you where the improvements can be made.

From a trust factor, it’s like an investor trusting a certified public
accountant … if there is an independent review on the table, we can each relax and trust each other, and spend our time strategizing marketing, not arguing over whether the work is ready to present or not.

What we have learned over the years is that nothing is more invaluable than having a unbiased, critical review of an author’s work as a roadmap for bringing the work to market. In writing circles this is called a critique. We want you to have a critique of your work. You might already have one, or you may need to get one. Here’s what one author had to say about his critique.

Dear “Cheri”: The critique was more favorable than I had anticipated. I’m a long time editor, of academic works, and I know from experience that good authors appreciate good critiques. As for my own writing – again academic — I have always taken criticism well. I don’t always go along with everything the critic says, but I try the best I can to incorporate anything I feel is worthwhile. And that’s what I did today. Within minutes I was at my desk and my laptop, trying to find out what I could do to satisfy this critic. I also wanted to judge how much work would be required, how long a re-write would take, and so on. If you have that option, you can pass along my thanks to the critic. And you can say that I will try to turn it into a popular book, not an academic treatise. As an academic, I’ll never be able to put that aside completely, but I’ll do my best. And I suspect I can do
it within a month or two. You service is phenomenal.

HAVING A CRITIQUE PROTECTS YOU from unscrupulous agents. Having a critique protects US from egocentric writers who think their work is just fine like it is. If the critique says, “green light – good to go” then we can start marketing immediately. If the critique says, “some improvements can be made in grammar, punctuation, etc”, then we can pause with you while those changes are made.

WHAT DOES A CRITIQUE LOOK LIKE?
=======================================
Here are some links for sample critiques from one of our vendors that we respect. (We realize that not all of these apply to you, but we want you to see how versatile and powerful this critique format is.) Also, please realize that a critique is a fast overview. It is NOT a line edit.
(Links omitted)
YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE A 3RD PARTY CRITIQUE A good number of our applicants do. (As a serious writer, you should get one every year or two).
======================================================================
As we mentioned, if you already have a 3rd party critique, please let us know. It must match the level of detail that you see in the examples above. If you have an associate that you believe can do your critique, then be sure to send us their credentials first for approval.

Please don’t try to critique your own work. (Yes, we’ve seen that happen and we can tell immediately.) Also, many people ask if they can get a friend to do the critique, or a teacher, or an associate. The answer can be yes, but the problem is that if they don’t do editing for a living, then it’s like asking anyone to do something for free, it takes longer, and it may not be done correctly.

The critique should be inexpensive, usually around $60-$90 depending on the company you choose. It will tell each of us if the work is ready for marketing right away, or if more polishing is required. As we mentioned if you have a critique already, great, if not, we can provide a referral for a critique service.

As we’ve mentioned before, we need a common platform of trust from which to begin the representation process together. Many authors wonder if the critique just leads to more and more editing. The answer is NO! Editors are very integrous people, if they say a work meets or exceeds industry standards, then we can all trust their opinion. Once an editor says ‘good to go’, then everyone can move to the next step.

In summary, the critique protects you from unscrupulous agents that will try to tell you that you need endless rounds of editing. Once you have a critique you are in a much stronger position in your writing career.

PLEASE NOTE: WE ARE NOT ASKING FOR MONEY.We want you to have a critique by a qualified industry professional.
===========================================
MANY AUTHORS MISUNDERSTAND THIS SIMPLE REQUEST. We don’t want you to pay us, we want you to have a critique to start our relationship so that we can start from the same page. (If I told you the number of writers that accuse us of using this to take their money, you would be flabbergasted.)

Many authors ask, “why we don’t do the critique as part of our Agency?”.
===========================================
In the old days, perhaps that occurred. However in today’s competitive world we must focus almost entirely on our core competency, which is selling your work. Our company relies on editors to work with you to bring your work to industry standards. We are not editors, we are sales professionals.We contract out all editing work. (As you might imagine, it turns out that editors are usually lousy salespeople, and we love the editors we work with dearly). This point is worth spending extra time on, we aren’t editors, we are sales professionals, and those are two VERY different skill sets.

———- One more positive response from an author about the critique ———————————-

Dear “Cheri”: Thank you so much for your quick responses and professionalism. It was so refreshing to hear an unbiased critique of my work for the first time. I have hungered for it since I’ve been writing. Someone actually read the whole script and took the time and care to provide a professional critique and show me the areas that need improvement. I am so determined to make my work a success, and it helps me to know what my strengths are and where I need improvement. Thank you, and please pass on a big thank you to my editor.
————————————————————————

IN CONCLUSION:
===========================================
Please review the critique sample links above. Think about how powerful an ‘excellent’ critique would be to the selling process and how it will give us the confidence we need to put our reputation on the line for you.

Think about how it protects you, protects us, and how it provides a meeting point so that we can trust each other and move forward on the same page

Thank you again for your time and consideration. We look forward to working with you and developing your writing career together.

Sincerely,
“Cheri” VP Acquisitions

P.s. Instructions for the next step are at the bottom of the email after the FAQs below

Typical FAQs that we see at this stage:
=================================

Q) I have a critique, what do I do?
A) First look at the critque and compare it to the examples above. Many critiques are long on plot and character development. The critique that we prefer includes that PLUS a strong focus on the mechanics.. i.e. punctuation, grammar, format, and spelling. If your critique does not address those mechanical elements we will ask you to get a new one. However if your critique is reasonably close to our examples, then simply let us know that you have one, and we’ll send you the contract, and then you put your critique in with the contract when you send it in.

Q) I need a referral.
A) We will provide you with a referral to someone we trust and who discounts their prices to our clients. You can certainly use any qualified person to do the critique if you know one, but they MUST have been in the industry.

Q) How long should a critique take?
A) It should take about two weeks. It should cost no more than $60-$90. It should be thorough. Many “old style” critiques are long on plot and short on mechanics. The critique that we desire will not only include commentary on the plot, it will also critically review grammar, spelling, punctuation, and the mechanics of writing. We know, we know.. it’s all of our least favorite aspect of writing, but to succeed as a writer, your mechanics must meet or exceed industry standards.

Q) Do I have to pay for it or does the publisher provide for the final polishing and editing?
A) Both…. As your agent, we need it to be ‘great’ before we will pitch it, and then, if the publisher wants to make changes, then they will pay for the changes they desire.

Q) What if the critique says my writing is horrible? Will you still represent me?
A) The critique will never say that your writing is horrible. The critique will point out your strengths and weaknesses. It will come from a coaching point of view, not from a judgmental point of view. As we’ve mentioned earlier, our Agency is different in that we are willing to develop talent. We will not fire you because of a poor critique.

Q) My teacher/friend/pastor/writer/PhD/English Teacher…… can do the critique right?
A) Yes, maybe… we’ve seen very poor work from PhD’s, teachers, and most writers. If they haven’t had a stint as a true editor, then usually they aren’t going to do a good job.

Q) My work is my work, It’s special and i’m not changing anything…
A) That’s fine, but we do insist that spelling, grammar, and punctuation meet or exceed industry standards. We have a saying, “if you put 10 editors in a room you will come out with 15 opinions”. Ultimately, the final decision is yours. If you don’t agree with them, we are on your side, especially about subjective items. On the mechanics and formatting issues we side with the editors.

Q) What do the buyers/publishers think of this model that you use?
A) Frankly, our buyers know that when we pitch a work, that we’ve put the writer through the proverbial wringer! Our buyers know that our writers can understand a contract, comply with reasonable requests, and that we’ve weeded out the ‘something for nothing’ writers that are basically lazy about their craft. This hyper-competitive industry will only reward the best, and that’s our commitment to our buyers, and to you.

Q) How do I know that this won’t turn into endless rounds of editing that I have to pay for?
A) At some time and some place, we have to trust each other. We believe that this is where it has to start. Your risk is $60-$80. Our risk is that our internal cost of our time with you at our hourly rate is easily greater than that amount. (And you never pay us for that time, we don’t charge any fees as we’ve mentioned earlier). So, we’ll spend the time to work with you if you’ll do your part to make sure your work is the best it can be. Unless the critique points out the need for substantial rework, there shouldn’t be any more fees. That’s why we require an independent 3rd party for the critique. This protects YOU from an unscrupulous agent, and it protects US from egocentric writers.

Q) I’m still nervous, what does your contract say?
A) First you keep the copyright to your work, and second, you can fire us in 90 days. Our contract includes the following two clauses designed to protect you. There are no payments to us in the contract unless we sell your work.

Here is the exact language in the contract:
—————————————————————–
1)The copyright and ownership is specifically retained by the AUTHOR for this work and all works submitted to, and accepted by, the Agent. The Writer does not grant to Agent or any other party any right, title or interest of any kind in any copyright, ownership and/or any other intellectual property right contained in or as a part of any work of the Writer submitted to the Agent. The Agent agrees to make no claim to any such right, title or interest, however denominated.

2) The Writer/Producer may terminate this Agreement after 90 consecutive days of no sale by Agent.

——————————————————————

So, if you don’t like us, or we don’t perform, you can fire us in 90 days, and we clearly state that you keep your copyright so there is no chance of us claiming your work. We don’t know how much more ‘safe’ we can make it. (If you think we are going to steal your work, then you are too paranoid to work with us anyway and we’re happy if you decline). Other than that, the contract is for one year duration, and we ask for a reasonable 10% if we sell your work.

===========================================
IN CONCLUSION.. THE NEXT STEP IS SIMPLE …
Please “Reply” to this email with one of the following three statements:
===========================================

1) I understand how a critique protects each of us and will improve my writing (or validate that I’m as good as I think I am). Please send your contract and a referral for a critique service. I will get the critique underway as soon as I hear from you. We have to start trusting each other somewhere and I am committed to my writing as a business.

or,

2) I have a critique already. Please send me your contract and I will include my critique with the contract when I send it in.

or

3) “Thanks but no thanks, I’ve never heard of such a thing”.. or some variant of that…

===========================================

In conclusion, no matter what your reply, I truly and sincerely wish you the best in your writing career and I want you to know that I have enjoyed our interaction immensely thus far. Continue to follow your dreams, and it is my deepest hope that you succeed with your writing career.

I remain, yours truly,
“Cheri” VP Acquisitions

THE AUTHOR POSTED THE FOLLOWING REPLIES ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 01, 2006:

Q. How long have you been writing, and what are your goals as a writer?

A. About eight years, off and on. Now I write full time, and am working on my fourth book. To become published and give people their money’s worth when they buy my work.

Q. Do you consider your writing ‘ready-to-go’, or do you think it needs some polishing.

A. I feel my work is ready to go, I think if I edit it one more time it will
fall apart. But, I know there is always room for improvement.

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006
Subject: Re: NY Literary Agency: Positive Review

Dear Ms. (Name removed), I have a question for you. I read the critique response to “Book Title”, am I wrong in assuming that only the synopsis of the manuscript was critiqued? If so how could anything be gleaned from simply reading the synopsis?

I feel a critique could be very helpful!
thanks, Author

***
—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006
Subject: RE: NY Literary Agency: Positive Review

Your background, your writing skills and the subject matter were very easy to say yes to.. why waste any other time?

Our mission in the Acquisitions Department is clear and very “cut and dried”. We answer 3 questions:

1. Will the subject matter sell? Is it commercially viable?
2. Is the writing good enough, or would it be good enough with some degree of assistance?
3. Did you as the evaluator like the work and would you believe in it if you were selling it?

If we get a “3 Yes” designation then you pass (at my level).

The next item we look for in our filtering process is your willingness to listen/make changes/, what your goals are, and what your overall demeanor is. We will very quickly wash out a great writer with a bad attitude.

After that, we leave it up to the experts to really dig in and get detailed.

Best regards,
“Cheri” VP Acquisitions

Please excuse any delay as I have been traveling with limited access to emails.

Our Pledge To You:
==================
* We respect what you have accomplished thus far as a writer.
* We believe that great authors are made, not born. We are willing to develop talent.
* We pledge straight talk in a confusing and old-school industry.
* We can’t promise a sale. We can promise a professional relationship.

p.s. Missed Emails, Spam, Whitelists, and other reasons for lapses in communications. We are very, very diligent about returning every email that we receive within a couple of days. The same is true for our vendors and suppliers. IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A COMMUNICATION AND YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE, PLEASE, CHECK WITH US AND WE WILL SEE WHAT HAPPENED. Please don’t jump to negative conclusions. The Internet is not 100% foolproof and we are very sensitive to our clients’ expectations and our promises about timely communications.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006
Subject: NY Literary: Contract & Critique Referral

Congratulations and my warmest wishes for our mutual success! And again, we thank you for your understanding and your acceptance of our business philosophy. We look forward to working with you and because you have indicated such a strong commitment to your work you can rest assured that we will be excited and committed to doing what we can to work just as hard for you!

PLEASE READ THIS INFORMATION CAREFULLY AS IT WILL SAVE YOU TIME AND REDUCE YOUR STRESS (and mine!):

1. Attached is our Contract for Agency Representation.
===========================================
It is simple and straightfoward and we’ve used it for years. It is also
non-negotiable. I’m happy to answer any questions that you may have, but 99% of the time we will not make a change to it if requested. If you want to have a lawyer look at it, by all means do so, but we’ve spent great time and energy with our lawyers making it simple enough for a business person to understand.

You don’t have to be nervous because you can back out very easily. We very clearly state that your ‘out’ from the contract is that you can fire us in 90 days if we don’t perform or you don’t like our services for any reason. This rarely happens, but it’s there for you if you want it.

Your work is completely safe and remains your work. You keep your copyright and this contract is only for the work you submit, not all your works. (You can discuss other works later with your agent).

We are not trying to tie your hands in any way, and as you will see from the contract, we only get paid if you get paid. There are no other payments to us.

We ask that you regular mail us two signed copies of the contract. The address is within the document. International authors can either fax the contract or mail it. Please allow up to 30 days to receive the counter-signed contract back in the mail. The contracts are sent to our NY office and depending on the travel schedule of our President, it may take that long to get them signed and back to you.

We ask that you get the critique started in parallel with sending in the contract. Send in your contract at the same time you are getting your critique. Don’t wait for the critique to send in your contract.

2. Referral for the Critique/Evaluation
===========================================
As we mentioned in the prior email, if you have a critique or evaluation similar in format to those we sent you earlier please send it to us along with your contract. (Don’t email it separately, we have a hard time matching it up. Simply print it and put it with your contract). If you want us to tell you if what you have is acceptable then email it to me as quickly as you can.

If you do not have a critique, please email the following address and tell them that we referred you (address omitted) All you have to say is ““Cheri” referred me”.

They will send you a very clear set of instructions on how to proceed with the critique, send your manuscript, payment, etc.

Writers Literary offers a discounted price to referrals that we send the ($89). We send them so much business that they will prioritize your work and this will speed up the entire process. We can also lean on them if we need to make them work more quickly!

When they complete your critique they will send it to you and to us at the same time. Remember, we are unique in that we are willing to help you develop your talent, so there is no need to worry about what the critique will say.

What’s Next?
=================
During the next 30 days we should receive your contract and your critique. Once we receive your contract and your critique is finished and in our hands, you will be put in touch with your Agent. At that time the Agent will review the critique with you and the two of you will develop a strategy to market your work as quickly as makes sense given the information that we see in the critique.

The Agent will then become your primary contact and will answer questions, guide you, and hopefully, before too long, come to you with the good news of a sale! (Note: we never, never promise a sale, that’s a checkbox for you within the contract by the way).

I am happy to answer any questions that you have and I have enjoyed our interaction. My sincere best wishes for your writing career.

Best regards,
“Cheri” VP Acquisitions

If you can’t open the pdf attachment, try clicking on this link (link omitted)

A Few Frequently Asked Questions (I can’t resist, you know me by now)
===========================================
Please send the contract in parallel with getting the critique. That way
we’ll have you in the system when the critique is finished. Don’t wait to send in the contract until your critique is completed. Send the contract in immediately and please allow 2-3 weeks for notification that we received it.

If you need an extension, simply email me and we automatically grant one, so don’t stress if for some reason you haven’t heard from me. Non-US authors are automatically granted an extension.

If you have a critique already please be sure it matches the thoroughness of the critique example we sent you. If it doesn’t we will reject it. If it does, we will move forward quickly. If you want me to look at it just email it to me.

What’s Next? Once the critique process is complete you will be connected to the Agent that will be working with you. You will discuss ‘next steps’ based on the results of the critique. As we mentioned in a previous email,we are willing to develop talent so there is no need to worry unduly about the results of the critique.

We look forward to working with you. Once we receive your contract and enter it into our system you will receive an email confirmation.

In the meanwhile don’t forget to contact adminNY@writersliterary.com to get your critique started. They will tell you exactly how to proceed. Send in your contract in parallel with having your critique done.

Please note:
============
If for some reason you don’t get your contract back in a timely fashion (say 30 days) please email contractadmin@theliteraryagencygroup.com and they will find out what went awry.

I have enjoyed interacting with you but my role with you is now finished. I am in charge of new author acquistions only. If you need help with something let me know though, and I’ll endeavor to assist you.

