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September 29, 2011April 22, 2021 - 4 Comments

Queryfest, part V: things are not always as they appear to be

No, this is not a composite shot, nor has it been Photoshopped: this is an undoctored snapshot of fish in a hotel lobby. Note how well they coordinate with the wallpaper.

So did I somehow manage to capture flying fish in an unguarded moment? Of course not: as the coral in the bottom right-hand corner might have tipped you off, I took this picture through a large fish tank that had been impeccably cleaned that morning.

The fish are, as one might expect, swimming, and through a more familiar medium than air. Yet while you and I both know that those fish are not actually paddling madly through the lobby, bumping into those hastily checking out, someone unfamiliar with the habits of fish or the ambient conditions of hotel lobbies might assume otherwise, based on what is visible here.

Bear our fishy friends in mind, please, as we wend our way through today’s exploration of all things query-related. This photo illustrates some basic facts of querying: since the writer is so familiar with her own manuscript, she sometimes forgets that the query-reader — the agent of her dreams, or more often, the Millicent employed to screen queries for the agent of her dreams — can judge a queried book’s content only by what actually makes it into the letter. All too often, a vague descriptive paragraph, one that talks about the book rather than telling its story, leaves poor Millie guessing.

Not buying that analogy? Okay, try this one on for size: the chances of landing an agent by addressing a query to just any agent — or, sacre bleu, to Dear Agent at just any agency — without first ascertaining that the intended recipient does in fact represent your type of book are about as high as strolling into a hotel lobby to snag the morning paper and being greeted by fish lazily meandering through the air. It could appear to be the way things work, but if you’ll look a little closer, those seemingly free-ranging fish are confined.

Not crazy about that analogy, either? Here’s an even more fundamental querying truth, a corollary of the first: regardless of what a writer intends to say in a query letter, Millicent must rely upon what it actually says. No matter how beautifully the manuscript in question may be written, if the query is awkward — as, let’s face it, hastily thrown-together missives tend to be — you really can’t blame her for leaping to the conclusion that the manuscript’s writing suffers from the same malady.

Okay, so maybe you are capable of blaming her, in the dark of night and the privacy of your studio. But it isn’t really her fault: a single-page query letter does not provide a heck of a lot of information upon which to make a determination about whether to request manuscript pages. If that information is conveyed poorly — or, even more common, if some of that information doesn’t make it into the query letter for the simple reason that the writer doesn’t know it should be there — the query is often self-rejecting.

What does that have to do with our friends the fish, you ask? No matter how pretty they may look soaring through the air in front of the lobby’s dubious artwork, the sight of them is inherently jarring. The onlooker expects fish to appear only within certain contexts. While a fish out of water will always catch the eye, the connoisseur of fins will be looking to the briny deep to find the best specimens.

Yes, that was rather a stretch, now that you mention it, but I wanted to use the photo. Just present your query as Millicent expects to see it, okay?

Since quite a few of the elements of a professionally-presented query are a bit counterintuitive, especially to those writing one for the first time, it’s important not to rush the process. Yes, it’s tedious, not nearly as much fun as writing the book itself. However, I’d much, much rather see my readers spend an extra week or two on drafting a really good query letter than to have any of you kicking yourselves a month from now, wishing you’d queried differently.

Especially if the difference between popping it in the mail on Monday morning and three Mondays from now means being able to have someone whose literary (and grammatical) opinion you trust read your query draft. Even if a writer’s been at it a while, it can be pretty hard to see the flaws in one’s own query letters — and for some reason I have never been able to fathom, even aspiring writers professional enough to be routinely soliciting feedback on their manuscripts often guard their queries jealously from any human eyes other than Millicent’s.

Whose peepers, as those of you who have been visiting this blog for a good long time are already aware, are not generally charitably-oriented. Is she really the first sentient being you want seeing your query?

All too often, the answer is yes, occasionally with disastrous consequences. The dangers of sending off a first draft should be self-evident — and if they are not, allow me to refer you to those earlier fish analogies. (Oh, you thought I had time to run these posts through multiple drafts?) It can take even a very gifted writer a few tries to get it right.

Not that over-tinkering doesn’t carry its own perils. Certain gaffes are as likely to turn up in queries penned by writers accustomed to the querying process as for those new to it.

How is that possible, you scream in horror? The nature of on-screen revision, for one thing. Since most experienced queriers will tweak their basic query letters to personalize them for each (don’t worry; I’ll be getting to that soon), there tends to be a lot of cutting, pasting, and general rewriting going on between mailings and/or strikings of the SEND button.

Here’s a pop quiz for those of you who were hanging around Author! Author! last spring: what extremely common outcome is likely to plague any piece of writing whose specifics have been constantly being revised over time without its author sitting down and re-reading the whole thing between revisions? Shout it out: it can turn into a Frankenstein manuscript, an unholy mish-mash of half-completed revisions.

The single most common type of Frankenstein query, as we saw last time, is the mismatched salutation and address. Nothing screams out I’m doing a mass mailing of queries, and you, sir, are palpably on the bottom of my wish list! like a letter that runs like the following. (As always, if you’re having trouble reading this example, try holding down the COMMAND key and pressing the + key to enlarge the image.)

wrong names query

See the problem? In the stress of sending out multiple queries — a smart strategy in its own right, by the way; with sometimes months-long turn-around times at some agencies and no-reply policies at others, waiting to hear back from Agent A before querying Agent B is a sure-fire strategy for wasting years of your life — Mssr. Flaubert copied the address of one agent onto a letter personalized for another.

What he intended to send (and probably didn’t ever notice he didn’t send) was this:

Clearly, our Gustave fell victim to query fatigue. Quite understandable, of course, but how do you think Ms. Marketer is likely to respond not only to being addressed by the wrong name and with the honorific for the wrong sex, but being congratulated for her speech at a conference she never attended?

That’s right, campers: “Next!”

So please, proofread every single query every single time . Yes, even e-queries. Many a Millicent has been left shaking her head regretfully over a dropped word or misspelling in an otherwise admirable query.

Better yet, have a first reader you trust go over it. This is an excellent contribution to your writing career for any significant others, family members, or friends whom you, in your great wisdom, have deemed too fond of you to be trusted to provide critical feedback on your manuscript. (Trust me, “But my mom loved it!” is not an argument that flies well in the publishing industry.) Often, these kind souls are only too glad to help, even with a task as inherently unglamorous as sitting down with your query in one hand and a checklist of the information it needs to contain in the other.

Another great employment for aid-eager friends: have ‘em read your query twice, then set it aside. Talk about something entirely different for five minutes — and then have ‘em tell you the premise of the book and why it will appeal to your target market. (It helps if you tell them up front that “Because Johnny wrote it!” is not an argument Millicent is likely to find convincing.) If you’re feeling really ambitious, hand the letter back to them and ask them to tell you why you’re targeting that particular agent with this particular manuscript.

Seem like a tall order? Actually, it isn’t: if you’ve described the book memorably, even a non-professional should be able to recall its premise. And if you’ve been direct in your first paragraph about why, out of all the proverbial fish in the sea, you’re angling for this one, a lay reader should be able to catch the reference.

A good first reader should also be able to tell you when it’s time to weed out puns like that last one. You wouldn’t want to receive that kind of painful feedback from a total stranger, would you?

Whatever you do, don’t fall into the oh-so-common trap of getting complacent about your basic query. Just because a letter has garnered chapter requests in the past does not mean that it couldn’t use a bit of punching up. Even if you are a querying veteran, at least cast your eye over this list of garden-variety query turn-offs.

That’s right, campers: it’s another of my famous faux pas check-lists.

Why should a writer who has been querying a while take the time to go through a do-not list? For most aspiring writers, it takes quite a bit of rejection to open their eyes to the possibility that their query letters themselves might be problematic, rather than the book being queried. Out comes the broken record:

Unfortunately, writers all too often automatically assume that it’s the idea of the book being rejected, rather than a style-hampered querying letter or a limp synopsis.

But how is this possible, without a level of mental telepathy on the screener’s part that would positively stun the Amazing Kreskin? Remember, all the information Millicent has about your book is on the query page.

Are the rejecting agents seeing past the initial letter to the manuscript itself, decreeing from afar that the writing is not worth reading — and thus that the writer should not be writing? Do they have some sort of direct cosmic link to the Muses that allows them to glance at the first three lines of a query and say, “Nope, this one was last in line when the talent was handed out. Sorry,” before they toss it into the rejection pile?

Of course not. Only editors have that kind of direct telephonic connection to the demi-gods.

Yet this particular fear leaps like a ravenous shark onto many fledgling writers, dragging them off the path to future efforts: it is the first cousin that dangerous, self-hating myth that afflicts too many writers, leading to despair, the notion that if one is really talented, the first draft, the first query, and the first book will automatically traject one to stardom.

It never — well, almost never — turns out like that. Out comes the broken record again:

Being a professional writer is work, and what gets the vast majority of queries rejected is a lack of adherence to professional standards. Which can, my friends, be learned.

As, indeed, we’ve already seen over the course of Queryfest. But what if you already have a query letter that meets all the technical criteria, and it’s still not garnering the responses you want?

Pull up your chairs close, boys and girls: it’s time for the master class on querying. Today, we’re going to concentrate on the delicate art of query diagnosis.

Why? I feel another broken record coming on:

The querying market is even tighter than it was the last time I visited this issue — and that’s really saying something. It’s as competitive now as it has ever been in my lifetime.

Seriously, there are a heck of a lot of fishies clamoring for just a couple of spots in Millicent’s boss’ aquarium. But before you begin to feel for your submission’s pulse, please (wait for it):

Re-read everything in your query packet IN HARD COPY and OUT LOUD: your query letter, synopsis, author bio, and ANY pages the agency’s website or agency guide listing has asked queriers to include in a querying packet.

Better still, read them over AND have someone you trust read it over as well, checking for logical holes and grammatical problems. For any attached pages, the best choice for this is another writer, ideally one who has successfully traversed the perils of the agent-finding ravine.

My, we’re covering a lot of different types of physical environment today, are we not? Let’s slap another broken record on the turntable:

As much as you may love your mother, your spouse, and your best friend, they are, generally speaking not the best judges of your writing.

Look to these fine folks for support, encouragement, and the occasional spot-check for salutation-matching, not for technical feedback on your writing. Find someone whose LITERARY opinion you trust — such as, say, a great writer you met at a conference, or the person in your writing group who keeps being asked to send sample chapters — and blandish her into giving your query packet materials a solid reading.

Lest you think I am casting unwarranted aspersions upon your mother, your spouse, or your best friend, let me add that my own fabulous mother spent her twenties editing the work of some major science fiction writers; fifty years later, she is one of the best line editors I have ever seen, in my professional opinion, but as she is my mother, I would never dream of using her as my only, or indeed even my primary feedback source. Naturally, that doesn’t stop her from line-editing while she reads my work, as I do for hers — years of professional editing causes a particular type of myopia that prevents one from ever reading again without brandishing a vicious pen that attacks margins with the intensity of a charging rhinoceros — but I respect my work enough to want first reader feedback from someone who was not there when I took my first toddling steps.

As excellent as this advice is, I sense that some of you are already merrily making plans to disregard it. If you are planning to be the only pre-Millicent peruser of your query packet, then I implore you…

Make sure that you read all of the constituent parts of your submissions in hard copy, not just on a computer screen. Proofreading is far easier — and more likely to be accurate — in hard copy.

I’m quite serious about treating this a final flight-check: don’t leave rooting out the proofreading and logic problems until the last minute. As Gustave knows to his sorrow, it’s just too easy to skip them when you’re in a hurry.

Once you have cleared out any grammatical or spelling problems and made sure your submission pieces say what you thought they were saying (you’d be surprised how many don’t), sit down with yourself and/or that trusted first reader and ask yourself the following questions.

(1) Is my query letter longer than a single page in standard correspondence format?
I know it’s hard to cram everything you want to say to promote your work into a single page, but it’s just not worth it to go longer: it’s a standard instant-rejection trigger. Yes, even if you are e-querying: I covered this earlier in this series, speaking of broken records, but even e-mailed queries longer than a page are seldom read in their entirety.

And please, for your own sake, don’t take the common escape route of shrinking the margins or the typeface; trust me, any screener, agent, editor, or contest judge with even a few weeks’ worth of experience can tell. (For a quick, visual-aid-assisted run-down on why their being able to tell that is bad news for the querier who does it, please see my last post.)

Remember, if you are sending a paper query or any pages at all (even if the agency’s guidelines ask you to imbed them in an e-mail),

You must indent your paragraphs in a mailed query letter — or, indeed, in any writing sample of any length intended for agent-dwelling eyes. Business format is not acceptable in this context.

For those of you unclear on the difference between correspondence format and business format (or, to put it another way, those who are coming upon this checklist in my archives, rather than reading it as today’s post), please see my earlier post on the subject.

(2) If my query letter just refuses to be shorter than a page, am I trying to achieve too much in it? Specifically, is my query trying to do more than get the agent to ask to see the manuscript?
Is it perhaps trying to convince the agent (or her Millicent) that this is a terrific book by assertion, rather than presenting the premise compellingly? It maybe attempting to summarize the entire plot, rather than the premise? Is it reviewing the book, rather than describing it? Is it begging for attention, rather than presenting the book professionally? Is it trying to suit the tastes of every agent to whom you might conceivably send it, rather than the one to whom it is currently addressed?

Query letters over-reach in these ways all the time. Like pitches, queries often turn into litanies of summary, rather than convincing, professional presentations of a book’s category, premise, and selling points. As I have advised before,

Don’t try to cram a half an hour’s worth of conversation about your book into a scant page. Just present the information necessary to interest an agent in your manuscript, then STOP.

(3) If my query letter is too long, am I devoting too many lines of text to describing the plot?
The attempt to force the query to serve the purpose of the synopsis or book proposal is, of course, the most common letter-extender of them all. Too often, the plot or argument description overflows its allotted single paragraph so dramatically that other necessary features of the query letter — why the querier has selected this agent and no other, the intended readership, the book category — get tossed overboard in a desperate attempt to keep the whole to a single page.

The simplest fix for this, in most instances, is to reduce the length of the descriptive paragraph.

Remember, your job in the query is not to summarize the book (that’s what the synopsis is for), but to pique enough interest to generate a request for pages. Keep it brief.

How brief? Well, let’s just say that if you can’t say the first two paragraphs of your query letter — the ones where you say why you are approaching that particular agent, the book category, and the premise — in under 20 seconds of normal speech, you might want to take a gander at the ELEVATOR SPEECH category at right.

(4) Is my query letter polite? Does it make me sound like a professional writer it might be a hoot to get to know — or a pushy jerk who would be a pain to represent?
Oh, you may laugh, but you’d be amazed at how often aspiring writers sound annoyed, fed up, or just plain unpleasant in their queries. A prime means of creating any of these effects: using the query letter as a forum for blaming the agent addressed for prevailing conditions in the publishing industry, up to and including how difficult it is to land an agent.

Millicent and her ilk did not create the ambient conditions for writers; treating them as though they did merely betrays a lack of familiarity with how the industry actually works.

Even if they had plotted in dark, smoke-filled rooms about how best to make writers’ lives more difficult, pointing it out either explicitly or implicitly would not be the best way to win friends and influence people. In my experience, lecturing a virtual stranger on how mean agents are is not the best tack to take when trying to make a new friend who happens to be an agent, any more than cracking out your best set of lawyer jokes would be at a bar association meeting.

I’ve seen some real lulus turn up in query letters. My personal favorite began Since you agents have set yourselves up as the guardians of the gates of the publishing world, I suppose I need to appeal to you first…

A close second: I know that challenging books seldom get published these days, but I’m hoping you’ll be smart enough to see that mine…

And third: Before you dismiss this query without reading it, just let me point out…

Be honest now: would you rush out and sign these people, or would you shudder slightly and move on to the next query? If you are even tempted to say the former, I ask you: if you were an agent, would you be willing to introduce a client that sounded like this to an editor? Or would you assume that if you did sign any of these people, you’d have to invest hours on end lecturing them about how to present themselves professionally?

Remember, even if you met an agent at a conference (or via a recommendation from a client) and got along with him as though you’d known each other since nursery school, a query is a business letter. Be cordial, but do not presume that it is okay to be overly familiar.

Oh, you think I’m joking about that last one? In the current informal environment, addressing total strangers by their first names, making assumptions about what they’re like, and even presuming similarities are far from uncommon, alas. But publishing is a formal business; manners still count.

I see that’s having little effect on you; you want to see just how disastrous a too-familiar approach could possibly be. Okay, let’s toss it in the water and see how it swims:

“Why is this writer leaping to all of these conclusions about my boss?” Millicent mutters. “Even if this Gustave person had any basis for them, this would still be kind of creepy. And what’s the deal with the less-than-standard-length page?”

Oh, Millie, you should be grateful that this message wasn’t scrawled in a greeting card. Possibly with kittens on the front. This Gustave guy sounds positively desperate.

Trust me on this one: a cold query to an agent you’ve never clapped eyes upon before is not the place to demonstrate how friendly you are. Nor is it the proper moment to draw conclusions about that agent’s personality, preferences, or motivations. Even if you should happen to guess right, you’re not applying for the job of this person’s best friend, after all: you’re a writer seeking this agent’s professional services.

Show that you can maintain appropriate boundaries. A great rule of thumb: let the agent set the level of familiarity. Don’t address an agent (or, indeed, anyone in the publishing industry) in familiar terms — like, say, by first name alone — until she addresses you that way first.

Which is to say: keep that salutation formal. And keep the begging to a minimum, will ya?

Instead, demonstrate that you are a serious writer who understands that the buying and selling of books is not a charitable activity aimed at the betterment of the human condition. It’s often that, too, but at base, publishing is a business. After hours staring at query letters filled with typos and blame, professional presentation comes as a positive relief to Millicent.

Oh, yes, there are more points to the checklist, but frankly, I can’t keep up the fish analogies. Keep swimming forward, everyone, and keep up the good work!

September 27, 2011May 1, 2021 - 3 Comments

Queryfest, part IV: wait, you mean it matters how it looks on the page?

So far in the course of Queryfest posts, I have been talking about how to present your book project so that it sounds like a professional writer’s argument that a manuscript is worth a peek, rather than a carnival hawker’s introducing the Greatest (fill in the blank here) in the World. Take a peep behind the curtain for only 10 cents!

Both are intended to prompt the onlooker to want to look, of course, but as we discussed last time, hard sells (You’ll be sorry if you let this book slip through your fingers, Mr. Agent!), self-assessments (This book contains the most exciting chariot race since Ben Hur!), and the ever-popular claim of universal appeal (every woman who has ever had a best friend will want to read this novel!) tend to fall flat in queries. Agents like to make up their own minds about the quality of writing. A much savvier way of piquing their interest: a straightforward, professionally-worded description of what your book is about, who its specific intended readership is, and why you think the agent you’re addressing would be a good fit for it.

What’s that you say, campers? You would like to see some concrete examples of queries done well and others that miss the mark?

What an excellent idea; the rest of Querypalooza shall be stuffed to the gills with plenty of both. Rather than leap right into questions of content, however, let’s get ourselves accustomed to how a query should — and should not — look on the printed page.

Gird your loins, campers: today, we’re going to be tackling the purely cosmetic issues.

I hear some of you grumbling already, do I not? “But Anne!” a few voices protest out there in the ether. “I can understand why I need to make my manuscript appear professional by adhering to the rules of standard format, considerately gathered for my benefit under the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT category on the archive list conveniently located on the lower right-hand side of this page, but a query letter rises or falls purely on its content, doesn’t it? As long as I do not scrawl it in crayon on tissue paper, why should I worry about what it looks like?”

Good question: why is it in your interest to pay attention to the superficial side of querying? Because in a mailed query, formatting and presentation are the first things Millicent the agency screener notices. It’s the first indication she has of just how familiar a writer has made herself with how the publishing industry actually works.

Okay, I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch all of the implications of that gale-force collective gasp. Did it indicate (a) a certain level of surprise that Millicent will be judging anything but the content of the query, (b) a shocked realization that the denizens of agencies might perhaps harbor some expectations about how the information in a query should be presented, rather than simply regarding it as a free-form expression of creativity, and/or (c) a clawing, pathological fear that the seventeen queries you sent out last week for your memoir about living in the wilderness for five years might lose some credibility because they were written on bark with blackberry juice?

In the interest of rendering the comparisons to follow as useful to as broad a range of queriers as possible, I’m going to assume it was all of the above. And rather than tell you why our Millie’s view of a query might be colored by how it is presented, I’m going to show you.

Because first impressions can be indelible, before I demonstrate just how a poorly presented query looks wrong, let’s take a gander at what a really good query letter looks like. Not so you can copy it verbatim — lest we forget, rote reproductions abound in rejection piles — but so you may see what the theory looks like in practice.

And please, those of you who only e-query: don’t assume that none of what I’m about to say about traditional paper queries is inapplicable to you. Even agents who accept only e-mailed queries were weaned on mailed ones; the paper version is still the industry standard, dictating what does and does not look professional to folks in the biz. Even if there is no paper whatsoever involved in your querying process, you should still be aware of how query letters should appear on a page.

For ease of comprehension, I’ve decided to construct a query for a book whose story you might know: MADAME BOVARY. (At least, I hope that those of you who write novels about the human condition will be familiar with it. If not, and you are at all interested in learning anything about how a few vivid details can light up a page, I would highly recommend your picking up a copy.) If you’re having trouble reading this example at its current size, try holding down the COMMAND key and pushing the + key a couple of times to enlarge the image.

Makes the book sound pretty compelling, doesn’t it? If you were Millicent, wouldn’t you ask to see the first 50 pages?

After the last few posts, I hope it’s clear to you why this is an awfully good query letter: in addition to containing all of the required elements, it presents the book well, in businesslike terms, without coming across as too pushy or arrogant. Even more pleasing to Millicent’s eye, it makes the book sound genuinely interesting and describes it in terms that imply a certain familiarity with how the publishing industry works. (The date on the letter is when the first installment of MADAME BOVARY was published, incidentally; I couldn’t resist.)

Well done, Gustave! It’s perfectly obvious that, in addition to having written a whale of a good book, you were professional enough to learn how the agent of your dreams would expect to see that book’s many excellencies presented in a query.

For the sake of comparison, let’s take a gander at what the query might have looked like had Mssr. Flaubert not done his homework.

You see what’s wrong with this version, right? Obviously, the contractions are far too casual for a professional missive.

No, but seriously, I hope that you spotted the unsupported boasting, the bullying, disrespectful tone, and the fact that this query doesn’t really describe the book. Also, to Millicent’s eye, its being addressed to Dear Agent and undated would indicate that ol’ Gustave is simply plastering the entire agent community with queries, regardless of individual agents’ representation preferences.

That alone would almost certainly lead her to reject MADAME BOVARY out of hand, without reading the body of the letter at all. And those ten pages the agency’s website or listing in a standard agents’ guide said to send? Returned unread to our pal Gus.

The Dear Agent letter has a first cousin that also tends to engender automatic rejection. It’s a gaffe to which even very experienced queriers routinely fall prey. See if you can spot it in its natural habitat:

bad-flaubert-query-letter-2

If you reared back in horror, exclaiming, “Oh, no! Our Gustave has sent the query to agent Clarissa Richardson, but left the salutation from what was probably his last query to agent Tom Jones!” congratulations: you win a gold star with walnut clusters. Since the advent of the home computer, aspiring writers have been falling into this trap constantly; cutting and pasting only works if all of the personalized elements get changed each and every time.

The cure? Pull out your hymnals, long-time readers, and sing along: read EVERY SYLLABLE of each query letter IN HARD COPY and OUT LOUD before you send it, every single time you send it.

Yes, even if you are e-querying or pasting a letter into a form on an agency’s website. Do not hit SEND until you have made absolutely sure that the salutation matches the recipient.

Did you catch the two other major problems with both versions of this letter? Go ahead; go back and look again.

First, how exactly is the agent to contact Gustave to request him to send the manuscript? She can’t, of course, because Mssr. Flaubert has made the mistake of leaving out that information, as an astonishingly high percentage of queriers do.

Why? I suspect it’s because they assume that if they include a SASE (that’s Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope, for those of you new to the trade, and it should be included with every mailed query and submission unless the agency’s website specifically says otherwise), the agent already has their contact information. But if, heaven forfend, the SASE and the query get separated — hey, Millicent’s desk has been known to hold reams and reams of paper at any given moment — or, as is increasingly common, the agency prefers to respond to queries via e-mail, Gus is out of luck.

And no, in response to what half of you just thought: no matter how great the query makes the book appear to be, Millie is not going to take the time to track down Gustave’s address. “I don’t care if it is the next A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION,” she sniffs, moving on to the next query. “I have 500 queries to get through before I can go home tonight.”