Best regards,
“Cheri” VP Acquisitions

> —–Original Message—–
> From: Author
To: Writers Literary, Editorial service to which NYLA referred her
> Sent: Saturday, February 04, 2006 8:07 PM
> Subject: critique info.
>
> Dear Sirs,
> “Cheri” referred me to you for a critique of my book.
> thank you,

—– Original Message —–
>From: (Name omitted) Writers Literary
>To: Author
>Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 8:48 AM
>Subject: RE: critique info.
>
>Re: Discounted Critique for The New York Literary Agency
>
>Thank you for requesting a critique from Writers Literary. Congratulations on your acceptance by a leading Literary Agency. You’ve achieved quite a milestone and we are honored to assist you with your writing career.
>
>An Invoice is below at the bottom of the email that reflects the discount that you receive because of your Literary Agency affiliation.
>
>Here are some Frequently Asked Questions about the Critique Process. If you don’t see the answer to your question here, please feel free to email me.
>
>
>Cordially,
>”Lulu”- VP Administration
>Writers Literary
>============= FAQ
>Q) How Do I Send You My Manuscript?
>A) Please wait until we receive your payment. Then your Project Manager will ask for a fresh copy of your manuscript via email. We have a very difficult time with hard-copy. However if you need to mail your work, please let us know.
>
>Q) What are the qualifications of your editors/critics?
>A) We have had great feedback from our clients regarding our editors. Following are credentials for some of the editors that work for us. You can see that your work will be in skilled hands! Click on this link to see some of their credentials. http://www.writersliterary.com/editing.html
>
>Q) How long does it take?
>A) About 10 business days (2-3 weeks) to deliver the critique to you after payment is received.
>
>Q) What does the critique look like? Will I get a copy?
>A) You will be sent a copy of the critique when it is completed. Typically, for expediency, we will also send one to your Literary Agency as well.
>
>Q) I have revisions, should I send them to you if they haven’t started the critique yet?
>A) No please don’t send revisions while we are in process. It is doubtful that you will have changed enough to substantially change the critique, so please don’t send in revisions if we have already begun the process.
>
>Q) How does the process work? Do I send you my manuscript or will you get it from the Agency?
>A) First, we will receive your payment and we will then introduce you to our Project Manager who will be in charge of your critique. The project manager will need a fresh copy of your manuscript. She will give you instructions at that time, so please hold your manuscript until you hear from her after your payment is received.
>
>Q) I sent in my payment and I haven’t heard anything….
>A) Sometimes, with all the spam flying around, email can slip through the cracks (on both sides). Please if after 4-5 business days, if you haven’t heard from us that your payment was received, don’t hesitate to recontact me. PLEASE CONTACT (email address) FOR ALL
>PAYMENT RELATED QUESTIONS.
>
>If you have any other questions about payments or process please let me know. Other than that, please wait to hear from your Project Manager after payment is received.
>
>Thank you again, we look forward to working with you and wish you the best in your writing career.
>
>Best regards,
(Name omitted) – Critique Payment Administration
>
>p.s. Just to ease your mind a little bit more about the process, here’s
>some praise we recently received.
>
>”Thank you so much for your quick responses and professionalism. I received the critique back from Paula, and it was so refreshing to hear an unbiased critique of my work for the first time. I have hungered for it since I’ve been writing. Someone actually read the manuscript and took the time and care to provide a professional critique and show me the areas that need improvement. I am so determined to make my work a success, and it helps me to know what my strengths are and where I need improvement. Thank You, and please pass on a big thank you to Paula.”
>
>”I am writing to you via my wife’s email because there was something wrong with mine and I apologize for the inconvenience. As for the critique on my manuscript: Wow!! Thank you so very much for your honesty and for your straightforward analysis. After reading the MS so many times, I guess I never saw the grammatical errors that seem so blatant now. I will follow your suggestions and try to analyze my writing with a close eye on grammar. I cannot thank you enough for your help. I wish you could help me with the entire work but I know that if I do not try to improve on my own, I will never learn and I will always be dependent. I don’t know what the New York Literary Agency will do now and I am mortified at the prospects. I will keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.”
>
>”I would like to thank you for this critique, it is refreshing to get an honest professional opinion of my work, it make me realise just how much I don’t know about the written word and its presentation.It’s been a long time since I left school with considerable number of years passing before I became interested in writing stories.I would like you to thank the critique for me and let it be know that I look at this as a new beginning and rebirth of my education.”
>
>Payment Information Form
>=======================
>
>PLEASE ALLOW AT LEAST 4 BUSINESS DAYS FROM THE TIME YOU SUBMIT AN ELECTRONIC OR FAX PAYMENT TO RECEIVE A CONFIRMATION. For mailed payments please wait a little longer.
>
>IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A PAYMENT CONFIRMATION EMAIL IN THE STATED TIME FRAME PLEASE EMAIL: and we will determine what happened. (Usually we get back to you more quickly than that, but sometimes we do take a vacation or sick day).
>
>INVOICE: Critique
>==========================================
>
>Schedule of Administrative Fees:
>1 New Author Critique
>Total Due = $89

(PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS)
Please do not send your manuscript to this address. This is
>an accounting email only. Once we receive your payment you will receive full instructions on where to send your work.
>
>I hereby authorize Writer’s Literary & Publishing Services, or their credit card processor, to charge my credit card a one time fee of $89 USD only.
>
>Signature_______________________________________________
>
>Card Number: _____________________________________________ Exp. Date:
>
>Name on Card:
>_______________________________________________________
>
>Exact Billing Address of Cardholder: __________________________________
>
>City, State Zip, Country:
>__________________________________________________
>
>CVV2 Security Code: (3 digits on back of card, or 4 digits on front for
>Amex) __________
>
>Email for us to notify you when the card is processed:
>_________________________
>
>We strongly prefer an electronic copy of your materials sent via e-mail, however, if you are unable to e-mail your materials, please mail them to: (address in Florida)

—– Original Message —–
From: Author
To: New York Literary Agency
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 12:04 PM
Subject: Book critique

I have sent your $89.00 as requested on Feb. 7,2006, for a book critique, you should have received it by now. Please respond.

From: Writers Literary
To: Author
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 12:52 PM
Subject: RE: Book critique
My apologies, I’ll try to figure out what’s wrong. To speed up the research, would you please send any payment details that you have such as the date you sent the payment, how it was sent, whether it has been withdrawn from your check, etc, to (e-mail address omitted) I will immediately research this for you.
Thank you.
Regards,
Payment Processing

— Original Message —–
From: Author
To: VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
Subject: Book critique
Dear “Cheri”,

I contacted the critique service as you requested, (email address omitted) sent off the $89.00 fee through our credit union on Monday, they received the money on Tuesday, (I called the credit union to make sure) but for some reason the critique service has not received it, or at least they have not let me know they have received it after I sent them an e-mail asking if everything was in order. Diane at the service said she would do some research to see what was going on with the sent $89.00 fee. Please see what you can do on your
end, “Cheri”.

thank you

AFTER PAYMENT WAS CONFIRMED, THE AUTHOR RECEIVED THE FOLLOWING, WHICH SHE ANSWERED AND RETURNED, ALONG WITH AN E-MAILED COPY OF HER MANUSCRIPT, ON Wednesday, February 15, 2006 AT 5:34 PM:

Thank you for the opportunity to assist you by providing you with a critique of your work. As a fellow writer, I wish you the best in your writing career and I hope you find the information below helpful and useful. We have found that this format is the easiest way to present our findings to you. Please fill out the top portion of the form and return, along with your manuscript to:

This information is to be provided by the author:

The Current Title of the Work:

The Current Synopsis of the Work:

The Current Length of the Work (# of words):

Market/Demographic Focus:

Describe The Main Character (if applicable)

Describe any Supporting Characters (if any)

—– Original Message —–
From: Critique Administration
To: Author
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Subject: RE: critique response

Dear Author,

Thank you for your information, which has been forwarded to one of our editors. I will be back in touch as soon as I am in receipt of your critique. The process takes approximately two weeks from the date we receive your completed information, (give or take a few days depending upon holidays and time constraints).

If you have not heard from me, please contact me. Sometimes, emails go “missing” so your communication would be helpful in catching something of this nature. Many thanks!

Continued best regards,

“Lulu,” Director of Critique Fulfillment
Writers Literary & Publishing Services

—– Original Message —–
From: “Vi” Writers Literary
To: Author
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 8:08 AM
Subject: Writers Literary – Critique Administration

Dear (Author),

Your critique Wire Transfer payment has been received. Thank you!

Please fill out the top portion of the attached critique form and forward it, via email, along with your manuscript (even if you have already done so previously). I apologize in advance for any duplication of effort on your part; however, in order for my department to be expeditious in getting your critique done quickly, it is most helpful to have the manuscript in the same email as the critique form. Thank you for your assistance!

Once we receive the completed critique form and manuscript, both will be forwarded to one of our editors who will develop your critique. The process takes approximately two weeks. Once the critique is received back from the editor, you will be sent a copy and one will also be forwarded to your referring agency who will then contact you to review it with you.

Important!! Please email the critique form and manuscript to: (e-mail address omitted)

We will then get started.

Best regards,

“Vi”
Critique Fulfillment Department
Writers Literary

—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 3:49 AM
Subject: NY “Cheri” Out Of Office

I will be out of the country with no access to emails or voice mail until Sunday. Please excuse any delay in my communications during this time. I expect to be caught up by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thanks,
“Cheri”

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: NY “Cheri” Out Of Office

“Cheri”,

Don’t send out the dogs! It was a false alarm! My credit union sent the money in the wrong name. And they are the best in town! Anyway, the book has been sent to the critique service. Hope you had a great trip!

Thanks,

—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions
To: Author
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2006 9:00 AM
Subject: RE: NY “Cheri” Out Of Office

Whew! Please note:

In the future, send all administrative communications to (email address)

I have enjoyed interacting with you but my role with you is now finished. I am in charge of new author acquistions only.

“Angie” and her administrative team will take good care of you. Ask “Angie” about any questions related to receiving your contract or the process of the critique and then meeting the agent once all the paperwork and preparation is in place.

I wish you the absolute best success and I have enjoyed our e-meeting together.

Best regards,
(Name omitted) – VP Acquisitions

Our Pledge To You:
==================
* We respect what you have accomplished thus far as a writer.
* We believe that great authors are made, not born. We are willing to develop talent.
* We pledge straight talk in a confusing and old-school industry.
* We can’t promise a sale. We can promise a professional relationship.

p.s. Missed Emails, Spam, Whitelists, and other reasons for lapses in communications. We are very, very diligent about returning every email that we receive within a couple of days. The same is true for our vendors and suppliers. IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A COMMUNICATION AND YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE, PLEASE, CHECK WITH US AND WE WILL SEE WHAT HAPPENED. Please don’t jump to negative conclusions. The Internet is not 100% foolproof and we are very sensitive to our clients’ expectations and our promises about timely communications.

—– Original Message —–
From: New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2006 6:16 AM
Subject: Literary Agency – Contract Administration

Dear (Author),

You should have received your executed contract in the mail by now, and if not, you should within the next few days. If you do not receive it within a week, please let us know.

Once again, we congratulate you on your commitment to your writing career and we compliment you on what you have achieved thus far.

Sincerely,

The Contract Administration Department

Note: Please do not reply to this email. ContractAdmin is a singular use email only. “Cheri” and the Acquisition Team have enjoyed working with you thus far. Since their role is very focused on acquisition of new talent, if you have questions or follow-up comments please contact “Angie” at (e-mail),as she is in charge of administration and preparing you for working with the Agent. “Angie” be your administrative contact for the duration of your time with us.

Important: If you have not made arrangements for obtaining a critique, please contact: (Writers Literary e-mail) immediately.

What’s Next?
=============

Once the critique is in the hands of your Agent, they will review yourcritique with you and, based upon what is contained within the critique, discuss what is necessary before beginning the sales and marketing of your work.

p.s. Missed Emails, Spam, Whitelists, and other reasons for lapses in communications. We are very, very diligent about returning every email that we receive within a couple of days. The same is true for our vendors and suppliers. IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A COMMUNICATION AND YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE, PLEASE, CHECK WITH US AND WE WILL SEE WHAT HAPPENED. Please don’t jump to conclusion. The Internet is not 100% foolproof and we are very sensitive to our clients’ expectations.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Lulu” Administration, Writers Literary
To: Author
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 2:41 PM
Subject: Writers Literary – Critique Administration – Reminder

Re: Critique Information Reminder

We are performing our monthly audits and verifying the status of your critique. Thank you for taking a moment to verify our accuracy.

Our records show that we are awaiting receipt of the critique form and/or manuscript/script in order to complete your critique.

If this is in error (and yes, it happens) please email me with any details you have. We sincerely apologize if we have missed an email containing your information or if we have acknowledged receipt of your information already, yet you are receiving this message. Given that we have several
people who process the information that comes through to Writers Literary, sometimes there are errors on our part and our database may simply not be reflecting the correct data.

Should you need the critique form to be sent to you again, please let us know. All information and inquiries should be sent to: (e-mail address)

Continued best wishes for your writing career.

“Lulu” – Director of Critique Fulfillment
Writers Literary & Publishing Services

—– Original Message —–
From: “Vi” Critique Administration, Writers Literary
To: Author
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 5:43 PM
Subject: Writers Literary – Critique Administration

Dear (Author),

Your critique has been completed (see below) and for expediency it has also been forwarded to your Literary Agent. Your agent will review the critique and get back to you within a few days to discuss the results with you. If you have NOT heard from the agent within five days, please contact them.

Thank you again for your commitment to your writing career. At Writers Literary we stand ready to assist you in all phases of bringing your work to the top quality possible and if you decide that future improvements are necessary, we hope you will allow us to assist you.

If you have any comments about your critique (good or bad) please let me know. We are always trying to improve our processes and customer service.

=============================================================
Many authors can make their own changes suggested by the critique. However, some authors try to make their own changes, when they really don’t have the skills necessary to do so. Therefore the Literary Agency that you work with has asked us to provide the following information to them as well (see below):

NOTE: THIS IS INTENTIONALLY BLANK. THE COMPLETED FORM HAS BEEN SENT TO YOUR AGENT WHO WILL BE CONTACTING YOU TO REVIEW YOUR CRITIQUE.

Editor’s Notes:

In my opinion as the person that has reviewed this work, the changes or
Improvements suggested by this review can be made by the author.

______ (Yes, Probably, Maybe, No) This is a 4 point forcing scale.

The amount of work needed to bring this to industry quality standards is:

____ not much
____ some
____ a lot

Remember, the purpose of the critique is to get an unbiased plan of action to bring your work up to professional standards. Your agent will work with you and this information to do so.

“Vi”– Writers Literary Services
Critique Administration

—– Original Message —–
From: “Hal,” Senior Editor, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, March 04, 2006 2:53 PM
Subject: Critique Analysis

Hello, this is “Hal,” Senior Agent at the New York Literary Agency. Please allow me to introduce myself (e-mail address). And my administrator, (Name omitted, e-mail address) Together We will be working with you to first prepare you for marketing, and then to Begin the process of selling your work.

If you have administrative, clerical, filing, or other items to discuss, Please take them up with (assistant). If you have questions about the marketing And agenting, please take them up with me.

Please DO NOT cc everyone as that creates make-work as emails are forwarded And duplicated.

If you haven’t heard from someone, please let me know as I am your senior Contact. Sometimes, with all the spam flying around, email can slip through the cracks (on both sides).

Now that those details are over, let’s get started.

I received your Critique and have reviewed it. (You should have already received It from Writers Literary but if not, it is attached here again. Please always check your Spam filters to see if it may have ended up there.)

It is our recommendation, and we’re sure that you would agree, that the Indicated improvements are implemented before we submit your manuscript to Potential buyers. It is absolutely critical that we submit only top quality Works to our buyers.

The reality is that buyers are inundated with so many manuscripts they can Pick and choose those that are as close to perfect as possible. This saves Them money and effort and allows them to get a better idea of what the Finished product will look like so that their decision process moves more Quickly.

At this time we have to make a decision based on the results of the Critique. Our basic question is this, “based on the critique results, can the author Make their own changes, or should they be required to work with a Third-party editor to make the improvements called for in the critique?”

1) Our first choice is for you to use an editor to assist you.
2) ——————————————————————–
3) In many cases the author is so close to the work, that they can no longer be
4) Objective about making changes. It also helps to have someone to ask
5) Questions of, etc. (Note: you can get started with an editor for around $150ish).

2) You may decide to make the changes yourself.

We realize that in many cases the author feels that they can make their own Changes, or they need to save money, or they just want to do the changes Themselves.

If this is your decision, please realize that we may perform an internal Critique on the changes you have made, and if we find that more work is Needed, then we will request that you work with an editor. However, we may Find that your changes are acceptable, and we may move forward.

There is no right or wrong answer to the above question, just what’s best For you, me, and the work.

Conclusion

I hope this explains the options available to you at this time. Just to Repeat, if you make your own changes, then we may require more work, or we May not. Obviously we’ll have to review what the changes look like. If you Use a third party editor, then we know that the work was done correctly and We can move forward. (As an example of why we like to suggest a third party Editor, think of an accounting auditor. This is an independent third party That certifies that certain standards are met).

Please let me know which way you would like to proceed given the results of The critique.

If you have any other questions or would like to proceed in a different Manner please let me know. This is a slow-moving industry and we can afford To take our time to bring your work to the highest possible level before we Pitch it… you know the old saying, “you never get a second chance to make A first impression”.

I look forward to your reply.

Best regards,

“Hal,” Senior Agent

Attachment: Critique form
(PLEASE NOTE: FOR POSTING ON THIS WEBSITE, I HAVE REMOVED IDENTIFIABLE REFERENCES TO THE BOOK, TO PROTECT THE AUTHOR. THE AUTHOR HAD E-MAILED THE ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT, BUT APPARENTLY, THE CRITIQUE BELOW REFERS ONLY TO THE QUESTIONS PREVIOUSLY ANSWERED BY THE AUTHOR AND THE FIRST PAGE OF TEXT.)

Critique Section – This information will be provided by the Critic:

The Current Title – How catchy is it? How well does it convey the information in the manuscript?
I don’t find this a very catchy title.

The Current Synopsis – How catchy is it? Does it intrigue?

This synopsis sounds interesting, but there is no need to give a chapter by chapter summary.

The Current Length of the Work – Is it appropriate for the target market?

Yes.

What is the power of the opening 3-5 sentences?

The opening is fairly good.

Dialogue (if any) – Describe and comment.

Good.

Mechanics – Grammar:

There are errors in grammar and punctuation throughout the script. I have edited the following paragraphs to show some of them. I have highlighted the words and punctuation marks I added and have put in bold the words that have to be deleted:

There are some long, convoluted sentences that have to be rewritten for correctness and clarity, eg: (OMITTED TEXT)

Throughout the script, there are too many long, involved sentences. It sounds as if the writer has tried to cram as much as possible into each sentence. It reads better when you break up some long sentences into shorter, simpler ones. The aim is to make your script easy and enjoyable for people to read. Readers don’t want to have to struggle through long, complicated sentences.

It’s better not to use unnecessary phrases that add nothing to the meaning of the sentence but just make it sound longer and wordier. Making a sentence longer and wordier does not make it sound more impressive. The convention nowadays is to write tight. Simplicity is valued over ornate writing. Clear, simple, focused writing is easier to understand and a pleasure to read. When you make your sentences long and convoluted, that makes the book harder to read and people are more likely to be put off and choose to read something that is easier to understand.

Mechanics – Spelling:

There are some typos, eg: (OMITTED TEXT)

Mechanics – Punctuation:

There are various mistakes, including missing commas. I showed some of them in the paragraphs I edited above.

Mechanics – Formatting:

The manuscript should be typed in Courier 12, double-spaced.

Is there a need for illustrations? (Children’s, non-fiction, etc.)

No.

Other / Conclusion

This is an interesting story, but the script has to be edited to correct the errors in grammar and punctuation.

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Hal,” Senior Editor, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2006 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: Critique Analysis

Dear “Hal,” thank you for getting in touch with me so quickly. The only thing is, I have a problem. I cannot afford an editor. So where do we go from here? You sound like a very smart man, and since we have a contract, what do you suggest I do?

—– Original Message —–
From: “Hal,” Senior Editor, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2006 7:40 PM
Subject: RE: Critique Analysis

Dear (Author),

We completely understand cash flow challenges, so no worries! Take your time. This is a slow moving business and we’re in it for the long term. We like you and your work and we are willing to wait.

At this point you can use the critique as your guide and make the changes yourself. You can submit them to me when you feel you are ready and we will take a look at it again at that time. If you do not wish to make the changes, we can take your work as is and go directly to marketing. The choice is yours.

Please let me know how you wish to proceed.

Thanks,
“Hal” – Senior Agent

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Hal,” Senior Agent, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 1:36 PM
Subject: Re: Critique Analysis

Dear “Hal,”

All right, I will make the changes, and we will go from there. I was amazed when I went back over the book and saw that the critique analysis was correct. I found mistakes I did not know were there. Hell, I thought I was perfect!

Thanks,

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Hal,” Senior Agent, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 12:31 AM
Subject: We have a problem

Dear “Hal,”

We have a problem. I received a message telling me that the New York Literary Agency is a fraud. That the agency and staff earn their money, not by selling books, but by referring writers to a critique service (their own) and by referring writers to an editorial service (their own). I believe a person accused of fraud should have a chance to explain. What say you, “Hal”?

I hope this is not true. A literary agency can make a lot more money selling a good author’s work then by defrauding them.

Thank you,

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Hal,” Senior Agent, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 12:09 AM
Subject: Here is your chance.

“Hal,”

It would seem you and the rest of the staff at New York Literary Agency, have been very busy. Everywhere I look on the Internet, when I ask about the agency, I get information that the New York Literary Agency is only a scam. And that you all have been doing a scam for at least six years!

Here is what you can do. Send me an email stating that you no longer represent me, and send back my contract. If you do this, then I will be satisfied. If you do not do this then I will contact the police in Boca Raton, Fla. The Better Business Bureau in Boca Raton, Fla. then start with the police and Better Business Bureau in New York since you have an address there as well. Not to mention the FBI, since I am sure they would like to know what this agency is up to of late. I am sure they have also heard about you as well.

The ball is in your court!! Let’s see if you are smart enough to end this!

—– Original Message —–
From: “Hal,” Senior Editor, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 4:44 PM
Subject: RE: Critique Analysis

Dear (Author),

I like authors that like to work for themselves, and who are open to assistance as well. So, yes, make your changes, and when you send it to me we’ll decide if it’s ready to go at that time.

“Hal,” – Senior Agent

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 6:46 PM
Subject: WHAT GIVES?

“Cheri”,

Are you playing games? Before I found your name all over the Internet with a bad rep, you were always so quick to respond.

Hmmm, I wonder why.

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: Administration, Writers Literary
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 6:47 PM
Subject: WHAT GIVES?

I am not hearing anything from anyone. I wonder why?

—–Original Message—–
From: Author
To: “Jo”- Administration, New York Literary Agency
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 6:50 PM
Subject: WHAT GIVES?

“Jo”,

Suddenly I am not hearing from anyone. Why do you think this is, “Jo”?

—– Original Message —–
From: “Hal,” Senior Agent, New York Literary Agency (NOTE: SIGNATURE BELOW DOES NOT MATCH ORIGIN)
To: Author
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 9:31 PM
Subject: RE: We have a problem

Dear (Author),

First, let me assure you I DO NOT get paid as you mentioned below. I do not work on commission and I get no “kick backs” what so ever. I do not know of anyone in our company that works this way either. If I did, I certainly would not have to work the hours I do. (You will notice it is 6:32pm on a Saturday evening)

As far as the negative comments that are out there about us, here is what our company says….

Please let me apologize in advance for any ‘attitude’ that this email contains. We are asked to comment on that blather all the time, and the sorry truth is that good authors have missed their chance at quality representation because our business model has angered a bunch of wannabe writers. Our successful authors don’t have time to frequent those boards, and if you can find a non-self-published author on the forums, let me know.

It’s funny how people will believe something from someone they’ve never met, vs. someone they have interacted with over time.( i.e. me.), but at least you’re asking for more info, so I commend you for that.

We used to spend time and energy trying to get them to present both sides of the same story on the forums, but frankly it was a waste of time and we have too many applicants anyway.

If you have any specific questions, I’ll answer them, but this ‘comment on what I found” is a waste of time and energy, which I frankly don’t have any more of. (excuse the bad grammar).

Make up your own mind based on our own interaction. I’m very, very sure that I’ve treated you professionally, and that I’ve responded to every email you’ve sent.

Otherwise, best to you in your career, I hope you can find another agent that will treat you with the respect that I have, but I doubt it.

Best regards,
“Cheri” – VP Acquisitions

Here is our ‘form’ rebuttal:
================================

First, let me thank you for ‘seeking first to understand’. I apologize in advance for the length of this email but we want you to be able to make an informed decision about how to proceed.

We are keenly aware of the negative message boards out there and frankly we are very concerned too. Please allow me to give you our analysis of the situation and a suggestion about how you might proceed.

There appear to be three categories of people on those boards.
——————————————————————-
1) The first category are the ‘industry watchdogs’. These are people that derive some level of psychological benefits from ‘exposing’ fraud, scams, etc. WE HAVE CONTACTED THESE PEOPLE NUMEROUS TIMES AND OFFERED TO ANSWER THEIR QUESTIONS ON A PUBLIC FORUM FOR THE BEST INTEREST OF THE INDUSTRY AND THE WRITERS. They have refused or ignored our requests. What does that tell you? It tells me that they aren’t interested in the truth, it tells me that they are interested in more visitors to their website. Also, they have blocked our rebuttal posts and deleted our prior posts. In short, it’s a very one-sided message board isn’t it?

2) The second category are people that have worked with us, for whom we haven’t been successful, and they are blameful, pointing fingers, etc. Basically just jumping on the bandwagon because they would rather feel ‘took’ than acknowledge that their work wasn’t good enough to sell.

3) The third category, for whom we feel the most sorry for, are authors such as yourself who stumble into this mess. Many of these authors just decide not to continue, and may lose the one real chance that they ever had to secure representation. Contacted any other agencies lately? How has the response level been? Wouldn’t you give us just a few points for responsiveness?

So, what to do?….
————————
First, we challenge you to actually go through the message board and to find anything of substance. What we see is repeat, repeat, and each time something is repeated, it gets more and more outlandish. Our favorite, was that “we steal work and sell it to China”. ugh.

Go through the boards and send me any SPECIFIC questions you have. (I’ll actually save you some time, and answer some now because we’ve heard most of them… )

Q) You charge fees.. that sucks.. no one should charge a writer anything…you should get paid only if you sell something… and various flavors of this misconception.

A) We really don’t charge fees. We ask the writer to improve their work and a critique and editing (sometimes) is part of that process. The odds are so against new writers that we’ve learned that we can only invest our time with writers that are willing to pull their own weight. Writers that aren’t willing to pull their weight we call the “something for nothing” writer, who is regurgitating old mantras about how if an agent charges anything, they are bad. Guess what,
if your last name was President Clinton, we’d waive our fees too.

Q) You’ve never sold anything… the author sold it.. blah, blah

A) We now have 4 deals. The most recent is with an UK publisher. (Note: because of the vitriolic people on these boards we don’t post our deals because the instant we post a name, the really creepy and scary people that hate us start sending this crap to the posted name. We’ve got the documents and if ever needed our lawyers can pull them out.) We assisted every author with the contract on those 4 deals. We actually have emails from the publisher complimenting us on the fair job we did for our author. Yes, in two of the deals the author found the relationship, two of them, we found the relationship. In all 4 deals we provided SIGNIFICANT value to the contract negotiation and the post-publishing supoort. The thing that is
lost in all this is that very, very few literary agents have even one deal under their belt. Also, we did a measurement in April and we had 68 open and active discussions with buyers about our authors’ work. We expect a few more deals by the end of the year. You might also be interested to note that we also find really bad contracts for our authors and we recommend that they don’t accept them. We’ve seen more contracts than anyone you know and we bring that expertise to our clients.

Q) You use Form Letters and you are impersonal…

A) True or false, we have answered every email that you have ever sent us? I know the answer is true, and you know it too. To me, that’s personal service. Yes, we use form letters for billing, acquistions, status reports, etc. Our lawyers like us to say it the same way, every time. Do you really want to hold that against us? By using every method possible to keep our admin costs down, we can spend our money selling for our authors, it’s that simple.

Q) The people who work at your company are scam artists, thieves, and have records… etc.

A) This is the grapevine at it’s worst. We aren’t, we aren’t and we don’t. Have you ever heard of mis-identity, or identity theft. We have learned that it’s impossible to curb this situation. Also, did you ever ask yourself why writers have used pen names since time began, and why agents are so hard to get to? It’s because every agent that we know has been literally stalked by some crazy writer. We’ve had them drive by our house. creepy and wierd.

Q) If all this is so untrue, why haven’t you done anything about it?

A) We’ve tried, we’re filing lawsuits against Victoria Strauss and a few
other message board owners, but for the most part, anyone can say anything, so we have just learned to live with it, and to hope that the real authors, the ones we want as clients, can see through it as what it is.

So, in conclusion, if you want to spend your time looking for any real and substantive items on the boards, please do so and let us try to answer the question as best we can.

Please let me repeat our business model. We want writers who are willing to help themselves. However, in the end, you must be the one that has to decide what you want to do. If you are unwilling to spend any money to improve your writing, then please go away. If you are willing to take a small chance with us, then give us a try.

Either way, we wish you the best in your writing career.

p.s. I think this person says it very well…

In closing, I’d like to mention that on several sites that I’ve perused, your agency has been given a bad reputation for problems that I myself have not experienced. Given this, I felt that I should tell you personally that I have been very happy with the level of service your company has given me and at no time have I ever felt uncomfortable about working with you, even after having a dozen web sites try to warn me that you are “unfair”. It is my opinion that some of these sites really ought to look into the writers posting these complaints, but it is only my opinion, so I’ve kept it to myself, except of course to share it with you. In any case, I’ve felt you’ve done a wonderful job up to this point, and that you deserve some thanks for everything that you do… so, er, thank you.

Please, make up your own mind based on our interaction.

And before you lose what might be a decent chance at success, we suggest that you at least stay with the process until you see our contract.

Our contract is very simple and it has the following clauses that protect you:
===========================================
1. There are no fees. If your work needs improvement, then you are responsible for that. If you think your work doesn’t need improvement, then good for you, but we rarely, rarely, see ‘ready to go’ work. Rarely, and I mean rarely. If you think WE should pay someone to improve YOIUR work, then we really are glad to get rid of you now.

2. You can fire us if we don’t perform, easily and cleanly after any 90 day period where we don’t make a sale.

3. You keep all rights, copyrights, etc.

I promise you those 3 clauses are in the contract, so, you can believe what you read, or you can give us a try and make up your own mind.

I know you are nervous, however, what’s your real risk? Ask yourself that.

Our successful authors have answered that question for themselves, and frankly, they don’t have the time or energy to hang out posting on boards, they are following their success and their dream, and I hope you do the same.

Whatever your decision, I wish you the best.

The quotes below are unedited and as you can see, quite from the heart. (We have lots more of these.) If you are really cynical, you will probably believe we made them up, but I promise you, we can prove every one of them.

=======================

“Just a note to say, whatever the outcome of my submission, it’s refreshing to engage an agent who will a) take an email submission, b) turn it round as quick you’ve committed to do and c) actively work with a writer. Submissions are daunting enough anyway without having to wait ten weeks for an impersonalised slip of paper. Here’s to you.”

“I would like to thank you for this critique, it is refreshing to get an honest professional opinion of my work, it make me realise just how much I don’t know about the written word and its presentation.”

It’s been a long time since I left school with considerable number of years passing before I became interested in writing again. I would like you to thank the critique editor for me and let it be known that I look at this as a new beginning and rebirth of my education.

“Thank you for my critique. I couldn’t believe how fast I got it! Frankly, I don’t think it is humanly possible to top the phenomenal service I have received from you. Not only did you keep me apprised of the situation every step of the way – a critique within days of your receipt of my manuscript! I was utterly amazed to say the least! I must congratulate you and all your team for the high level of friendly, efficient service and professionalism that you give your clients. I am HUGELY impressed!”

“As for my critique, I could hardly believe that could write such a WONDERFUL one about my work. The fact that she said she loved this story made all the years and years of writing and keeping the faith worthwhileI THANK YOU, CYNTHIA, THANK YOU! Your positive words abou my work have made my whole year!!!!!!!!!”

“After having reread all the information sent to me, I must say that I am impressed by the way your agency has handled the science, or art of appreciating new sources of writing. If only all agencies displayed your model the world may be a better place. Your FAQ has answered all of my questions and i am eager to get to work.”

===========================

So, as you can see, some clients love us (and some clients hate us, but hey, that’s life in real business). We respect that our service is not for you, but we did want you to know that we have many more clients that like us, than hate us. That said, I wish you the best in your writing career. If you would like to reconsider, we are open to it. If not, we wish you the best and hope that you will find an agency with a soft spot for new authors.

—– Original Message —–

From: “Hal,” Senior Editor, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 9:31 PM
Subject: RE: Here is your chance.

Dear (Author),

I just sent you an email with an explanation but unfortunately for you you were too impatient to wait for it. So, fulfilling your wishes……

I am sorry that this didn’t work out.

This email shall serve as formal termination and dissolution of our Literary Agency Contract for Representation.

“Hal,” – Senior Agent

—– Original Message —–
From: Administration, Writers Literary
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 8:10 AM
Subject: RE: WHAT GIVES?

Dear (Author),

I am sorry. This is the first email I have received from you. After checking your account, I see that your critique is complete and you should have received it around March 3. By copy of this email to the Critique Fulfillment Dept., they will forward you another copy.

Please let me know if there is anything else you need. Thank you.

Best Regards,

Writers Literary
Accounting

—– Original Message —–
From: “Cheri” VP Acquisitions, New York Literary Agency
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 10:14 AM
Subject: RE: WHAT GIVES?

Still am, but not wasting time convincing anyone.

Best regards,
“Cheri” – VP Acquisitions

Our Pledge To You:
==================
* We respect what you have accomplished thus far as a writer.
* We believe that great authors are made, not born. We are willing to develop talent.
* We pledge straight talk in a confusing and old-school industry.
* We can’t promise a sale. We can promise a professional relationship.

p.s. Missed Emails, Spam, Whitelists, and other reasons for lapses in communications. We are very, very diligent about returning every email that we receive within a couple of days. The same is true for our vendors and suppliers. IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A COMMUNICATION AND YOU BELIEVE THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE, PLEASE, CHECK WITH US AND WE WILL SEE WHAT HAPPENED. Please don’t jump to negative conclusions. The Internet is not 100% foolproof and we are very sensitive to our clients’ expectations and our promises about timely communications.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Vi” Critique Administration, Writers Literary
To: Author
Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 4:52 PM
Subject: Writers Literary – Critique Administration

Dear (Author),

Attached is a copy of your completed critique that we emailed to you on 3/3. Below is a copy of the email that accompanied it. By separate email, I will send a copy of an email that your agent sent to you on 3/4.

Thanks,
“Vi” – Writers Literary Services
Critique Administration

Dear (Author),

Your critique has been completed (see below) and for expediency it has also been forwarded to your Literary Agent. Your agent will review the critique and get back to you within a few days to discuss the results with you. If you have NOT heard from the agent within five days, please contact them.

Thank you again for your commitment to your writing career. At Writers Literary we stand ready to assist you in all phases of bringing your work to the top quality possible and if you decide that future improvements are necessary, we hope you will allow us to assist you.

If you have any comments about your critique (good or bad) please let me know. We are always trying to improve our processes and customer service.
=============================================================
Many authors can make their own changes suggested by the critique. However, some authors try to make their own changes, when they really don’t have the skills necessary to do so. Therefore the Literary Agency that you work with has asked us to provide the following information to them as well (see below):

NOTE: THIS IS INTENTIONALLY BLANK. THE COMPLETED FORM HAS BEEN SENT TO YOUR AGENT WHO WILL BE CONTACTING YOU TO REVIEW YOUR CRITIQUE.

Editor’s Notes:

In my opinion as the person that has reviewed this work, the changes or
Improvements suggested by this review can be made by the author.

______ (Yes, Probably, Maybe, No) This is a 4 point forcing scale.

The amount of work needed to bring this to industry quality standards is:

____ not much
____ some
____ a lot

Remember, the purpose of the critique is to get an unbiased plan of action to bring your work up to professional standards. Your agent will work with you and this information to do so.

“Vi” – Writers Literary Services
Critique Administration

—– Original Message —–
From: “Lulu”- Administration, Writer’s Literary
To: Author
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 6:31 AM
Subject: RE: WHAT GIVES?

(Author),

Your email is confusing. ???

“Lulu” – Director of Critique Fulfillment
Writers Literary & Publishing Services

Posted on - 2 Comments on The blessings of Ataraxia, or, How to be a dream client

The blessings of Ataraxia, or, How to be a dream client

I sat down to write about agencies again today, but to be absolutely honest with you, I had to stop halfway through, because I’ve been having a genuinely upsetting day. Since we writers have to be so tough to make it in this business, it’s easy to forget that we are actually finely-balanced musical instruments. It’s hard to create when we’re thrown for a loop. Today’s loop-generator was a fairly common one for givers of feedback, professional and friendly both, so I think it would be useful for me to write about it. (And if not, hey, I blog pretty much every day, so if it turns out that I’m just being self-indulgent today, I can always be purely useful again tomorrow, right?)

Because I am EXTREMELY selective about whose work I read (I have been exchanging chapters with my first readers for years, and professionally, I will only work with clients I feel are bursting with talent, but even then, if the subject matter or genre is not a good fit with my tastes, or if I don’t think I can help a writer get published within a reasonable amount of time, I will refer him on), the vast majority of the time, my interactions with other writers are a joy. Really. I enjoy giving feedback quite a bit, even when I am charged with the task of helping a client incorporate not-very-sound advice from an agent, editor, or dissertation advisor in such a way that it will not destroy the book.

Okay, I’ll grant you, it doesn’t SOUND like a whole lot of fun. But usually, it is: I love good writing, and like any competent editor, the sight of anything that detracts from good writing’s presentation makes me foam at the mouth and reach for a pen.

Every so often, though, I’ll run into someone who thinks I’m just making up the rules of standard format, or norms of academic argumentation, or even the usual human expectation that within a story, each subsequent event will follow logically upon the one before it. (Blame Aristotle’s POETICS for that last set of rules, not me.) This morning, I was lambasted at length for having had the gall to point out that someone’s Chapter Two might not be utterly clear to a reader that did not have the author reading over his shoulder, explaining verbally the choices made on the page.

Long-time readers of this blog, sing along with me here: when you submit a manuscript, all that matters is what is on the page. If ANYTHING in your first 50 pages is not perfectly comprehensible without a “Yes, but I explain that in Chapter Four”-type verbal clarification, rework it.

Please. Thank you.

Now, since it’s my job – or ethical obligation, in cases of volunteer feedback-giving – to point out precisely this sort of problem wherever it appears in a manuscript, I am always a trifle nonplused when I encounter a writer who thinks I’m only flagging it out of some deep-seated compulsion to be hurtful. Again, I am very selective about whose pages I read, and I burn to be helpful: it’s not uncommon for my commentary on a book to be longer as most of the chapters. I try to be thoughtful, giving my reasons for any major suggested change with a specificity and completeness that makes the Declaration of Independence look like a murmur of vague discontent about tea prices.

Obviously, this level of feedback is not for everybody; one of my best friends in the work refers to me affectionately as a manuscript piranha, but still, she lets me read her work. Because, honestly, is there anything worse than handing your work-in-progress to someone who just says, “Oh, it was fine,” or “Oh, it just wasn’t my kind of book,” without explaining WHY? I think completeness of feedback implies a certain level of devotion on my part to making the manuscript in question the best book it can possibly be.

Yet I was told this morning that, to put it mildly, I was incorrect about this. Apparently, I only suggest changes as a most effective means of ripping the author’s heart from his chest, stomping upon it, pasting it back together, sautéing it in a nice balsamic vinegar reduction, then feeding the resulting stew to, if not the author, than at least the neighbor’s Rottweiler.

Imagine my surprise.

This was for a manuscript I LIKED, incidentally. I had made a grand total of ONE suggested change, in the midst of oceans of praise.

So what did I do? What editors and agents moan privately to one another about having to do for their clients all the time, be preternaturally patient until the “But it’s MY work! It MUST be perfect!” tantrum petered out. Until then, further discussion was simply pointless.

Because, in the first moments after receiving critique, creative people are often utterly, completely, fabulously unreasonable about it. They not only want to shoot the messenger – they want to broil her slowly on a spit over red-hot coals like a kabob, and THEN yell at her. Fear of this stripe of reaction, in case you were wondering, is the most common reason most people will give only that very limited “Oh, it was fine” feedback after reading a friend’s manuscript. They’re just trying to keep their heads attached to their bodies, rather than skewered upon some irate writer’s pike.

It’s also the usual excuse — which you may believe or not, as you see fit, considering the source — that most agents give for why they send out form letter rejections, rather than specific, thoughtful replies to requested submissions. Their stated reason for form letter responses to queries, of course, is sheer volume: they don’t have time to reply to each individually. But obviously, if they have the time to read 50 pages, they have time to scrawl a couple of lines about how it could be improved. The fact is, they don’t want to: they don’t want to engender an angry response that might turn into an endless debate about the merits of a book they’ve already decided, for whatever reason, that they do not want.

Since most writers are peaches and lambs and every other kind of pacific, cooperative kind of entity you can think of most of the time, this fear is perhaps overblown. Most of us are perfectly capable of taking a little constructive criticism in the spirit it is intended. But every so often, some author loses it – and for that author’s display of temper, alas, we all pay.

That’s the official logic, anyway.

So now you know: if you want to establish yourself as a dream client in the eyes of the average agent or editor, who tends to hide under a chair after giving even the mildest feedback to her clients, greet the first emergence of any feedback with apparent tolerance; give yourself time to calm down before you argue. To buy yourself time, say something like, “Wow, what an interesting idea. I’ll have to think about that. Thanks.” Then take the rest of the day off, and don’t so much as peek at your manuscript again until you’ve had a chance to calm down.