Aspiring writers are even less likely to include their contact information in e-mailed queries. “Why bother?” the e-query thinks, blithely hitting SEND. “All the agent needs to do to get in touch with me is hit REPLY, right?”

Not necessarily: e-mailed queries get forwarded from agent to assistant and back again all the time. Millicent’s hitting REPLY might just send the joyous news that she wants to read your first 50 pages to someone in the next cubicle.

I hesitate to bring this up, but it’s also not unheard-of for e-mails to be sent to the wrong querier, or for SASEs to get mixed up. I once received a kind rejection for someone else’s book stuffed into my SASE. I returned the manuscript with a polite note informing the agency of the mistake, along with the suggestion that perhaps they had lost my submission.

True story. To add a happy ending: the agency assistant who wrote the extremely apologetic response to my having handled it professionally grew up to be my current agent, now a senior agent at the same agency.

The moral: don’t depend on the SASE or return button alone. Include your contact information either below your signature or in the header.

This is especially important if you happen to be querying a US-based agent from outside the US. English-speaking foreign writers often presume, wrongly, that US agents have a strong preference for working with the locals, that not being able to fly a few thousand miles for frequent face-to-face meetings would be a deal-breaker, or that an expatriate would be better off using her mom’s home address in Indiana so as to appear to be living in North America. As a result, they tend not to mention in their (almost invariably e-) queries that they and their manuscripts are not currently stateside.

However, the US is a mighty big country, and e-mailing is inexpensive; distance is not a deal-breaker, typically. NYC-based agents have been representing clients without meeting them in person since the early 20th century. Some agencies might deduct the cost of international phone calls from the advance, just as they might choose to charge the writer for photocopying, but in the era of e-mail and Skype, that’s increasingly rare.

Go ahead and include your contact information, wherever you are. Being far-flung might even be a selling point, if the agent happens to like to travel. (Oh, you don’t think the agent of your dreams would like to crash for a few days on your couch in London?)

But I digress. Back to the diagnosis already in progress.

Gustave’s second problem is a bit more subtle, not so much a major gaffe as a small signal to Millicent that the manuscript to which the letter refers might not be professionally polished. Any guesses?

If you said that it was in business format rather than correspondence format, congratulations: you’ve been paying attention. In a mailed submission, this format would strike most Millicents as less literate than precisely the same letter properly formatted. (It would be fine in an e-mailed submission, where indented paragraphs are harder to format.)

Any other diagnoses? No? Okay, let me infect the good query with the same virus, to help make the problem a bit more visible to the naked eye:

See it now? This otherwise estimable letter is written in Helvetica, not Times, Times New Roman, or Courier, the preferred typefaces for manuscripts.

Was that huge huff of indignation that just billowed toward space an indication that favoring one font over another in queries strikes some of you as a trifle unfair? Especially since very few agencies openly express font preferences for queries (although a few do; check their websites and/or agency guide listings).

To set your minds at ease, I’ve never seen font choice alone be a rejection trigger. I can tell you from very, very long experience working with aspiring writers that queries in the standard typefaces do seem to be treated with a touch more respect.

I know; odd. But worth knowing, don’t you think?

Font size, however, often does prompt knee-jerk rejection; stick to 12 point.

Don’t believe me? Okay, here’s a modified version of the good query, accidentally mailed out in 14-point type:

Yes, yes, I know: you probably wouldn’t even dream of having sent it out this way on purpose — but are you absolutely positive that your default font is 12 point, not 14? Are you sure that when you copied your letter from Word and pasted it into an e-mail, your e-mail program didn’t alter the query into the 14-point type you prefer for composing e-mails?

The moral: even if you have sent out essentially the same query letter dozens of times (oh, don’t pretend that you’ve never just pasted in new contact information to an already-used letter), it’s very much in your interest to read it over each time. You’d be surprised how often simple slips of the mouse result in some rather odd outcomes on the query page. Or how frequently e-mails arrive looking substantially different than their authors intended.

While we’re on the subject of cosmetic problems, let’s take a look at another common yet purely structural way that well-written query letters can send off an unprofessional vibe:

Not all that subtle, this: a query letter needs to be limited to a SINGLE page. This restriction is taken so seriously that very, very few Millicents would even start to read this letter.

Why are agencies so rigid about length when dealing with people who are, after all, writers promoting book-length works? Long-time readers, chant it with me now: TIME. Can you imagine how lengthy the average query letter would be if agencies didn’t limit how long writers could ramble on about their books?

Stop smiling. It would be awful, at least for Millicent.

Fortunately, the one-page limit seems to be the most widely-known of querying rules, if one of the most often fudged in e-queries. “What’s Millicent going to do?” the fudger mutters. “Print it out in order to catch me at my little ruse? She doesn’t have that kind of time.”

Which is rather unfair to screeners, since e-queries can, since they omit the date and address salutation at the top of the message, be several lines longer and still fit within the one-page ideal. I just mention. If you’re fearful of running long, compose your query in Word, ascertain that it could be printed onto a single page, then copy and paste it into an e-mail.

The one-page limit is so widely known, in fact, that aspiring writers frequently tempt Millicent’s wrath through conjuring tricks that force all of the information the writer wishes to provide onto a single page. Popular choices include minimizing the margins:

or shrinking the font size:

or, most effective at all, using the scale function under Page Setup in Word to shrink the entire document:

Let me burst this bubble before any of you even try to blow it up to its full extent: this sort of document-altering magic will not help an over-long query sneak past Millicent’s scrutiny, for the exceedingly simple reason that she will not be fooled by it.

Not even for a nanosecond. The only message such a query letter sends is this writer cannot follow directions.

An experienced contest judge would not be fooled, either, incidentally, should you be thinking of using any of these tricks to crush a too-lengthy chapter down to the maximum acceptable page length. Ditto for pages requested for submissions to agencies or publishing houses: if you shrink it, they will know. And they won’t appreciate your attempt to trick them,

Why am I so certain that any professional reader will catch strategic shrinkage? For precisely the same reason that deviations from standard format in manuscripts are so obvious to professional readers: the fact that they read correctly-formatted pages ALL THE TIME.

Don’t believe the tricks above wouldn’t be instantaneously spottable? Okay, glance at them, then take another peek at our first example of the day:

Viewed side-by-side, the formatting differences are pretty obvious, aren’t they? Even in the extremely unlikely event that Millicent isn’t really sure that the query in front of her contains some trickery, all she has to do is move her fingertips a few inches to the right or the left of it, open the next query letter, and perform an enlightening little compare-and-contrast exercise.

Don’t tempt her to do it. It will not end well for you.

The benefits of eschewing formatting skullduggery is not the only thing I would like you to learn from today’s examples, however. I would also like you to take away this: with one egregious exception, these examples were more or less the same query letter in terms of content, all pitching the same book. Yet only one of these is at all likely to engender a request to read the manuscript.

What does that mean, in practical terms? Even a great book will be rejected at the querying stage if it is queried or pitched poorly.

Yes, many agents would snap up Mssr. Flaubert in a heartbeat after reading his wonderful prose on the manuscript page — but with a query letter like the second, or with some of the sneaky formatting tricks exhibited here, the probability of any agent’s asking to read it is close to zero. Millicent receives too many well-written queries from writers who follow the rules to waste even a moment regretting those who do not.

The moral, should you care to know it: how a writer presents his work — in the query or on the manuscript page — matters.

That means, by extension, that even a long list of rejections based upon an improperly-formatted query might well be unreflective of how Millicent would respond to the same manuscript as presented in an impeccable query. So keep refining that query, campers: even a book as genuinely gorgeous as MADAME BOVARY would not see the inside of a bookstore today unless Flaubert kept sending out query letters, rather than curling up in a ball after the first rejection.

Oh, don’t pretend that you haven’t considered giving up. Deep down, pretty much every aspiring writer believes that if she were really talented, her work would get picked up without her having to market it at all. It’s an incredibly common writerly fantasy: there’s a knock on your door, and when you open it, there’s the perfect agent standing there, contract in hand.

“I heard that your work is wonderful,” the agent says. “Here, sign this, so I may sell the manuscript I have not yet read to that editor who is waiting at the car parked at your curb.”

Or perhaps in your preferred version, you go to a conference and pitch your work for the first time. The agent of your dreams, naturally, falls over backwards in his chair; after sal volitale has been administered to revive him from his faint, he cries, “That’s it! The book I’ve been looking for my whole professional life! I can die contented now!”

Or, still more common, you send your first query letter to an agent, and you receive a phone call two days later, asking to see the entire manuscript. Three days after you overnight it to New York, the agent calls to say that she stayed up all night reading it, and is dying to represent you. Could you fly to New York immediately, so she could introduce you to the people who are going to pay a million dollars for the film rights, as well as the publisher that wants to release your book two weeks hence?

I have nothing against a good fantasy (especially of the SF/Fantasy genre), but while you are trying to find an agent, please do not be swayed by daydreams. Don’t send out only one query at a time; it’s truly a waste of your efforts. Try to keep 7 or 8 out at any given moment.

This advice often comes as a shock to writers. “What do you mean, 7 or 8 at a time? I’ve been rejected ten times, and I thought that meant I should lock myself away and revise the book completely before I sent it out again!”

Feel free to lock yourself up and revise to your heart’s content, but if you have a completed manuscript in your desk drawer, you should try to keep a constant flow of query letters heading out your door. As they say in the biz, the only manuscript that can never be sold is the one that is never submitted.

There are two reasons keeping a constant flow is a good idea, professionally speaking. First, it’s never a good idea to allow a query letter to molder on your desktop: after awhile, that form letter can start to seem very personally damning, and a single rejection from a single agent can start to feel like an entire industry’s indictment of your work.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: one of the most self-destructive of conference-circuit rumors is the notion that if a book is good, it will automatically be picked up by the first agent that sees it. Or the fiftieth, for that matter.

This is simply untrue. It is not uncommon for wonderful books to go through dozens of queries, and even many rounds of query-revision-query-revision before being picked up. There are hundreds of reasons that agents and their screeners reject manuscripts, the most common being that they do not like to represent a particular kind of book.

So how precisely is such a rejection a reflection on the quality of the writing?

Keep on sending out those queries several hundred times, if necessary. Until you can blandish the right agent into reading your book, you’re just not going to know for sure whether it is marketable or not. Keep up the good work!

September 26, 2011January 19, 2017 - 3 Comments

Queryfest, part III: eschewing the classic annoyance triggers, or, leaving that leaf unturned may cost you

Still hanging in there, campers? By this point in my annual examination of all things query-related, I’m accustomed to hearing howls of anguish out there in the ether. I’ve caught the occasional whimper, but still, I’m worried that I may already have stunned you into mute horror with my accounts of just how competitive the agent-finding market is these days.

Because that particular Medusa has turned many a talented would-be author’s dreams to stone, I’m going to start slowly today. Let’s ease into a hardcore discussion of query letters in a casual manner, with a nice, calming, verdure-based anecdote about interpersonal vitriol.

Until a couple of years ago, I lived next door to people who simply couldn’t abide trees, or indeed, greenery in any form. I’m not talking about a minor antipathy to the odd magnolia or a reasonable fear that a nearby swaying cedars might drop a branch on the house during a nasty windstorm, either — the mere sight of any leaf-bearing living thing irritated the adults in this family into a frenzy of resentment.

Their especial aversion: if the leaf in question happened to detach itself from its parent plant and respond to gravity. The very thought of a pile of autumn leaves rendered them apoplectic; to suggest, however gently, that the season might have been nicknamed fall for a reason was to invite an 18-minute tirade on the troublesomeness of plant matter. Not so much as a stray blade of grass ever seemed to evade their notice; their yard could not have had more impervious surfaces had it been an industrial kitchen.

At least twice a year, the Smiths (not their real name, but a clever pseudonym designed to hide their true identities) would demand that we chop down our magnificent 60-foot willow tree, on the grounds that occasionally, one of its leaves would be wafted onto their porch. They also had it in for another neighbor’s apple tree, our pear, and a few innocent pines across the street. After the city declined to remove an 80-foot fir, the Smiths very pointedly ripped out their (uncovered, with five children in residence) swimming pool because, they told us huffily, OTHER PEOPLE’S leaves kept blowing into it.

Just between us, we like trees on our side of the fence. So did the people who owned the house before us, as well as all of our neighbors except the dreaded Smiths. We live in Seattle, for heaven’s sake, where a proposal to rip out a single 100-year-old cedar on private property typically attracts fifty citizens to a public meeting to protest. I’ve seen picket lines surrounding city-condemned trees. In fact, prior to a recent city council election, I received more than one circular explaining where all the candidates stood on trees (sometimes literally, judging by the photographs) and their possible removal.

If I were a tree forced to live in an urban environment, in short, I’d definitely move here.

So in the Smith’s view, we were far from their only inconsiderate neighbors — we are merely the geographically closest in a municipality gone greenery-mad. We were, however, the only locals who kept bringing them holiday cookies, freshly-grown pears, and offers of babysitting in the hope of smoothing things over. We were also, perhaps unwisely, the only ones to tell them to go ahead and cut off branches at the property line, as is their right.

This neighborly behavior did not win us any Brownie points with the Smiths, alas, and with good reason: long after the cookies disappeared down their gullets, our willow tree still greeted them every morning when they applied their magnifying glasses to their driveway. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in close proximity to one of these gracefully-swaying giants, but they have two habits that drive people like the Smiths nuts: they love dropping leaves that are, alas, susceptible to both gravity and wind, and they just adore snaking their branches into places where there aren’t other trees.

Like, say, the parking lot that was the Smiths’ yard.

Thus, I cannot truthfully say I was surprised to walk into our yard to discover Mr. Smith ten feet up in the willow, hacksaw in hand and murder in his eye. (I talked him down before any branches fell.) Nor was I stunned when the Smiths tore down the fence between our yards, propping the old fence on our lilac and laurel for a few weeks, apparently in the hope that the trees wouldn’t like it much. (They didn’t, but they survived.) Or when the two trees closest to the new fence shriveled up and died (dropping masses of leaves in the process, mostly on the Smith’s concrete) because someone had apparently dumped a couple of gallons of weed killer on them.

The arborist said he sees that a lot.

In the interest of maintaining good relationships on the block, we let all it all go, apart from telling Mr. Smith that our insurance wouldn’t cover neighbors plummeting from our tree. We laughed as though his repeated requests that we remove the willow taller than our house were a tremendously funny joke that just keeps getting more humorous with each telling. We stopped planting anything close to the fence and heroically resisted the urge to shake our trees just before one of the Smiths’ immensely noisy yard parties.

From the Smiths’ point of view, of course, this response was unsatisfactory in the extreme: from their perspective, we held all the power, as we were the stewards of the tallest trees in the neighborhood. (Which shade a stream that runs off to a salmon breeding ground; we are the ones who explain to new neighbors not to use anything toxic on their yards, lest it run into the stream.) We were the harborers of raccoons, the protectors of possums, the defenders of that unsightly hawks’ next.

To them, we had a monopoly on the ability to change the situation. That, to put it mildly, irked them so much that each spring, I trembled for the baby hawks. Seen from our side of the fence, though, the Smiths possessed a far from insignificant power: all of the neighborhood-annoying ability that molesting wildlife, intimidating our cat, poisoning our trees, and encouraging each of their five children to take up a musical instrument could convey.

On sunny days, the tots practiced scales in their spotless yard. We were on board with it until the youngest brought home a tuba.

Yet we, the Smiths, the wildlife, and the rest of the neighborhood lived in a state of uneasy détente, at least until the day last year that we decided to remove a couple of poisoned trees from our yard, efforts speeded by audible cheering from the Smiths’ house. I could have sworn that we had cleared the ground. Yet a couple of days later, branches littered our side of the fence again. We carted those away, only to discover the following week piles of leaves that had apparently fallen from trees that were no longer there.

The Smiths had evidently decided to start dumping fallen leaves over the fence. That showed us, didn’t it?

Why am I sharing this lengthy tale of woe and uproar, other than to demonstrate my confidence that no one on the Smiths’ side of the fence reads blogs? Because our situation with the neighbors so closely paralleled the relationship between agents and many of the aspiring writers who query them.

Think about it: by everyone’s admission, the agents own the trees — but that doesn’t mean that aspiring writers don’t resent clearing up the leaves. Or that they don’t in their own small ways have the ability to annoy agents quite a bit.

I sense some of you settling in to enjoy my account of this. “Pop some popcorn, Martha,” long-time query-resenters cry. “We’re going to have us some entertainment!”

Don’t get your hopes up — most of these annoyance tactics are only visible from the agents’ side of the fence. Completely generic Dear Agent letters, for instance, or queries clearly mass-emailed to every agent in the country. Sneaking a few extra lines above the prescribed page into an e-mailed query letter because, after all, what agency screener is going to have time to check that whether it ran longer? Shrinking the margins and/or the typeface on a paper query so that while it is technically a single page, it contains a page and a half’s worth of words. Deciding that the agency website didn’t really mean it about sending only the first five pages with the query, since something really great happens on page 6. Continuing to e-mail repeatedly after a rejection, trying to plead the book’s case. Telephoning at all, ever.

Oh, and those nit-picky little manuscript problems we have been discussing all year. Including any or all of those can be a trifle irritating, too.

Consider that, I implore you, the next time you are tempted to bend an agency or contest’s submission rules. While dumping the leaves over the fence might well have made the Smiths feel better, it certainly didn’t render them any more likely to convince us to rip out all of our trees; if anything, it made us more protective of them.

Aspiring writers’ attempts to force agents to change the way they do business by ignoring stated guidelines and industry-wide expectations doesn’t achieve the desired effect, either. It merely prompts agencies to adopt more and more draconian means of weeding out submissions.

Nobody wins, in short.

While you’re thoughtfully crunching popcorn and turning that little parable over in your mind, I’m going to switch gears and talk about that great annoyer of the fine folks on the writer’s side of the querying-and-submission fence, querying fatigue. Those of you who have been seeking agents for a while are familiar with the phenomenon, right? It’s that dragging, soul-sucking feeling that every querier — and submitter, and contest entrant — feels if and when that SASE comes back stuffed with a rejection.

“Oh, God,” every writer thinks in that moment, “I have to do this again?”

Unfortunately, the answer is yes. If an aspiring writer wants to land an agent, get a book published by press large or small instead of self-publishing, or win a literary contest, s/he does indeed need to pick that ego off the ground and keep moving forward.

Stop glaring at me — that’s just a fact.

Querying is a tough row to hoe, both technically and psychologically. But here’s a comforting thought to bear in mind: someone who reads only your query, or even your query and synopsis, cannot logically be rejecting your BOOK, or even your writing. Logically speaking, to pass a legitimate opinion on either, she would have to read some of your manuscript.

Too often, aspiring writers beat themselves up unduly over query rejections, and it just doesn’t make sense. Unless the agency you are querying is one of the increasingly common ones that asks querants to include a brief writing sample, what is rejected in a query letter is either the letter itself (for unprofessionalism, lack of clarity, or simply not being a kind of book that particular agent represents), the premise of the book, or the book category.

Those are the only possibilities, if all you sent was a query. So, if you think about it, there is no way that even a stack of rejection letters reaching to the moon could be a rejection of your talents as a writer, provided those rejections came entirely from cold querying.

Makes you feel just the tiniest bit better to think of rejections that way, doesn’t it?

“But Anne,” some of you protest through a mouthful of popcorn, “I make a special point of querying only agencies whose websites ask me to imbed a few pages in my e-query or on its submission form. So when those folks reject me — or just don’t respond — I should take that as a rejection of my writing talent and/or book, right, and not just of my query?”

Not necessarily. You have no way of knowing whether the rejection happened before Millicent finished reading the query (the most frequent choice), after she finished reading it, on page 1 of the writing sample, or at the end of it. All you know for sure is that something in your query packet triggered rejection.

The query is the most sensible first choice for reexamination, since it’s the part of the query packet that any Millicent would read first — or at all. After all, if the query didn’t grab her attention (or if it dumped any of those pesky leaves over her fence), it’s unlikely to the point of laughability that she read the attached pages.

In response to all of those jaws I just heard hitting the floor, allow me to repeat that: typically, professional readers stop reading the instant they hit a red flag, regardless of how many pages of material they may have requested to see. True of Millicents, true of contest judges, even frequently true of editors. Sorry to be the one to break that to you.

The vast majority of queriers and pitchers do not understand this. They think, and not without some justification, that if an agent’s website asks for ten pages of text, that someone at the agency is going to be standing over Millicent with a whip and a chair, forcing her to read that last syllable on p. 10 before making up her mind whether to reject the query.

Just doesn’t happen. Nor would it be fair to our Millie if it did. In practice, she simply does not have the time to scan every syllable of every query packet.

Oh, don’t roll your eyes. Even at a mere 30 seconds per query — far less than writers would like, but still, about average — screening 800-1500 queries per week would equal one full work day each week doing absolutely nothing else…like, say, reading all of those submissions from aspiring writers whose pages she actually requested.

Besides, from her point of view, why should she take the time to read the entirety of a query letter whose first paragraph or two is covered with those annoying leaves? Why wouldn’t she assume that if the query is filled with typos, the five pages the agency’s submission guidelines said you could send would be similarly unpolished, too?

“Someone ought to take a rake to this letter,” she grumbles, slurping down her latte. “Next!”

A pop quiz, to see if you’ve been paying attention: is the best strategic response to this kind of rejection to

(a) decide that the rejection constitutes the entire publishing world’s condemnation of the entire book and/or your talent as a writer, and never query again?

(b) conclude that the manuscript itself was at fault, and frantically revise it for a year before querying again?

(c) e-mail the agency repeatedly, pointing out all of your manuscript’s finer points in an effort to get them to change their minds about rejecting your query?

(d) decide that Millicent was a fool and send out exactly the same query packet to the next agency?

(e) scrutinize both the query and the pages for possible red flags, then send out fresh queries as soon as possible thereafter?

If you said (a), you’re like half the unpublished writers in North America: not bad company, but also engaging in behavior that renders getting picked up by an agent (or winning a contest, for that matter) utterly impossible. I’ve said it before, and I’ll doubtless say it again: even a thoughtful rejection is only one reader’s opinion; no single rejection of a query or submission could possibly equal the condemnation of the entire publishing industry.

If you said (b), you’re like many, many conscientious aspiring writers: willing, even eager to believe that your writing must be faulty; if not, any agency in the world would have snapped it up, right? (See the previous paragraph on the probability of a single Millicent’s reaction being an infallible indicator of that.)

If you said (c), I hope you find throwing those leaves over the fence satisfying. Just be aware that it’s not going to convince Millicent or her boss to chop down the willow.

If you said (d), well, at least you have no illusions that need to be shattered. You are tenacious and believe in your work. Best of luck to you — but after the tenth or fifteenth rejection, you might want to consider the possibility that there are a few leaves marring the beauty of your query letter or opening pages.

If you said (e), congratulations: you have found a healthy balance between pride and practicality. Keep pushing forward.

While we’re considering the possibility of organic debris obscuring the efficacy of your query, let me bring up the most common fallen leaf of all: boasting about the writing quality, originality of the book concept, or future literary importance of the writer in the query. If your query contains even a hint of this, take it out immediately.

Yes, I know — I’ve talked about this one already in this series, but it’s such a common Millicents’ pet peeve that it can’t be repeated enough. Agents and editors tend to be wary of aspiring writers who praise their own work, and rightly so. To use a rather crude analogy, boasts in queries come across like a drunk’s insistence that he can beat up everybody else in the bar, or (to get even cruder) like a personal ad whose author claims that he’s a wizard in bed.

He’s MAKING the bed, naturally, children. Go practice your tuba in the yard.

My point, should you care to know it: if the guy were really all that great at either, wouldn’t other people be singing his praises? Isn’t the proof of the pudding, as they say, in the eating?

Even if you are feeling fairly confident that your query does not stray into the realm of self-review, you might want to ask someone whose reading eye you trust to take a gander at your query, to double-check that you’ve removed every last scintilla of subjective evaluation of your own work. Why? Well, aspiring writers are not always aware that they’ve crossed the line from confident presentation to boasting.

To be fair, the line can be a mite blurry. As thoughtful reader Jake asked some time back, in the midst of one of my rhapsodies on pitching:

I’ve been applying this series to query writing, and I think I’ve written a pretty good elevator speech to use as a second paragraph, but there’s something that bothers me.

We’ve been told countless times not to write teasers or book-jacket blurbs when trying to pick up an agent. (”Those damned writer tricks,” I think was the term that was used.)

I’m wondering exactly where the line between blurbs and elevator speeches are, and how can I know when I’ve crossed it. Any tips there?

Jake, this is a great question, one that I wish more queriers would ask themselves. The short answer:

A good elevator speech/descriptive paragraph in a query letter describes the content of a book in a clear, concise manner, relying upon intriguing specifics to entice a professional reader into wanting to see actual pages of the book in question.

whereas

A back jacket blurb is a micro-review of a book, commenting upon its strengths, usually in general terms. Usually, these are written by someone other than the author, as with the blurbs that appear on book jackets.

The former is a (brief, admittedly) sample of the author’s storytelling skill; the latter is promotional copy. The first’s appearance in a query letter is professional, while the second is a shovelful of fallen leaves.

Many, if not most, queriers make the mistake of regarding query letters — and surprisingly often synopses, especially those submitted for contest entry, as well — as occasions for the good old American hard sell, boasting when they should instead be demonstrating. Or, to put it in more writerly language, telling how great the book in question is rather than showing it.

From Millicent’s perspective — as well as her Aunt Mehitabel’s when she is judging a contest entry — the difference is glaring. So how, as Jake so asks insightfully, is a querier to know when he’s crossed the line between them?

As agents like to say, it all depends on the writing, and as my long-term readers are already aware, I’m no fan of hard-and-fast rules. However, here are a couple of simple follow-up questions to consider while examining a query that’s already been rejected a few times:

(1) Does my descriptive paragraph actually describe what the book is about, or does it pass a value judgment on it?
Remember, if Millicent can’t tell her boss what your book is about, she’s going to have a hard time recommending that the agency pick you up as a client. So go ahead and tell her the story; resist the temptation to shoehorn your dream back-jacket blurb into your query.

The typical back-jacket blurb isn’t intended to describe the book’s content — it’s to praise it, in the hope of attracting readers. And as counter-intuitive as most queriers seem to find it, the goal of a query letter is not to praise the book, but to pique interest in it.

See the difference? Millicent does. So do her Aunt Mehitabel and her cousin Maury, who screens manuscripts for an editor at a major publishing house.

(2) Does my query present the book as a reviewer might, in terms of the reader’s potential enjoyment, assessment of writing quality, speculation about sales potential, and assertions that it might make a good movie? Or does my query talk about the book in the terms an agent might actually use to try to sell it to an editor at a publishing house?
An effective query describes a book in the vocabulary of the publishing industry, not in terms of general praise. (If you’re not certain how to do that, don’t worry — we’ll be getting to the nuts and bolts in a few days.)

(3) Are the sentences that strike me as possibly blurb-like actually vital to the query letter, or are they extraneous?
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the average query letter is crammed to the gills with unnecessary verbiage. Just as your garden-variety unprepared pitcher tends to ramble on about how difficult it has been to find an agent for her book, what subplots it contains, and what inspired her to write the darned thing in the first place, queriers often veer off-track to discuss everything from their hopes and dreams about how well the book could sell (hence our old friend, “It’s a natural for Oprah!”) to mentioning what their kith, kin, and writing teachers thought of it (“Uncle Thaddeus says it’s a natural for Oprah!”) to thoughtfully listing all of the reasons that the agent being queried SHOULDN’T pick it up (“You probably won’t be interested, because this isn’t the kind of book that ends up on Oprah.”)

To Millicent and her fellow screeners, none of these observations are relevant. You don’t have very much space in a query letter; use it to provide only the information that will help an agent see just how marketable your book actually is.

(4) Does my query make all of the points I need it to make?
Oh, you may laugh, but humor me for a moment while we go over the basics. A successful query letter has at minimum ALL of the following traits:

* it is clear,

* it is less than 1 page (single-spaced, with 1-inch margins),

* it describes the book’s premise (not the entire story; that’s the job of the synopsis) in an engaging manner,

* it is politely worded,

* it states unequivocally what kind of book is being pitched, using a book category that already exists in the publishing industry, rather than one the writer has simply made up,

* it makes it clear whether the book in question is fiction or nonfiction,

* if it is nonfiction, it includes some description of the writer’s platform (credentials for writing the book, including expertise and/or celebrity status),

* it includes a SASE (if it is being sent via regular mail) or full contact information for the querier, and

* it is addressed to a specific agent with a successful track record in representing the type of book it describes.

You would not believe how few query letters that agencies receive actually exhibit all of these traits. Even the fiction/nonfiction bit is often omitted. And to be brutally blunt about it, agents rather like that, because gaffes like these make it oh-so-easy to reject 85% of what they receive within seconds.

No fuss, no muss, no reading beyond, say, line 5. Again, sound familiar?

A particularly common feature to omit: the book category. Many writers just don’t know that the industry runs on book categories, not vague descriptions like well, it’s sort of based on something that really happened to me or it’s a combination Western/romance novel/science fiction epic, with elements of humor thrown in. What’s an agent to do with a description like that? Where would such a book reside in a bookstore? How would a reader looking for such a book describe it to a bookstore employee, or find it on Amazon?

More to the point at querying time, how would the agent know which imprints would consider publishing such a book? It would be literally impossible for an agent to sell a book to a publisher without a category label, for the exceedingly simple reason that book categories are how the industry keeps track of which readers are buying which books. If a query says a book is a Highland romance, the agent knows right away who the target reader is, what that reader expects to see on the page (roughly, anyway), and how well books in that category tend to sell. If, on the other hand, the query describes that same book as a well-written examination of two passionate lovers — one in a kilt, one in a dress — as they face terrifying conflicts and moving emotional wrenches, the agent would actually have to read the book before even beginning to think about which editors might be interested in it.

I see that glint in your eye, but no, that’s not a good thing, from the querier’s perspective. Millicents seldom request manuscript pages because they’re curious about what kind of a book is being queried. Most often, if they can’t categorize the book at a glance, they will just reject the query.

Most of the time, omitting the book category is simply the result of ignorance: the overwhelming majority of queriers simply don’t know that it’s necessary to include. They know what kinds of books they’ve written, after all; it doesn’t occur to them that the category wouldn’t be self-evident. Other queriers, bless their warm, fuzzy, and devious hearts, fail to mention their book’s category for strategic reasons, lest their work be rejected on category grounds. “This agency doesn’t represent mysteries,” this type of writer reasons, “so I just won’t tell them what kind of book I’ve written until after they’ve fallen in love with my writing.”

I have a shocking bit of news for you, Napolèon: publishing simply doesn’t work that way. If Millicent cannot tell from your query where your book will eventually rest on a shelf, she’s not going to read it at all.

Yes, for most books, particularly novels, there can be legitimate debate about which shelf would most happily house it, and agents recategorize their clients’ work all the time. (It’s happened to me, and recently.) As long as people in the industry speak and even think of books by category, though, you’re not going to win any Brownie points with them by making them guess what kind of book you’re trying to get them to read.

(5) Does my query make my book sound appealing — not just to any agent, but to the kind of agent who would be the best fit for my writing?
You wouldn’t believe how many blank stares I get when I ask this one in my classes, but as I’ve pointed out before, you don’t want just any agent to represent your work; you want one with the right connections to sell it to an editor, right?

That’s not a match-up that’s likely to occur through blind dating, if you catch my drift. You need to look for someone who shares your interests.

I find that it often helps aspiring writers to think of their query letters as personal ads for their books. (Don’t pretend you’re unfamiliar with the style: everyone reads them from time to time, if only to see what the new kink du jour is.) In it, you are introducing your book to someone with whom you are hoping it will have a long-term relationship — which, ideally, it will be; I have siblings with whom I have less frequent contact than with my agent — and as such, you are trying to make a good impression.

So which do you think is more likely to draw a total stranger to you, ambiguity or specificity in how you describe yourself? Or, to put it another way, are you using the blurb or demonstration style?

Do you, as so many personal ads and queries do, describe yourself in only the vaguest terms, hoping that Mr. or Ms. Right will read your mind correctly and pick yours out of the crowd of ads? Or do you figure out precisely what it is you want from a potential partner, as well as what you have to give in return, and spell it out?

To the eye of an agent or screener who sees hundreds of these appeals per week, writers who do not specify book categories are like personal ad placers who forget to list minor points like their genders or the state in which they reside. It really is that basic, in their world. And writers who hedge their bets by describing their books in hybrid terms, as in it’s a cross between a political thriller and a gentle romance, with helpful gardening tips thrown in, are to professional eyes the equivalent of personal ad placers so insecure about their own appeal that they say they are into long walks on the beach, javelin throwing, or whatever.

Trust me, to the pros, this kind of complexity doesn’t make you look interesting, or your book like a genre-crosser. To them, it looks at best like an attempt to curry favor by indicating that the writer in question is willing to manhandle his book in order to make it anything the agent wants.

At worst, it comes across as the writer’s being so solipsistic that he assumes that it’s the query-reader’s job to guess what whatever means in this context. And we all know by now how agents feel about writers who waste their time, don’t we?

Don’t give Millicent’s psychic skills a workout; be specific, and describe your work in the language she and her boss understand. Otherwise, they’re just not going to understand the book you are offering well enough to know that any agent in her right mind — at least, anyone who has a substantial and successful track record in selling your category of book — should ask to read all or part of it with all possible dispatch.

I know you’re up to this challenge; I can feel it. Don’t worry, though — you don’t need to pull it off within the next thirty seconds, regardless of what that rush of adrenaline just told you.

But don’t, whatever you do, vent your completely understandable frustration in self-defeating leaf-dumping. It’s a waste of energy, and it will not result in the outcome you want. Keep up the good work!

September 24, 2011January 19, 2017 - 9 Comments

Queryfest, part II: the infamous self-rejecting query, or, when is a letter addressed to a business not a business letter?

Querying, I think we all can agree, is a necessary evil: no one likes it. It generates a whole lot of inconvenience for writer and agency alike, and to engage in sending one out is to put one’s ego on the line in a very fundamental way. Rejection hurts, and you can’t be rejected if you never send out your work, right? So you can either try to lie low, keeping your dreams to yourself, or you can attempt to approach those high-and-mighty gatekeepers of the industry, asking to be let inside the Emerald City.

Sounds a lot like high school social dynamics, doesn’t it?

Just as many people stay away from their high school reunions because they fear exposing themselves to the judgment of people whom past experience has led them to believe to be shallow and hurtful, many, many writers avoid querying, or give up after just a handful of queries, because they fear to be rejected by folks they have heard are — wait for it — kind of shallow and prone to be hurtful.

There are a variety of ways to deal with such fears. One could, for instance, not query at all, and resign oneself to that great novel or brilliant nonfiction book’s never being published. Alternatively, one could query just a couple of times, then give up.

Or — and if you haven’t guessed by now, this would be my preferred option — you could recognize that while some of the people at the reunion may in fact turn out to be kind of unpleasant, you really only need to find the one delightful person who finds you truly fascinating to make the entire enterprise worthwhile.

You’ll be pleased to hear, though, that unlike a hapless ex-school kid gearing up to attend a reunion, there are certain things an aspiring writer can do before querying to increase the probability of a positive reception. Certain elements mark a query letter as coming from someone who has taken the time to learn how the publishing industry works.

Agents like writers who bother to do that, you know, and with good reason. Such new clients are much less time-consuming than those whose ideas of how books are sold bear only scant relation to reality. Aspiring writers harboring unrealistic expectations tend not only to express resentment when their work encounters stumbling-blocks — they often end up feeling disappointed when things are going well.

This isn’t at all uncommon, by the way; even very talented fledgling writers often harbor unrealistic ideas about how books find representation. Let’s face it, we all know at least one writer who has blithely sent off a query, expecting to receive in reply an immediate offer of representation, only to be astonished to learn that the agent to whom he sent it actually wants to read his manuscript before making a commitment. Chances are that you’re also acquainted with a writer, perhaps the same one, laboring under the illusion that a really good book will move from the query stage to publication, or at least an offer of publication, within a matter of weeks. Then there’s the writer flabbergasted when her query does not receive an instantaneous response, and the one stunned to realize that it often takes 3-6 months or even longer for an agent to get back to a writer about a submitted manuscript.

And hands up, anybody who also knows a writer who, after his first query was rejected (or, as has become increasingly common, did not generate a response at all), decides that there’s no need to query anyone else. If one agent rejected it, they all will, right?

Wrong on every point, I’m afraid. Chant it with me now, veterans of Queryfest, Part I: agents are individuals, with individual tastes; they represent specific book categories, not books in general; therefore, there is no such thing as a single manuscript — or a perfect query letter — that will please every agent, everywhere, every time.

The query letter structure I proposed last time — not the only one possible by any means, or even the only one that works; it’s just what has worked best in my experience — also frees the writer from the well-nigh impossible task of trying to cram everything good about a book into a single page.

Which is, I have noticed over the years, precisely what most aspiring writers try to do.

No wonder they get intimidated and frustrated long before they query the 50 or 100 agents (yes, you read that correctly) it often takes these days for a good book to find the right fit. To put this in perspective, a truly talented writer might well end up querying the equivalent of my entire high school graduating class before being signed.

Hey, I went to a small school. My class wasn’t even big enough to sustain exclusive cliques.

Believe it or not, a book project that generates masses of rejected queries is not necessarily a bad book concept, poorly written, or even unmarketable. Rejection is often a function of heavy competition, agent specialization, and aspiring writers not being aware of what information a query letter is supposed to contain.

Apart from doing the necessary homework to get a query that does contain the right information onto the desk of an agent who does habitually represent that type of book, the only way that I know to speed up that process is to make the query letter itself businesslike, but personable.

I sense some of you clutching your chests, all set to launch into a full-blown panic attack, but you can relax. I’m not talking about spilling your soul onto a single sheet of paper.

I’m talking about making your query letter unique. And not in the all-too-common misdefinition of the word as a synonym for special. I mean unique in its proper sense of one of a kind.

A tall order, you say? Well, keep in mind that the sole purpose of the query is to engender enough excitement in an agent (or, more commonly, in Millicent the agency screener: it is rare for agents at the larger agencies to read query letters themselves; Millicent’s the one getting the paper cuts) that she will ask to see a representative chunk of the book itself, not to reproduce what you would like to see on the book’s back jacket or to complain about having to work through an agent at all.

If either of the last two options made you chuckle in disbelief, good. Believe it or not, I’ve seen both turn up many, many times in unsuccessful query letters. Boasting and petulance both abound on the query page, and both tend to discourage positive response.

Now, I know that my readers are too savvy to do either of those things deliberately, but isn’t it worth sitting down with your query letter and asking yourself: could an exhausted Millicent — in a bad mood, with a cold, having just broken up with her boyfriend AND burned her lip on that over-hot latte yet again — possibly construe that letter as either?

Yes, querying is a chore, and an intimidating one at that. Yes, ultimately, it will be the agent’s job, not yours, to market your work to publishers. And yes, an agent or editor probably would have a far better idea of how to spin your book than you would.

Agents and their screeners are in fact aware of all of these things. You don’t need to tell them.

Your query letter needs to market your book impeccably anyway, in a tone that makes you sound like an author who loves his work and is eager to give agent and editor alike huge amounts of his time to promote it. Not a walk in the park, definitely, but certainly doable by a smart, talented writer who approaches it in the right spirit.

Sound like anyone you know?

So start thinking, please, about how to make your query the one that waltzes into the reunion with a positive attitude, not the one who storms in with a chip on its little shoulder. Or, heaven forefend, the one that doesn’t stick its nose through the door at all.

The gates of the Emerald City are not going to open unless you knock, people. I’ve said it before, and I shall no doubt say it again: the only manuscript that has absolutely no chance of getting published is the one that is never queried or pitched.

Yet even as I typed that, I could sense some ardor-deflation out there. “”My God,” the little voice in the back of my head which I choose to attribute to my readership shouts, “how on earth could anyone sound unique within the context of a single-page missive? How can I cram all I need to say to grab their attention in that little space, much less seem unique while doing it?”

Um, are you sitting down? You don’t actually have the entire page to catch their attention. To be on the safe side, figure you have only about five lines to convince them to keep reading.

Yes, you read that correctly. While you already have the heart medication and/or asthma inhaler at the ready, it seems like a good time to add: Millicent and her ilk do not read the vast majority of query letters to their ends.

Are you rending your garments and shouting, “Why, Lord, why?” Because the vast majority of query letters disqualify themselves from serious consideration before the end of the opening paragraph. They are, in fact, self-rejecting.

Hey, I told you to sit down first.

At the risk of repeating myself, this is largely attributable to aspiring writers’ not being aware of what information a query letter should contain. And should not: unfortunately, Americans are so heavily exposed to hard-sell techniques that many aspiring writers make the mistake of using their query letters to batter the agent with predictions of future greatness so over-inflated (and, from the agent’s point of view, so apparently groundless, coming from a previously unpublished writer) that they may be dismissed out of hand.

Like what, you ask? Here are some perennial favorites:

This is the next (fill in name of bestseller here)!

You’ll be sorry if you let this one pass by!

Everyone in the country will want to read this book!

Women everywhere will want to buy this book!

This book is like nothing else on the market!

There’s never been a novel/memoir/nonfiction book on this subject before!

And, of course, the all-time most common:

It’s a natural for Oprah!

Admittedly, Millicent sees this one less often since Oprah’s network show went off the air, but you’d be surprised at how little the demise of Oprah’s book club caused the frequency of this claim’s appearing in query letters to diminish. Five years ago, it wasn’t at all uncommon for Millicent to see this assertion ten or fifteen times per day.

I hate to burst anyone’s bubble (yet I do seem to be doing it quite a bit lately, don’t I?), but even back when Oprah’s book club was in full swing and concentrating on living authors, this claim was seldom credible to professional eyes, unless the author could legitimately include in the query the date upon which she was already booked to appear on the show. Ditto with all of the boasts above, actually: to Millicent, these are all absurd statements to discover in a query letter.

Yes, even if the book in question actually is the next DA VINCI CODE.

Why? Because these aren’t descriptions of the book; they’re back-jacket blurbs, marketing copy, equally applicable to (and equally likely to be true about) any manuscript that crosses their desks. After one has heard the same claim 1500 times, it starts to lose a little vim.

“Why do these queriers keep telling me that their books are unique?” Millicent grumbles, reaching for her fourth latte of the afternoon. “Why aren’t they SHOWING me?”

Ah, there’s the rub: assertions like these simply are not as effective at establishing a writer’s ability or a story’s appeal as demonstrating both practically, through well-written sentences and a summary containing lively and unusual details. At base, all of these hard-sell statements are reviews — and not, let’s face it, from the most credible source. Authors tend, after all, to be slightly partial to their own work.

Or so the pros surmise from the scads and scads of queries telling them point-blank that this book or that is terrific.
Even in the rare instances that these statements aren’t just empty boasts based upon wishful thinking, consider: whose literary opinion would you be more likely to believe in Millicent’s shoes, the author’s vague claim of excellence about his own book or another reader’s recommendation?

To put it another way, if someone you’d never met before came up to you on the street and said, “Hey, I bake the world’s best mincemeat pies, the kind that can change your life in a single bite,” would you believe him? Enough to stop in your tracks, giving up all hope of getting your errands done that morning, and ask him for information about his pie-making process? Based upon only his self-assessment, would you trustingly place that total stranger’s good-looking (or not) slice of God-knows-what into your mouth?

Or would you want some assurances that, say, this hard-selling yahoo knows something about cooking, had produced the pie in a vermin-free kitchen, and/or hadn’t constructed the mincemeat out of ground-up domestic pets?

Oh, you may laugh, but honestly, expecting an agent to ask to read a manuscript purely because you think it might sell well to a non-specific audience is the literary equivalent of that pie-pusher’s telling a passerby to open wide and swallow. Requesting manuscript pages means setting aside time (usually Millicent’s first, then, if she approves it, the agent’s) out of very busy schedules to engage in intensive reading. Why would agents and editors’ desire to hear about a new writer’s past publication history in a query — or educational background, or even platform — if not to try to figure out if that pie is made of reasonable materials and in a manner up to professional standards of production before agreeing to invest the time in ingesting it?

That’s why, in case you’ve been wondering, a good query letter includes what I like to call ECQLC, Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy, platform information and/or selling points that will make Millicent sit up and say either, “Wow, this writer has interesting credentials,” “Wow, this writer is uniquely qualified to tell this story,” and/or “Wow, this book has greater market appeal/a larger target audience/is significantly more important to human existence than I would have guessed.”

The crucial exclamation to elicit, obviously, is “Wow!” Not merely because Millicent honestly does enjoy discovering exciting new writing projects (yes, even though it’s her job to reject 98% of the ones that cross her desk), but because a query letter that mentions either the writer’s credentials or the book’s selling points is genuinely rare. It’s very much in your book’s interest, then, to include yours.

I sense some disgruntled muttering out there, do I not? “Here we go again, Anne,” some mutterers, well, mutter. “I can’t stand it when the pros start rattling on about platform. Isn’t that just code for we’re not interested in taking a chance on previously unpublished authors?”

Actually, it isn’t. Agents and their Millicents don’t ask to see platform information in queries in order to seem exclusionary toward previously unpublished writers (okay, not merely to seem exclusionary). They want it to be there because specific references to specific past literary achievements are signals to a quick-scanning screener that this is a query letter to take seriously.

As will an opening paragraph that states clearly and concisely why the writer decided to query this agent, as opposed to any other; a well-crafted single-paragraph elevator speech for the book; some indication of the target market, and a polite, respectful tone. The same basic elements, in short, as an effective verbal pitch.

Did some light bulbs just flicker on over some heads out there?

That’s right, campers — the difference between a vague boast and solid information about your book and why THIS agent is the best fit for it is actually a show, don’t tell problem, at base. Part of your goal in the query letter is to demonstrate through your professional presentation of your project that this is a great book by an exciting new author, not just to say it.

So you might want to eschew such statements as, “My friends say this is the greatest novel since THE GRAPES OF WRATH. It will move you to tears and rock you with laughter. It’s also a natural for Oprah.” You can make better arguments for your manuscript’s relevance.

“But Anne,” I hear some of you protest, “my book really is the best novel since THE GRAPES OF WRATH; several of my first readers/my writing teacher/my mother said so. Even if I did happen to be clutching the hems of their respective garments at the time, begging piteously for some positive feedback on my writing, isn’t it relevant in a query that I’m not the only human being that thinks I can write?”

Well, yes and no, garment-clutchers. Yes, you should mention in your query letter if someone of whom Millicent is likely to have heard and whose opinion she is likely to respect has said, preferably in writing, that your manuscript will revolutionize literature as we know it. At least if s/he meant it in a positive sense.

No, you should not bring up that someone of whom the literary world at large has never heard has compared you to Leo Tolstoy. Trust me on this one: it’s just going to sound like yet another boast

Think about it: why would someone who reads for a living just take a total stranger’s assurance that a manuscript is the most hilarious novel since TOM JONES? Professional readers tend to like to make up their own minds about how good a book is. Besides, how could Millicent possibly verify a review from a random person? For all she knows, your sainted and exceptionally literate mother has no taste in books at all, or any familiarity with the current book market. For all she knows, you just made up that writing teacher’s comment.

Oh, pick your jaws off the floor, quoters-of-others: of course, you weren’t intending to do such a thing, but you’d be astonished at how often queriers seem to pluck positive reviews from the ether. Unless you can legitimately cite a well-established author in your chosen book category — and believe me, Millicent will double-check the quote — or a household name other than Mom, your glowing review is all too likely to get dismissed as just another of the thousands of similar plugs our Millie sees every month.

Unless “Who is this person, and why should I care what he thinks?” is the response you were hoping to engender?

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but usually, Millicent will simply stop reading if a query letter opens with an empty boast like that, because to her, including such statements is like a writer’s scrawling on the query in great big red letters, “I have absolutely no idea how the publishing industry works.” Which, while an interesting tactic, is unlikely to get an agent or her screener to invest an additional ten seconds in reading on to your next paragraph.

That’s right, I said ten seconds: as much as writers like to picture agents and their screeners agonizing over their missives, trying to decide if such a book is marketable or not, the average query remains under a decision-maker’s eyes for less than 30 seconds. That doesn’t seem like a lot of time to make up one’s mind, does it?

Actually, it is ample for a query letter rife with typos and unsubstantiated claims about how great the book is to turn a professional reader off. Or one that fails to mention whether the book in question is fiction or nonfiction — another mind-bogglingly frequent omission. Or one that wastes too much valuable page space telling Millicent that the book will inevitably sell well, rather than providing her with enough information about the story for her to see why it will. Or one that asks her to read a kind of book her boss simply does not represent.

It’s more than enough time, in short, to reject a self-rejecting query.

Try not to blame Millicent for speeding through those missives, automatically ruling out the ones that contain common mistakes and omissions. I can’t stress enough that agency screeners do not reject quickly merely to be mean. It’s their job, and to a certain extent, developing pet peeves and shortcuts is a necessary psychological defense for someone handling hundreds of people’s hopes and dreams in any given day’s work.