Say this, even if in that moment, the suggestion proffered seems to you like the worst idea since Hannibal decided to march all of those elephants over the Alps to get at Rome. Because at that precise second, you are not just an individual writer, concerned with the integrity of your own manuscript: you are representing all of us. Show that, contrary to our stereotype in the industry as touchy hotheads unwilling to consider changing a single precious word, most of us really are capable of taking a little criticism.

Admittedly, my readers all acting this beautifully in the fact of critique probably sounds better to me right now than it might had I not just been scathed for trying to help out. Whenever I am confronted with a defensive critique-rejecter, I must confess, I seldom think of cooperative, thoughtful revisers with any abhorrence.

Feedback, though, and the revision process in general, ought to be treated with more respect by everyone concerned. There really ought to be a muse, if not an ancient Greek goddess, of manuscript revision, someone to whom we can pray for patience and tolerance in getting feedback on our work.

A muse of revision might conceivably make better sense to court than a muse of inspiration. Few of us writers like to admit it, but if we write works longer than a postcard, we all inevitably worship in private at this muse’s altar. Why should the initial inspiration gals get all the credit, when so much of the work that makes a book wonderful is in the re-editing?

Editing gets a bad rap, and self-editing even worse. You can’t spend half an hour in a gathering of more than three serious writers without hearing someone bitch about it. Oh, it’s so hard; oh, it’s so tedious. Oh, I’m sick to death of revising my manuscript. If I have to spend another instant of my life reworking that one pesky sentence, I shall commit unspeakable mayhem on the nearest piece of shrubbery.

We don’t describe the initial rush to write that pesky sentence that way, though, do we? Our muse leaps out at us, flirts with us, seduces us so effectively that we look up a paragraph later and find that six hours have gone by. Our muse is the one that gives us that stunned look in our eyes that our loved ones know so well, the don’t-call-me-for-breakfast glaze that tells the neighborhood that we will not be available for normal human interaction for awhile.

Ah, but the muses of initial inspiration don’t always stick around, do they? No, the flighty trollops too often knock you over the head with a great idea, then leave you in the lurch in mid-paragraph. Do they call? Do they write? Don’t they know we worry ourselves sick, we writers, wondering if they are ever going to come back?

Not so Ataraxia, the muse of revision. (Hey, I came up with the notion, so I get to name her. According to the ancient philosopher Sextus Empiricus — I know, I know; you can’t throw a piece of bread at a party these days without hitting someone chatting about Sextus Empiricus, but bear with me here — ataraxia is the state of tranquility attained only at the end of intense self-examination. Ataraxia is the point at which you stop second-guessing yourself: the ultimate goal of revision, no?)

Ataraxia yanks you back to your computer, scolding; she reads over the shoulder of your dream agent; editors at major publishing houses promise her their firstborn. While being a writer would be a whole lot more fun if completing a good book could be accomplished merely by consorting with her flightier muse sisters, party girls at heart, sooner or later, we all need to appeal to Ataraxia for help.

Best to stay on her good side: for starters, let’s all pledge not to scream at the kind souls who give us necessary feedback. Yes, I suspect Ataraxia would really enjoy that sort of sacrifice.

I’ll confess, I have not always treated Ataraxia with respect myself. How tedious revision is, I have thought from time to time, inventing reasons not to sit down and put in a few hours of solid work on a project. What a bore, to have to go back to a book I consider finished and tweak it: hour after hour of staring at just a few sentences, changing perhaps an adjective or two every ten minutes. Yawn.

Over time, though, I have started to listen to what I was actually telling myself when I complained about revision. It wasn’t that I objected to putting in the time; there have been few days in the last decade when I haven’t spent many hours in front of my computer or scribbling on a notepad; I’m a writer, so that’s what I do. It wasn’t that I felt compelled to rework my novel for the fiftieth time, or, in cases where I’ve been incorporating feedback, that I thought the changes would be bad for the book.

No, my real objection, I realized, is that I expected the revision process to bore me to tears. Am I alone in this?

But Ataraxia watches over even the most ungrateful of writers, so she whacked me over the head with an epiphany: a manuscript is a living thing, and to allow it to change can be to allow it to grow in new and exciting ways.

So now I know: whenever I start procrastinating about necessary revisions, it is a pretty sure sign that I had been thinking of my text as something inert, passive, a comatose patient who might die if I inadvertently lopped off too much on the editing table. What if, instead of thinking of revision as nitpicking, I used it to lift some conceptual barriers within the book? What if I incorporated my first readers’ suggestions about my memoir in a way that made the book better? Not just in terms of sentences and paragraphs, but in terms of content?

Just a suggestion: instead of regarding feedback as an attack upon the book, a foreign attempt to introduce outside ideas into an organically perfect whole or a negative referendum upon your abilities as a writer, perhaps it would be more productive to treat critique (your own included) as a hint that maybe the flagged section could use an influx of fresh creativity.

Try to move beyond just making grammatical changes and inserting begrudging sentences where your first readers have asked, “But why is this happening here?” If you have stared at a particular sentence or paragraph for hours on end, changing it and changing it back — c’mon, you know we all do it — naturally, you’re going to get bored. Naturally, you are going to loathe that kind of revision.

But the next time you find yourself in that kind of editing loop, set the text you’re working on aside for a few minutes. Pick up a pen (or open a new document) and write that section afresh, in new words, as if for the first time. No peeking at your old text, and no cheating by using sentences you recall writing the first time around. Allow yourself to use different analogies, to reveal character and event differently. Give yourself time to play with your ideas and the way you want to say them before you go back to the original text.

Then walk away for ten minutes. Maybe you could do some stretching exercises, to avoid repetitive strain injuries, or at least take a stroll around your house. Feed the cat. Plot a better way to get legions of elephants over the Alps. Anything to get your eyes off the printed word for awhile.

And then, when you return, read the original version and the new. You probably will not want to substitute one for the other entirely, but is there any part of the new version that could be incorporated into the old in an interesting way? Are there sentences that can be switched productively, or some new ones that could be added to the old? Are there arguments or character points in the new that would enliven the old?

What you’re doing with this exercise is transforming revision from a task where you are fine-tuning something essentially finished into an opportunity to infuse the manuscript with fresh ideas at problematic points. Conceptually, it’s a huge difference, and I guarantee it will make the revision process a lot more fun.

As Ataraxia wants it to be, I suspect.

Okay, I feel less self-indulgent now: I think I have wrested some good, practical advice out of my very, very bad day. And naturally, unlike your garden-variety agent or editor, I’m not going to give up on this writer because of a single loss of temper. Nor, unlike the average writer’s friend with a manuscript, am I going to let the one writer who implied that my feedback on his work was the worst idea since Stalin last said, “I know! Let’s have a purge!” discourage me from giving feedback to others.

But please, the next time you are confronted with feedback that makes your blood boil, take a deep breath before you respond. Think about me, and about Ataraxia, and force yourself to say, “Gee, what an interesting notion. May I think about it, and we can talk about it later?” Then go home and punch a pillow 700 times, if you must, but please, don’t disembowel the messenger.

She may be bringing you a news flash from Ataraxia. Keep up the good work!

Posted on - 8 Comments on Dream On: Guest Blogger Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Dream On: Guest Blogger Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Anne here for a moment: I’ve been cracking the get-your-work-out-there whip pretty heavily in my last two series, so I am very pleased to reintroduce FAAB (Friend of Author! Author! Blog) Jordan Rosenfeld, bringing her patented brand of writer encouragement. Here, she’s addressing a MONUMENTALLY important issue (in response to an excellent reader comment — thanks again, Moo!) that seldom gets discussed at writers’ conferences, which are typically geared to either business (“Get and agent! Get an agent!”) or craft (“You’re writing wrong! You’re writing wrong!”). But in the quiet of whatever time and space we have managed — often with great difficulty — to carve out as a writing studio, this issue often looms large: how do we give ourselves permission to write?

Take it away, Jordan!

Dream On, by Jordan E. Rosenfeld , Guest Blogger

I received a comment awhile back from reader “Moo Crazy” who asked for suggestions on what to do when one’s desire to write is at odds with one’s inner morality that suggests writing is not a “responsible” way to live, usually because of its slim profit margin. A lot of writers, therefore, hold back from the time they would love to take from children/job/significant others and don’t give their writing life their “all,” which breeds its own kind of nasty feelings.

Let me say the obvious first and get it out of the way so we can move on to working with the feelings:

If you don’t write, there will be no product with which to do anything.

If you don’t write, you are not being responsible to yourSELF.

Whatever you believe about writing — i.e, a noble endeavor or a waste of time — will not only be true for you, but you will teach others to believe this about it as well.

If you resist writing out of guilt, you will also slowly begin to resent those you believe are keeping you from doing what you love.

So when you look at all those likely outcomes of holding back, you can see that leaning in to the responsibility angle also comes with some drawbacks.

Let me share a little story on this subject. I have been writing all of my life. When I met my husband he took one look at my loaded shelves full of journals and knew he was in the presence of someone for whom writing was not just a passing fancy. However, he is also a rational person who believes that financial security is a wise thing. I always wrote “on the side.” I jammed it into the crevices of my life wherever I could find them. I rose early, worked late, put off social engagements, even sacrificed time spent with him.

When small but exciting things happened to me, like the time I went to the writing conference — where I, in fact, met the illustrious Miss Mini — and was told by an agent, “This is really good stuff, you should finish it and then send it to me,” I came home thinking “I’m going to do it. I just need a month.” But when I got home, I couldn’t make a case for taking a month off from my already low-paying job. I felt guilty. What if he banked on my success and nothing happened? What if I failed him?

I proceeded to be a pretty miserable person for quite some years, always hungering after the life that I wanted but was afraid to have in which I wrote all the time and called my own shots. Not until I started creating space for my writing life by focusing on it every day, by doing all the various exercises I previously led you all through, did anything shift.

And then one day, after I’d spent a particularly juicy week day-dreaming about the freelance writing life I was going to have for myself, after I’d started taking my writing life so seriously that nobody dared tell me it was a pipe dream, my husband came to me. “I think you should quit your job,” he said. “It’s time. You have to do this.”

You have no idea how amazing it was to hear those words. What had changed in him from the man who couldn’t bear the idea of me taking a month off to finish a novel?

*I* had changed. I had begun to take myself and my writing so seriously, as if it was in fact a child I was to nurture, that I all but radiated an aura of success. Nothing about our finances changed; I didn’t hand him a written guarantee that I would bring in X dollars. I simply began to do all the work on myself — that of visualizing, emphasizing the positive, writing down in precise detail the writing life I wanted — and he shifted along with me.

I’ve been self-employed for two years now and in these two years more has happened to my career than my entire life put together prior to this.

Two books are being published, I’m a contributing editor at Writer’s Digest magazine, I’m writing book reviews for an NPR-affiliate radio station and the SF Chronicle, I have a literary agent shopping my novel. A few years ago, none of that seemed plausible to me. It all seemed so very far off.

The key is that we think we are making our family members safe, our parents happy and our society proud of us for our restraint by not writing. When all we are really doing is preventing ourselves from our own fullness, our own potential success, which will have a positive effect on everyone in our lives. It’s a terrible edge to walk.

I recommend you start by giving in to your daydreams. You don’t even have to do anything, but start fantasizing in full vivid color, what kind of writing life you want. How much time do you see yourself writing? When, where, and what is coming out? What would you be doing differently if only you had the time to write? Ask these questions until you actually begin to shift.

My next online class with Rebecca Lawton might also help you to this end:

CREATING SPACE: FOR WRITERS AND OTHER ARTISTIC SOULS (Wavegirl Books, 2007) is part writer’s guide, part playbook and now, a series of online classes! Using a principle pioneered by the authors, the class guides participants through activities and insights designed for a creative life. We explore how you attract your life, show you how to fashion your own journey by Creating Space for your desires, and cheerlead you through the process of writing and attracting your good. The classes draw from the principles of the forthcoming book.

Next Session: Letting Go, Creating Space
Schedule: 4 weeks, October 20 through November 17, 2006
Cost $125.
LIMIT: 15 students

It’s important to remember that you are the one who shapes your own life. You are in charge of letting go of what you don’t want, and you — guided by your feelings — can make choices that allow everything and everyone around you to play supportive roles in your life story. This four-week class will teach you the principles of Creating Space, and how to let go of what keeps you from your goals.

To register: Send an email to: createspacej@yahoo.com with your name, address, phone number & email address, and send a deposit of $50 (refundable until October 1st) to: Wavegirl Ink, P.O. Box 654, Vineburg, CA 95487-0654

All class participants will receive a 10% discount on the annual Creating Space Retreat or other CS classes. Those who refer friends who complete the current class will receive a $25 discount on any subsequent class in the series.

Anne again here: Thanks, Jordan! As always, you can catch Jordan’s words of wisdom on her blog, as well as on her literary radio program Word by Word.

But right now, let’s talk about this one: what struggles do YOU face in giving yourself permission to write? What helped you overcome them?

Posted on - No Comments on Giving that gift horse a thorough dental inspection

Giving that gift horse a thorough dental inspection

Yesterday, in wrapping up my series on how advances work, I made passing reference to differences in how agents like to submit their clients’ work to editors — differences which can determine whether there is any possibility of your first book’s generating competitive bidding between publishing houses. I had suggested, in fact, that you might want to have a wee chat with any agent interested in signing you about which strategy s/he prefers.

Today, I want to talk a bit about that conversation, in the hope that some of you will be having it very soon with agents who read your submissions over the Labor Day weekend. (And also, if I’m honest, to distract you while you are waiting for everyone in the publishing industry to get back from summer vacation. I’m a big fan of multi-tasking.)

While you’re waiting to hear back from an agent is a great time to come up with your list of questions for when you are offered representation. (It’s also a good time to send out more queries, to be on the safe side. Unless the agent who has your work has specified that he will only accept an exclusive submission, you are under no obligation to keep your work under wraps while he is making up his mind. Keep moving forward.)

Why should you come up with questions in advance, or come up with your own list distinct from the ones the AAR suggests? Well, for many writers, the actual moment of solicitation can be very, very disconcerting: after years of plowing through uncertainty and rejection, an agent who says yes can look a whole lot like the Archangel Gabriel, descending from heaven in a cloud of glory, book contract in hand.

In my experience, writers are often too dazzled by their own good fortune in being solicited as a client to ask pertinent questions. One does not, after all, lightly question a burning bush.

However, choosing an agent is one of the most important decisions you will ever make as a writer — more important, conceivably, than deciding to sign a publication contract. You need as much information as you can get, in order to make sure that you are making the right decision.

I know, I know: when you don’t have an agent, any agent sounds pretty good. But all you have to do to learn otherwise is walk into a group of three or more agented writers. Give them an hour, and at least one will be complaining about her agent. Not all agents are good ones; as in any profession, there are bound to be ones who are better at it than others. More importantly, there will be some who are better fits for you than others.

Trust me, you will be happier in the long run if you ask about the issues that are important to you up front. Remember, this is a long-term relationship you are setting up: for years to come, your agent will be the FIRST person you call when you have a professional crisis or triumph. Get to know this person a little before you say yes. My favorite pre-signing question of the moment is, “How often do you typically have contact with your clients? How often should I expect updates from you?” followed closely by, “If I have questions or concerns, would you prefer that I e-mailed you, or picked up the phone?”

Why are these at the top of my list? Because, to be absolutely truthful, I am the only writer I know who has as much contact with her agent as she wants. (And why am I so sure about that? Because I am often in those groups of three or more agented writers that I mentioned above.) Before I signed with her, I told her that I would have a lot of questions — because I am a habitual crier of “But why? — and that I wanted to make sure that I could feel free to ask them without imposing on her time or getting on her Manhattan-frazzled nerves.

I knew to ask, because I’d previously been with an agent whose only time to chat was between 5 and 6 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Why so early? Well, she was a perverse soul who would not answer the phone at all after noon New York time (that was when she called editors, you see.) and who couldn’t seem to remember which Washington had the pleasure of my citizenship. In short, my former agent was prone to forget about the time difference between her coast and mine. Not being a habitually early riser myself (I often write in the dead of night, when the phone is unlikely to ring), I certainly did not want to repeat this experience with my new agent.

Judging from my current agent’s reaction, I would guess that I was the first prospective client who had ever asked for that kind of ground rule up front. Moral of the story: when you are first dealing with an agent, remember that you are two human beings who don’t know each other very well. The clearer you can be about how you would like to be treated (over and above the fact that you would like the agent to sell your books for you), the more likely you are to get what you want out of the relationship.

Don’t badger, of course, but be straightforward. Also, be as precise as you can. “What are your plans for my book?” for instance, tends to elicit rather vague replies, giving a false impression that the agent is either being evasive or that they have not thought about it much.

However, to the ear of a good agent, this question translates thus: “Who specifically will you be approaching first? Will it be a phone call, lunch, or coffee? Why is your first choice the best publishing house for it?” Agents do not tend to think in vague terms: they’re concrete people, by and large.

So throw ‘em a lifeline. Ask instead, “Are you planning to do individual submissions, or multiple submissions?” This question does not require translation for the agent to understand, and will elicit much of the information that most writers have in mind when they ask for a plan.

Which brings me back to yesterday’s distinction between individual and mass submissions — just as I reach the end of my blogging day, I notice. Tomorrow, I shall go into the logic behind these two major submission strategies, as well as giving you a better idea of what the agent could conceivably do on your behalf.

In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on The great advance mystery, Part III

The great advance mystery, Part III

Well, it’s a beautiful day — sunny, without being too hot — and after that refreshing dip in the self-esteem pool with Jordan yesterday, I think we’re all in good shape to tackle the great advance mystery once again. The good news is that this time, there is some good news.

Oh, yes — I heard those whimpers of anguish after my last two posts on the subject. “So, Anne,” I heard some of you crying, “are the stories we’ve all heard about monumental advances just great big lies? Why, oh why would anyone do anything so cruel to people who are treading a hard path and want to dream big?”

No, the huge advances still do happen sometimes, if the book seems marketable enough to a publisher — but again, the big numbers are usually affiliated with NF books that already have plenty of name recognition behind them. A sterling platform, as they like to say in the biz. Occasionally, though, a first book has BESTSELLER written all over it in letters so large that even the accounting department at a major publishing house can see them, and those books do in fact attract large advances, often due to competitive bidding.

But again, it’s extremely rare. Usually, the big advances go to writers with established track records — and thus established readerships. The big advances, in short, are not often evidence of a publishing house gambling on a new voice, but rather of their putting their chips on a relatively safe bet.

As you may have noticed if you have been querying for awhile, people in this industry are not, generally speaking, wild risk-takers. You also may have noticed that their rhetoric at writers’ conferences might lead a naïve listener to conclude the opposite. That’s one of the mysteries of the industry, too.

But honestly — how big a chance is a publisher actually taking by bringing out the next HARRY POTTER book? Practically none. And when a publishing house does take the occasional chance on a new author, they like to hedge their bets, putting as little money on the line as possible.

Often, too, the big numbers we hear for fiction are for multi-book deals, which throws the aspiring writers’ sense of realistic expectations off still further. But they do undoubtedly happen from time to time, so please, do not give up hope.

At the same time, you will probably be better off in the long run if you are not expecting so much money that your life will change radically overnight when your first book sells. It’s not a bad idea to do some research. For those of you who are taking Jordan’s advice and tracking down the 411 on a favorite author, try to find out how much that writer got for her first book. And if your favorite writer is not someone whose big break came within the last decade or so, you might want to do some research on someone who writes in your genre who did. Not to stomp on your hopes, of course — just to inoculate yourself against elevated expectations of the industry.

Trust me, the more you understand how publishing works, the juicier you can make your dreams about succeeding in it. It honestly does make more sense to think in terms of making your entire writing career a success, rather than just dreaming big about one book — and not working on the next while you are marketing the first.

If you really want to get a clear mental image of what could happen if everything goes right with your first book, and if you have an extra $20 lying around that you are willing to invest in it, you could do worse than to subscribe to Publishers Marketplace’s daily e-mail updates: they give a ballpark estimate of how much books sold each day commanded. After a couple of weeks of following the sales, it becomes pretty apparent that the vast majority of first sales are on the low end. “A nice deal,” as PM likes to call it.