Even the best-intentioned Millicent might conceivably, after as short a time as a few weeks of screening queries, start relying pretty heavily upon her first impressions. Consider, for instance, the pervasive misconception that business format is proper for either query letters or manuscripts. It isn’t: business format for letters is, as the name implies, appropriate for business letters; query letters should be in correspondence format, with indented paragraphs, and there’s a completely different standard format for manuscripts.

That may be counter-intuitive to some writers — writing is writing, isn’t it? — but to those who handle professional manuscripts for a living, it seems self-evident. “Why would a query and a manuscript be formatted identically?” Millicent asks, genuinely astonished at the very idea. “They have utterly different functions. And since the publishing industry prides itself on maintaining standards of literacy, why would we jettison indentation just because people in other types of business that have nothing to do with books decided some years ago that indenting paragraphs was optional? Shouldn’t it be obvious to anyone who has ever picked up a traditionally published book that indentation is far from obsolete?”

Indented paragraphs are, to put it bluntly, not only the industry standard, but proper in English prose. They are an idea whose time has not only come, but remains.

It’s also darned handy at screening time: improper formatting is the single quickest flaw to spot in either a query or manuscript. So why wouldn’t Millicent free up an extra few seconds in her day by rejecting paper query letters devoid of indentation on sight? Especially when empirical experience has shown her that aspiring writers who don’t use grammatically-necessary indentation in their query letters often eschew it in their manuscripts as well?

“But Anne,” some of you demand indignantly, and who could blame you? “What does indentation have to do with the actual writing in a manuscript? Or a query, for that matter?”

Potentially plenty, from Millicent’s point of view. Remember, the competition for both client spots at agencies and publication contracts is fierce enough that any established agent fill her typically scant new client quota hundreds of times over with technically perfect submissions: formatted correctly, spell- and grammar-checked to within an inch of their lives, beautifully written, AND the kind of book the agent has an already-established track record of representing. So there’s just not a lot of incentive for her to give a query with formatting, spelling, or grammatical problems the benefit of the doubt.

Some of you still don’t believe me about the dangers of using business formatting, do you? Okay, let’s take a gander at what Millicent expects to see, a letter formatted observing standard English rules of paragraph-formation:

mars query indented

Now let’s take a look at exactly the same letter in business format:

biz style mars query

Interesting how different it is, isn’t it, considering that the words are identical? And isn’t it astonishing how many paces away a reader can be for the difference to be obvious?

Admittedly, to someone who has never seen a professionally-formatted query (or manuscript, for that matter) in person, it might not be so obvious. It also might not be obvious to those unfamiliar with correspondence format. Why, the very last time I used these examples at Author! Author! detail-oriented reader Kathy pointed out,

In your first example, you put a space between the indented paragraphs. But in our manuscripts, we don’t add that extra space.
So are we to add that extra space between indented paragraphs? And do we indent the paragraphs in an email query? I’m so confused!

I feel your pain, Kathy, but frankly, Millicent wouldn’t: the rules governing manuscript format are simply different from those governing correspondence. That’s always been true (at least since the advent of typewriters in the mid-19th century), yet many queriers seem to find it confusing. That generally comes as a surprise to folks in the publishing industry, because it would simply never occur to them that anyone would confuse a manuscript with a letter, or indeed, that anyone would believe that all writing on paper should be formatted identically. Thus the relative intolerance of business format I mentioned above.

To clear up the confusion, queries CAN have a skipped line between indented paragraphs, but it’s optional. They should be single-spaced (and limited to a single page), printed on only one side of the page (not all that difficult for a single-page letter), and have one-inch margins. Queries also have left-justified salutations and addresses, as well as middle-justified closing compliments and signatures.

Book manuscripts, on the other hand, are double-spaced, with no skipped line between paragraphs except to indicate breaks between different sections of text. Their paragraphs must always be indented — the practice of not indenting the first paragraph of a chapter is found only in published books, not properly-formatted manuscripts. They have slug lines (and if any of this is news to you, run, don’t walk to the aptly-named HOW TO FORMAT A BOOK MANUSCRIPT category on the archive list at right.)

So manuscripts really don’t look anything like letters, when you come right down to it. Nor do they look like e-mails.

A writer could get away with non-indented paragraphs in an e-mailed query these days, but it’s certainly not mandatory. As I mentioned, the Internet and most e-mail programs are set up for business format (i.e., no indentation, single-spaced). Thus, most e-mails are single-spaced with a skipped line between paragraphs, non-indented paragraphs, and left-justified closing and signature. Because that is the norm for e-mailed communications, that format is perfectly acceptable for an e-mailed query.

In a paper query, though, non-indented queries tend to be self-rejecting. Ditto with requested materials, even if you are sending them via e-mail. (Unless her agency specifies otherwise, Millicent will expect you to send any requested pages as Word attachments, not as inserts in the body of an e-mail; thus, all pages should include indented text. FYI, agencies that tell queriers to include sample pages or chapters with their queries are not technically requesting material: they simply like for Millie to have more information at her fingertips before she makes a decision. For an in-depth discussion of the differences between query packets and submission packets, please see the HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A QUERY PACKET and HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A SUBMISSION PACKET on the archive list at right.)

“Wait just a paper-wasting minute!” indentation-avoiders everywhere cry. “Let’s go back to that bit about non-indented queries being self-rejecting. Standards have changed; e-mail has eliminated the need for observing traditional paragraph standards in any context. Besides, at the risk of repeating ourselves, it’s the writing that counts, not the formatting.”

I understand the logic, of course, but it simply doesn’t apply at the query stage: Millicent cannot possibly judge the manuscript’s writing until she has requested and read the manuscript, right? A query is judged on different criteria (and yes, Virginia, I shall be going over those criteria in detail later in the series.)

Even if it were not, the agent for whom she works couldn’t possibly submit a manuscript devoid of indented paragraphs to a publisher, period; no amount of argument is going to convince Millicent otherwise. Demonstrating a familiarity with the location and function of the TAB key, then, is a pretty good idea.

Besides, not all businesses work in the same way. As anyone who works in an agency or publishing house would no doubt be delighted to tell you, there are many, many ways in which publishing doesn’t work like any other kind of business. One does not, for instance, require an agent in order to become a success at selling shoes or to become a well-respected doctor.

If you’re looking for evidence of the biz’ exceptionalism, all you have to do is walk into a bookstore with a good literary fiction section. Find a book by a great up-and-coming author that’s sold only 500 copies since it came out last year, and ask yourself, “Would another kind of business have taken a chance like this, or would it concentrate on producing only what sells well? Would it continue to produce products like this year after year, decade after decade, out of a sense of devotion to the betterment of the human race?”

Okay, so some businesses would, but it’s certainly not the norm.

Yet almost invariably, when I try to tell them that publishing is an old-fashioned industry fond of its traditions, that agents and their screeners tend to be people with great affection for the English language and its rules, and that a savvy querier should therefore be only too delighted to curry favor with these fine people by means as simple as hitting the TAB key from time to time, I receive the same huffy reply from writers who dislike indenting: some version of, “Well, I heard/read/was told that a query/marketing plan had to be businesslike. Therefore, it must be in business format. QED, tradition-hugger.”

I’m always glad when they bring this up — because I strongly suspect that this particular notion is at the root of the surprisingly pervasive rumor that agents actually prefer business format. Agents do occasionally state point-blank at conferences, in interviews, and even in their submission guidelines that they want to receive businesslike query letters. But businesslike and business format are not the same thing. Businesslike means professional, market-savvy, not overly-familiar — in short, the kind of query letter we talked about last time.

Business format, on the other hand, doesn’t dictate any kind of content at all; it’s purely about how the page is put together. There’s absolutely nothing about it, after all, that precludes opening a query with the threat, “You’ll regret it for the rest of your natural life if you let this book pass you by!”

All of these negative examples are lifted from actual query letters, by the way. My spies are everywhere.

All that being said, there’s another reason that I would strenuously advise against using business format in your query letters. A comparative glance at the two letters above will demonstrate why.

Take another look, then put yourself in Millicent’s shoes for a moment and ask yourself: based upon this particular writing sample, would you assume that Aspiring Q. Author was familiar with standard format? Would you expect Aspiring’s paragraphs to be indented, or for him/her (I have no idea which, I now realize) NOT to skip lines between paragraphs?

Okay, would your answer to those questions change if you had a hundred query letters to read before you could get out of the office for the day, and you’d just burned your lip on a too-hot latte? (Millicent never seems to learn, does she?)

No? Well, what if it also contained a typo within the first line or two, had odd margins, or began with, “This is the best book you’ll read this year!” or some similar statement? Wouldn’t you be at least a LITTLE tempted to draw some negative conclusions from the format?

Even if you wouldn’t, Millicent would — and perhaps even should. Why? Because although most aspiring writers seem not to be aware of it, every sentence a writer submits to an agency is a writing sample. And every page is proof that a writer not only has taken the time to learn the norms of the industry — like, say, that queries and manuscripts should be formatted differently — but is conscientious enough to be able to follow them consistently without coaching.

Why, yes, that is quite a lot to read into something as simple as how a writer chooses to format a query, or whether he knows not to open it with his best friend’s immortal assertion that the novel being queried is fated to sell better than JAWS, PEYTON PLACE, and the entire TWILIGHT series combined. But when a stranger comes up to sell you a meat pie, you’re going to be looking for whatever clues you can to figure out if he’s on the up-and-up before you take a bite out of it.

I can feel some of you getting depressed over this, but actually, I find it empowering that the high rejection rate is not arbitrary. Quick rejections are not about being mean or hating writers — they’re about plowing through the mountains of submissions that arrive not only daily, but since the advent of e-mail, hourly. Lest we forget, the average agency receives 800-1500 queries per week, and that’s not counting the post-Labor Day backlog or New Year’s Resolution Rush, folks. Agents and screeners have a very strong incentive to weed out as many of them as possible as rapidly as possible.

That’s why, in case you were wondering, that agents will happily tell you that any query that begins “Dear Agent” (rather than addressing a specific agent by name) automatically goes into the rejection pile. So does any query that addresses the agent by the wrong gender in the salutation. If you’re unsure about a Chris or an Alex, double-check the agency’s website; they often list bios with pronouns in them. If that fails, call the agency and ask whether the proper salutation is Ms. or Mr.; no need to identify yourself as anything but a potential querier.

And, of course, the most obvious self-rejecter of all, any query that is pitching a book in a category the agent is not looking to represent. Yes, even if the very latest agents’ guide AND the agency’s website says otherwise. Queriers don’t get to play rules lawyer; you’re just going to have to accept that these people know what their own connections are.

You are sitting down, are you not? Good, because what I have to say next may come as something of a shock: each of these self-rejecting queries will, in all probability, generate exactly the same form rejection letter as queries that were carefully considered, but ultimately passed upon.

So how precisely is an aspiring writer to learn what does and doesn’t work in a query? By finding out what Millicent has been trained to spot — and learning what appeals to her.

A great place to start: go to writers’ conferences and ask individual agents about what kind of queries they like to see, so you may compare their answers. Attend book readings and ask authors about how they landed their agents. Take writers who have successfully landed agents out to lunch and ask them how they did it.

Sound like a lot of trouble? You’re not alone in thinking so, I assure you. There’s a reason I revisit this topic so thoroughly once a year; I’m just trying to save you a little legwork.

However you decide to go about learning the ropes, do not, whatever you do, just assume that what works in other kinds of marketing will necessarily fly in approaching an agent. Almost universally, agency guidelines specifically ask aspiring writers not to use the hard-sell techniques used in other types of business: writers seeking representation are expected not to telephone to pitch, send unrequested materials, or engage in extracurricular lobbying like sending cookies along with a query letter.

Instead, be businesslike, as befits a career writer: approach them in a manner that indicates that you are aware of the traditions of their industry. We shall be talking about how to go about that next time, naturally. Keep up the good work!

September 23, 2011January 19, 2017 - No Comments

Queryfest 2011 is open for business — and the masses rejoice!

At long last, I am proud to cut the ribbon on Queryfest, this year’s intensive foray into the ins and outs of all things query-related. I had intended to kick off the festivities on Monday, but as I may have mentioned last weekend, this walking on two legs thing is a whole heck of a lot more tiring than it looks. No wonder toddlers take so many naps.

That image seems appropriate, given how many aspiring writers spend any given day scratching their heads over that most basic of submission guideline requests: query with SASE. While that phrase might not seem particularly remarkable to those of us who deal with manuscripts for a living — or, indeed, to those of you who have been agent-hunting for long — to a writer brand-new to the quest, it can be downright mystifying.

“What is a query, other than a question?” these brave souls wonder. “What does that acronym stand for, and what about a SASE is too horrible to describe in fully fleshed-out English words?”

Perfectly reasonable questions, all — and surprisingly difficult to answer conclusively with even a rather thorough Internet search. As clever and incisive reader Elizabeth commented in our discussion last fall,

My queries are getting better as I go, but each expert I follow has different advice. How to choose which will work best for me and my book? It’s a quandary.

An excellent question, Elizabeth, and one I’m quite positive that many of your fellow queriers share. There’s certainly no shortage of how-to guides for would-be queriers out there; there are almost as many formulae out there for sure-fire query letters as there are professional givers of writing advice. Heck, substantial numbers of amateurs seem to post their notions, too, mostly phrased as though the advice in question were, if not actually something that any truly talented writer should have been born knowing, at least a precept to which any sane person seeking publication should adhere or risk being laughed out of literate society. Not to mention so self-evidently true and easy to follow that no explanation is required: simply stating the rule seems to be sufficient.

But they tend to be one-size-fits-all propositions, don’t they? Often, these doubtless well-meant query guides are simple lists of rules, light on explanation but heavy on dire warnings about what will happen to the unwary writer who does not follow them down to the last period.

I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but better that you hear it from me than learn it from agonizing experience: the perfect query applicable to every set of agents’ eyes is as mythical as a unicorn and a centaur hitched to Apollo’s chariot. Frankly, generic queries don’t work, and even a relatively good boilerplate is going to start looking like a carbon copy to agents and their screeners within just a few months of its becoming popular with queriers.

I know, I know: that’s not what you’ve been hearing elsewhere. It’s true, nevertheless: no one, but no one can give you a fill-in-the-blanks query template that will work every time. Nor will following any given set of rules — yes, even mine — produce a query that will wow every single agent in the country.

How do I know that? Well, experience: the publishing world just doesn’t work like that. It values originality and individual writing style — why on earth would it even want to see identical (or close to identical) verbiage in every query letter?

But that’s not the only reason following a template is not a good idea. Because every book — and every category of book — is different, there is no such thing as a foolproof query formula into which any aspiring writer could simply plug her own information and hit SEND. And even if a query blueprint appropriate to any book, fiction or nonfiction, actually did exist, it wouldn’t necessarily be in your best interest to use it: literary agents are, contrary to popular opinion amongst aspiring writers, not automatons programmed to respond identically to everyone else in the publishing industry, but individual people with individual tastes.

Each of ‘em likes what they like, in short. That may seem like it makes your task harder, but actually, it can be empowering: you will be a much, much happier querier if you don’t fall into the exceedingly common querier’s trap of believing that any single agent’s response to your query is necessarily (a) the response any agent would have to it, (b) proof that the publishing industry’s rejecting your book’s concept, rather than the query letter that presents it, and therefore (c) just a handful of rejections means you should give up on the book.

Because the agenting world is diverse — and needs to be, in order to get the job done — (b) and (c) cannot be true. Even if agents did not harbor personal tastes (but they do), no one agent speaks for the entire industry. Furthermore, no agent in the world represents every kind of book, so the widespread belief that sending even the best-crafted query letter to any ten randomly-selected agents will engender ten identical responses is misguided. If nine of those agents don’t have solid track records representing books in your category, that never-fail boilerplate will, I can tell you now, fail with all nine.

And it may well fail with the tenth as well, if she’s just broken her heart by investing a year or two in fruitlessly trying to sell a book like yours. Or if she did sell that book three years ago, but the market has shifted. Or if she happened to have had a terrible honeymoon in the island paradise in which your story is set.

See earlier comment about individuals’ having individual tastes. Which is why (a) is unlikely to be true as well — but I’m getting ahead of myself, amn’t I?

That doesn’t mean, though, that those diverse-minded potential agents for your work don’t share certain expectations for what a query should be — or that there are not queries that would in fact be rejected by most of the agencies currently operating in this country. A professional query looks a certain way, contains specific information, and is, above all, a compelling argument for paying attention to both the book being queried and its author.

Which is why, as those of you who have been surfing the net in search of definitive answers may well have been wondering, agents, editors, and even freelance editors like me tend to be a trifle impatient with the oft-heard (but completely understandable, from a new writer’s perspective) complaint that it’s impossible for aspiring writer to tell what to do because there isn’t a single standard how-to list out there to which every authoritative source subscribes. From a professional point of view, the expectation underlying this complaint doesn’t even make sense: queries should be individuated for the book they are pitching, period.

So how could there possibly be a one-size-fits-all boilerplate? Or even a single list of rules? Every book — and every book category — is different; every agency has its own guidelines, and every agent has his own personal likes and dislikes. That being the case, why would it even be in agents’ best interest to subscribe to a single set of querying rules?

And where would they do it, the National Agency-Oppression Convention? The Society for the Simplification of the Deliberately Complex Field of Publishing? The Association for the Destruction of Opinion-Expression on the Internet?

Another commonly-held belief amongst aspiring writers that the pros tend to find mystifying: the notion that it’s the publishing industry’s job to track down every query advice-giving entity out there and bully it into conformity. It’s not as though the Internet Fairy is out there enforcing advice standardization across the Internet on any subject, or even fact-checking, for the most part.

Like everything else you find online, querying advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Yes, even mine.

Which is why, as those of you used to barked orders on what to do may well find surprising throughout Queryfest, I shall make a point to explain not only what your querying options are, but the pros and cons of each. With concrete examples, whenever possible. (And in case any of you missed last weekend’s announcement: if you would like to have your query letter used as an example in this series, here is how to go about submitting it. Who doesn’t like free professional query critique?)

So fair warning: what I’m going to be offering in Queryfest is not a one-size-fits-all boilerplate for querying success. That would be a waste of your time. Instead of just telling you what to say and how to format it, I’ve designed this series to help you create your own individualized query letter, perfect for your book and no one else’s.

How is this possible? For the same reason that agents and editors tend to be dismissive of the notion that it’s hard for a first-time querier to figure out what to do. From a professional point of view, it’s kind of surprising that even someone who believes every piece of advice he reads, from any source, wouldn’t pick up eventually that any query needs to contain the same basic elements: title, book category, whether it is fiction or nonfiction, brief description, credentials/platform for writing that particular book, polite sign-off, SASE if querying by mail.

Don’t worry, acronym-fearers; we’ll be defining that. I shall also be going over all of these requisite elements in enough detail that you can juggle them the manner best suited to present your book.

That’s going to require learning how agents think about books — and learning to talk about your manuscript in the terms that will make sense to them. Not to mention learning how to address your new and improved query to the right people. No query gets rejected faster than one pitching a book that the agent to whom it is addressed doesn’t handle.

If more than one statement in that last paragraph came as a surprise to you, you’re not alone. The overwhelming majority of queriers don’t learn nearly that much about how the publishing industry actually works before trying to capture its interest — and that’s a pity. In today’s hyper-competitive literary market, intelligent agents are not merely looking for good manuscripts by talented writers; they are seeking good manuscripts by talented writers who have rendered themselves easy to work with by having taken the time to learn how the publishing industry — wait for it — actually works.

In my experience, the most effective query letters are the alchemical effect of a combination of a well-written, professional letter, a writer who has taken the time to learn to talk about her manuscript in terms meaningful to the publishing industry, a book concept that happens to be appealing to the current literary market, and an open-minded agent with the already-existing connections to sell it successfully. Such a confluence doesn’t occur all that often — and it virtually never happens by accident.

“Heavens, Anne,” some prospective query-writers scoff, “if that’s your standard of good querying, I’m not surprised that you believe it doesn’t happen very often. As Elizabeth Bennet told Mr. Darcy after he listed his criteria for a genuinely educated woman, I do not wonder at your not knowing many; I wonder at your knowing any at all.”

Touché, skeptics, but not entirely true. As a matter of fact, I know scads of writers who produced such query letters by dint of persistent and intelligent effort.

How did they manage to pull off that difficult high dive? By coming to terms with the fact that there is no such thing as a single query letter ideal for every conceivable agent. There is, however, such a thing as a perfectly wonderful query letter specialized to appeal to a specific agent, as well as a slightly modified version personalized for another.

For the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be talking about cobbling together such a letter. Once you have the tools in your writer’s toolkit, you can use them to construct a whole flock of such letters, each tailored to an individual agent’s likes and dislikes and the expectations of your chosen book category.

Already, I hear martyred sighs rising across the English-speaking world. “But Anne,” easy-fix advocates protest, “that sounds like a whole heck of a lot of work, and I already resent taking time away from my writing to query agents. Couldn’t I, you know, just recycle the same letter over and over again?”

Well, you could, protesters. You could, I assure you, stop reading this right now, invest less than 20 seconds in a Google search of writing the perfect query letter, and come up with literally hundreds of one-size-fits-all templates that would make your life easier in the short run.

But I don’t think you should. Candidly, I think that the literally thousands of sources out there telling writers to follow this or that fool-proof formula are doing a serious disservice to those they advise, even when the actual elements of the advice they are giving is pretty good.

Why? Writers’ notorious aptitude for unwarranted self-blame, mostly; it’s driven literally millions of talented people into giving up on their books prematurely. The cycle usually runs a little something like this:

(a) Aspiring writer (let’s call him Ambrose, for the sake of storytelling convenience) finds an allegedly sure-fire query boilerplate online, in a book, in a class, and/or on the street somewhere.

(b) Rejoicing at the apparent ease of querying, Ambrose hurriedly copies and pastes his own information in to the template and sends it off to 1/5/127 agents.

(c) Since Ambrose’s query gives an accurate picture of neither his book nor his writing — how could it, when it consists almost entirely of one-size-fits all phrasing? — it gets rejected 1/5/127 times, usually via a form-letter rejection. (Hey, agents use templates, too; they’re real time savers.)

(d) Since Ambrose believes that the template he is using cannot possibly be the problem (it’s utterly foolproof, right?), he concludes that the only possible reasons he could have been rejected are:

(1) The book was lousy; somehow, the agent managed to sense that the writing was poor without reading any of it, or,

(2) The book was lousy, because the agent read the materials her website or agency guide listing said he could include with his query, or,

(3) The book’s concept was lousy, because that’s all the agent could possibly have judged from the query itself, but regardless,

(4) Rejection can only mean that he shouldn’t have queried with the book in the first place.

(e) Ambrose gets depressed for hours/weeks/months, far too much so to risk rejection again by sending out more queries, at least not anytime soon.

Recognize the pattern? Not from your own querying history, I hope, but from one or more of your writer friends?

What renders it sad is not solely the fact that Ambrose was rejected, but that his logic has a hole in it. He has not seriously considered the many, many other reasons an agency might have chosen to reject his query.

Such as, you ask? Well, the individual taste issues I mentioned above, of course. The culprit could also be having made the right case to the wrong agent, for instance, or having made the wrong case to the right agent. Or even having made the right case to the right agent at the wrong time; market demands — and thus agents’ needs — change all the time.

Rejection at the query stage can also be the result of the writer’s having formatted the letter oddly, or having failed to follow the directions on the agent’s website, agency guide listing, or Publishers’ Marketplace page. It could even have been a matter of having adhered to the standards set forth on one of these sources after the agency has changed its rules, or because the targeted agent no longer represents one or more of the types of book one of those sources says she does.

Rejection may, in short, come flying at an aspiring writer from any number of sources. As I think would be quite apparent if querying writers talked amongst themselves more about both rejection and the nuts and bolts of querying, rejection is not always the querier’s fault.

Nor, necessarily, is it the fault of the manuscript being queried. Most queries fail on a few very basic levels that don’t have much to do with the writing quality of the manuscript.

Yes, really: the vast majority of queries are rejected on the query letter alone. There’s a good reason for that: most of the query letters currently floating through the US Mail or flying via e-mail actually do deserve to be rejected by professional standards, but not because the books they are pushing are poorly written, poor concepts, or any of the million other reasons a manuscript might not be up to publication standard.

The most popular: unprofessional presentation, non-standard spelling and/or grammar, omitting to mention necessary information, hostile tone (again: yes, really), being sent to an agent who does not represent the kind of book presented, and, most notorious of all, the query’s obviously being a generic letter designed to be sent out indiscriminately to every agent currently operating in North America.

Agents have a pet name for the latter: they’re called Dear Agent letters, because some of them are so generic that they are not even addressed to a particular agent. Virtually without exception, US-based agents simply reject Dear Agent letters unread.

Also destined for the reject pile: queries sporting overused tricks to attract an agent’s attention — strategies, it may not astonish you to learn, often borrowed from one of the zillion guides out there, each giving ostensibly foolproof guidelines for how to construct a positively infallible query letter. Perhaps it is unfair, but nothing says generic query like the hip new lead-in that some hugely popular marketing guru was advising two years ago.

In my experience, simple works better than gimmicky — and certainly better than a boastful hard sell. Quite possibly because it is significantly rarer.

Although I am confident that my readers are too savvy to fall into the pitfalls that plague the average querier, the overwhelming majority of query letters agents receive are either uncommunicative, petulant in tone, just poor marketing — or (and I suspect you will have seen this coming. obviously copied from a standard one-size-fits-all pattern. We can do better than that, I think.

So let’s start at the basement and work our way up, shall we?

For those of you absolutely new to the art of approaching publishing professionals, a query letter is a 1-page (single-spaced, with 1-inch margins) polite, formal inquiry sent out to an agent or editor in the hope of exciting professional interest in the manuscript it describes. It is also, contrary to what most aspiring writers believe, a writing sample, so if it is poorly written, it’s toast, regardless of the strength of the book being offered.

It’s equally important to talk about what a query is not. A strong query should not be, contrary to popular practice, an occasion for either begging or boasting; you will want to come across as a friendly, professional writer who has done her homework. Nor is its goal to make the agent fall down on the floor, foaming at the mouth and crying, “I will die if I do not sign this author immediately!”

So what is its goal, you ask? To prompt the agent or editor to request pages. Period.

Let’s face it: no agent worth his 15% is going to sign a writer without reading any of her work. The sooner an aspiring writer accepts that, the sooner she can stop setting herself up for Ambrose-level disappointment. Going into the querying process with realistic expectations makes the process much, much easier on the ego.

So how does one go about eliciting the admittedly less dramatic but ultimately more respectful of your writing result, a direct request to read your manuscript? Without bells and whistles: an effective query introduces the book and the author to a prospective agent in precisely the terms the industry would use to describe them.

It is, in essence, the manuscript’s personal ad, intended to attract a compatible agent or editor to ask for a first date. To put it in terms more familiar to those of you followed my recent Pitchingpalooza series, the query is a written pitch, intended not to prompt an instantaneous offer to represent the book, but a request to read some or all of the manuscript or book proposal.

Ah, I just scared some of you with that comparison to pitching, didn’t I? “That’s all very easy to say, Anne,” point out those of you who find the prospect of sitting down face-to-face with a real, live agent about as appealing as hand-feeding a hungry wolf marshmallows by balancing them on your nose, “but you just got finished telling us that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all formula. So how does a writer trying to break into the biz pull it off without a prescriptive plan that tells him precisely what to do at every step?”

Well, for starters, don’t feed wild animals that way. Are you trying to get mauled?

Once you toss aside the twin preconceptions that there is only one kind of perfect query letter and you are being expected to guess what it contains, constructing a good query letter introduction for your manuscript or query letter becomes quite a bit easier. It just requires a bit of advance preparation.

I felt you tense up again, but trust me, this is prep that you — yes, YOU — are uniquely qualified to do: figuring out what your book is about, who might want to read it, and why. Once you have figured out those elements, writing the query letter is a matter of constructing a document with elements you already have on-hand.

And that’s a comparative breeze, because instead of trying to chase an elusive wraith of an ideal or copying what worked for somebody else, you’re talking about a book you love. What’s more natural to a writer than that?

I hasten to add: being natural does not mean presentation doesn’t count. Your query needs to be businesslike without using business format (long-time readers, chant it with me now: documents without indented paragraphs appear illiterate to folks in the publishing industry), discussing your book project in terms that an agent might use to describe it to an editor.

Keep taking those nice, deep breaths; you are already well prepared to do this.

Don’t believe me? Okay, let’s take a gander at the information you would need to include, so you may see for yourself just how much of it you probably already have at your fingertips. Typically, a query letter consists of five basic elements:

1. The opening paragraph, which includes the following information:

* A brief statement about why you are approaching this particular agent
Hint: be specific. “I enjoyed hearing you speak at Conference X,” “Since you so ably represent Author Q,” and “Since you are interested in (book category), I hope you will be intrigued by my book” all work better than not mentioning how you picked the agent in the first place — or putting it as bluntly as, “I did a web search under Literary Agents, and your name popped up.”

*The book’s title
Self-explanatory, I should hope, but you would be surprised how often queriers leave it out.

*The book’s category
Where your book would sit in a bookstore? Most queries omit any mention of book category, but as in a pitch, it’s essential; no agent represents every type of book on the planet.

*Word count (optional)
Actually, I never advise including this, unless the agency states specifically in its guidelines that it wants to see word count in queries. If they don’t ask, don’t include it.

Why not? Because including the word count makes it easier to reject so many queries off the bat. If your work falls within the normal word count for your genre — for most works of fiction, between 80,000 and 100,000 words (estimated)– it won’t do you any harm include it, usually, but if it is longer, it’s not worth your while. (If you don’t know how to estimate word count — most of the industry does not operate on actual word count — please see the WORD COUNT category on the archive list at right.)

2. A paragraph pitching the book.
This is the part that stymies most queriers. Relax — we’re getting to it. For now, just bear in mind that this section should not be a paraphrase of your dedication page or a preview of the blurb you’d like to see on the jacket. Don’t praise your book; describe it.

3a. A BRIEF paragraph explaining for whom you have written this book
What an agent will have in mind is an already-established target market of readers with a demonstrated interest in books like yours. Keep it realistic. Speculation that every woman/man/fly fisher in America will want to read your book will fall flat, for the exceedingly simple reason that any agent will already have seen this claim literally thousands of times.

3b. and why your book might appeal to that demographic in a way that no other book currently on the market does.
If the demographic is not especially well-known (or even if it is; agents tend to underestimate the size of potential groups of readers), go ahead and include numbers. If you can compare your book to another within the same genre that has sold well within the last five years, this is the place to do it, but make sure to make clear how your book serves the target market differently and better.

Don’t make the very common mistake, though, of having your book sound like a carbon copy of a current bestseller. You want your work to come across as unique.

4. An optional paragraph giving your writing credentials and/or expertise that renders you the ideal person to have written this book
Or, indeed, absolutely the only sentient being in the universe who could have pulled off this daunting task well. Here is where you present your platform — or, to put it in a less intimidating manner, where you explain why the agent should take you seriously as the author of this book.

Actually, this paragraph is not optional for nonfiction, and it’s a good idea for everyone. Include any past publications (paid or unpaid) in descending order of impressiveness, as well as any contest wins, places, shows, semi-finalist listings, etc., and academic degrees. (Don’t worry: we shall be talking in depth about what degrees will and will not strike an agent as relevant for a fiction writer.)

If you have no credentials that may legitimately be listed here, don’t panic: just omit this paragraph. However, give the matter some serious, creative thought first. If you have real-life experience that gives you a unique insight into your book’s topic, include it. (It need not have been paid work.) Or any public speaking experience — that’s actually a selling point for a writer, since so few ever read in public before their first books have come out. Or even ongoing membership in an established writers’ group.

Anything can count, as long as it makes you look like a writer who is approaching the publication like a professional. Or like a person who would be interesting to know, read, and represent.

5. An EXTREMELY brief, polite closing paragraph
Here is where you thank the agent for her time, mentioning any enclosed materials (synopsis, first five pages, or whatever the agent lists as desired elements), calling the agent’s attention to the fact that you’ve enclosed a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope), if you are querying via regular mail, and giving your contact information, if it is not already listed at the top of the letter. (If you can’t afford to have letterhead printed up, just include your contact information, centered, in the header.) Say you look forward to hearing from her soon, and sign off.

There, that’s not impossible to pull off in a single page, is it?

Oh, dear, you’re tensing up again at the prospect of sitting down and writing it, aren’t you? Don’t panic: again, you may already have constructed — mentally, anyway — some or all of the constituent parts of a professional-looking query letter. You merely have to pull them together into a polite missive personalized for each agent you plan to approach.

A good way to start is to work on each element of the query individually, then snapping the pieces together. Trying to write the entire thing from beginning to end in one sitting, as most aspiring writers do, is not only more stressful than doing it piecemeal; it also tends to end in a rushed, panicked note tossed off quickly, just to have it done.

Don’t look at me that way; I know you’re in a hurry to pop that letter in the mail, but in the long run, taking the query piece by piece can save you time. Take a gander at how easily the building blocks snap together to make a log cabin — and if you’re having trouble reading the individual words, try holding down the COMMAND key and pressing + to enlarge the image:

You can pull that off without breaking a sweat, right?

I see quite a few lit-up eyes out there. “Um, Anne?” some wily sorts murmur, jotting down hasty notes. “What you’ve just shown looks suspiciously like a template. Mind if I borrow it wholesale and use it as such?”

Actually, I do, but not because I’m especially proud of having penned a sentence as immortal I enclose a SASE for your convenience, and I look forward to hearing from you soon. You should eschew copying anybody else’s query letter for the very simple reason that it is important that your query letter sounds like your book.

Not my book, or the creation of any of the small army of writing gurus out there, but yours. After all, you’re not seeking representation for a generic volume; you’re looking for the best agent for your particular manuscript.

So why on earth would you waste your time — and your manuscript’s potential — on a generic query letter? By the time we’re finished, the very suggestion that your book’s chances would be improved by utilizing boring, one-size-fits-all query copy is going to make you laugh out loud.

At least, I hope it will. Tune in tomorrow, campers, and keep up the good work!

September 9, 2011January 19, 2017 - 8 Comments

Wrapping it all up and (not) tying it with a big, pretty bow — and an answer to yet another reader’s concern

I’m posting later than I intended this evening, campers — a trifle irritating, as I have a delightful guest post that I’d like to toss up bright and early tomorrow morning. I’m committed to answering any and all questions from readers, though, even if those questions crop up in posts from five years ago. (Yes, my blogging program alerts me.) It’s fine to leave questions on older posts, but please, everyone, try to match the post’s subject matter with the question you are asking. That way, readers with similar concerns are more likely to find and benefit from both question and answer.

If you can’t find something close to your topic on the exhaustive archive list conveniently located at the lower right-hand corner of this page, I’d like to ask you to do two things. First, leave your question in the comments section of my most recent post (again, to maximize its usefulness to other readers), and second, let me know that you couldn’t find an appropriate category on the archive list. I’m always eager to make that list panic-proof, so category suggestions are always welcome.

What extended my question-answering time today was a comment in the latter category: left on yesterday’s post, rather than in the archives. It was time-consuming not due to the complexity or originality of the comment, but because it contained a simple statement that I have heard quite a bit over the years: a complaint that my posts deal with writing and marketing issues of concern to writers in too much detail.

What rendered this particular complaint difficult to answer was not that the commenter was evidently irked that I had spent so many paragraphs on what was to him a fairly straightforward issue: whether to include a SASE in a query or submission packet. (He felt that the entire question could have been resolved in just a few words: you should.) But that was not the crux of yesterday’s post; it dealt with specifics about what kind of SASE to use, why, and when.

The commenter was not aware of that, though, because — and he was honest enough to tell me this point-blank — he hadn’t bothered to read the entire post before telling me that it was much too long for its subject matter. He concluded, therefore, that the only reason I could possibly want to discuss something as mundane as the logic about the SASE for more than a few paragraphs was that I liked the sound of my fingers hitting the keyboard.

Sigh.

I’m not going to waste everyone’s time by unpacking that logic. Nor am I going to bother to debate whether it’s worthwhile to go over the reasoning behind the sometimes perplexing practices of the publishing industry; that’s what I do here. I assume — correctly, I think — that on days when I post at length on topics that don’t interest any given reader, the members of the Author! Author! community are intelligent enough to turn their attention elsewhere for the nonce.

It has been a while since I explained why I explain things at such length, though, so allow me to devote the first few minutes of our time together to clarifying why I believe that in an online world stuffed to the gills with one-size-fits-all advice source purporting to tell aspiring writers precisely what to do in articles of 250 words or less, Author! Author! fills an important niche. My apologies to those of you who have heard this before, but true to form, I have a brand-new illustrative anecdote this time around.

I’m perfectly aware that there are plenty of aspiring writers out there in a hurry to find out basic information about how to query, submit, revise, format, etc.; that’s why I have structured the aforementioned archive list to be as specific as possible. Many of the categories are paraphrases of readers’ questions, in fact, so that writers with similar questions might find the answers relatively quickly. (Sound familiar?) Because I have been blogging on writing, querying, and submitting for over six years now, it’s probably not astonishing that I tend to revisit the more important topics from time to time.

Today’s, for instance. Those of you who have been querying and submitting for a while probably already know how to ship requested materials to agents. Indeed, you might have learned about it here; because it is vital, I revisit the topic at least once a year. But for some readers, it will be brand-new information. For other readers, particularly those who will be first encountering this post while searching for answers about shipping in the archives, it will be a supplement to (or perhaps a contradiction of) what they have learned from other sources, up to and including those super-short lists of what aspiring writers should do.

I believe I owe it to both those sets of readers to deal with the issues at hand as thoroughly as I would the first time I ever blogged about it, in sufficient detail and with enough illustrative examples so that a writer brand-new to the biz will come away from the post not only understanding what to do, but why. As I say early and often, I don’t believe any writer should follow a rule without knowing why adhering to it is a good idea — and what can happen if he eschews it.

There, in the proverbial nutshell, is my philosophy of blogging about writing. I’m here to explain the hows and whys behind the rules, so good writers can follow them better, increasing their chances of getting published. And when my clever and insightful readership presents me with intriguing follow-up questions, I squirrel them away until the next time I deal with the topic, to improve my treatment of it.

So are my posts long and detailed? Darned right.

I can see how my penchant for thoroughness might be a touch irritating to those seeking quick answers, but hey, there’s no shortage of those on the Internet. Have at it, and the best of luck searching. Frankly, I would much rather over-explain the occasional practicality here than to have even one of my readers make an avoidable gaffe.

Just in case anyone isn’t sure why (see what I just did there?), let me share the story of one of my favorite cookbook authors. Let’s call her Sheila. I’m not going to use her real name: this story was so infamous in publishing circles that for several decades, her name was synonymous with avoidable error. She’s a great cooking author, though, so I don’t want to revive the association.

Sheila’s story is worth knowing for any would-be author. Many years ago, back in the heyday of the cookbooks by amateur chefs like Julia Child, Sheila wrote a terrific debut cookbook: intriguing recipes well described, with amusing and enlightening anecdotes joining them. Her agent loved it; her editor loved it; her godmother, a well-known cooking writer herself, loved it enough to give it a spectacular back-jacket blurb.

Sheila was, in short, expected to be the next great cookbook author — so why do I think those of you fond of your kitchens may not be aware of her work? Quite simply, her cookbook contained a faux pas that got her publisher sued: a reader following her directions to the letter blew up an oven.

How is it possible that not only Sheila, but her agent, editor, godmother, every single reviewer, and the overwhelming majority of her readership missed that the instruction in question was so dangerous? Sheila had written the recipe while laboring under the assumption that anyone remotely interested in baking a pie might conceivably have read a cookbook before. Her target audience might be relied upon to know the terminology, right?

Tell that to the hapless reader who took add one can of sweetened condensed milk too literally, setting the unopened can in the middle of the pie pan, presuming, wrongly, that its role was to weigh down the crust While a more experienced cook might perhaps have wondered why Sheila would have gone out of her way to specify what needed to be inside a can used for this purpose, the eager first-time cookbook reader did not think to question the recipe until her stove went boom.

And so did Sheila’s career as a cookbook author, at least for many years. She became famous as a cautionary tale to those who would write about cookery: when producing a to-do list, don’t leave room for misinterpretation. The stakes are just too high to take a chance.

They are here, too: at Author! Author!, I routinely talk about how to present and modify your writing in order to render it more attractive to agents and editors. What could possibly be more important to get right than that? And why on earth should you follow a rule I set out if I don’t prove to you why it’s in your book’s best interest to adhere to it?

Allow me to reiterate, then: I don’t expect you to cling to my advice just because I say something will work. If you don’t understand what I am suggesting you should do — or what an agent, editor, or submission guidelines have asked you to do — by all means, ask. Some of my best posts have been sparked by readers’ questions; heck, so have many of my series. Even if it’s just a quick question on a past post, I would much, much rather spend some of my blogging time clarifying matters for my readers than to see even one of you commit the querying or submission equivalent of advising your readers to blow up their ovens.

So darned right, these posts are detailed; long may they be. I’m here to help good writers succeed.

Case in point: for the last couple of posts, I have been talking — yes, at length — about how to put together query packets, as well as their more illustrious cousins, submission packets. Even in these mercurial days of e-mailed queries, electronic submission, and Hubble telescope photographs of far-flung celestial bodies (I’m a sucker for a nice snapshot of Jupiter), most agencies still prefer paper submissions. Heck, many still insist on mailed queries as well.

Why? Well, fear of computer viruses, for one thing. But even more important: it’s so much easier for an electronic submission to get lost.

Hey, when Millicent the agency screener gets on an online submission reading roll, she hits the DELETE key more than any other. Not too surprising that her finger would slip occasionally, is it? Force of habit, really; the lady rejects a heck of a lot of manuscripts between lunch and checking out for the day.

For reasons both of tradition and prudence, then, a lot of writers are going to be in the market for shipping containers for their manuscripts in the months to come. Yet as insightful long-time reader Jen wrote in to ask some time back:

Sending off all those pages with nothing to protect them but the slim embrace of a USPS envelope seems to leave them too exposed. Where does one purchase a manuscript box?

An excellent question, Jen: many, many aspiring writers worry that a simple Manila envelope, or even the heavier-duty Priority Mail envelope favored by the US Postal Service, will not preserve their precious pages in pristine condition. Especially, as is all too common, if those pages are crammed into an envelope or container too small to hold them comfortably, or that smashes the SASE into them so hard that it leaves an indelible imprint in the paper.

Do I sense some of you scratching their heads? “But Anne,” head-scratchers everywhere ask, and bless their hearts for doing so, “once a submission is tucked into an envelope and mailed, it is completely out of the writer’s control. Surely, the Millicents who inhabit agencies, as well as the Maurys who screen submissions at publishing houses and their Aunt Mehitabels who judge contest entries, are fully aware that pages that arrive bent were probably mangled in transit, not by the writer who sent them. They can’t blame me for mashed mail, can they?”

Well, yes and no, itchy ones. Yes, pretty much everyone who has ever received a mauled letter is cognizant of the fact that envelopes do occasionally get caught in sorting machines, if not actually mauled by playful bands of orangutans with a penchant for playing volleyball with objects with pointy corners. Mail gets tossed around a fair amount in transit. So even a beautifully put-together submission packet may arrive a tad crumpled.

Do most professional readers cut the submitter slack for this? Sometimes, but if Millicent’s just burned her lip on that latté that she never seems to remember to let cool, it’s not going to take much for the next submission she opens to annoy her. I don’t know Aunt Mehitabel personally, but I have heard contest judges over the years complain vociferously to one another about the state in which entries have arrived on their reading desks. Indeed, I have been one of those complaining judges.

All of which is to say: appearances count. You should make an effort to get your submission to its intended recipient in as neat a state as possible.

How does one go about insuring that? The most straightforward way, as Jen suggests, is to ship it in a box designed for the purpose. Something, perhaps, along the lines of this:

Just kidding; we’re not looking for a medieval Bible box here. What most professional writers like to use looks a little something like this:

This is the modern manuscript box: sturdy white or brown cardboard with a lid that attached along one long side. Usually, a manuscript box will hold from 250 to 750 pages of text comfortably, without allowing the pages to slide from side to side.

While manuscript boxes are indeed very nice, they aren’t necessary for submission; the attached lid, while undoubtedly aesthetically pleasing, is not required, or even much appreciated at the agency end. Manuscripts are taken out of the boxes for perusal, anyway, so why fret about how the boxes that send them open?

In practice, any clean, previously-unused box large enough to hold all of the requested materials without crumpling them will work to mail a submission. Don’t waste your valuable energies badgering the manager of your local office supply emporium for an official manuscript box; you may only confuse him. Anything close to the right size will do, but err on the large side: it’s easier to pad a manuscript around the edges to fit in a big box than to bend it to squeeze into a small one.

Some of you are resisting the notion of using just any old box, aren’t you, rather than one specially constructed for the purpose? I’m not entirely surprised. I hear all the time from writers stressing out about what kind of box to use — over and above clean, sturdy, and appropriately-sized, that is — and not without good reason. In the old days — say, 30+ years ago — the author was expected to provide a box, and a rather nice one, then wrap it in plain brown paper for shipping.

These old boxes are beautiful, if you can still find one: dignified black cardboard, held together by shining brass brads. They were darned near immortal, too; I have several that members of my family routinely sent back and forth to their agents in the 1950s, back when sending a manuscript across the country entailed sending it on a multi-week trek. To this day, not a sheet of paper inside is wrinkled.

Ah, tradition. For sending a manuscript, though, there’s no need to pack it in anything so fancy — or indeed, anything extravagant. No agent is going to look down upon your submission because it arrives in an inexpensive box.

In fact, if you can get the requested materials there in one piece box-free — say, if it is an excerpt short enough to fit into a Manila folder or Priority Mail cardboard envelope without wrinkling — go ahead. This almost always will work for a partial or the briefer stack of materials acceptable to send in a query packet.

Do bear in mind, though, that for either a query or submission packet, you want to have your pages arrive looking fresh and unbent. Double-check that your manuscript will fit comfortably in its container in such a way that the pages are unlikely to wrinkle, crease, or — perish the thought! — tear.

Remember the Sanitary Author’s advice about printing all of your query and submission packet materials on bright white 20 lb. paper or better? This is part of the reason why. It honestly is penny-wise and pound-foolish to use cheap paper for submissions; not only does heavier paper ship better, but it’s less likely to wilt over the course of the multiple readings a successful submission will often see at an agency.

Good rule of thumb: if you can look at a stack of printed pages and see even a vague outline of page 2 while you’re examining page 1, your paper isn’t heavy enough.

Look for a box with the right footprint to ship a manuscript without too much internal shifting. To keep the manuscript from sliding around and getting crumpled, insert wads of bubble wrap or handfuls of peanuts around it, not wadded-up paper.

Yes, the latter is more environmentally-friendly, but we’re talking about presentation here. Avoid the temptation to use newspaper, too; newsprint stains.

Most office supply stores carry perfectly serviceable white boxes — Office Depot, for instance, stocks a serviceable recycled cardboard variety — but if you live in the greater Seattle area, funky plastic toy store Archie McPhee’s, of all places, routinely carries fabulous red and blue boxes exactly the right size for a 450-page manuscript WITH adorable little black plastic handles for about a buck each. My agent gets a kick out of ‘em. Fringe benefit: while you’re picking one up, you can also snag a bobble-head Edgar Allan Poe doll that bears an uncomfortably close resemblance to Robert Goulet:

If that’s not one-stop shopping, I should like to know what is.

Your local post office will probably stock manuscript-sized boxes as well, as does USPS online. Post offices often conceal some surprisingly inexpensive options behind those counters, so it is worth inquiring if you don’t see what you need on display.

Do be warned, though, that the USPS’ 8 1/2” x 11” boxes only LOOK as though they will fit a manuscript comfortably without bunching the pages. The actual footprint of the bottom of the box is the size of a piece of paper, so there is no wiggle room to, say, insert a stack of paper without wrinkling it.

Trust me, that’s not something you want to find out after you’ve already printed out your submission. If you’re in doubt about the internal size of a flattened-out box (as they tend to be at the post office), fold it into box shape and try placing a standard sheet of paper flat on the bottom. If it doesn’t lie completely flat, choose a larger box.

Yes, yes, I know: the USPS is purportedly the best postal service in the world, a boon to humanity, and one of the least expensive to boot. Their gallant carriers have been known to pursue their appointed rounds despite the proverbial sleet, hail, dark of night, and mean dogs. But when faced with an only apparently manuscript-ready box on a last-minute deadline, the thought must occur to even the most flag-proud: do the postal services of other countries confound their citizens in this way?

What do they expect anyone to put in an 8 1/2” x 11” box OTHER than a manuscript? A beach ball? A pony? A small automobile?

All that being said, far and away the most economical box source for US-based writers are those free all-you-can-stuff-in-it Priority Mail boxes that the post office provides:

Quite the sexy photo, isn’t it, considering that it’s of an object made of cardboard? Ravishing. If you don’t happen to mind all of the postal service propaganda printed all over it, these 12″ x 12″ x 5 1/2″ boxes work beautifully, with a little padding. (Stay away from those wadded-up newspapers, I tell you.)