Study the exceptions: what can you do to make your book seem that appealing on a marketing level? Not to make it more shallow, mind you — one of the surprising things you will learn from following the trends is that some deep books are very sought-after — but to see what the fad-hungry industry thinks is hyper-marketable right now. Is there a way to spin your book concept so it sounds more like the sought-after ones?

This is a useful exercise, because it helps ground your understanding of the ever-changing industry in the present, not the past. And this is a distinct advantage, since so much of the information writers get about this industry is still geared to the way it was 20 or 30 years ago — which, come to think of it, is often when the wild success stories we hear on the writers’ conference circuit are set, isn’t it?

This can be a trifle misleading to writers trying to break into the biz now, because back then, new authors were routinely offered three-book contracts by major publishing houses. Thus the big advances. It wasn’t because people in the industry felt more affection for writers as a group back then; it was a simple matter of economics. Given that the publishing house hoped that the newly-signed author’s second and third books would be even bigger than the first, as the author’s name recognition grew amongst readers, it only made practical sense to give writers of promise enough money that they don’t need to be working 40+ hours per week in order to pay the rent. When you are banking on someone’s future books, it’s definitely in your best interest for him to be writing full-time.

Those were the days, eh?

But by the end of the 1980s, too many second and third books did not justify the promise of their authors’ first — and pop quiz: why was this a problem?

Good for you, those of you whose hands shot in the air immediately: it IS because once a publisher pays an advance to an author, they cannot get it back, even if the book did not sell enough to justify the advance.

The publishers lost money, and multi-book deals for new authors became comparatively rare. And since publishing houses are investing less in their new authors — both in terms of advance money and in terms of expectations for profiting of these authors’ future books — they have also fallen into the habit of promoting new authors’ books less assertively.

No, you didn’t just fall into Never-never Land there for a moment: it really is a Catch-22. Books that are not well promoted by their publishing houses are far less likely to sell well than those that are — which means that they do not establish as strong a track record for their authors. Which means, in turn, a smaller advance next time, typically.

Yet, basically, when a publishing house takes on a new author, it is looking for that author to establish a track record with the first book, the kind of sales success that used to be the result of massive publicity campaigns by the publishing house. Then, if that sells well, they will be eager for the second. And yes, that generally means the process is less lucrative up front for writers.

Unless, of course, there is competition over which publishing house will buy a book. Then, the sky’s the limit. That’s prime NYC publishing logic for you: something that other people want is viewed as inherently more valuable than something only one person wants, or even knows about.

I can’t resist bringing in my favorite example of this kind of thinking. Years ago, when I was writing for the LET’S GO travel guides, my companion and I found this marvelous beach in southern Washington, 21 miles of unbroken sand, so much beach that people were allowed to drive along it, scanning for sand dollars. It was early on a weekday, so we were the only people as far as the eye could see. So, naturally, being good West Coasters, we settled down to enjoy all of that natural solitude.

After we had been there about 15 minutes, another car came driving slowly along the beach. It drove past us, disappeared for a few minutes, then returned to park perhaps 20 feet away from us. A bunch of cooped-up, fractious kids jumped out, whooping, and their presumptive parents began setting up a fairly elaborate campfire set to roast hotdogs inches from our outraged noses.

Understandably, my companion and I were fairly miffed. Surely, with 21 miles of beach to choose from, their party and ours could have shared the scenery without being on top of each other’s lunches. It seemed like such bizarre behavior that I felt compelled to ask the mother of the screaming children why they had picked that particular place.

She looked at me as if I were speaking Urdu. “Well, that’s where the people were. It must be the best place.” Need I even say that their car had New York plates?

And that, my friends, is the basic logic behind competitive bidding, or indeed, any industry buzz that makes a book seem more valuable. Not everyone who gets into the bidding, or who is doing the buzzing, has actually read any of the book in question, so it usually isn’t a matter of the writing, or even necessarily of the story: it’s all about wanting to grab that elusive object of desire before the next guy does.

There are a couple of ways that a book can become the object of competitive bidding. First, if there is enough initial interest from publishers (again, often a matter of name recognition and industry buzz), the agent could elect to put it up for auction, as was the case with THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, which the industry had decided would be a major bestseller long before it hit print.

More commonly, though, an agent will send out a book to several editors at once, and if more than one editor wants it, the publishing houses start bidding against each other for the book. The one who offers the higher advance, of course, gets to publish the book.

And that, as you may well imagine, is a great situation for any writer, first-time or experienced.

It’s also a pretty good reason to ask any agent who offers to represent you, “So, how do you plan to market my book?” before you sign an agency contract. There are plenty of agents out there who do not favor mass submissions, where editors at several publishing houses are all reading the book simultaneously. Instead, they prefer to target one editor at a time, tailoring the submission to wow that person in particular.

Both methods have their pros and cons, of course – but that is a matter for another day. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on What if I want one-on-one assistance?

What if I want one-on-one assistance?

First Reader Editing
I offer one-on-one developmental editing services for manuscripts and book proposals. As fit between an editor an a project is monumentally important, however, I am very selective about taking on projects. If you would like to explore the possibility of whether I would be a good fit for yours, please e-mail a 1-paragraph description of your project, as well as brief indications of the book category, your target market, submission history, and any deadlines that might be hanging over the project to me at anne@annemini (dot) com.

Please do not send me your query letter, synopsis, or any portion of your manuscript or book proposal unless I specifically request it. If you have general questions about writing, querying, submission, etc., that you would like for me to answer on a one-on-one basis, rather than addressing as questions on my blog, please e-mail me to book online or telephone consultation time (see below).

Please allow lead time for scheduling: I am generally booked up months in advance for book-length projects. I do maintain a waiting list for unexpected openings; they sometimes turn up with very little advance notice, so it’s always worth asking.

If I am not the right editor for your project, I might be able to steer you toward a good fit elsewhere. If you are interested in a recommendation, please provide me with — wait for it — the book category, intended target market, and a one-paragraph summary of your project.

Mini Consults
Sometimes, it’s just helpful to talk about your book with someone who reads manuscripts for a living. Since so many Author! Author! readers asked for it, I also now answer writing questions and give professional feedback on marketing materials, such as queries, synopses, and book proposals in pre-scheduled telephone appointments. While this is not a substitute for full-scale editing, many of my clients have found Mini Consults effective in tackling seemingly intractable literary problems.

If you would be interested in learning more about this service, please e-mail a 1-paragraph description of your project, the book category, your target market, submission history (if any), and deadline requirements to me at anne@annemini (dot) com.

All other questions
Part of my purpose in setting up this website is to provide as much information about the writing life and publication process as possible to aspiring writers, as well as providing a forum for creating community amongst writers at all levels. To that end, I am always happy to answer questions posted by readers, provided that the questions are general enough to be of interest to all.

Please post these questions as comments on the blog, rather than sending them to the e-mail address above. If I answer a question via e-mail, it helps one person; if I answer it on the blog, it’s available for everyone. Also, it’s substantially more time-consuming for me to respond one at a time to similar questions.

Please be aware, however, that due to heavy demand, I can no longer answer readers’ requests for free manuscript-specific advice or personal writing career guidance that are sent to me through this forum. If I answered all of the questions I receive individually, answering my e-mail alone would be a full-time job!

Also, I’ve covered a great deal of material on this blog over the years, so if you check the category list at right or run a search in the box in the upper-right corner, you may find the answer you are seeking more quickly than asking me directly. The archives remain posted for a reason, and that reason is to help writers!

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Guest Blogger Jordan strikes again

Hello, my friends! It’s been awhile, eh? Apologies for not popping back in sooner, but perhaps this is good timing, as I hear that you’ve been receiving the skinny from Mini on the brutal, humiliating and absurd trade known as publishing.

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time I interviewed authors—famous ones like TC Boyle and emerging ones like Gayle Brandesi—for my literary radio program Word by Word. I hosted this show for three years (a volunteer labor of love that still got us a $10K NEA grant) and I got some of the best (and worst) advice from writers possible. One of my favorite bits came from the contemporary surrealist writer Aimee Bender. We were discussing her story, “Fruit and Words” (which, if you haven’t read it, you must. It can be found in her collection, Willful Creatures). She said (and I am paraphrasing from memory): “Writing is the only art where you must use the medium itself to describe the act of making it. You don’t paint a picture to describe one, or dance a dance,” she said.

I thought a lot about this, how we writers take the tool of everyday communication and mold it for both artistic and practical purposes. We are always using our medium. When you think about that, you who are no strangers to the pen, the muse or even the writing conference, you will realize that you have a powerful tool at your disposal to help focus you on a daily, even hourly, basis.

Focus being the key word here. That’s what all this happy feeling stuff is about—getting you to focus your feelings and thoughts—which are linked, by the way—on positive outcomes and good feelings. Why? So we can sing Kumbaya and bliss out on our own inner beauty? No! (Well, okay, if you must). The reason is that positive thinking attracts more of itself and it has a tendency to lead to hope and motivation—two things you need in spades in this industry.

The problem is, positive thinking doesn’t come terribly naturally to many of us. It’s been beaten, shamed and encouraged out of us. Which is why I’m here to remind you that beneath all the terrible odds and the ridiculous standards, there’s a reason why you write in the first place that probably is closer to making you feel joy than it is to getting rich quick. But it’s easy to get lost in the getting rich and famous end of it.

Yes, you want to make a living at your trade but I doubt you’re in this for the money. You’ve got important ideas and good stories and you must write or die, and you seek a reputable, time-tested platform to put them out there. When you lean toward the positive, have faith and generally believe good things might happen, you are more likely to follow up on leads you’d otherwise be too depressed, ignorant or overwhelmed to pursue. You are more likely to say “yes” to things, to accept tips, to learn, grow, and find your way smack into the center of success.

So here’s a tip: Whatever your writing goal, try to think about it when you’re ALREADY feeling good—don’t send negative thought or feelings to the thing you want most when you’re about ready to throw down the pen forever and apply to Burger King.

Save thinking about Being a Published Novelist for times when you’ve paused from laborious data entry/real estate selling/banal Ad-copywriting and have stepped out onto the corporate patio to soak in some sunshine. Reach for your writing desires as a kind of mood enhancer, so that you come to link positive moments with the acquisition of your Number One Desire. You have to train yourself here as rigorously as Pavlov did his dogs.

Yes, this is kind of like meditation. When the downer thought—remember those “I suck” examples I gave before—comes floating through, chase it off like a nasty, smelly little dog that is trying to soil your yard, and either court or wait for a better moment to think, “But some people make it as writers, and so will I.”

You have the tool—writing—so use it to get what you want. Don’t wait for things to happen to you. Don’t wait for agents and publishers and adoring audiences to validate you. You have to start behaving as if you ALREADY HAVE that which you desire.

I know you just said, “But how can I act as if I have what I don’t have, Jordan? That’s crazy talk!”

Is it? You’re writers. You have a rich fantasy life, I know you do. You’ve spent unreasonable amounts of time dreaming about things and people you wanted. You’ve allowed yourself to wander off into bubbles of fantasy. But someone or something probably made you “snap out of it” and tell yourself, “Stop dreaming, babe. Don’t kid yourself.”

Well I’m instructing you to get back to dreaming. Choose to spend lots of time imagining in full color and detail what it is you want. Because when you do, you activate all kinds of powerful little sensors and feelings inside yourself. They lead to excitement, hope, action, more writing.

Then WRITE DOWN your fantasies for the perfect literary career in precise detail as if it is already happening. Because the more you take your writing career as something that already exists, the more you make room for things to happen instead of languishing in the statistics and deciding it isn’t worth trying.

Here’s an example from my journal from September of last year:

“Today it occurred to me that if I want to be a published novelist, nothing stands in my way. The way will be shown to me. I have finished my novel revision and I’m agent-shopping again, but with such confidence and power that it happens so fast and the agent sells my book fast too. It’s was all just a simple matter of readying myself, shifting my energy.”

Funny thing is, while THAT novel I am describing above did not succeed in getting me an agent, I wrote a whole OTHER novel that in fact garnered me an agent in one week’s time when I sent out queries. I’m not making this up. The novel mentioned above was something I needed to clear out of myself, and it made room for the one I really wanted to write. I was so SURE, so EXCITED, that I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when I got an agent.

And the fact is, I didn’t wait for external validation to believe that. Yes, I have done my homework, but my other novel is perfectly lovely too. Nothing wrong with it. Except that it deals with family issues and I felt very scared that if it were published, my family would hate me. I channeled lots of fear towards it. Et Voilà, it went nowhere.

I hope that for every strike of reality that hits you about why it’s hard to make it as a writer, you’ll remember that so long as you don’t jump on that particular bandwagon, and make room to write what you want and feel good about it ONCE A DAY, you’ll be shocked and amazed at how much opens up for you.

If you’d like to formally get involved in this work, it’s not too late to sign up for the Creating Space online class (link), session one, which begins on September 8th, for 4 weeks.

My new professional website is going up in about a week too, so please visit me there. In the meantime, you can always find me at my blog.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld

Anne here:

Thanks, Jordan, for all those words of wisdom! We really appreciate your stopping by.

And everybody, if you’ve been finding Jordan’s advice helpful, please, write in and let us know. Also, if I can blandish Jordan into coming back and visiting us here again (as I hope I shall), are there any points she’s made you’d like her to expand upon?

I also want to toot my horn on her behalf before I sign off. Jordan’s book, “Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time” will be published by Writer’s Digest Books in Fall, 2007 and her book with Rebecca Lawton, “Creating Space: The Law of Attraction for Writers & Other Inspired Souls,” will be published in Summer, 2007 by Wavegirl Ink. She is a book reviewer for NPR affilliate KQED’s news-magazine the California Report and a freelance contributer to Writer’s Digest Magazine, The Writer, The St. Petersburg Times, AlterNet, The Pacific Sun and more. Her novel, THE NIGHT ORACLE, is represented by the Levine-Greenberg literary agency.

Posted on - No Comments on The great advance mystery, Part II

The great advance mystery, Part II

When I left off last night, I was initiating you into the mysteries of how advances work, working up to an answer to Jude’s excellent question, ““How much does a first book usually garner in way of an advance?” Today, I want to talk about how the general rules governing advances might apply to you, and how you can prepare yourself for your first publishing contract.

An advance, as I told you yesterday, is essentially an unrepayable loan against the author’s future royalties for a particular book. (Unrepayable in the sense that if your book sales are slow, and your royalty percentage does not reach the amount of the advance, you are not obligated to return the difference to the publishing house.) The more copies the publishing house expects to sell, the higher the advance — with certain exceptions, of course, because this is the publishing industry, and there are exceptions to most rules.

Royalty rates vary, based upon what your agent negotiates into the publication contract, but generally speaking, first-time authors get a lower percentage of the cover price than better-established ones. Also, the author typically gets a significantly higher percentage of hardback sales than trade paper, and trade paper endows a higher percentage than paperback. So the anticipated format of release — which is utterly beyond the author’s control — will have a significant impact upon the amount of the advance a publisher offers.

Everyone with me so far? Okay, let’s get down to dollars and cents.

I could sugar-coat this, but I’m not going to lie to you; if you’re serious about your writing, you deserve to know the truth. The plain fact is, these days, it is EXTREMELY rare for a first book by a non-celebrity to attract a large enough advance to allow its author to quit her day job (yesterday’s first blog to the contrary). Buy a car, maybe — but for fiction, it might not always be a NEW car, if you catch my drift.

Why so low? Because the advance will be a reflection of how the publishing house thinks the book will sell, and a first-time author is usually not walking into the deal with an already-established readership. This is why, for those of you who read Publisher’s Weekly , bloggers tend to command higher advances for their books than other first-time authors, even when those books are simply the blogs repackaged into book form: there is an already identified, preexisting audience for such books (who have, presumably, already read everything the book except for the introduction and Library of Congress number). Unfortunately, while there are quite a few fiction blogs out there, they tend not to command immense readerships, so this route to self-improvement is not available to all writers.

Also, for a first book, the planned print run is generally small. For the purposes of illustration, let’s assume that you’ve written a beautiful, lyrical literary fiction book that the publisher anticipates will sell 3,000 copies. You do the math. If it comes out in hardback (and, increasingly, first novels are being released in trade paper, which automatically means a lower royalty percentage for the author), it might retail for around $24. Let’s assume you got a good contract, and you’re entitled to 10% of the cover price. That’s $2.40 per book, less your agent’s 15%, so $2.04 per book is yours. If every single copy of the initial printing sells, your share would be $6,120.

And at most publishing houses, they would assume that the first print run of LF would not sell out; they’d be banking on readers of your second and third books coming back and buying it after you are better established. So your advance might be in the neighborhood of $2,000 — less, of course, your agent’s 15%.

I heard that gigantic collective gulp out there. Well might you gulp. If only one publisher is interested in a book, there is little incentive for the advance to be larger.

A small advance can be quite a shock to those new to the game, especially if the acquiring editor makes a ton of manuscript revisions a condition of the sale — which is far from uncommon — or with a nonfiction book, where the book is sold not on the finished manuscript, but upon a proposal and the first chapter. Ideally, if you write NF, your agent will fight to try to raise the advance to a point where you could be writing full-time in order to finish the book, but it does not (and I hate to tell you this, but it’s my job) always work out that way.

There is a huge difference, from the writer’s point of view, between being paid a month’s salary to make major revisions and being expected to take an unpaid vacation or use up all of your accrued sick leave to do it. Or, still worse, NOT having benefits and needing to take the time off anyway, or not being able to take any time off at all. How to pay for revision time can be an issue even if the advance is relatively large: even if the sum offered is princely, it’s not as though the author gets the entire amount in a single chunk when the ink is still fresh on the publishing contract.

Was that primal scream I just heard the sound of 500 of you crying, “Wha-?!?”

That’s right: the advance is paid in installments, either in two (one upon contract signing, the second upon the publisher’s acceptance of the manuscript) or three (one upon signing, the second upon acceptance, the third upon publication). To burst even more bubbles, some publishers are notoriously slow in coming up with the dosh; yet another excellent reason to affiliate yourself with an agent, so you have someone fighting hard to extract your money from sometimes recalcitrant publishers’ pockets.

Which continues to be true down the line, incidentally. Royalties are not typically paid to the author as soon as they come in: most publishing contracts specify that they will be paid every six months. So even if your book is selling extremely well, you might not see your share for quite some time.

Have I depressed you into a stupor? Or motivated you to get started on that second book?

The latter, I hope, because the good news is, this is a business where your efforts may be slow to pay off initially, but when they do, they can pay off for decades. Most writers who make a living at it are receiving royalties on multiple past works, not living from advance to advance. So if you’re in it for the long haul, remember, your first book is the Open Sesame to the publishing world, not to the room with the heaps of gold in it.

The Open Sesame is the first necessary step, however, and by being aware that a big advance may not mark the occasion of your first book’s sale, you can concentrate on the achievement itself, rather than the up-front monetary award. I know too many authors who were so intent upon the advance that they were disappointed — disappointed! — at their first publishing offers.

As I’ve said before and shall no doubt say again, if you’re planning a lifetime of writing, it is VITAL to recognize your achievements along the way. Yes, there are overnight successes in this business, but usually, those overnight successes have been toiling for years in obscurity first, either having trouble finding an agent or publisher, or writing books that sold only a few thousand copies each. (Again, you do the math.)

But those small books were successes, too, as was finishing each manuscript, landing an agent, and yes, signing with a publisher for a tiny advance. All should be celebrated, and heartily — because, frankly, are any of us in this ONLY for the money?

That being said, I hope all of us make a lot of money at it.

Tomorrow, I shall wrap up this topic, talking about ways you can find out what first books in your genre are attracting these days and how to talk to a prospective agent about it without sounding greedy and/or unrealistic. Also, I will discuss how agents’ submission strategies can affect the probability of your book’s being the object of competitive bidding, which is the best means to a larger advance.

Keep up the good work!

Posted on - 5 Comments on Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

I don’t normally get all Biblical on you fine people, but on this particular Sunday, I’ve just had some rather startling news: a writer friend of mine, someone whom I have helped until I was blue in the face, has just landed a rather large publishing deal. With a big enough advance that she can take months off her day job to finish the book — since it’s a NF book, she only has a chapter and the proposal written.

She has, in fact, just achieved the writer’s dream. So why am I not dancing and singing and inviting all of us to celebrate her success?

Normally, I would. You know me — usually, I am the first to jump up and down when someone hits a home run in the publishing game. Especially a friend. And even more especially someone I have helped along the way — not only did I spend a month and a half going over her book proposal with her, but I more or less bullied my wonderful agent into first talking with her (when’s the last time a powerful NYC agent gave you twenty minutes of phone time mid-project?) and then into reading her proposal toute suite.

Nor was that all. 100% of my friend’s information about how to write a book proposal came from this very blog and my in-person assistance. Heck, I once edited one of her proposal drafts when I had a fever of 102 — as her friend, not as her hired editor — because she was in a panic about a deadline.

I seriously believed in this writer, in short.

I don’t like to toot my own horn, but considering that my friend had NEVER queried before, these boosts probably took at least 3-5 years off her road to publication, conservatively speaking. I am not exaggerating — she knew so little about how the industry works that she didn’t even know that I had hooked her up with one of the best agents in the world for her type of book until AFTER she had signed — and then only because other writers in her area gasped when she told them who her agent was.

Yes, you read that right: my friend was so new to the process that she hadn’t even bothered to do ANY research about an agent before signing with her. That should make those of you who have been conscientious in your querying faint.

But hey, I try to be as supportive of other writers as I can; I’ve been working hard to be happy for her, even though, strictly speaking, she hasn’t paid her dues. She’s a good writer, and a lot of people forget in the early stages of the process that kind authors like me who are willing to help those earlier on are not simply public utilities provided by the universe for their assistance, but human beings who might conceivably like to be thanked every once in awhile.

Okay, so maybe it was a little overly-trusting of me to teach someone I had known less than a year to make Mediterranean recipes that have been in my family for generations (had I mentioned she was writing a food memoir?). Perhaps it was overly-tolerant to let someone who really didn’t want to get published any more than any of the other writers I knew hijack what was supposed to be my Christmas vacation to teach her how to do a book proposal. But honestly, there was really no graceful way I could whack her over the head and say, “Um, would you mind learning enough about the business to be grateful for what you HAVEN’T had to go through?”

So I held my tongue, even when she started speaking about parts of the book that had been my suggestions as her own unaided ideas. Even when she implied to her blog readers (she’s a fairly successful blogger) that she had gotten her agent through a magical process of networking set up by the universe, apparently without any individual human being having made any exceptional effort on her behalf. (It made me feel like a telephone operator, not a friend.) Okay, I put my foot down when she started stealing my recipes (and my godmother’s, while she was at it) for her book, but other than that, I just was supportive and waited for more experience in the business to teach her that it’s a bad idea not to give credit where credit is due.

Then her book garnered offers from two major publishing houses — and she didn’t even bother to pick up the phone or drop me an e-mail to let me know.

I had served my purpose, I guess. The only reason I found out that she had sold the book at all was that I had sent her an e-mail about something else. Yes, dear readers, I honestly did find out about her first book sale as an, “oh, by the way.” After she had informed other friends, evidently. As nearly as I can tell, I was pretty much the last in her circle of acquaintance to know — after I had given her such a boost in her career that from the beginning of the proposal-writing process to book deal was 10 months.

Yes, you read that correctly.

I don’t know how much the publisher is giving her. I am not going to ask. I would rather not know to the penny how much my friendship is worth.

I am writing about this not just to vent (although that’s feeling pretty good, too, of course), but as a double-sided cautionary tale — no, make that triple-sided. First, since publishing is a business that thrives on personal connections and writers believing in one another, it is — as I expect I have pointed out before — an environment where we’re all better off if we are eager to help other writers.

If I did not believe that we all have an ethical obligation to help and a need to be helped, I certainly would not devote so much time to this blog. I genuinely hope that the advice I give here will help you succeed, and that as success builds upon success, you will help others in your turn.

Unfortunately, there are people who don’t understand that generosity should be reciprocal; writers like my former friend, who will grasp at any connection they can to clamber more quickly up the proverbial ladder to success, are not all that rare, alas. Do bear this in mind the next time you meet an established writer and ask for advice or a recommendation: that hesitation you see will be a direct result of having been used before.

The unappreciative make it harder for everyone else.

Second, it is very, very common for those of us with good agents to be asked by writers we barely know to show material to our agents, to lobby for representation. This is a more substantial favor than most aspiring writers realize: most of us will NEVER ask such a large favor of our agents without reading the manuscript in question first, at least in part, so the request generally entails investing a fair amount of our time. And since a well-known writer might get four or five of these requests at any given writers’ conference, that’s a substantial charitable donation to the arts.

Why must we read it first? Well, if the requesting writer turns out NOT to be very talented, it will make it significantly harder for us to make similar referrals in future. If the requester is talented but turns out to be hard to work with or just a jerk, that will necessarily reflect badly upon us, too.

Which is why it is considered very, very rude within the industry to walk up to someone you’ve never met before and hand him a manuscript. No matter who he is. If you want to enjoy a good reputation, NEVER force a ream of paper upon someone who hasn’t asked for it.

Pitch as often as you like, but don’t penalize busy people for being too polite to say no. (Oh, yes, sometimes they will take the manuscript — but the ones that do are usually authors new to the game who are afraid that they’ll get a reputation for being mean if they do not say yes to all comers. It’s really not fair to take advantage of that fear: if your first book had just come out, and you were promoting it while still working your day job, wouldn’t you resent being handed 500 pages by a total stranger?)

Third, don’t leave all of your gratitude to grace the acknowledgments of your first published book. If people are kind enough to help you now, express gratitude now — and no, just saying, “Gee, thanks” is not always sufficient for a major favor. For heaven’s sake, send flowers every once in awhile.

And remember, no one in this business (or any other, for that matter, outside the clergy) is under any obligation to do favors for people they don’t know. Bear in mind that you ARE in fact asking a personal favor if you ask for advice or assistance, a time-consuming, genuine drain upon a generous person’s limited time. Please don’t treat any author, agent, editor, or writing teacher’s having been nice to you once as an invitation for further imposition.

Trust me, you don’t want to be the person about whom someone in the industry says, “Wow, I should have said no three favors ago.”

Above all, try to place yourself in the shoes of the person you want to help you. Treat them as you would like to be treated — because, in the long term, being considerate can only help you in this business. Not only does this make abundant ethical sense, but this is a business where people have long, long memories: it is certainly not unheard-of for an act of over-eager imposition to catch up with its author years later.

As for my friend, well, bless her for landing the book contract. I’m glad she’s making money for our mutual agent, and I hope her book is very, very successful; as I said, she’s a good writer. I even sincerely hope that she becomes a major writing star. And I wish for her the best gift of all: that she will come to realize that in this industry, as in life, other people don’t just exist to bring her benefits. In a generous universe, we all need to help one another.

There endeth today’s lesson. Keep up the good work, and be kind to one another.

Posted on - No Comments on The great advance mystery

The great advance mystery

Okay, I didn’t want to leave bad feelings hanging in the air, so I’m posting for a second time today. I hate not feeling upbeat about the publication process, even for a few hours. Onward and upward, as I always like to say.

Thank goodness, then, that intrepid reader Jude wrote in this weekend to ask the burning question on everyone’s mind: “How much does a first book usually garner in way of an advance?” I was shocked — SHOCKED, I tell you — to realize I had NEVER done a post on the subject. So thank you, Jude, for reminding me to do it.

We’ve all heard the stories, haven’t we, of the struggling author plucked from obscurity by the sale of that first book? How Stephen King misheard how many digits were in the advance for CARRIE when his agent called to tell him about it — and then dropped the phone when he finally understood how much money was involved? How Jean Auel’s THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR, garnered what was at the time the highest amount ever commanded by a first novel at auction? How occasionally literary novels wow ‘em so much at Farrar, Strauss that the advances run into six figures?

And on a more modest level, how, referring to my last blog, authors get large enough advances to take extended leaves of absence from their day jobs in order to write and revise?

Before I launch into a description of how the average book’s experience is different from these, let me ask a few questions to those of you new to dealing with the publishing industry: are you sitting down? With a cool drink in your hand, and perhaps a teddy bear to clutch? Have you taken any necessary medication to ward off heart attack or stroke?

If the answer to all of these questions is yes, let’s back up a little and define our terms, so we can discuss the first-time author’s advance productively.

For those of you new to the biz, it’s called an advance because it is an up-front payment of the author’s future royalties, a percentage of the cover price of the book. Essentially, the amount of the advance is the publishing house’s very conservative estimate of how many copies they expect to move. Why conservative? Because if your book does not sell as well as they think, you don’t have to pay back the difference.

Sort of like THE PRODUCERS, isn’t it? An author could conceivably make more money on a heavily-hyped failure — defined by the industry as a book that was expected to sell 100,000 copies but only sold 10,000 — than on a sleeper that was originally expected to sell 3,000 but actually sold 10,000. What a world!

Actually, that doesn’t happen all that often, since (a) a large advance usually means that the publisher will invest more resources in promoting the book ,and (b) the advance calculations are ALWAYS intended to fall on the short side, so the publisher will not be out of pocket much.

How do they calculate it, you ask? Well, it’s sort of as if your parents sat you down a year before your wedding and said, “Here’s what we expect the cash value of your wedding presents to be. If you will sign the rights to any future presents over to us, we will pay for the wedding — gown, invitations, food, everything — and pay you, say, 7% of the cash value of the first 50 gifts, 10% of the second 50 gifts, and 12% for gifts #101 on. We will give you now, at this very moment, a check for 2% of what we think the ultimate cash value of all of your gifts will be, in return for signing our contract. We’ll pay you the rest of your percentage after the gifts have rolled in. Of course, if you would prefer to pay for the wedding all by yourself, you don’t have to agree to this, but we can afford to throw you a much, much bigger wedding than you can possibly throw for yourself — with invitations sent out to thousands of people on your behalf — which may ultimately translate into many more presents.”

Welcome to the world of publishing. A heck of a lot happens before the author gets to toss that bouquet around.

Tomorrow, I shall go into why it actually is good for you to be aware of the norms of the industry, and how you can go about making yourself a savvier hoper. The more you know, the better you can work the system, and the more of a joy you will be to the agent of your dreams!

Onward and upward, everybody. And keep up the good work.

Posted on - 2 Comments on Characters who think, part III

Characters who think, part III

For the last couple of days, I have been addressing the issue of how to integrate your characters’ thoughts into the narrative. As usual when there’s not a hard-and-fast rule, I found I had a lot to say on the subject. Yesterday, I discussed several different common methods of indicating thought, means both more and less graceful than just saying that a character is thinking:

I want to go to the prom more than I want to live to be twenty-five, Janie thought.

Today, I want to talk about playing with these methods to reflect both your personal writing rhythms and your writing goals in particular instances. How you choose to present thought in a given scene should be reflective of the action and tone of the scene, as well as your personal writing preferences. Sometimes, the extra beat allowed by saying “he thought” works better in the scene than a more direct method; some methods allow you to show different sorts of characterization than others.

To help you decide, let me show you the same scenelet done several ways. (Please bear in mind that I haven’t figured out how to make the blog show italics, so italicized phrases are indicated by asterisks at the *beginning and end* of the phrase.) First, let’s look at a fairly traditional way to handle thoughts in a group scene in a third person narrative, maintaining narrative perspective while choosing one person’s thoughts to highlight:

Dr. Butler tucked his stethoscope into his Tattersall vest. “I’m afraid there will be no prom for you tonight, Gertie.”

Gertrude was furious. Chicken pox, smicken pox, she thought, seething. It was perfectly obvious to her that her sly little sister had been at her while she slept with a permanent red marking pen. *Little vixen. I’ll boil your guts for soup.* “But I’m feeling fine!”

Wilma pushed her back down on the bed with a firm motherly hand. “Now, sweetie, don’t jump around while you’re feverish. I’ll dig your old mittens out of the attic, so you can’t scratch yourself into a bloody mess.”

This works fine with a variety of styles, doesn’t it? Not even the most virulent of point-of-view Nazis would have a problem with this. But what about in a tighter third-person narrative, one where the narrative voice is more closely aligned with the protagonist? Let’s look at this scene again, with the perspective tightened onto Gertrude:

Boring old Dr. Butler tucked his stethoscope into that stupid Tattersall vest his wife never seemed to be able to pry off his decrepit corpse. What, were those stripes painted onto his torso? “I’m afraid there will be no prom for you tonight, Gertie.”

Chicken pox, smicken pox. That little beast Janie must have been at me with a permanent red marking pen while I napped. Yeah, right, Mom: I needed that extra fifteen minutes of beauty sleep. “But I’m feeling fine!”

Wilma shoved her back down on the bed with a hand that must have been soaking in an ice bucket for an hour. Predictably, she came down on the side of caution. Big surprise. “Now, sweetie, don’t jump around while you’re feverish. I’ll dig your old mittens out of the attic, so you can’t scratch yourself into a bloody mess.”

Allows for a bit more character development, doesn’t it? If you have a very opinionated protagonist, this method can give you a lot of freedom to bring out character richness through perceptual details, without the tedium of identifying the protagonist as the instigator of these ideas each and every time.

Do be aware, though, that this method can get a bit confusing if you have chosen to write a scene from an omniscient narrator’s perspective, showing the reader several different characters’ thoughts within the same scene. In that case, you will need to label who is thinking what, for clarity:

Oh, no, Dr. Butler thought, time to bring on another spoiled pretty girl tantrum. “I’m afraid there will be no prom for you tonight, Gertie.”

Get your hands off me, you filthy old trout, Gertrude seethed. Chicken pox, smicken pox. “But I’m feeling fine!”

Wilma pushed her back down onto the bed: Mother of God, the girl’s flesh was burning up. “Now, sweetie, don’t jump around while you’re feverish.” She frowned the livid scratch welts on Gertrude’s arms. *I would have killed for skin as smooth as hers at that age, and all she can think to do is hack at it?* I’ll dig your old mittens out of the attic, so you can’t scratch yourself into a bloody mess.”

Janie clutched Gertrude’s taffeta dress against her body, watching herself surreptitiously in the full-length mirror on her sister’s closet door. How like Mom not to notice the hot water bottle under Gertie’s pillow. How like Gertie not to notice that her wake-up coffee had been loaded with ipecac. It was amazing, how little grown-ups paid attention. “Seems a shame to waste such a beautiful dress. Shall I go downstairs and tell Tad you’re not going?”

As you may see, a number of different methods of identifying character thought can be made to work well. Here, without overuse of the verb to think, the reader can enjoy the humor inherent in the unspoken battle of perspectives. However, it requires constant vigilance on the part of the writer to make sure that we always know who is thinking what. Even a single thought left floating in the air can throw off the rhythm of the whole scene.

That’s a long answer to your question, Cathryn, but I hope it helps. It’s less a issue of finding a rule to apply in every instance, I think, than figuring out what will serve your character and scene — as well your narrative — best in the moment.

Thanks for the thought-provoking question. And everybody, please: when you are puzzled by a technical issue, or curious about the business side of the industry, or anything in between, feel free to post a comment or question about it, and I’ll take a swing at addressing it. Chances are, you’re not the only reader who wants to know.

Keep up the good work!

Posted on - 1 Comment on Characters who think, part II

Characters who think, part II

Yesterday, I was talking about the spirited debate amongst givers of writing advice regarding how to designate characters’ thoughts — other than simply saying,

Is this what monkey brain casserole is supposed to taste like? Sharon wondered.

Today, as promised, I shall give you an overview of the different schools of thought on the subject. To set the ground rules firmly in advance: for the purposes of this discussion, I am assuming that we are talking about a third-person narrative with a strongly defined protagonist. Why? Well, in other flavors of narrative choice, the strictures of the narrative point of view tend to dictate how and when the reader is shown a character’s thoughts.

Too technical? Allow me to clarify. In a first-person narrative, the only thoughts we could possibly be hearing are the protagonist’s, right? So there is no reason to present them in any special way: they are simply a part of the narrative point of view.

Ditto with a multiple first-person perspective, or a multiple protagonist tight third person. In these cases, there are structural signposts for the reader about whose perspective is whose — the most popular, of course, being the simple act of devoting one chapter to each perspective à la THE POISONWOOD BIBLE — so again, the form dictates whose thoughts will appear when. The thoughts are presented in exactly the same way as the rest of the facts retailed by the narrative.

However, most fiction is written in the third person, so let’s concentrate on that. When the narrative voice is distinct from that of the protagonist’s mind, it is necessary to differentiate on the page between what the character is thinking and what is the author’s commentary on the situation at hand. Often, the problem is that the writer wants to keep the thoughts in the first person, to be literal about them, but it’s not the only option the writer has. Here are a few ways it can be done.

First, there is the italicization method. With this stylistic choice, all of the protagonist’s thoughts are italicized, to differentiate them from speech. The thoughts, of course, are all in the first person and present tense. In practice, Method #1 will look something like this — or, wait a minute, I can’t do italics in blog format. So you’re going to have to use your imagination: the bits within asterisks are italicized.

*I shouldn’t be doing this.* With shaking hands, Brenda reached for the glass in front of her. *What would my mother say? Or Aunt Grizelda?*

Basically, these italicized thoughts operate as asides to the overall narrative. Sometimes, these asides are thrown into the middle of narrative sentences — *Oh, God, are my readers going to like this format?* — to heighten dramatic tension.

The primary advantage of this method is obvious: there is never any question about what is thought and what is speech. (In case you were not aware of it, placing a reader’s thoughts within quotation marks is fairly universally frowned upon. Just because Jane Austen does it doesn’t mean you should.) This can be a big plus, if your protagonist is given to thoughts that are diametrically opposed to what she is saying:

*That muumuu’s pattern is giving me a migraine.* “I love your dress,” Tanya said.

However, as I mentioned yesterday, there is a sizable contingent of the editorial community — that’s the fine folks working at publishing houses, in addition to freelancers like me — that believes this is sort of a cheap writing trick. This view is especially common amongst editors who frown on typeface tricks in general. They like the text, only the text, and all of the text, please.

A second popular method is to reserve the italics for the especially vehement thoughts, simply stating that the other, more pedestrian things floating around your protagonist’s head are indeed thoughts:

What a lucky break, Janie thought dreamily as Tad drove them down the boulevard in his red Astin-Martin roadster. Who’d have thought that her sister’s getting chicken pox would mean that Janie would get to go to the prom as a freshman? Here she was, sitting next to the most popular boy in school, a spray of green gladioli firmly pinned to where the strap would have been on a less formal dress, and — *watch out for that horse in the road!*

Now, I was a little tricky here, because this example contains Methods #3 and #4 as well. In the first sentence, I have used Method #3, taking the very direct route of just telling the what Janie is thinking and that she is thinking it. This is useful when the actual phraseology of the thought deserves emphasis. However, a lot of professional readers consider it a bit clumsy if used too often, just as using a tag line (he said, she cried out) every time a character utters a sound is considered a bit ham-handed by the pros. Method #3 is best used sparingly, for this reason.

In Method #4, later in the paragraph, I have moved the content of Janie’s thoughts into third-person narration, providing a little analytical distance from her daydreaming mood. (Because, really, who would be able to describe her own situation accurately while being driven to the prom by a dreambarge like Tad?) This can be very effective when the narrative voice is very distinct from the character’s; it’s a great choice for displaying irony to its utmost advantage, for instance.