While I’m on the subject of large boxes, if you’ve been asked to send more than one copy of a manuscript — not all that uncommon after you’ve been picked up by an agent — don’t even try to find a box that opens like a book: just use a standard shipping box. Insert a piece of colored paper between each copy, to render the copies easy to separate. Just make sure to use colored printer paper, not construction paper, or the color will rub off on your lovely manuscripts.

Whatever difficulties you may have finding an appropriately-sized box, DO NOT, under any circumstances, reuse a box clearly marked for some other purpose, such as holding dishwashing soap. As desirable as it might be for your pocketbook, your schedule, and the planet, never send your manuscript in a box that has already been used for another purpose. Millicent considers it tacky.

Don’t pretend you’ve never thought about doing this. We’ve all received (or sent) that box that began life as an mail-order shipping container, but is now covered with thick black marker, crossing out the original emporium’s name. My mother takes this process even farther, turning the lines intended to obfuscating that Amazon logo into little drawings of small creatures cavorting on a cardboard-and-ink landscape.

As dandy as this recycling effort is for birthday presents and the like, it’s not appropriate for shipping a submission. It’s unprofessional — and if there’s ever a time when you want your work to be presented as professionally as possible, it’s when you’re submitting it.

Think about it: do you really want your manuscript to arrive looking as if you just grabbed the nearest cardboard container? Or to prompt an allergy-prone Millicent to mutter between sneezes, “Why does this submission smell of fabric softener?” (One drawback of nicer paper: it soaks up ambient smells like a sponge. My memoir’s editor evidently smoked a couple of cartons over my manuscript, and even now, years later, the marked-up pages still smell like the employee handbook in a Marlboro factory.)

“But wait!” I hear the box-savvy cry, “those Amazon boxes are about 4 inches high, and my manuscript is about 3 inches high. It just cries out, ‘Stuff your manuscript into me and send me to an agent!’”

A word to the wise: don’t take advice from cardboard boxes; they are not noted for their brilliance. Spring for something new, and recycle that nice Amazon box for another purpose.

And you do know, I hope, that every time you send requested materials, you should write REQUESTED MATERIALS in great big letters in the lower left-hand corner of the submission envelope, don’t you? (If you have been asked to submit electronically, include the words REQUESTED MATERIALS in the subject line of the e-mail.) This will help your submission to land on the right desk, instead of in the slush pile or recycling bin.

Yes, readers who have had your hands raised since this post began? “This is all very helpful, Anne, but a bit superficial, literally. I want to know what goes inside that manuscript box and in what order.”

Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that you have just been asked to submit materials to the agent of your dreams. To be absolutely clear, I’m talking about REQUESTED materials here, not just sending pages to an agency that asks queriers to include the first chapter, a few pages, or a synopsis with a query — all of these would, in the industry’s eyes, be unsolicited submissions.

I know, it’s a trifle counter-intuitive that a blanket statement on a website, in an agency guide, or from a conference dais that a particular agent would like to receive these materials from all queriers doesn’t constitute solicitation, but it doesn’t. The logic runs thus: guidelines that recommend submitting extra material with a query are generic, aimed at any aspiring writer who might conceivably be considering sending a query.

By contrast, a solicited submission, a.k.a. requested materials, is one that an agent is waiting to see because she has asked a particular writer to send it following a successful pitch or query. Because the agent expressed positive interest in seeing those pages, the lucky requestee is fully justified in scrawling REQUESTED MATERIALS in letters two inches high in the lower right-hand corner of the envelope or shipping box, just to the left of the address, to assure that the submission lands on the right desk instead of the slush pile made up of, you guessed it, unsolicited manuscripts.

Everyone clear on the difference between solicited and unsolicited materials? Dandy.

Just as generic requests vary in what agents ask queriers to send, so do requests for solicited material. While every agency and small publishing house seems to have a slightly different idea of what constitutes a standard submission packet (word to the wise: read those requests carefully), here are the most commonly-requested constituent parts, in the order in which they are generally expected to appear in the packet:

1. Cover letter
You HAVE been sending cover letters with your submissions, right? Just sending a manuscript all by itself is considered a bit rude, as well as strategically unwise.

“Oh, please, Anne,” the submission-weary murmur. “Rude? What do you call making a querier write ANOTHER letter to an agent who has already agreed to read my work?”

I sympathize with the submission fatigue, weary ones, but don’t get your hackles up. In the first place, there’s no need for a long-winded missive — a simple thank-you to the agent for having asked to see the materials enclosed will do. It’s hardly onerous.

In the second place, the submitter is the one who benefits from including a cover letter — all the more so because so few writers remember to tuck one into their packets. An astonishingly high percentage of submissions arrive without a cover letter, and often without a title page as well, begging the question: what makes these submitting writers so positive that the requesting agent will still remember their queries well enough to render page one of chapter one instantly recognizable?

I’m not going to depress you by telling you just how unlikely this is to be the case. Suffice it to say that it’s in your best interest to assume that the person who heard your pitch or read your query won’t be the first person to screen your submission, for the exceedingly simple reason that it is, in fact, often a different person.

It doesn’t really make sense to presume that everyone who sets eyes on your manuscript will already be familiar with who you are and what you write. In fact, you should assume precisely the opposite. (Why do you think a properly-formatted manuscript has a slug line identifying the author on each and every page?) The poor strategic value of not being polite enough to identify your work and thank the agent for asking to see it aside, though, it’s very much in your self-interest to include a cover letter.

Does anyone out there want to take a guess at the practical reason omitting both a cover letter and a title page might render a submitter less likely to get picked up?

If you instantly cried, “Because it renders the agency’s contacting the submitter substantially more difficult!” give yourself a gold star for the day. Like a query letter and a title page, a good cover letter should include all of the sender’s contact information.

Trust me, the last response you want your submission to generate is a heart-felt, “Oh, it’s too bad we have no idea who sent us this or how to contact him or her; all we have is the author’s last name in the slug line. This saddens me, because I really liked this manuscript!”

Yes, that little piece of dialogue is pretty lousy, now that you mention it. But you get my point, right?

“Okay, Anne,” the former head-scratchers concede, “I should include a cover letter. What does it need to say?”

Glad you asked. Under most circumstances, all it needs to say is this:

Seriously, that’s all there is to it. Like any other thank-you letter, the courtesy lies more in the fact that the sender took the time to write it, rather than in what it actually says.

A couple of caveats:

(a) If you met the agent at a conference, mention that in the first paragraph of the letter, to help place your submission in context. As crushing as it may be for the writerly ego to contemplate, an agent who spent days on end listening to hundreds of pitches probably is not going to remember each one. No need to re-pitch, of course, but a gentle reminder never hurts.

While you’re at it, it’s not a bad idea to write the name of the conference on the outside of the envelope, along with REQUESTED MATERIALS. Heck, it’s a very good idea to write the conference’s name on the outside of a query to an agent one has heard speak at a conference, too, or to include the conference’s name in the subject line of a query e-mail. The point here is to render it pellucidly clear to the agent why you’re contacting her.

(b) If another agent is already reading all or part of the manuscript you’re sending — or has asked to see it — mention this in your cover letter. No need to say who it is or how long s/he has had it; just tell the recipient that s/he’s not the only one considering representing this book. Unless the agency has a policy forbidding simultaneous submissions, withholding this information will only generate resentment down the line if more than one agent wants to represent your book.

Yes, even if that agent to whom you submitted 9 months ago has never responded. Actually, it’s in your strategic interest to contact that non-responder to let her know that another agent now has your manuscript.

(c) Make sure ALL of your contact information is on the letter, either in the header (letterhead-style, as I have shown above) or under your signature. Again, you want to make sure that the agent of your dreams can call you up and rave about how much she loved your manuscript, right?

(d) Make absolutely certain that the letter includes the title of your book, just in case the letter and the manuscript end up on different desks. (Yes, it happens. Don’t ask; just prepare for the contingency.)

Everyone comfortable with the cover letter? For more tips on how to construct one with aplomb, please see COVER LETTERS FOR SUBMISSIONS (where do I come up with these obscure category titles?) on the archive list at right.

2. Title page
Always include this, if any manuscript pages have been requested — yes, even if you have already sent the first 50 pages, and are now sending the rest of the book.

Why? Long-time readers, chant it with me now: because the submission looks more professional that way.

Also, like the cover letter, a properly-constructed title page renders it easy for an agent to track you down. Believe me, if the agent of your dreams falls in love with your manuscript, you’re going to want to hear about it right away.

3. The requested pages in standard format, unbound in any way.
The operative word here is requested. If an agent or editor asked you for a partial, send PRECISELY the requested number of pages. Don’t fudge here — even if your novel features a tremendous cliffhanger on p. 51, if the agent of your dreams asked for the first 50 pages, send only the first 50 pages, period.

Actually, in this instance, you should send only the first 50 pages even if they do not end in a period. Even if the designated last page ends mid-sentence, stop there. When an agent or editor asks for a specific number of pages, send that number of pages — no more, no less.

They mean pages in standard manuscript format, by the way. It’s impossible to over-estimate the desirability of sending professionally-formatted submissions. If you’re brand-new to reading this blog or have somehow avoided my repeated and vehement posts on standard format for manuscripts over the last five years, please see the HOW TO FORMAT A MANUSCRIPT and STANDARD FORMAT ILLUSTRATED categories on the list at right.

For the benefit of those of you who are going to blow off that last piece of advice because you’re in a hurry — oh, I know that you’re out there — allow me to add a couple of little tidbits you would have learned from those posts on formatting: a manuscript intended for submission should not be bound in any way, and the first page of text should be page 1, not the title page.

4. Synopsis, if one was requested, clearly labeled AS a synopsis.
With fiction, when an outline is requested, they usually mean a synopsis, not the annotated table of contents appropriate for nonfiction. For nonfiction, an outline means an annotated table of contents. Most of the time, though, what an agent will ask to see for either is a synopsis.

5. Author bio, if one was requested.
An author bio is a one-page (double-spaced) or half-page (single-spaced) plus photo account of the submitting writer’s professional credentials. Typically, when an agent submits a manuscript or book proposal to editors, the author bio is tucked immediately at the end of the manuscript or sample chapter.

6. A SASE big enough to fit the entire manuscript.
This should be automatic by now, but to recap for those of you who will read this weeks or months from now in the archives: that’s a self-addressed, stamped envelope, for those of you new to the game, and for a submission or query packet, it should be large enough to send back every scrap of paper you’re mailing to the agency.

Emphasis on the stamped part: always use stamps, not metered postage, for the SASE. That’s probably going to be a lot of stamps: due to the paper-consumptive rigors of standard format, one rarely, if ever, meets a full-length manuscript that weighs less than two pounds. That means some luckless intern is going to have to tote it to the post office personally. Don’t make her life more difficult by sticking metered postage on the package.

If the requested pages fit in a Manila or Priority Mail envelope, it’s perfectly acceptable to fold a second one in half, stamp and address it, and tuck it in the submission package. But how does one handle this when using a box as a SASE?

Well, it would be impracticable to fold up another box inside. If you have been asked to send so many pages that you need to pack ‘em in a box, paper-clip a return mailing label and stamps to your cover letter, along with a polite request that the agent would affix both to the shipping box in the event of rejection. To be on the safe side, explain in your cover letter how you want them to reuse the box: peel the back off the mailing label, stick it over the old label, affix new postage, and seal.

Yes, that seems pretty basic, but have you heard the one about the can of sweetened condensed milk?

You can also nab one of those tough little everything-you-can-cram-in-here-is-one-price Priority Mail envelopes, self-address it, add postage, and stick it into the box. If you don’t care if your manuscript comes back to you a little bent, this is a wonderfully cash-conscious way to go. Those envelopes are surprisingly tough, in my experience — what are they made out of, kryptonite? — and while the pages don’t look too pretty after a cross-country trip in them, they do tend to arrive safely.

If you’re getting the manuscript back, it’s because Millicent’s rejected it. Who cares if the pages show up on your doorstep bent?

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m not a big fan of writers over-investing in impressive return postage — or of aspiring writers shelling out the dosh to overnight their submissions. Neither is necessary, and quick shipping most emphatically won’t get your work read faster.

Or taken more seriously. Don’t waste your money.

7. Optional extras.
For a partial, if you want to send a second, business-size envelope SASE as well, to make it easy for Millicent to request the rest of the manuscript, place it at the bottom of the packet (and mention it in your cover letter.)

It’s also a good idea to include a self-addressed, stamped postcard for the agency to mail to you to acknowledge receipt of the manuscript. They don’t always send it back, but usually, they do. To generate a chuckle in a hard-worked Millicent, I always liked to send a SASP that looked like this — although with a stamp attached, of course:

Don’t worry about this causing trouble; it doesn’t, and you will have proof that they received it. This is important, because manuscripts do go astray from time to time. You can also have the post office track the box for a low fee.

8. Pack it all in a durable container that will keep your submission from getting damaged en route.

Why, this suggestion seems strangely familiar, somehow…oh, yes, we spent half of this post talking about it. (Had I mentioned that I like to be thorough?)

And that, my friends, is the low-down on the submission packet. Don’t forget that every syllable you send to an agency is a writing sample: this is a time to use impeccable grammar, punctuation, and printing, please. No smudges or bent corners, either. Make it all pretty and hope for the best.

Oh, and open that can of sweetened condensed milk before you add it to the pie, will you? I would sleep better at night, and so would your oven. Keep up the good work!

September 8, 2011January 19, 2017 - 4 Comments

The logic behind the SASE, or, how to be prepared for something falling on you from a zeppelin

Last time, I broached the subject of the infamous and ubiquitously-requested SASE, industry-speak for the Stamped, Self-Addressed Envelope (get it?) that should accompany every mailed query letter and/or submission packet. (E-mailed queries and submissions cannot include them, obviously, as these forms of communication have no temporal heft to them.) There’s no such thing as a Get Out of Thinking About It pass on this one, I’m afraid: forgetting to include a SASE in a query is an instant-rejection offense at virtually every agency in North America.

Or, to put that in terms even Narcissus could understand, no matter how gifted, talented, and/or beautiful a writer or his work may happen to be, neglecting this small piece of industry etiquette effectively assures that Millicent the agency screener will not spend enough time with ol’ Narcissus’ query packet to find out that he and his work display any or all of these delightful attributes. The packet will simply be rejected unread.

And not merely because Narcissus’ nasty habit of assuming that the rules that apply to ordinary mortals could not possibly apply to him is darned annoying to anyone who has to deal with him professionally. If the agent decides to pick up the manuscript, the writer’s having included the expected SASE demonstrates a pleasing ability to follow directions — and if the agent decides to pass, s/he may return rejected pages at the writer’s expense.

Yes, I know: it’s trying to be expected to underwrite one’s own rejection, but there actually are some benefits for the SASE-provider in this arrangement. To name but one: actually finding out that your query has in fact been rejected, rather than gnawing your fingernails in perpetual worry for a year or two.

Oh, you would prefer to be left to wonder whether (a) the agency has a policy of not informing rejected queriers if the answer is no (quite common), (b) the agency has a policy of not reading incomplete query packets (like, say, those that omit a SASE), or (c) your packet got stuck sideways in the mailbox, and never reached the agency at all?

The expectation that an aspiring writer will always include a SASE with any kind of paper query or submission is universal, at least among U.S. agencies and publishers, so much so that I’ve noticed that many agencies don’t even explain what it means on their websites or listings in the standard guides anymore. It’s become one of those secret handshake things, a practice that the industry just assumes that any writer who is serious about getting published will magically know all about without being told.

Call me zany, but as those of you have been reading this blog for a while are already aware, I’m not a big fan of unspoken assumptions; they place the writer new to the game at a serious strategic disadvantage. So I hope those of you who have been at this for some time will forgive my taking a second post to explain to those new to querying what a SASE is and why, to put it bluntly, the writer is expected to pay the postage for a rejection letter or returned manuscript.

SASE logic seems to be counterintuitive for many aspiring writers. Contrary to popular opinion, a SASE shouldn’t always take the form of a business-size envelope; it varies according to what was sent in the first place. To accompany a single-page query, it’s letter-sized, but should you happen to be querying an agency whose guidelines call for writers to include more than five pages of additional materials (e.g., writing sample, synopsis, author bio, book proposal, a chapter or two), you’d be sending that in a Manila envelope, right? In that case, the SASE would need to be a second Manila envelope, stuffed inside the first, carrying sufficient materials to ship all of those additional materials back to you.

Oh, you hadn’t been thinking of the SASE in those terms? Or was that giant whoosh I heard not a collective gasp, but a whole bunch of eyebrows out there hitting the ceiling?

Probably the latter, I’m guessing, because I’m constantly meeting aspiring writers who are unaware that a SASE should also accompany a manuscript submission. That tends to come as a great big surprise to even writers who have been querying and submitting for a while: since the prevailing wisdom is that the point of the SASE is ease of getting back to a writer to say yes or no, it’s far from uncommon for submitters of 500-page manuscripts to include a simple business-size envelope as a SASE. While certainly understandable, this misses the primary goal of the SASE: ensuring the safe return of whatever a writer sends to an agency.

Thus, you should always include enough postage on your SASE that everything you submitted may be popped into it and mailed with a minimum of effort on the sender’s part. That means, in practice, including a shipping container (second envelope, box, or a shipping label to affix to the box in which you sent the manuscript) already addressed to you with enough postage to get all of those requested pages back to you in one piece.

Since all of that will need to be tucked into the same envelope or box that contains your query, any materials the agency’s submission guidelines request, and/or requested materials, it can get cumbersome, once the time comes to pack it all up. Not to say expensive, especially for writer submitting to US-based agencies from outside the country, who not only have to figure out what the return postage would be in dollars instead of their local currency, but have to wrap their eager fingertips around some US stamps.

Don’t worry, foreign readers: there’s a trick to it. I’ll be getting to that.

I’m constantly barraged with questions from readers about why, in the age of fairly universal paper recycling and cheap, high-quality printers, a writer shouldn’t just ask an agent to recycle a rejected manuscript. Quoth, for instance, clever reader Melospiza:

Why on earth would you want your manuscript back (after it has been rejected)? It won’t be pristine enough to send out again. Why spend the money? And any parcel over one pound can’t be dropped in a mailbox, but must be taken to the post office, not something an agent will appreciate. Let the agent recycle the paper and enclose a (business-size) SASE only.

Oh, would only that were possible, Melospiza, but there’s a rather basic, practical reason to include the SASE for safe return of the manuscript. Chant it with me now, campers: as with a SASEless query, not including a SASE in a submission is usually an automatic-rejection trigger.

Yes, you read that correctly: leaving a SASE out of the submission packet can, and often does, result in a submission’s being rejected unread; ask about it sometime at a writers’ conference. The vast majority of agents will be perfectly up front about the fact that they train their screeners accordingly.

The owners of all of those eyebrows are clutching their heads now, aren’t they, thinking of all of those SASEless submissions — or, more likely, submissions accompanied by only a #10 SASE, rather than one with sufficient postage for the manuscript’s return — they sent out in the dark days of yore. “Okay, I can understand why Millicent would reject SASE-free queries without reading them,” the head-clutchers cry, “but why, in heaven’s name, would an agent who asked to see pages reject them unread?”

Good question, retrospective panickers. The short answer: because it’s obvious to Millicent that a writer who submits without a manuscript-size SASE doesn’t know the secret handshake.

The longer answer is hardly more comforting, I’m afraid. In the publishing industry, it’s considered downright rude for a writer not to include a SASE both large enough and loaded down with enough pre-paid postage to send — wait for it — EVERYTHING enclosed back to the sender. If the SASE isn’t tucked into the packet, or if the postage is not sufficient, and if the agency is going to keep its side of the tacit agreement allowing it to read a writer’s unpublished work, it is going to have to shell out the dosh to mail the rejected manuscript back. Ditto with a query letter that arrives unaccompanied by a SASE.

The result in both cases is generally a form-letter rejection — which costs the agency not only the price of the return postage, but also an envelope and Millicent’s time to address it — or, as is increasingly popular, no response at all. Yes, even for a submission. Pages often go bye-bye, because it would be expensive for the agency to ship back the whole shebang.

I implore you, no matter how little you want to see that manuscript again, do not omit the SASE for the return of the manuscript. Unless, of course, the agency’s website or listing in one of the standard agency guides says specifically that they will recycle rejected manuscripts. (Practically none of them do, but check anyway.)

“You must be pulling our collective leg, Anne,” I hear some of you muttering. “Okay, maybe SASEless queries do tend to get rejected unread, but I can’t believe that it happens to submitted manuscripts or book proposals. By the time an agent is sufficiently interested in you to want to see actual chapters of your book, your foot is too firmly in the door for your submission to be tossed aside unread for a reason as unrelated to the quality of the writing as not including a SASE. I mean, really, what purpose would being that touchy serve?”

A fairly tangible one, actually: it would be one less manuscript for Millicent to read.

Remember, it’s her job to reject 98% of what crosses her desk; even a very successful agent at a giant agency seldom picks up more then 5 or 6 new clients per year, even including ones poached from other agencies. (Which happens all the time, by the way. It would astonish most aspiring writers to know just how many of us agented writers are unhappy with our current representation. As I say early and often, you don’t want just any agent to represent you — you want a well-connected, fully engaged agent who loves your writing and will defend it to the death.) Every submission that disqualifies itself on technical grounds is another step toward that ongoing goal of thinning the pack of contenders.

Do you really want to volunteer your precious manuscript for that particular kamikaze mission?

Admittedly, from the submitter’s point of view, a good argument could be made that this practice inevitably leads to, as Melospiza rightly points out, a big ol’ waste of money, not to mention trees, without really providing much benefit to the gentle, tolerant souls who actually pay for the return postage. After all, from the writer’s perspective, a SASE included with a submission is only going to be used if the news is bad. If the agency likes a partial, they’re going to ask to see the entire manuscript — which means your initial submission will get filed, you will send another packet (with another SASE), and your first SASE may well end up in the trash.

Or, if you’re really lucky, you’ll never see it again, because it will end up in a file drawer in your new agent’s office. Fingers crossed!

If, on the other hand, the agent of your dreams does not like it, all you are doing by providing the postage is paying to get the news that they’re turning you down in a way that will make your postal carrier’s back ache, rather than via a nice, light #10 envelope. So why not just send the manuscript along with a business-size SASE, and be done with it?

Because that’s not how the industry works, that’s why. (See commentary above re: secret handshakes.)

If you’re willing to risk it, you could always include a line in the cover letter, politely asking the agency to recycle the manuscript if they decide not to offer representation and mentioning the business-sized SASE enclosed for their reply. Do be aware, however, that this strategy sometimes backfires with screeners trained to check first for a manuscript-sized SASE: it’s not unheard-of for the Millicents of the world to toss aside such a manuscript without reading the cover letter.

As I believe I may have mentioned before, I don’t make the rules of submission; I only try to render them comprehensible. Let’s all pray that when Millicent does engage in the summary rejection of the SASEless, she flings that precious ream of paper into a recycling bin.

Originally, the whole paper-wasting arrangement was set up this way in order to protect writers. The logic behind this one is so pre-computer — heck, it’s pre-recycling, if you don’t count Abe Lincoln’s scrawling the Gettysburg Address on the back of a used envelope — that it’s likely to be counterintuitive to anyone querying or submitting for the first time today.

Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when books were widely read, writers didn’t need agents because publishing houses still read through their slush piles, and the photocopier had not yet been invented. Prior to the advent of personal computers (and nice laser printers in workplaces that might conceivably be accessible after the boss goes home for the day), you could not print out spare copies of your precious manuscript to submit to every Tom, Dick, and Random House in the biz, obviously. Nor could you attach a Word document to an e-mail and send it off via Pony Express. Or even pop down to the corner copy store to run off half a dozen copies.

Equally obviously, no sane human being would entrust her only copy of a manuscript to the vagaries of the mails. So how did writers reproduce their work to submit to several publishing houses or agencies simultaneously?

They retyped it, that’s how. Every single page, every single syllable, every single time.

Think those hardy souls wanted to get their rejected manuscripts back? Darned tootin’. It might save them weeks of retyping time.

My long-term readers will have heard my favorite concrete example of how these returned manuscripts helped writers before, but it’s such a terrific illustration of just how much the SASE used to assist the average aspiring writer that I have no qualms about trotting it out again. Back in the far-away 1950s, my mother, Kleo, was married to Philip, a struggling science fiction writer. While she toiled away at work and went to school, Philip spent his days composing short stories.