Method #5 is my personal favorite, because it allows such tight pacing: in an ultra-tight third-person narrative, where the narration is letting the reader in on the protagonist’s thoughts, bodily sensations, and perceptions as the primary lens through which the story is told, the protagonist’s thoughts are integrated seamlessly into the text. In this method, whenever it is apparent whose perspective the reader is seeing, there is no need to identify the thoughts as such:

There’s no such thing as a ghost. Repeat it a hundred times, and it might start to feel true. Stacey’s skin rippled slightly over the back of her neck: a passing breeze from that window behind her that was definitely closed the last time she checked, certainly. It would be stupid to turn around and double-check it. Yes, the window must just be in sore need of refreshed weatherstripping. There is no such thing as a ghost, silly. There’s no such thing as a ghost.

Perfectly clear that Stacey is thinking, isn’t it? Yet not once does the narrative either say so or have to use typeface or punctuation tricks to show it.

Tomorrow, I shall discuss the various ways that each of these methods can help you establish the mood and point of view of a scene. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

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Characters who think

Excellent and insightful reader Cathryn wrote in last week to ask: “For any manuscript submission, can you give us the rule for indicating character thought? I have found ‘italicize only foreign words’ and ‘ underline anything that needs italicizing.’ Help!”

Cathryn, a lot of readers struggle with this — and I wish that the standard style manuals would just come on out and say that standard format for manuscripts is NOT identical to standard format for print, and that rules that governed the printed word during the days when the typewriter was the dominant medium are not all still true. I think not saying these things confuses aspiring writers needlessly.

To deal with the more straightforward issues first: in standard manuscript format — which, lest we forget, is NOT the same format as ends up on the published page — words you want italicized should be, well, italicized. Underlining them to indicate that you want them italicized was what you did when you were working with a typewriter: in most models, italics were not available. Like the double dash to indicate that the author really MEANT a dash and not a hyphen, these old rules were originally signals to the typesetter for how to set up the final print run.

For all of the insiders’ talk about being cutting-edge, this is sometimes a pretty archaic business.

A similar logic governs the italicization of foreign words — that would be words that are not proper nouns, incidentally. Names, as my high school French teacher liked to remind us between salty reminiscences of her college exchange year in Paris, do not translate. Foreign words are italicized to alert the typesetter (and now, the agent and editor) that those odd spellings are not typos, but legitimate words ze foreen tungzze.

However, not everything in writing is governed by a rule. I’m not surprised you had difficulty tracking down a hard-and-fast rule governing characters’ thoughts, Cathryn: there isn’t one. How you choose to handle it is a matter of personal style.

Now, there are PLENTY of writing teachers out there who will disagree with me, upstanding souls who will insist that there is one, and only one, right way to do ANYTHING in a text. Like the dreaded Point-of-View Nazis, these critics will jump all over innocent manuscript pages, ripping them to shreds because the writer has not elected to use the critics’ favorite method.

The simple fact is, though, for every soi-disant expert who will insist that characters’ thoughts must MUST be italicized every time without fail, there are two who will aver with equal vehemence that italicizing a character’s thoughts is a rookie’s trick, only used by writers who do not have sufficient skills to integrate their characters’ ruminations more naturally into the text.

To render the issue even more confusing, both schools of thought have their advocates amongst agents and editors. Both will tell you with absolute confidence, you will be delighted to hear, that the other side is absurd, amateurish, and wrong.

“In all matters of opinion,” Mark Twain teaches us, “our adversaries are insane.”

But the vitriol with which rule-mongers push their own stylistic choices makes them SOUND so right, doesn’t it? At times, it can be very similar to the way people speak in the fitness industry. As anyone who has paid attention to diet and exercise trends over a couple of decades can tell you, what the so-called experts claim will work changes radically and often. The same doctors who were insisting that high fat, low carbs were the answer to every dieter’s prayer were claiming five years before that complex carbs were the way of the gods. Something that looked suspiciously like Atkins was very popular in the early 1970s. There was a period when heavy exercisers were told not to drink much water while they were perspiring, and another where dehydration spelled doom.

Yet, amazingly enough, no matter content of the advice, or whether the advisor had been telling you the exact opposite the day before, the experts always use exactly the same tone, don’t they? You know the tone I mean, surely — that “any fool should know THAT” tone so favored by doctors with scant bedside manners. It is not a tone that invites disagreement, or even rational discussion — its intent is to impress the hearer with the speaker’s authority.

Why? Because they say so.

Since there are so many different schools of thought on the thought issue, I am a trifle reluctant to state my own opinions on the subject, lest they be taken as prescriptions. Instead, I am going to go through the most popular methods of showing character thought, and talk about the pros and cons of each.

But that is a task for tomorrow. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

Posted on - 2 Comments on Manuscript revision VIII: har de har har har

Manuscript revision VIII: har de har har har

My, I went on a tear yesterday, didn’t I? Well, better get comfy today, too, folks, because this is going to be another long one. Although, as a writer of comic novels on serious topics (my latest is about when the first AIDS death happened at Harvard, hardly inherently a chuckle-fest), the topic du jour is very close to my heart: making sure the funny parts of your manuscript are actually funny, and revising so they will be.

Why, you may be wondering, am I taking up this topic immediately after the issue of freshness of voice? Well, to professional readers, humor is often a voice issue. Not many books have genuinely amusing narrative voices, and so a good comic touch here and there can be a definite selling point for a book. The industry truism claims that one good laugh can kick a door open; in my experience, that isn’t always true, but if you can make an agency screener laugh out loud within the first page or two, chances are good that the agency is going to ask to see the rest of the submission.

Hey, there’s a reason that my novel, THE BUDDHA IN THE HOT TUB, opens with the death of the protagonist’s grandmother in a tragic bocce ball accident in Golden Gate Park. (After consultation with his fellow players, the murderer is allowed to take the shot again, with no penalty.) The smile raised by it buys the novel good will with editors for pages to come.

But if a submission TRIES to be funny and fails — especially if the dead-on-arrival joke is in the exposition, rather than the dialogue — most agents and editors will fault the author’s voice, dismissing it (often unfairly) as not being fully developed enough to have a sense of its impact upon the reader. It usually doesn’t take more than a couple of defunct ducks in a manuscript to move it into the rejection pile.

All very technical, I know. But as I’m relatively certain I’ve said before (about 7000 times, if memory serves), the more you can put yourself in your dream agent or editor’s reading glasses while you are revising your submission, the better off you will be in the long run.

Humor is a great way to establish your narrative voice as unique, but it can be a risky strategy. Why, you ask? Well, unless you are lucky or brave enough to be a stand-up comic, or have another job that allows you to test material on a live audience — okay, I’ll admit it: back when I was lecturing to college students, I used to try out jokes on my captive audience all the time — you honestly cannot tell for sure if the bits that seemed hilarious to you in the privacy of your studio would be funny to anyone else.

Trust me on this one: your first test of whether a joke works should NOT be when you submit it to the agency of your dreams.

So how can you know what works and what doesn’t? Personally, I read every syllable of my novels out loud to someone else before even my first readers or agent see them. If an expected chuckle does not come, I flag the passage and rework it, pronto.

Now, this isn’t a completely reliable test, because I have pretty good delivery (due to all of those years honing my comic timing on helpless college students, no doubt), but it does help me get a sense of what is and isn’t working. Reading out loud is also one of the few ways to weed out what movie people call bad laughs, the unintentional blunders that make readers guffaw.

This strategy only works, of course, if you are open to the possibility that the sentence that you thought was the best one-liner penned in North America since Richard Pryor died is simply not funny, and thus should be cut. Admittedly, this kind of perspective is not always easy to maintain: it requires you to be humble. Your favorite line may very well go; it’s no accident that the oft-quoted editing advice, “Kill your darlings,” came from the great wit Dorothy Parker.

But be ruthless: if it isn’t funny, it should go — no matter how much it makes you laugh. As any successful comedy writer can tell you, in the long run, actually doesn’t matter if the author laughs himself silly over any given joke: the reaction that matters is the audience’s. (And no, the fact that your spouse/mother/best friend laughed heartily does not necessarily mean a line is genuinely funny. It may mean merely that these people love you and want you to be happy.)

Lacking an audience, it is still possible to weed out the unfunny. There are a few common comic mistakes that should set off warning bells while you are editing — because, believe me, they will be setting off hazard flares in the minds of agents and editors.

First, look for jokes that are explained AFTER they appear in the text. Starting with the punch line, then working backward, is almost never as funny as bits told the other way around: a good comic bit should produce a SPONTANEOUS response in the reader, not a rueful smile three lines later. (And to an agency screener, explaining a joke after the fact looks suspiciously like the bit fell flat in the author’s writing group, and the writer scrambled to justify the joke in order to keep it in the book.) If background information is necessary in order to make a joke funny, introduce it unobtrusively earlier in the text, so the reader already knows it by the time you make the joke.

Second, ANY real-life situation that you have imported because it was funny should be read by other people before you submit it to an agent or editor. No fair telling it as an anecdote — have them read it precisely as you present it in the text. Keep an eye on your victims as they read: are they smiling, or do they look like jurors on a death penalty case?

The humorous anecdote that slayed ‘em at the office potluck VERY frequently rolls over and dies on the page. Just because everyone laughed when Aunt Myrtle’s prize-winning carrot-rhubarb pie fell onto your dog’s head at the Fourth of July picnic doesn’t necessarily mean that it will inspire mirth in the average reader. Especially if that reader doesn’t already know that Aunt Myrtle’s pies are renowned for making Mom swell up from an allergic reaction, so Dad generally arranges to have some tragic pie-related incident occur every year — which brings us back to problem #1, right?

Again, this is an assumption problem: there’s a reason, after all, that the language includes the phrase, “you had to be there.”

Don’t feel embarrassed, please, if you find that you have included such a scene: even the pros make this mistake very frequently; you know those recurring characters on sketch comedy shows, the ones that are only funny if you’ve seen them a couple of dozen times? Often, those are real-life characters pressed into comic service. (In the extremely unlikely circumstance that good comedy writer Ben Stiller will one day upon this message in a bottle: honey, that bit with the guy who keeps saying “just do it” has NEVER worked. It wasn’t funny in the often-hilarious THE BEN STILLER SHOW; it still wasn’t funny a decade later, in the not-very-funny STARSKY & HUTCH. Kindly stop telling us how funny it was when the guy did it in real life — it’s irrelevant.)

Third, you should also take a very, very close look at any joke or situation at which a character in the text is seen to laugh immoderately. (And if, after you reread it, you find yourself tempted for even 35 seconds to exclaim, “But everyone laughed when it happened!” go stand in the corner with Ben Stiller.) I like to call this the Guffawing Character Problem; it is ubiquitous in first novels, so much so that agency screeners often just stop reading when it occurs.

Why? Well, to professional eyes, having characters whoop and holler over a joke reads like insecurity on the author’s part: like the laugh track on a TV series, it can come across as merely a blind to cover a joke that actually isn’t very funny. It makes the reader wonder if, in fact, she’s being ORDERED to laugh. Agents and editors don’t like taking orders from writers, as a general rule.

The device also sets the funny bar unnecessarily high: the broader the character’s response, the more pressure on the poor little joke to be funny. If the character’s laugh is even one millisecond longer than the reader’s, it’s going to seem as though the writer is reaching.

Fourth, excise any jokes that you have borrowed from TV, movies, radio shows, other books, or the zeitgeist. And definitely think twice about recycling comic premises from any of the above. This is a freshness issue: by definition, a joke that has been told before by someone else isn’t fresh, right?

This may seem like rather strange advice to those of you who have just spent summer conference season being told endlessly by agents and editors that they are looking for books like this or that bestseller, but honestly, copycat books usually don’t sell all that well. (Witness how quickly chick lit fell off agents’ hot lists, for instance.) As Mae West liked to say, there are a lot of copies out there, but if you’re an original, no one can mistake you for someone else. No one remembers the copies.

Don’t believe me? Okay, name three books patterned after COLD MOUNTAIN. Or SEX IN THE CITY. Or, if you want to go farther back in time, CATCH-22. I thought not.

#5 is really a subset of #4, but it is common enough to warrant its own warning: if you use clichés for comic effect, make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that you have used them correctly. You would not BELIEVE how common it is for writers to misreproduce clichés. (I would not believe it myself, if I had not been a judge in a number of literary contests and edited hundreds of manuscripts.) If you’re going for a recognition laugh, you’re far more likely to get it with “It’s a dog-eat-dog world” than “It’s a doggie-dog world.”

Trust me on this one. An incorrectly-quoted cliché will kill any humorous intention you had deader than the proverbial doornail. So make sure that your needles remain in your haystacks, and that the poles you wouldn’t touch things with are 10-foot, not 100-foot. (How would you lift a 100-foot pole without the assistance of a dozen friends, anyway?) When in doubt about the proper phraseology, ask someone outside your immediate circle of friends — your own friends may well be making the same mistake you are.

Even better, leave the clichés out altogether. Most agents and editors dislike clichés with an intensity that other people reserve for fiery automobile crashes, airplane malfunctions, and the bubonic plague. They feel (as do I) that a writer worth rewarding with a publishing contract should be able should be able to make it through 50 pages of text without reverting to well-worn truisms, even as a joke.

If you are new to writing comedy, allow me to let you in on a little secret: many jokes that garner chuckles when spoken aloud fall flat in print. This is particularly true of the kind of patented one-liner people on the street are so fond of quoting from their favorite sitcoms, movies, and sketch comedy shows. Take a gander, for instance, at these zingers out of context:

From the 1970s: Excu-u-use me!
From the 1980s: You look mahvelous!
From the late 1990s: I don’t know karate, but I do know cah-razy.

Now, if you close your eyes and conjure up vivid images of Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, and Owen Wilson, respectively, saying these lines, these old chestnuts might still elicit the odd chuckle. Go ahead and chuckle your head off, if you are given to atavistic clinging to the popular culture of your past, but please, I implore you, do not make the (unfortunately common) mistake of reusing these kinds of once-popular catchphrases in your writing. Not only are such bits seldom funny out of context, but it will date your book: what is humor today probably will not be in a decade, and one generation’s humor will not be another’s.

In fact, if you aspire to perfecting your comic voice, it might behoove you to take a good, hard look at the careers of Mssrs. Martin, Crystal, and Wilson — and Mssr. Stiller and Madame Mae West, for that matter. All of them started out as comedy writers, writing material for themselves and others, and all became progressively less funny (in this writer’s opinion) as soon as they started performing comic material written by other people.

An accident? I think not. They became less funny because their individual comic voices had gotten lost.

Oh, the people who were writing for them have tried to recapture their quite distinct original voices, but the copy is never as vivid as the original. Why any of you stopped writing your own material is a mystery to me. But I digress…

And so will an agency screener’s mind digress, if you drag gratuitous pop culture references into your submissions. People tend to have very strong associations with particular periods in their lives, and for all you know, the reference you choose to use may be the very one most favored in 1978 by your dream agent’s hideously unkind ex, the one who lied in court during the divorce proceedings and hid assets so cleverly that their daughter’s college fund had to be used to pay those unexpected medical bills of Mother’s. Then the car broke down, and all of those checks bounced, and the orthodontist tried to repossess Angela’s braces…

See what happened? One little pop culture reference, and POW! You’ve lost your reader’s attention entirely.

So even if you are using pop culture references to establish a particular period, do it with care. Be sparing. Even if your teenage son quoted SHANGHAI NOON endlessly for six solid months while the entire family cringed in a Y2K fallout shelter, do be aware that your reader might not have the associations you do with those jokes. There are a myriad of associational possibilities — and almost none of them will make YOUR work more memorable or seem fresher.

Which brings me full-circle, doesn’t it? One of the advantages to using humor in your submissions is to demonstrate the originality of YOUR voice — not Owen Wilson’s, not Steve Martin’s, and certainly not that anonymous person who originated that joke your best friend from college just forwarded to you. If your individual voice is not inherently humorous, don’t try to force it to be by importing humor from other sources. Lifting material from elsewhere, even if it is genuinely funny, is not the best means of establishing that YOU are funny — or that yours is a book well worth reading.

Or better still, remembering AFTER having read and offering to represent or publish.

People still remember Mae West, my friends, not her hundreds of imitators. Here’s to all of us being originals on the page — and keep up the good work!

Posted on - 2 Comments on Manuscript revision VII: never assume a universal reaction

Manuscript revision VII: never assume a universal reaction

In my earlier discussion of freshness and why your want you manuscript to convey the subtle-yet-vivid impression that it has just popped out of the cultural oven — or at any rate isn’t a Twinkie that’s been sitting in the back of a cupboard for the last five years — I brought up the need to avoid incorporating stereotypes into your submissions, lest you offend someone on the reading end of your query. (Hint: not everyone in New York is straight, for instance, or white, or male, or…)

Today, though, I want to talk about how stereotyping and other authorial assumptions of mutual understanding with the reader can water down the intended impact of a manuscript, even when the assumptions in question are not inherently offensive to the reader.

If I have not already made this clear, even amongst agents and editors who are not easily affronted personally, stereotypes tend not to engender positive reactions. Why? Well, in a new writer, they’re looking to see is originality of worldview and strength of voice, in addition to serious writing talent. When you speak in stereotypes, it’s extremely difficult for a reader new to your work to tell where your authorial voice differs markedly from, say, the average episodic TV writer’s.

It’s just not as impressive as hearing from you directly.

Which is why, in some cases, marked personal prejudices may actually lend verve to a voice. This is nowhere more true than in the world of blogs. We bloggers are SUPPOSED to be absolutely open about our pet peeves and quirky interpretations of the world around us: one of the points of the medium is to be as subjective as possible. Think about it: wouldn’t Andrew Sullivan’s blog about politics (well worth reading, if you haven’t) be far less interesting if he didn’t make his personal views so VERY apparent? Or, for that matter, wouldn’t this very blog be rather uninteresting without my pronounced (albeit charming, I hope) personal slant?

That’s why the mainstream news’ attempts at establishing themselves as legitimate voices in the blogosphere have tended to fall so flat, I think: their voices are the products of PR research; the individual bizarreness has been utterly ironed out.

Which is, by the way, one of the most common critiques of MFA programs, and even writing groups. In some of these settings, the criticism goes, books end up being, if not written, then edited by committee: the authorial voice is nipped and tucked to conform to so many people’s opinions of what the work should be that the originality of the voice gets lost. In the industry, books like these are known as “an MFA story” or “workshopped to death.”

Does it surprise you that I, the queen of hogtying writers and forcing them to get an outside opinion of their work before they submit it, would bring this up? Ah, but as Aristotle tells us, true virtue lies in not taking a desirable trait to its most extreme form, but rather in practicing goodness in moderation. A fresh voice is an original voice, and just as adhering to stereotypes can muffle the originality of the writer’s worldview on the page, so can editing too much for what you think your readers want to hear — even if those readers are agents and editors.

In other words: make sure that your manuscript’s voice always sounds like YOU.

As with any rule, there are major caveats to sounding like yourself, or course. The first rule – and one of the ones most commonly broken by those new to writing – is that in order for your reader to be able to appreciate the nuances of your voice, you need to provide enough information for the reader to respond spontaneously to the action of the piece, rather than being informed that this is funny, that is horrible, etc.

Those of you who have taken writing classes are probably familiar with this rule’s most famous corollary: show, don’t tell.

The second cousin of this axiom is less well known: not everything that happens in real life is plausible on paper. And that’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? As Virginia Woolf tells us, “Good fiction must stick to the facts, and the truer the facts, the better the fiction.” While that is often true, what are we to make of the real-life experience that seems made-up when it’s translated into print?

Simple: fiction tends to adhere to rules of dramatic structure and probability; real life doesn’t.

So when you are looking over your manuscript with an eye to revision, remember this: “But it really happened!” is not an excuse that professional writers ever use — or that most agents and editors will ever accept. Why? Because it’s the writer’s job to make everything in the book seem plausible, whether or not it really happened.

Most writers don’t like hearing this, but not everything that strikes you personally as funny, outrageous, or horrifying is necessarily going to seem so in print. And it’s very, very common problem in novel submissions — common enough that I’m going to add it to the dreaded Manuscript Mega-problems list — for the author to assume that the opposite is the case.