Dozens of them. Type, type, type, week in, week out. She would come home and edit them; he would type a revised version. One or the other of them would get a good idea, and they would collaborate in writing the result: one dictating, one typing. She would take them to writing classes and the magazine editors who were already publishing her brother’s SF short stories, returning with still more feedback. Off he went to type another draft.

From scratch. Every single time either of them wanted to change a word. Hard for those of us who write on computers even to imagine, isn’t it?

As writers did in those dark days prior to e-mail, Philip and Kleo stuffed each of those short stories into gray Manila envelopes with a second envelope folded up inside as a SASE and sent them off to any magazine that had evinced even the remotest interest in SF or fantasy. (Except for the ones that Kleo hand-sold by taking to a magazine editor, which is actually how Philip got his first story published. She was, in effect, his original agent. But I digress.)

Each time a short story was rejected — as, in the beginning, all of Philip’s and Kleo’s were — and landed once again in their mailbox with the accuracy of a well-flung boomerang, they acted as professional writers should act: they submitted the rejected story to another magazine immediately. To minimize retyping, they would iron any pages that had gotten bent in the mail, slip the manuscript into a fresh envelope (yes, with a fresh SASE), and pop it into the mail.

Since there were not very many magazines that accepted SF or fantasy back then, they had to keep impeccable records, to avoid sending a rejected story back to a magazine that had already refused it. But Philip kept typing away, and kept as many stories in circulation at once as possible.

How many? Well, no one knows for sure anymore — since occasionally the only copy of a story got sent by mistake, some inevitably got lost.

(Which reminds me to nag those of you sending out manuscripts in the computer age: when was the last time you made a back-up of your manuscript? If, heaven forfend, a gigantic anvil fell from one of those anvil-toting zeppelins we’re always seeing overhead these days onto your main writing space, would it crush both your computer and your back-ups? Do you really want to be crawling about in the ashes, frantically trying to find the remnants of your hard disk?)

One day, the young couple opened their front door to find 17 rejected manuscripts spread all over their minuscule front porch. Their tiny mailbox apparently hadn’t been able to hold that many emphatic expressions of “No!”

So what did the aspiring writers of yesteryear do when faced with that many rejections on the same day? Did they toss all of that paper into the recycling bins that had not yet been invented? Did they rend their garments and give up writing forever? Did they poison their perfectly nice mail carrier for bringing so much bad news all at once?

No, they did what professional writers did back then: Philip had his wife iron the pages so they could be sent out again and resubmitted.

Lest you find the story depressing, the science fiction writer was Philip K. Dick, and one of those stories was THE MINORITY REPORT. Which a director who shall remain nameless (because he changed the ending in a way that would have caused any author’s resentful spectre to dive-bomb LA, howling) made into a rather lucrative movie, decades later.

Which only goes to show you: contrary to the common writerly fantasy/daydream/self-flagellation-after-rejection theme, even the best writers generally have to brazen through quite a bit of rejection before hitting the big time. As my mother likes to say, the only manuscript that stands NO chance of getting published is the one that sits in the bottom drawer, unseen by human eyes.

Admittedly, it was not the most comforting lullaby to have sung above one’s cradle, but she knew whereat she spoke. It’s as true today as it was six decades ago, when there were no photocopying machines, no computers, and no guarantee that the copy you sent would ever be retrievable if it went astray in some publisher’s office.

For our purposes today, the important thing to take away from this story is not the warm glow from the implied pep talk (although that’s nice, too), but the understanding that agencies don’t ask for SASEs in order to inconvenience, annoy, or impoverish aspiring writers. They do it today for precisely the same reason that they did it in the 1950s: to get your work back to you as expeditiously as possible, so you may try its fortunes elsewhere.

You’re welcome.

Also, as I mentioned last time, the practice was intended to protect the writer’s copyright. Just as an e-mailed attachment could conceivably end up, through the magic of multiple forwarding, anywhere on the planet, a loose manuscript that isn’t either in an agent or editor’s office, safely tucked away in that proverbial bottom desk drawer, or being conveyed through sleet, snow, and/or dark of night between one and the other could in fact be stolen.

I know; creepy even to consider. But think about it: is it more or less likely than something pointy falling on your house from a zeppelin?

I’ll answer that one for you: it does happen from time to time, so a savvy writer keeps very, very good track of who precisely has his manuscript when. (If this prospect tends to keep you up at night, please see the SHOULD I WORRY ABOUT MY WORK BEING STOLEN? category on the list at right for tips on how to protect your work.)

Three other things of which a savvy writer keeps very good track: which agents she has already queried (and with what unsolicited-but-permitted extra materials), which already-queried agents have requested materials (and what they requested; every agency asks for the submission packet to contain different components), and which agents are still waiting for her to send them those materials. If an aspiring writer is querying and/or submitting to multiple agents at once — and she should, unless the agent of her dreams has a no simultaneous submissions policy — she had better maintain excellent records; otherwise, it’s just too easy to mix things up.

Or not to know where to send Query #18 when the first 17 SASEs turn up in her mailbox. Or her inbox.

Speaking of minding the details, a savvy writer also takes care when applies postage to her SASE. Let’s take a gander at what postage-related fears were keeping intrepid reader Rachel up at night:

I have a question about the SASE that you put in with your materials. I understand it was always better to use stamps so that the agent can just toss it in the outgoing mail bin at the agency. But I was talking to the postal clerks yesterday and they said that post-911 rules are now in effect: any stamped package over 13 ounces has to be brought to the post. I asked to get metered mail instead, and they said it wouldn’t work because it would have that date (yesterday) on it. A dilemma!

I explained my situation to them and the clerks suggested just using a priority stamp (and the same shipping box), because if a SASE were expected, then stamps are really the only way to go. Is that how they’re doing it now?

Good question, Rachel. Before I answer it, let’s clarify the situation by reiterating the difference between a query packet’s SASE (a missive containing the query letter + any unsolicited materials an agency’s website said were permissible to send with it) and one tucked into a submission (requested materials).

When sending a query, SASE use is pretty straightforward: the writer takes a second envelope, writes his own address on it, adds appropriate postage, folds it, and stuffs it — neatly, please, as becomes a Sanitary Author — into the query envelope. (Oh, like you’ve been able to get the SA out of your mind since yesterday’s post.)

When sending a submission packet, the process is similar, but the packaging is different. If the agent only asks to see limited number of pages, few enough that they could be comfortably placed in a Manila envelope without wrinkling them (the Sanitary Author deplores crumpled pages; so do many agents), all you need to do is take a second Manila envelope, self-address it, affix the same amount of postage you’re going to use to send the whole packet to the agency, fold it, and place it neatly within the submission envelope.

Don’t worry; I shall be devoting some of our collective time in the week to come to explaining how to handle a request for a partial. I wouldn’t leave you hanging.

SASE-wrangling becomes a bit trickier if you’ve been asked to send the entire manuscript, because that generally entails using a box. (For a detailed explanation of what types of box should and shouldn’t be used, complete with glamorous photographs of cardboard in its various manifestations, again, tune in tomorrow.)

Obviously, it’s going to be unwieldy to stuff a second box inside the first, so it’s completely acceptable just to include a self-addressed mailing label and postage. Be sure to mention both in your cover letter, so they won’t get lost on the agency end. (Again, don’t panic: I’ll be talking about how to pull off including such necessary-but-prosaic details gracefully early next week.

If you have already submitted a partial, and then the agent asks for the whole manuscript, don’t just send the rest of the pages: by the time they arrive, Millicent probably will not have a clear enough recollection of the partial just to pick up the story where your initial submission left off. (Heck, by then, Millicent may already have moved on to pastures new; the turnover amongst screeners can be pretty remarkable.) Send the entire manuscript, in the aforementioned box.

Equally obviously (but I’m going to mention it anyway, just in case), the stamps on the SASE need to be US stamps, if the agency is US-based. That requirement means that SASEing is invariably a great deal more challenging — and expensive — for writers in foreign climes querying or submitting to US agencies. The far-flung are not exempt from the SASE expectation, I’m afraid, which can make e-mailed querying a more attractive option.

Good news for the far-flung: the US Postal Service’s website sells stamps at face value, rather than at the exorbitant mark-up one frequently finds for them abroad. The USPS more than happy to ship ‘em to your doorstep in exotic climes so you may stick ‘em onto your SASE before popping your submission into the mail.

But let’s get back to the crux of Rachel’s question: has the post-9/11 alteration in post office policy altered what agencies expect to see on a SASE?

The last decade has indeed seen some changes in how agencies handle packages, but actually, most of them date from before 9/11, back to the anthrax scare. Before that, virtually no agency accepted electronic submissions. A few scary mailings later, and suddenly, agencies all over New York were opening e-mail accounts. Hey, they may not pay their Millicents much, but the average agency certainly doesn’t want its screeners to get sick from opening a poisoned query envelope.

E-mailed queries and submissions don’t carry the risk of that sort of infection (and I think we can all guess how the Sanitary Author would feel about that). They do, however, occasionally contain computer viruses, so few agents will open an attachment unless they have already specifically requested an electronic submission from a writer.

That’s why, in case you’d been wondering, most agencies have policies forbidding e-queriers from sending unsolicited materials as attachments. Too much risk of computer contamination. Instead, they will usually ask queriers to copy any permissible additional materials and paste them into the body of an e-mail.

Rachel’s clerk was quite right about heavier packages having to be physically carried into the post office by human being, rather than blithely dropped into a mailbox or dumped in a mailroom — a policy shift that would affect virtually any submitted full manuscript, since they tend to be heavy little critters. However, that most emphatically does not mean is that the agent is going to be taking a rejected manuscript to the post office herself, or even that the Millicent who screened it will. Some luckless agency intern will be toting a whole mess of them there every few days.

Or not; since the USPS changed its regulations in this respect, many agencies have side-stepped the return mail problem by ceasing to return submitted manuscripts to their writers at all. (Sensing a pattern here?) Check policies before you submit.

Interestingly, agencies that operate this way virtually always still expect submitters to include SASEs with their submissions. Go figure. The moral: unless you are querying or submitting electronically OR an agency specifically says it doesn’t use SASEs, you should always include one.

And always use actual stamps, rather than metered postage. It’s called a STAMPED, self-addressed envelope for a reason, you know. The goal here is not merely convenience in mailing, but the submitter’s paying for his own manuscript’s return. Regardless of whether that means tossing it into the nearest mailbox (which would still be possible for most partial manuscripts) or assigning Millicent to do it, stamps have always served the purpose best.

That being said, I must confess that I don’t quite understand the clerk’s recommendation to Rachel to affix Priority Mail postage to the SASE, unless he was either lobbying her to use a flat-rate Priority Mail envelope as a SASE (not a bad idea, especially if the submission is just a few chapters; they fold nicely into a submission envelope) or simply trying to hawk a more expensive stamp. The distinction between Priority Mail and regular mail is the speed with which it arrives; the ease of mailing is identical.

Buying a more expensive stamp or a cheaper one to affix to the SASE is entirely up to the writer; coughing up the dosh for speedier return is not going to impress Millicent. Like overnighting requested materials vs. sending them regular mail, whether a submitter elects to pay a shipper extra money to convey a manuscript from point A to point B is generally a matter of complete indifference to the agent receiving it, as long as it gets there in one piece.

(“And looking pretty,” adds the Sanitary Author. “None of those pesky wrinkles. Print your manuscript on nice, bright-white, 20-pound paper while you’re at it, please. It’s aesthetically more pleasing than the cheap stuff.”)

To be blunt about it, the agent has absolutely no reason to care how quickly a rejected manuscript reaches its submitter. All she’s going to care about is whether you’ve included the means to mail it back to you at your expense, not hers.

And that, my friends, is the logic that most agencies’ listings in the standard agency guides and websites compress into the terse advice Include SASE. Apparently, somewhere on earth, there lurks a tribe of natural-born queriers who realize from infancy precisely what that means, so it requires no further explanation.

I’ll bet our old pal, the Sanitary Author, is one of that happy breed. For the rest of us, learning how agencies work requires a bit of homework — and the asking of trenchant questions. Keep up the good work!

September 7, 2011January 19, 2017 - No Comments

Nicely stamping your SASE and other Millicent-pleasing habits of the Sanitary Author

sanitary-author

Why, yes, now that you mention it, long-time Author! Author! habitués, I have used this photograph before. Several times, in fact: it’s one of my favorites, for reasons I shall discuss below. Although, really, does cultivating and maintaining an affection for the mythical Sanitary Author require much defense?

Before I launch into that very defense, however, I have some good news to announce about a member of our little community: Austin Gary’s novel, Miss Madeira has just come out in paperback and as an e-book. Congratulations, Austin!

If Austin’s name sounds familiar, it should: he was one of the literary fiction winners in the Author! Author! Rings True Competition earlier this year, albeit for another work. Nor his he a stranger to award winning: under the name Gary Heyde, he is also a BMI award-winning songwriter, with recordings by Tammy Wynette, John Berry, and Jeff Carson.

Miss Madeira was semi-finalist in the 2009 Faulkner-Wisdom fiction competition. Here’s the blurb:

Brilliant teacher Amelia Madeira is torn between her love for the woman who will eventually become her sister-in-law and a gifted male student. Despite producing several generations of students forever known as Madeira’s Kids, gossip begins to grow like apples on a poison tree. As anyone with an intimate knowledge of the workings of small-town America knows, episodic memory is the bailiwick of barbershops, beauty shops, and pool halls.

Keep that good news rolling in, folks. Celebrating our fellow writers’ triumphs substantially eases the long and curvy road to publication.

Back to business. Since I’m aware that many of you are rushing about madly, pulling together flotillas of post-Labor Day queries and submissions, I thought it would be a good time to devote a few days to how query and submission packets should be put together.

Yes, yes, I know: not the sexiest of topics, but lest we forget, Millicent the agency screener is charged not only with assessing the aptness of a queried or submitted manuscript for her agency’s representation list; she’s also going to be drawing some conclusions from the packets about the querier or submitter’s professionalism. Why is that relevant, you ask? Because a writer who has taken the time to learn how the publishing industry expects to see writing presented is going to be less energy-consuming to represent.

Before anyone bristles at the idea that an agency — not a non-profit entity, usually — might consider non-literary factors such as the ability to present writing professionally when weighing the pros and cons of picking up a particular writer, let me recommend that those of you who feel strongly on the subject have a spirited discussion about it in the comments. My goal here is not to judge how agencies operate, but to help good writers navigate the often opaque and counterintuitive querying and submission process.

For the next few days, then, I am going to be talking in minute detail about how to put together professional-looking query and submission packets. To lead gently into that noble endeavor, let us pause and consider the mystery of the Sanitary Author.

I’m not much given to double-takes, campers, but I must admit, I did a lulu when I spotted this sign standing by the side of a two-lane highway in unincorporated Neskowin, Oregon. To the casual observer, Neskowin is a blink-and-you-miss-it collection of buildings, but to the observant passerby, it is fraught with enigma. Among its mysteries: according to its ostensibly unofficial municipal website (last updated, apparently, in 2008) Neskowin’s population is a sparse 170, a human density that renders the two golf courses located there, well, surprising.

Who is playing golf in such high numbers that a lone course wasn’t deemed sufficient for local needs? Bears? Sea lions? Migratory Scots with an affection for Pacific Rim cuisine?

All of these legitimate wonders pale, however, next to the enigma of the Sanitary Author. What makes him or her so darned clean, the passing motorist is left to speculate, and why is the population of Neskowin so proud of that particular resident’s hygiene habits that the non-city fathers saw fit to erect a sign to commemorate the SA’s immaculate practices? Did s/he win some sort of international award for cleanliness, a plaudit akin to the Nobel Prize, in order to raise him or her so very high in the town’s esteem?

Not, obviously, as high as videos, coffee, or ice cream, but let’s face it, it’s more recognition than most authors get.

Does the SA reside in remote forest because such cleanly writing practices would not have been feasible within the confines of a large city like New York, Los Angeles, or even charming and nearby Portland? More importantly from the point of view of fellow authors, how does being so sanitary affect the quality of the SA’s writing — and if it has a net positive effect, should we all be beating a path to Oregon, clamoring to follow in the SA’s spotless footsteps?

And I don’t want to alarm anybody, but should we be worried about all of the unsanitary authors running around out there? The mind positively reels at the vast array of germs Millicent could conceivably pick up from their query and submission packets.

Oh, I know what prosaic types out there are likely to say: since the period after AUTHOR would tend to indicate an abbreviation, this sign probably only refers to the local sanitary authority, the fine municipal employees who look after water quality and maintain the sewer system. So much for impenetrable ambiguity, the literal would doubtless conclude. Just ignore that sasquatch strolling by; there’s nothing to see here.

But look closely at that sign: there’s a period after SANITARY, too. Complete words are seldom abbreviations, I find.

So the mystery continues. I shall make a valiant effort to wrest my mind away from the Sanitary Author and concentrate on the matter at hand: queries and the things that accompany them.

Oh, it’s no use: the image is burned into my brainpan. A psychologist friend of mine once told me that recent research demonstrates that the brain can respond as dramatically to recalled memories as to present life; sometimes, she says, the mind will experience flashbacks as current events. I’m fascinated by this, not only as a memoirist (and yes, the memoir that was supposed to come out a few years ago is still tied up in legal knots; thanks for asking), but as a novelist.

The writer’s descent into a creative trance is one of the least-understood of human phenomena, isn’t it? Don’t know what I’m talking about? Ask your kith and kin what you’re like during periods of intensive writing.

Personally, when I’m in mid-chapter, I have been known to lose my sense of the passage of time. If my cats didn’t remind me occasionally that they do not possess opposable thumbs or the ability to open cabinets (well, okay, most cabinets), they would probably be forced to start nibbling on my toes under my desk to stave off imminent starvation.

I’m inclined to blame this on the way that the creative process colonizes the writer’s brain. The cats seem inclined to blame it on me, which I suppose amounts to more or less the same thing: if a task can’t wait until I polish the scene in front of me to a high gloss, it’s probably not going to happen.

You may be unusually good at jumping back and forth between the creative and observational parts of your brain, but if you’re writing on a regular basis, I’m betting that those who have the good fortune to live and work with you have built up a stockpile of anecdotes about how you space out on the minutiae of quotidian life when you’re writing hard. Or — and I honestly am getting around to the point of today’s post again — when you are embroiled in sending out the aforementioned flotilla of queries.

Oh, you thought you were the only one who spaced out? Far from it. Little things like laundry, taking vitamins, watering plants, and checking e-mail seem to slip unnoticed out of the working writers’ consciousness in the middle of a querying binge or writing jag — and don’t even get me started on how the amnesia about practicalities can intensify in the face of an imminent deadline or, heaven help us, immediately after an agent asks to see a partial or full manuscript.

I suspect that this checking out from the everyday world is a necessary side effect of the alchemy of creation. Because, really, in order to render our characters’ lifeworlds gripping on the page, we writers have to create them in our minds every bit as vividly and in all of the detail of a vitally important memory. That’s a pretty absorbing task, isn’t it?

With a pretty gratifying payoff, potentially: if we do our job very well indeed, we might create a story, a situation, a character that seems to the reader to have stepped straight out of real life. Only better.

Is it that same is-it-real-or-is-it-Memorex trick of the brain, I wonder, that would allow a reader to fall in love with a character in a novel? As recent Nobel laureate — and about time, too — Mario Vargas Llosa wrote in THE PERPETUAL ORGY:

A handful of fictional characters have marked my life more profoundly than a great number of the flesh-and-blood beings I have known.

He’s talking about a literary orgy, incidentally, not a physical one: quite a lot of the book is devoted to his passionate decades-long love affair with the entirely fictional Emma Bovary. And who can blame him for falling in love with her, really? She’s a pretty absorbing character.

Do I sense those of you who intended to get queries and/or submissions out the door now that the annual post-Labor Day return of the publishing world to New York has arrived becoming a bit restless in the face of these musings? “I’m as fond of the creative haze as anyone else,” I hear some of you stalwart souls say, “but right now, most of my writing time is getting eaten up by the process of trying to find an agent. So if you don’t mind my asking, what does any of this have to do with the very practical marketing concerns we’ve spent much of the summer discussing?”

A couple of things, actually. First, in the throes of agent-seeking, it can be pretty easy to forget that query-screeners like Millicent actually are looking to fall in love with some writer’s work.

The querying hurdle is, at least in principle, set in place to maximize the probability of discovering the next Great American Novel — or memoir, or nonfiction book — by freeing agency staff from the necessity of reading pages from every ambitious soul currently writing in English. That way, the theory goes, Millicent can concentrate on deciding amongst the crème de la crème.

Your mind is still focused on the paragraph before last, isn’t it? Yes, you did indeed read that correctly: even the most virulent rejection-generator is usually eager to discover a novel that pulls her immediately into its lifeworld, or a memoir that wrings her heart, or the next Emma Bovary. I don’t think it’s at all coincidental that agents and editors so often describe their first responses to submissions in the language of attraction: you’re going to love this book, it’s a sexy topic, it didn’t grab me, I can’t get this book off my mind, I just didn’t fall in love with the protagonist.

Set those to music, and you’ve got a pop song. (Perhaps Austin could do something with it.) As hard as it may be to believe, Millicent is waiting to be swept off her feet.

Which is why, in case any of you have been wondering, I tend to discuss querying and submission in romantic terms: the query letter is a personal ad for your book; you want attract not just any agent, but the one that’s the best match for you and your work; the first page needs to seduce Millicent into wanting to read on; the chemistry between an agent and a book matters deeply. Ditto between a book and an editor.

So in addition to everything else we writers are trying to create, our writing also need to inspire love.

The interminable and annoying querying/submission process sounds substantially nobler put that way, doesn’t it? Feel free to use this argument the next time some non-writer gapes at the amount of time you’ve invested in trying to land an agent; generating love can take some time.

My second reason for bringing up this high-falutin’ topic is, I’m afraid, disappointingly prosaic. I meant to begin this post by talking about SASEs (Self-Addressed Stamped Envelopes), and I seem to have gotten sidetracked.

I can only plead that I was absorbed in my writing. Excuse me a moment while I feed my languishing cats.

Or perhaps I zoned out because, let’s face it, SASEs are not the most thrilling of topics. But they are absolutely vital to discuss, because a mailed query or submission unaccompanied by a SASE will get rejected automatically at virtually every U.S. agency. Almost invariably without being read.

Pause to ponder the implications, please: if Millicent doesn’t read your query, it’s literally impossible for her to decide to request your manuscript, and therefore impossible for her to fall in love with your writing. Which, in turn, renders it impossible for her boss, the agent, to fall in love with your writing, for the agent to convince an editor to fall in love with your writing, for the editor to convince an editorial committee to fall in love with your writing, and for the publishing house’s marketing department to convince readers to fall in love with your writing.

So omitting the SASE isn’t just a technical gaffe; it’s the catalyst in a tragic tale of lost love.

That’s the writer’s opportunity cost of neglecting to include a SASE in a query packet, but there are costs on the agency end as well. Think about it: having the SASE arrive in the same envelope with the query means that Millicent can grab either a form-letter rejection or please-send-us-pages note (oh, didn’t you realize that both were boilerplates?) the very instant after she makes up her mind which is appropriate.

It takes very little time, and the writers themselves are providing the resources for their own rejection. What’s not for the agency to like?

In fact, they like it so much that that most agencies have standing policies against accepting SASE-free queries at all. Providing an envelope and a stamp to reject a single forgetful writer may seem like a negligible expense — but multiply it by the 800-1500 queries the average agency receives every week, and we’re talking about a considerable investment in writers whose work they have already decided not to represent.

So if you didn’t hear back on that last raft of queries — you know, the ones where you glibly told Millicent to contact you via e-mail if she wanted to see pages — that’s probably why.

Yes, in answer to what half of you just thought so loudly, answering your mailed query via e-mail would have been costly for the agency, too, although obviously, not as costly as hauling an envelope from the supply cabinet and donating a stamp to your ongoing quest to be published. The Millicent charged with opening all of those envelopes and scanning the paper queries would have to stop what she was doing, carry your query — and only yours — to a computer, open the agency’s e-mail server, type a rejection (which would probably be identical to the form letter she’s been stuffing in SASEs all day), hit SEND, then head back to that waist-high pile of queries that came in last week.

Multiply that effort by every querier who thinks he’s being clever, considerate, and/or paper-saving by making a cavalier suggestion to contact him by e-mail, and it would add up to a lot of unnecessarily expended energy over the course of a year. Far, far cheaper for the agency just to tell its Millicents to toss any query unaccompanied by a SASE into the recycling bin.

Although if she does decide to ask for pages, she will probably let you know via e-mail, rather than by sending a reply in the SASE you so thoughtfully provided. I like to think of this as the SASE Utility Paradox: the rejected writer must pay for the postage and envelope that carry the bad news; the accepted writer must offer the stamp and envelope as a sacrifice to the gods of querying.