Personal anger masked as fiction, for instance, usually does not work so well on the page. If the average agency screener had a dime for every manuscript she read that included a scene where a minor character, often otherwise unrelated to the plot, turned up for apparently no purpose other than annoying the protagonist, she would not only own the agency — she might be able to rival the gross national product of Haiti.

I cannot even begin to count the number of novels I have edited that have contained scenes where the reader is clearly supposed to be incensed at one of the characters, yet it is not at all apparent from the action of the scene why. These scenes are pretty easy for those of us in the biz to spot, because the protagonist is ALWAYS presented as in the right for every instant of the scene, a state of grace quite unusual in real life. It doesn’t ring true — and it’s not as interesting as more nuanced conflict.

Invariably, when I have asked the authors about these scenes, the incidents turn out to be lifted directly from real life. The writer is always quite astonished that his own take on the real-life scene did not automatically translate into instantaneous sympathy in every conceivable reader.

This is an assumption problem, every bit as much as including a stereotype in your work. But what the writer pitches, the reader does not always catch.

Many writers assume (wrongly) that if someone is annoying in real life, and they reproduce the guy down to the last whisker follicle, he will be annoying on the page as well, but that is not necessarily true. Often, the author’s anger at the fellow so spills into the account that the villain starts to appear maligned. If his presentation is too obviously biased, the reader may start to identify with him, and in the worst cases, actually take the villain’s side against the hero. This revenge has clearly not gone as planned.

Yes, I called it revenge, because revenge it usually is. Most writers are very aware of the retributive powers of their work. As my beloved old mentor, the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, was fond of saying, “Never screw over a living writer. They can always get back at you on the page.”

Oh, stop blushing. You didn’t honestly think that when you included that horrible co-worker in three scenes of your novel that you were doing her a FAVOR, did you?

“But wait!” I hear some of you out there crying, especially those of you who are veterans of a lot of writing classes. “I’ve always been told that the key to good writing is to tap into my deep emotions, to let them spill onto the page. Are you saying that’s not true?”

Good question. No, I’m not saying that you should write with your emotional flow valve permanently set on low. I think there can be a lot of value in those writing exercises that encourage the opening up of the writer’s emotional memory. In revision, it is often useful to bring in some of those techniques to increase the emotional potency of a scene, just as a Method actor might use a traumatic memory from her childhood to inform her performance of a character in pain.

However, I do think that there is a fundamental difference between trying to express your deeper emotions in an exercise and trying to convey a CHARACTER’s emotional response in a book. In the first case, the point is to concentrate the feelings as much as possible. In writing a novel or short story, however, or even a memoir, unmitigated emotion is often confusing to the reader, rather than character-revealing.

What do I mean? Well, I’m going to stop telling you, and show you.

I try not to do this very often, but to illustrate, I am going to revive an anecdote I told on my former PNWA blog last winter. (My apologies to those of you who have heard the story before, but its illustrative value outweighs my dislike of repetition.) While you read it, consider the question: what helps a writer to include in a text, and what does not?

My most vivid personal experience of writerly vitriol was not as the author, thank goodness, but as the intended victim. A few years ago, I was in residence at an artists’ colony. Now, artistic retreats vary a great deal; mine have ranged from a month-long stay in a fragrant cedar cabin in far-northern Minnesota, where all of the writers were asked to remain silent until 4 p.m. each day to a let’s-revisit-the-early-1970s meat market, complete with hot tub, in the Sierra foothills. They’re sort of a crapshoot.

This particular colony had more or less taken over a small, rural New England town, so almost everyone I saw for a month was a painter, a sculptor, or a writer. Of the 60 or so of us in residence, only 12 were writers; you could see the resentment flash in their eyes when they visited the painters’ massive, light-drenched studios, and then returned to the dark caves to which they themselves had been assigned. I elected to write in my room, in order to catch some occasional sunlight, and for the first week, was most happy and productive there.

When I go on a writing retreat, I like to leave the emotional demands of my quotidian life behind, but not everyone feels that way. In fact, several artists had come to the colony with their significant others, also artists: writer and photographer, painter and writer, etc. One of these pairs was a very talented young married couple, she a writer brimming with potential, he a sculptor of great promise. (Although every fiber of my being strains to use their real names, I shall not. Let’s call them Hansel and Gretel, to remove all temptation.)

Sculptor Hansel was an extremely friendly guy, always eager to have a spirited conversation on topics artistic, social, or his favorite of all, sensual. No one in the dining hall was really surprised at how often he brought the conversation around to sex; honestly, once you’d sat through his slide show of sculptures of breast, leg, pudenda, buttocks, and breast, you’d have to be kind of dense not to notice where his mind — or his eyes — liked to wander. He was amusing enough, for a monomaniac. We had coffee a couple of times. I loaned him a book or two.

And suddenly, Gretel started fuming at me like a dragon in the dining hall.

Now, I don’t know anything about the internal workings of their marriage; perhaps they liked jealousy scenes. I don’t, but there’s just no polite way of saying, “HIM? Please; I DO have standards” to an angry lover, is there? So I sat at a different table in the dining hall for the next couple of weeks. A little junior high schoolish, true, but better that than Gretel’s being miserable or my being distracted from the writing I had come there to do.

The fellowship that each writer received included a requirement that each of us do a public reading while we were in residence. Being a “Hey – I’ve got a barn, and you’ve got costumes!” sort of person, I organized other, informal readings as well, so we writers could benefit from feedback and hearing one another’s work. I invited Gretel to each of these shindigs; she never came. Eventually, my only contact with her was being on the receiving end of homicidal stares in the dining hall, as if I’d poisoned her cat or something.

It was almost enough to make me wish that I HAD flirted with her completely unattractive husband.

But I was writing twelve hours a day (yes, Virginia, there IS a good reason to go on a retreat!), so I didn’t think about it much. I had made friends at the colony, my work was going well, and if Gretel didn’t like me, well, we wouldn’t do our laundry at the same time. My friends teased me a little about being such a femme fatale that I didn’t even need to do anything but eat a turkey sandwich near the couple to spark a fight, but that was it.

At the end of the third week of our month-long residency, it was Gretel’s turn to give her formal reading to the entire population of the colony, plus a few local residents who wandered in because there was nothing else to do in town, and the very important, repeated National Book Award nominee who had dropped by (in exchange for an honorarium that can only be described as lavish) to shed the effulgence of her decades of success upon the resident writers. Since it was such a critical audience, most of the writers elected — sensibly, I think — to read only highly polished work, short stories they had already published, excerpts from novels long on the shelves. Unlike my more congenial, small reading groups, it was not an atmosphere conducive to experimentation.

The first two writers read: beautifully varnished work, safe stuff for any audience. When Gretel’s turn came, she stood up and announced that she was going to read two short pieces she had written here at the colony. She glanced over at me, and my guts told me there was going to be trouble.

Her first piece was a lengthy interior monologue, a first person, present-tense description of Hansel and Gretel — helpfully identified BY NAME — having sex, in vivid detail. Just sex, without any emotional content to the scene, a straightforward account of a mechanical act IN REAL TIME that included — I kid you not — a literal countdown to the final climax (his, not hers).

It was so like a late-1960’s journalistic account of a rocket launch that I kept expecting her to say, “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”

Now, I certainly have no objection to writers who turn their diaries into works for public consumption, but this was graphic without being either arousing or instructive. However, the painters in the back row hooted and hollered, so maybe I just wasn’t the right audience for her piece.

Still, looking around the auditorium, I didn’t seem to be the only auditor relieved when it ended. (“Three…two…one.” That’s a QUOTE, people!) Call me judgmental, but I tend to think that when half the participants are pleased the act described is over, it’s not the best sex scene imaginable. And let’s just say that her husband probably would have preferred that this real-time telling had taken longer than six minutes to read. A classic case, one hopes, of the real-life incident being better than its telling on paper.

Gretel’s second piece took place at a wedding reception. Again in the first person, again with herself and her by now shattered husband identified by name, again an interior monologue, this little number had some legitimately comic moments in the course of the first page. As I said, Gretel could write.

Somewhere in the middle of page 2, a new character sashayed into the scene, sat down at their table, picked up a turkey sandwich — and suddenly, the interior monologue shifted, from a gently amused description of a social event to a jealously-inflamed tirade. Because I love you people, I shall spare you the details, apart from that fact that the narrative included the immortal lines, “Keep away from my husband, bitch!” and “Are those real?”

Gretel read the piece extremely well; her voice, her entire demeanor altered, like a hissing cat, arching her back in preparation for a fight. Fury looked great on her. And to her credit, the character that everyone in the room knew perfectly well was me — that’s not just paranoia speaking, I assure you; her physical description would have enabled any police department in North America to pick me up right away — never actually said or did anything seductive at all; her mere presence was enough to spark almost incoherent rage in the narrator. And Hansel sat there, purple-faced, avoiding the eyes of his sculptor friends, until she finished.

There was no ending to the story, no “three…two…one” this time. She just stopped, worn out from passion. I’m not even convinced that she read everything written on the page.

I was very nice to her during and after this hugely embarrassing event; what else could I do? I laughed at her in-text jokes whenever it was remotely possible — especially when they were against me — congratulated her warmly on her vibrant dialogue in front of the National Book Award nominee, and made a point of passing along a book of Dorothy Parker short stories to her the next day.

Others were not so kind, either to her or to Hansel. The more considerate ones merely laughed at them behind their backs. Others depicted her in cartoon form, or acted out her performance in the dining hall after she had dumped her tray; someone even wrote a parody of her piece and passed it around. True, I did have to live for the next week with the nickname Mata Hari, but compared to being known as the writer whose act of fictional revenge had so badly failed, I wouldn’t have cared if everyone had called me Lizzie Borden. And, of course, it became quite apparent that every time I was nice to Gretel after that, every time I smiled at her in a hallway when others wouldn’t, it was only pouring salt on her wounded ego.

Oh, how I wish I could say this was the only time I have ever seen a writer do something like this to herself…

But the fact is, it’s downright common in novels. Rest assured, though, that revenge fantasies tend to announce themselves as screamingly from the pages of a submission as they did from Gretel’s podium. If you’re still angry about an event, maybe it’s not the right time to write about it for publication. Your journal, fine. But until you have gained some perspective — at least enough to perform some legitimate character development for that person you hate — give it a rest. Otherwise, your readers’ sympathies may ricochet, and move in directions that you may not like.

And that can be deadly in a submission.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s always a good idea to get objective feedback on anything you write before you loose it on the world, but if you incorporate painful real-life scenes into your fiction, sharing before submission becomes ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE. If you work out your aggressions at your computer — and, let’s face it, a lot of us do — please, please join a writing group. Find good readers you can trust to save you from looking like a junior high schooler on a rampage — but who won’t tone down your marvelously original voice.

And Gretel, honey, in the unlikely event that you ever read this, you might want to remember: revenge is a dish best served cold. Or, as Philip used to say, never screw over a living writer. You never know who might end up writing a blog.

Hey, I’m only human. And yes, this incident did really happen — and that’s why I am writing about it here, not in my next novel, tempting as that might be.

Keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on The small press dilemma

The small press dilemma

For those of you who missed it, excellent and faithful reader MooCrazy wrote in a few days ago about a concern shared by many writers: the dilemma about how to handle desirable career transitions when dealing with a small press. Quoth Moo:

“Would you please speak to the issue of finding an agent after an author has published a first book through a traditional publisher without one? I love my current publisher, a small regional press. They claim the feeling is mutual. (I make a point of being very easy to work with.) However, I want to make sure my next book – a romp through a farm, similar to Bob Tarte’s “Enslaved by Ducks” – is represented by an agent because it is possibly national, even international in appeal. Should I stick with the publisher I love but try to interest an agent anyway? Will my publisher think it is bad manners to bring an agent in? They’ve already invited me to submit again. I don’t want it to appear that I don’t appreciate and trust them. Of course, there’s always the chance they won’t even like this book. It would be presumptuous of me to assume so.”

Moo, I hear you, and I’m glad you brought this up. I have heard some version of this concern from practically every author I have ever known who went through a small press. You don’t want to ruin the relationship, naturally, but you don’t want to limit your future books a press that may not have the distribution capacity to help your career grow in the long term. You want to be loyal to people who have been nice to you, but you would like to have your future books make a bit more of a splash. You don’t want to alienate those who may be your best chance at publication for the next book, but you are well aware that that prime face-out space on bookshelves and very visible table displays at the major bookstore chains are leased by the big publishing houses.

Here’s a short answer to the dilemma: last time I checked, Bob Tarte was represented by the recently-visiting-in-this-neck-of-the-woods Jeff Kleinman; his clients speak well of him. I have no idea if he would like your book project, but I suspect he would respond with sensitivity to a query letter that began, “I enjoyed hearing you speak at the recent PNWA conference.” (Don’t say this if it isn’t true, of course.) Since you so ably represented Bob Tarte’s excellent ENSLAVED BY DUCKS, I believe you will be interested in my book. While I already have an ongoing relationship with Small Publisher X, who printed my last book, I am eager to seek a broader audience for my work.” Why not test this supposition by sending off such a letter right away?

Before I go into all the reasons that this might be a good idea, let me run through why such an opening might be effective. That, from an agent’s point of view, is a pretty alluring opening paragraph to a query letter. It says that you’ve already taken the time to do some professional development for yourself as a writer, by going to a conference; it recognizes him for his past professional efforts, and ties those efforts to your work, and last, but certainly not least, it tells the agent that you already have publication credits. What’s not to love?

Yes, I know: this reads as though I am evading the central issue, which is whether small publishers get annoyed when their authors try to agent up. But in order to understand the prevailing industry attitudes about this, it’s important to understand why an agent would not see ANY ethical problem to picking up a writer who already has a self-negotiated contract with a small press.

Why? Well, in industry terms, there honestly would be no problem whatsoever: it’s understood that career writers often begin with small presses and move up to big ones. It’s also understood that to deal with the large presses, a writer will need an agent. Just as no one in professional baseball would expect a very gifted minor league player to remain with his original team when a major league club beckoned, it would actually surprise most publishing professionals if a serious writer DID stay with a very small press purely out of loyalty.

So from an agent’s POV, all your having a pre-existing relationship with a small publisher means is two things: first, that you have a successful track record of pleasing an editor (which is a selling point that he can use to try to pitch your work to the majors), and second, that there is already an editor at a press out there who is predisposed to read and admire your work (which means his job will be easier). This is going to make you a very attractive client prospect.

But will your publisher become annoyed if you shop your next book around to agents before you show it to them? Well, there certainly are unreasonably jealous people out there, but people who work for small presses also understand that it’s far from uncommon for a writer to start out at a small press and move up to a big one with the help of an agent. Actually, the more successful they are at promoting your first book, the more they could logically expect you to move onward and upward.

They know, in short, that your wanting to find an agent is not a reflection upon your relationship with them, but merely a practical attempt on your part to enhance your work’s visibility. If they are a credible house (and it sounds as though they are), this will have no effect upon your reputation whatsoever. Authors move from press to press all the time, without any hard feelings, and when well-meaning industry professionals genuinely respect an author, the last thing they want to do is to harm their future books’ chances of commercial success. In fact, if your subsequent books do well, the small press will benefit, because new readers will come looking for copies of your first book. Everybody wins.

Yes, I know: there is a LOT of talk on the conference circuit about writers being blacklisted, but actually, it doesn’t happen very often. In my experience, there are only three situations where presses tend to become mortally offended if their authors seek representation for their next books — and generally speaking, the mortally offended and the genuinely sociopathic are the only people you need to worry about bad-mouthing you. (I’m tempted to digress into diagnosing the motives of the people who have been threatening to sue over my memoir here, but I shan’t.)

What are these terrible instances? First, if it is a press that ONLY works with unagented authors, or who prefers to do so. Such presses are rare, but they do exist; it is undoubtedly cheaper to work with unagented writers. If this is their policy, however, they have set up a situation where their authors HAVE to leave them in order to pursue their careers. Consequently, they expect it.

When such a publisher becomes annoyed with an author for seeking representation, it is only because he was counting upon making more money on any given author before she moved up to the majors. But if a major press where you want to be, it just doesn’t make sense to stick with a press with that kind of policy anyway, does it?

The second instance is where the publication contract for the first book contained a right of first refusal clause over your next book. This is a fairly standard contractual provision, so you should check for it. In essence, it means that when you sold the first book, you agreed to let them look at it before any other publisher does. They already know that they like your writing (which means that it is not at all presumptuous for you to assume that they might want your next, incidentally), and they would rather not have to compete in order to retain you.

If you have such a clause in your first book’s contract, it would not prevent you from sending your next book out to agents. All it would mean is that any agent who did sign you would be legally obligated to show the book to your publisher before shopping it around. It just means that you would have to be honest with the agent about the obligation. You would land the agent, the agent would approach your publisher, and everyone would be happy.

The third situation — and honestly, one hears about it anecdotally far more than it occurs in real life — is where the editor who handled the first book has already heard about the next book and loved it, or has become friendly with the author to the extent that it never occurred to him that you might move on to another press, or who had just assumed that all of their authors are there for a lifetime, or who has fallen so deeply in love with you as to be beyond the reach of ordinary common sense. In short, these are instances where there is either a personal relationship between the author and the editor or publisher — or a dementia on someone’s part that there IS a personal relationship strong enough that it would transcend the norms of the industry.

Truly, there is absolutely nothing you can do about other people’s assumptions. If people at your press decide to be offended at your serving your work’s best interests, though, you might want to give some thought about whether this is the best place for your work in the long term. As an author, your top loyalty needs to be to your books, not to your publisher.

Since you say that you have a good relationship with the fine folks at your publishing house, though, you probably do not need to worry about this. If they’re reasonable people who know the industry, and you’ve been a dream to work with, chances are that they will be pleased if you do well with your next book.

However, if you are seriously worried, here is a close-to-foolproof method for avoiding insulting even the touchiest publishing type: flatter him or her by asking for advice. Send your editor an e-mail, saying that while obviously you would LOVE to have Small Publisher X print your next work, you’ve become aware that for the benefit of your overall writing career, it would make sense for your to seek an agent. Since ideally the editor will be working with any agent you might find, does the editor have any suggestions about whom to query?

This method has two benefits: it diffuses the situation (after all, you ARE being honest, so if the editor want to snap up your next book, s/he knows that s/he will have to take action, pronto) AND it potentially gives you that opportunity to send a query beginning, “Editor Y of Small Publisher X recommended that I contact you about representing my book…” Editors often have agents with whom they prefer to work, and vice versa. A recommendation from an editor will give you a definite advantage in the querying stage.

All that being said, I do think that writers worry too much about offending agents, editors, and publishers — or rather, that the writers who DO end up offending publishing professionals are seldom the ones who sit around worrying about it. The really offensive authors are the ones who don’t meet deadlines, or are rude about editing suggestions, or disappear for a year under the pretext of a rewrite, or don’t live up to promotional obligations, or who call their agents (or prospective agents) three times a week for updates. Trust me, nice writers like you who do everything in their power to be helpful and provide good books are not the ones whom editors and agents curse behind their backs. It’s the other ones, the ones who (I like to think, anyway) do not read my blog.

Remember, your publisher did not do you a FAVOR by publishing your book – your publisher published your book because the staff there thought it could make money and serve art doing it. However cordial your relationship with everyone there, it is in fact a business relationship. These are people who make their living off the talent of writers like you. Most of them are aware of it.

So why do almost all of us tiptoe around these people as though our very existence were cause for apology, although THEY live on OUR work? Well, it’s a pretty common reaction in a situation where one person holds disproportionate power over another.

Of course it is true that an offended agent tends not to sign the writer who offended her, any more than an affronted editor will rush to work with an agent with whom he’s just had a screaming fight. And naturally, you don’t want to impress an agent you want to sign you as a worrywart who will require constant attention from the moment the ink is dry on the contract. But as long as you are polite and respectful both before and after ink is put to paper, doing your job well and allowing them to do theirs, you will usually be fine.

Hope this helps, Moo. And keep up the good work, everybody!