Either way, you’re going to be buying some envelopes and stamps. (Don’t forget to keep receipts; if you file a Schedule C for your writing business, you may be able to deduct these costs as promotional expenses. Talk to a tax expert with experience handling writers’ returns — which I am not –before you deduct anything, however, because the IRS rules governing writers are, I am told, both strange and different than those applicable to other kinds of artist.)

Believe it or not, part of the SASE’s original purpose was not just to save agencies the cost of postage, but to render the querying and submission processes cheaper for the writer: it was substantially less expensive than if the agencies sent back manuscripts with postage due. (Which used to be the alternative, by the way.) It was also intended to preserve copyright by allowing the writer ostensible control about whose grimy paws were on the manuscript when.

Writers tend to forget this in the cyber age, when huge chunks of writing can be transferred from one end of the planet to the other with the simple push of a button (yes, of course I know that the world is not as flat as that image implies. Don’t quibble at me now; I’m on a roll), but technically, in order to prove copyright over unpublished writing, the writer needs to know at all times where all the extant copies are, saying who can and cannot read it. Writing I post on this blog, for instance, is under my control, since I dictate where people can view it; I could disable RSS feeds, if I wanted. (Oh, the power! The power!) If I sent the same posts out via e-mail, they could end up anywhere, forwarded far beyond my knowledge.

That’s why, in case any of you had been wondering, writing posted online is technically published. It makes it easier for writers to prove that they were the original authors of their online work.

The control-who-reads-it doctrine still governs how agencies operate. When you send previously unpublished material off to an agency — to a credible one, anyway — you are operating on the tacit assumption that no one on the other end will reproduce your writing without your permission. You are not, in effect, authorizing them to show it to anyone else until you sign a contract that explicitly grants them the right to do so.

(Which means, by the way, that you should be very wary of an agent who implies, as some have been known to do in order to edge out the competition, that she has already shown submitted materials to an editor as an inducement for you to sign with her. Technically, she cannot market your writing to anyone until you give her explicit permission to do so — but a writer who has just won a literary contest and is juggling manuscript requests from several agents might not be aware of that.)

When you send a SASE with a submission, you are implicitly asserting your right to control where your work is sent next. It conveys an expectation that if the agency rejects it, they will mail the pages back to you, rather than forwarding it to the kind of pirate press that is currently cranking out the 18th, 19th, and 20th installments in the Harry Potter series.

I hear the one in which Harry fights a dragon actually isn’t bad.

As I believe I have mentioned seventeen or eighteen hundred times before, this is a tradition-bound industry; it has historically been slow to change. No matter how good the logic against some of its long-held norms, this one did not change at all until there were some very tangible benefits on the agencies’ end to altering it.

For example, the anthrax scare convinced some agencies to accept e-mailed queries and submissions; prior to that, virtually none of them did. (Some still don’t; double-check before you press SEND.) And the post 9/11 requirement to tote heavy packages to the post office prompted some agencies to start recycling rejected manuscripts, rather than having the lowest intern on the totem pole wheel a paper-loaded dolly up out of the building.

Like so many other aspects of the querying and submission process, at one time, the use of the SASE carried greater benefits to the writer than it does now, but time has hardened courtesies into demands, and habits into traditions. Today, if you do not include a SASE with your submission, you may well be perceived as thumbing your nose at the traditions of people you are trying to impress.

As satisfying as that may be to contemplate, allow me to suggest that it might not be the best way to convince Millicent of your Socratic intellect, encyclopedic knowledge of how publishing works, and lamb-like willingness to take direction. So while my long-standing affection for writers, trees, and the printed pages both work to produce would love to be able to say dispense with the SASE, it would not be in your best interest to fling away the old norms.

I feel as though I should go off and plant a tree now. Or perhaps reread MADAME BOVARY. Instead, I’m going to be intensely practical for a few moments and tell you precisely how to play the SASE game correctly.

When you send a paper query (as opposed to the e-mail variety), tuck a stamped (not metered) envelope addressed to yourself into the envelope. Do this every time, regardless of whether the agency you’re querying actually asks for a SASE on its website or in its blurb in the standard agency guides. It’s expected, whether they say so or not.

If you are sending more than 4 pages of text along with your query — if the agent asked for an author bio, for instance, or a synopsis — make sure that the postage on your query’s SASE is sufficient to get all of those pages back to you. A #10 (business-size) envelope is the norm to accompany queries, and stamps are universally preferred over metered postage.

Since the agency will be popping the returned materials into the nearest mailbox, the stamps you use should be those currently in use in the AGENCY’s country of residence, not yours. This means that if you are submitting to a US-based agency or publishing house from outside the country, you will need to dig up some US stamps. Since foreign post offices often sell these at a considerable mark-up, you can save a lot of money if you buy the stamps directly from the US Postal Service online.

When you send requested materials via mail (again, as opposed to e-mail submissions), include in your submission packet an envelope or box addressed to yourself, along with sufficient postage for the safe return of EVERYTHING you have submitted. (If you want to be really considerate, you may also include a #10 SASE, so the agent may contact you to ask for more pages. This isn’t really necessary, though: in the age of e-mail and relatively inexpensive long-distance calling, that particular request is unlikely to come via regular mail.)

Again, do this every time, regardless of whether the agency (or publishing house) to whom you are submitting has actually asked for a SASE. Omit it only if the agency specifically asks in its guidelines that you not include it. (I know of only one agency that currently makes this request; need I remind you to read each and every agency’s submission guidelines, in case they differ?)

If the requested pages fit in a Manila envelope, it’s perfectly acceptable to fold a second one in half, stamp and address it, and tuck it in the submission packet. If you have been asked to send so many pages that you need to pack ‘em in a box, paper-clip a return mailing label and stamps to your cover letter, along with a polite request that the agent would affix both to the shipping box in the event of rejection.

You HAVE been sending cover letters with your submissions, right? Just sending a manuscript all by itself is considered a bit rude.

Relax, those of you who just clutched your chests: I’ll be talking about how to put together a cover letter for a submission packet as soon as I polish off this series on SASEs. Who knew there were so many different things that needed to go into a submission packet, eh?

Next time, we’ll delve a bit deeper into the practicalities of the e-mailed query, as well as the ins and outs of submission. You wouldn’t want to be caught unprepared if your query is successful, would you?

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for the Sanitary Author. You wouldn’t want to miss him/her/it, would you? Keep up the good work!

September 1, 2011January 19, 2017 - No Comments

Pitchingpalooza, part XXVI: surviving a conference with your dreams, sanity, and energy in one piece, or, if a stone can muster a smile, so can you

That’s an actual stone in my yard, believe it or not, one that apparently went out of its way to anthropomorphize itself for my illustrative pleasure. If rocks can be that helpful and friendly, it gives me great hope for human beings.

Which is my subtle way of leading into asking: after these last few weeks of posts, have you started to have dreams about pitching? If they’re not nightmares, and you’re scheduled to pitch at a conference anytime soon, you’re either a paragon of mental health, a born salesperson, or simply haven’t been paying very close attention. Either that, or I’ve seriously underemphasized the potential pitfalls.

For this, our last Pitchingpalooza post, I’m going to assume that you either are waking up in the night screaming or that I haven’t yet explained the conference environment adequately. So fasten your seatbelts — I’m going to be taking you on a guided tour of false expectations, avoidable missteps, and just plain disasters.

Hey, forewarned is forearmed. Or at least less stupefied in the moment.

First-time pitchers often harbor fears of inadvertently making a poor impression upon an agent or editor in a social situation, thereby nullifying their chances of being able to wow ‘em with a pitch in a formal meeting. I wish I could say that this is an unfounded fear, but actually, it’s pretty reasonable: one doesn’t have to spend much time hanging around that bar that’s never more than 100 yards from any writers’ conference in North America to hear a few horror stories about jaw-droppingly rude writers.

And I don’t know about you, but one of my more dubious gifts as a human being is an uncanny ability to find the most institutionally powerful person in the room and catch him in a misstatement or crack a joke that skewers his ego, generally before I know who he is. (It’s one of the reasons I elected to leave academia, as a matter of fact, as several past presidents of the American Political Science Association know to their sorrow. Fortunately for me, the step from spotting the incorrectly-placed comma in a constitution that would result in half the population’s losing a right to editing manuscripts was a relatively small one.)

Hard to imagine how this particular trait would have provided my ancestors with enough of a survival advantage to justify its being passed down the evolutionary line, but I do seem to have been born with it. Many are the family stories about the toddler critiquing the pediatrician’s sartorial choices.

Honestly, does anybody look good in those tacky white polyester coats?

Before any of my fellow compulsive truth-tellers begin to panic, let me hasten to add that agents’ and editors’ anecdotes are almost invariably about genuinely outrageous approach attempts, not minor faux pas. And that’s not just because “You’re not going to believe this, but a pitcher just forgot to tell me whether is book is fiction or nonfiction” isn’t nearly as likely to garner sympathy from fellow bar denizens as “This insane writer just grabbed my arm as I was rushing into the bathroom and refused to stop talking for 20 minutes.”

For one thing, the former is too common a phenomenon to excite much of a response from other agents. Unfortunately, though, the latter happens often enough that some agents turn against hallway pitching for life. As, indeed, many a product of the post-conference rumor mill can attest.

However — and this is a big however — in my experience, the aspiring writers who sit around and fret about being the objects of such anecdotes are virtually never the folks who ought to be worrying about it. These are not the kind of gaffes that your garden-variety well-mannered person is likely to commit.

The result: polite people end up tiptoeing around conferences, terrified of doing the wrong thing, while the rude stomp around like Godzilla with P.M.S. And then, once an agent who has been smashed into by one Godzilla too many complains on a blog or in an interview about how impolite writers are, the naturally courteous cringe, while the rude remain unfazed. Thus are the polite rendered more and more fearful of running afoul of an unspoken rule or two.

Case in point: technologically-savvy reader wrote in last year to ask if it was considered appropriate to take notes on a laptop or Blackberry during conference seminars. It’s still not very common (surprising, given how computer-bound most of us are these days) but yes, it is acceptable, under two conditions.

First, if you do not sit in a very prominent space in the audience — and not solely because of the tap-tap-tap sound you’ll be making. Believe it or not, it’s actually rather demoralizing for a lecturer to look out at a sea of faces that are all staring at their laps.. Are these people bored out of their minds, the worried speaker wonders, or merely taking notes very intensely?

Don’t believe me? The next time you attend a lecture of any sort, keep your eyes on the teacher’s face, rather than on your notes, your Blackberry, or that Octavia Butler novel you’ve hidden in your lap because you can’t believe that your boss is making you sit through a talk on the importance of conserving paper clips for the third time this year.

I guarantee that within two minutes, the teacher will be addressing half of her comments directly to you; consistent, animated-faced attention is THAT unusual in a lecture environment. The bigger the class, the more quickly she will focus upon the one audience member who is visibly interested in what she is saying.

Heck, in the university where I used to teach, active listening was so rare that occasionally, one or another of my colleagues would get so carried away with appreciation that he would marry a particularly attentive student. One trembles to think what these men would have done had they been gripping enough lecturers to animate an entire room.

Back to the Blackberry issue. It’s also considered, well, considerate to ask the speaker before the class if it is all right to use any electronic device during the seminar, be it computer, iPhone, or tape recorder.

Why? Think about it: if your head happens to be apparently focused upon your screen, how is the speaker to know that you’re not just checking your e-mail? Also, in these decadent days, when the antics of unwary pets and clumsy humans often go viral, how may a speaker be sure that you are not recording him with an eye to posting his speech beneath unflattering lighting on YouTube?

Enough about the presenters’ problems; let’s move on to yours. Do be aware that attending a conference, particularly your first, can be a bit overwhelming. You’re going to want to pace yourself.

“But Anne!” conference brochure-clutching writers everywhere pipe up. “The schedule is jam-packed with offerings, many of which overlap temporally! I don’t want to miss a thing!”

Yes, it’s tempting to take every single class and listen to every speaker, but frankly, you’re going to be a better pitcher if you allow yourself to take occasional breaks. Cut yourself some slack; don’t book yourself for the entire time.

Why? Well, let me ask you this: would you rather be babbling incoherently during the last seminar of the weekend, or raising your hand to ask a coherent question?

Before you answer that, allow me to add: since most attendees’ brains are mush by the end of the conference, it’s generally easier to get close to an agent or editor who teaches a class on the final day. Fewer lines, less competition.

Do make a point of doing something other than lingering in the conference center for three or four days straight. Go walk around the block. Sit in the sun. Grab a cup of coffee with that fabulous literary fiction writer you just met. Hang out in the bar that’s never more than 100 yards from any writers’ conference; that tends to be where the already-agented and already-published hang out, anyway.

And don’t you dare feel guilty about doing any of these things. Skipping the occasional seminar does not constitute being lax about pursuing professional opportunities: it is smart strategy, to make sure you’re fresh for your pitches. If you can’t tear yourself away, take a few moments to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, to reset your internal pace from PANIC! to I’m-Doing-Fine.

I know that I sound like an over-eager Lamaze coach on this point, but I can’t overemphasize the importance of reminding yourself to keep breathing throughout the conference. A particularly good time for a nice lung-filling is immediately after you sit down in front of an agent or editor.

Trust me: your brain could use the oxygen right around then. It will help you calm down so you can make your most effective pitch.

And at the risk of sounding like the proverbial broken record, please, please, PLEASE don’t expect a conference miracle. Writing almost never sells on pitches alone, no matter how many times you have heard that apocryphal story about THE HORSE WHISPERER. You are not going to really know what an agent thinks about your work until she has read some of it.

Translation: it’s almost unheard-of for an agent to sign up a client during a conference. (And no, I have no idea why so many conference-organizers blithely hand out feedback forms asking if you found an agent at the event. Even the most successful conference pitchers generally don’t receive an offer for weeks, if not months.)

Remember, your goal here is not to be discovered on the spot, but to get the industry pro in front of you to ask to read your writing. Period.

Yes, I know: I’ve said this before. Repeatedly, throughout this very series. And I’m going to keep saying it as long as there are aspiring writers out there who walk into pitch meetings expecting to hear the agent cry, “My God, that’s the best premise since OLIVER TWIST. Here’s a representation contract — and look, here’s my favorite editor now. Let’s see if he’s interested. I want this book sold by midnight!”

Then, of course, the editor falls equally in love with it, offers an advance large enough to cover New Hampshire in $20 bills, and the book is out by Christmas. As an Oprah’s Book Club selection, naturally, even though neither the Oprah show nor her book club exist anymore.

Long-time readers, chant along with me now: this is not how the publishing industry works. This is not how the publishing industry works. This is not how the publishing industry works…

Did I say that you could stop repeating it?

The key to being a happy conference-goer is not only to realize that the popular conception of how books move from manuscript to publication is dead wrong, but to believe it. Having to make a significant effort in order to get an agent to read your manuscript is normal.

Thus the appeal of conference pitching: done well, it will allow you to skip the querying stage and pass directly to the submission stage. So being asked to send pages is a terrific outcome for this situation, not a distant second place to an imaginary reality.

Admittedly, though, that is easy to forget in the throes of a pitch meeting. Almost as easy as forgetting that a request to submit is not a promise to represent or publish. Out comes the broken record again:

Whatever an agent or editor says to you in a conference situation is just a conversation at a conference, not the Sermon on the Mount or testimony in front of a Congressional committee. There is no such thing as an implied offer of representation or publication; there are only concrete offers and preliminary conversations. Everything is provisional until some paper has changed hands.

This is equally true, incidentally, whether your conference experience includes an agent who actually starts drooling visibly with greed while you were pitching or an editor in a terrible mood who raves for 15 minutes about how the public isn’t buying books anymore. Until you sign a mutually-binding contract, no promises — or condemnation, for that matter — should be inferred or believed absolutely.

Try to maintain perspective. If you can’t, stop and take a few deep breaths.

Admittedly, perspective is genuinely hard to achieve when a real, live agent says, “Sure, send me the first chapter,” especially if you’ve been shopping the book around for eons. But it is vital to keep in the back of your mind that eliciting this statement is not the end of your job as a marketer. Oh, look, here’s another golden oldie from the broken record collection:

Regardless of how much any given agent or editor says she loves your pitch, she’s not going to make an actual decision until she’s read at least part of it. And she’s not going to clear her schedule for the rest of the month to read it, either.

So even if you are over the moon about positive response from the agent of your dreams, please, I beg you, DO NOT STOP PITCHING IN THE HALLWAYS. Try to generate as many requests to see your work as you can.

Why, yes, you’re right: that is going to be a heck of a lot of work. What’s your point?

No matter who says yes to you first, you will be much, much happier two months from now if you have a longer requested submissions list. Ultimately, going to a conference to pitch only twice, when there are 20 agents in the building, is just not efficient.

Far too many aspiring writers will just give up after one successful pitch, assuming, often wrongly, that a friendly pitch meeting means a predisposition to like a submission or an implied promise to read it quickly. It doesn’t, and it isn’t. So it is VERY much in your interest to send out submissions to several agents at once, rather than one at a time.

I heard that gasp, but no, there is absolutely nothing unethical about this, unless (a) one of the agencies has a policy precluding multiple submissions (rare) or (b) you actively promised one agent an exclusive. (I would EMPHATICALLY discourage you from granting (b), by the way — and if you don’t know why, please see the EXCLUSIVES TO AGENTS category at right before you even CONSIDER pitching at a conference.)

Some of you look concerned, but trust me, this is what the agents will be expecting you to do. If an agent wants an exclusive peek, she will ask for one point-blank; again, there’s no such thing as a tacit request for a solo submission. By all means, tell each of the agents in the cover letter that others are looking at it, but don’t make the hugely pervasive mistake of granting an effective exclusive that the agent does not expect, simply because she was the one you liked best.

I see some of you blushing: you’ve made this mistake, haven’t you? And you ended up waiting six months to hear back — or did not hear back at all, right?

“Wow, Anne!” those of you who have lived through this highly unpleasant experience gasp. “What kind of a crystal ball are you wielding these days? That’s precisely what happened to me!”

No crystal ball needed on this one: it happens to pitchers all the time. They misunderstand the level of connection they made with agents at conferences, committing themselves in principle before the agents in question have even seen their work. “Well, we just clicked,” these writers say.

What they tend not to say is that let’s face it, it’s a heck of a lot less work — not to mention less wearing on the nerves — to send out one submission than, say, seven or eight. It’s also less work not to keep querying while that nice agent from the conference considers your submission.

And then one sad day, months after the conference, they receive the rejection, often as a form letter. “What happened?” one-at-a-timers cry. “I thought we clicked. And now I feel like it’s too late to send out those other requested materials.”

Actually, if less than a year has passed since the conference, it isn’t. But just think how much happier a writer who could say, “Well, I’m sad that the agent I liked best decided against representing my book, but at least those six other agents are still considering it,” would be in that moment. Or even one in a position to sigh with relief and murmur, “Wow, am I ever glad that I kept querying throughout these last six months. Now, I have other requests for materials.”

Besides, your time is valuable: sending out those post-conference submissions one at a time, waiting for a response from each before moving on to the next, could eat up years. Just mention in your cover letter to each that other agents are also reading it, and keep moving forward.

Trust me, hearing that it’s a multiple submission not going to annoy anyone. That old saw about agents’ getting insulted if you don’t submit one at a time is absolutely untrue. Let’s toss another broken record onto the turntable:

Unless an agent asks for an exclusive look at your work, it’s neither expected nor in your interest to act as if s/he has. In fact, hearing that others are interested may even make your book seem more attractive.

Yet another reason you should keep on pitching in those hallways: it tends to be a trifle easier to get to yes than in a formal pitch. Counter-intuitive, isn’t it? Yet in many ways, casual pitches are more persuasive.

Why? For one simple reason: time. In a hallway pitch, agents will often automatically tell a writer to submit the first chapter, simply in order to be able to keep on walking down the hall, finish loading salad onto their plates, or be able to move on to the next person in line after the agents’ forum.

Seriously, it’s true. If the agent handles your type of work, the premise is interesting, and you are polite, they will usually hand you their business cards and say, “Send me the first 50 pages.”

Okay, pop quiz to see who has been paying attention to this series so far: after the agent says this, do you:

(a) regard it as an invitation to talk about your work at greater length?

(b) regard it as an invitation to a lifetime of friendship?

(c) regard it as a promise to make you the next bestselling author?

(d) say, “Gee, you’re a much nicer human being than {insert name of other agent here}. He turned me down flat,” and go on to give details about how mean he was?

(e) launch into a ten-minute diatribe about the two years you’ve spent querying this particular project?

(f) thank her profusely and vanish in a puff of smoke, so you may pitch to another agent? And before you send out the requested pages IN THEIR ENTIRETY, IN HARD COPY, and OUT LOUD?

If you said anything but (Ff, I can only advise you go back and reread the Pitchingpalooza series — and as well as the entirety of the INDUSTRY ETIQUETTE category at right as well. You need to learn what’s considered polite and reasonable in the industry, pronto.

In a face-to-face pitch in a formal meeting, agents tend to be more selective than in a hallway pitch. Again, the reason is time: they’ve got more of it. In a ten-minute meeting, there is actual leisure to consider what you are saying, to weigh the book’s merits.

In short, enough time to save themselves some down the line by rejecting your book now.

Why might this seem desirable to them? Well, think about it: if you send it to them at their request, someone in their office is ethically required to spend time reading it, right? By rejecting it on the pitch alone, they’ve just saved Millicent the screener 5 or 10 minutes.

In a perverse way, a formal pitch can be significantly harder to give successfully than a hallway one. Sitting down in front of an agent or editor, looking her in the eye, and beginning to talk about your book can be quite a bit more intimidating than giving a hallway pitch.

Think of it this way: every time you buttonhole an agent and say those magic first hundred words is one less query letter you’re going to need to send out.

Still breathing at least once an hour? Good; I’ll move on.

As a veteran of many, many writers’ conferences all over the country, I can tell you from experience that they can be very, very tiring. Especially if it’s your first conference. Just sitting under fluorescent lights in an air-conditioned room for that many hours would tend to leech the life force out of you all by itself, but here, you will be surrounded by a whole lot of very stressed people while you are trying to learn as much as you possibly can.

As you may have noticed, most of my advice on how to cope with all of this ambient stress gracefully is pretty much what your mother said to you before you went to your first party: be polite; be nice to yourself and others; watch your caffeine and alcohol intake, and make sure to drink enough water throughout the day. Eat occasionally.

And you’re not wearing THAT, are you?

Actually, on the only occasion when my mother actually made that comment upon something I was wearing, she had made the frock in question. For my senior prom, she cranked out a backless little number in midnight-blue Chinese silk that she liked to call my “Carole Lombard dress,” for an occasion where practically every other girl was going to be wearing something demure and flouncy by Laura Ashley. It was, to put it mildly, not what anyone expected the valedictorian to wear.

She hastened to alter it. Even with the addition of quite a bit of additional fabric, most of the male teachers followed me around all night long. The last time I bumped into my old chorus teacher, he spontaneously recalled the dress. “A shame that you didn’t dress like that all the time,” he said wistfully.

Oh, what a great dress that was. Oh, how inappropriate it would have been for a writers’ conference — or really, for any occasion that did not involve going out for a big night on the town in 1939. But then, so would those prissy Laura Ashley frocks.

Which brings me back to my point (thank goodness).

I wrote on what you should and shouldn’t wear to a conference at some length in an earlier post, but if you find yourself in perplexity when you are standing in front of your closet, remember this solid rule that will help you wherever you go within the publishing industry: unless you will be attending a black-tie affair, you are almost always safe with what would be appropriate to wear to your first big public reading of your book.

And don’t those of you who have been hanging around the industry for a while wish someone had shared THAT little tidbit with you sooner?

To repeat a bit more motherly advice: do remember to eat something within an hour or two of your pitch meeting. I know that you may feel too nervous to be hungry but believe me, if you were going to pick an hour of your life for feeling light-headed, your first encounter with your future agent is not a wise choice. If you are giving a hallway pitch, or standing waiting to go into a meeting, make sure not to lock your knees, so you do not faint.

And practice, practice, practice before you go into your meetings. This is the single best thing you can do in advance to preserve yourself from being overwhelmed.

Fortunately, conferences are peculiarly rich in opportunities to practice talking about your book. As I pointed out yesterday, you will be surrounded by hundreds of other writers. Introduce yourself, and practice pitching to them. Better still, find people who share your interests and get to know them. Share a cookie; talk about your work with someone who will understand.

Because, really, is your life, is any writer’s life, already filled with too many people who get what we do? You will be an infinitely happier camper in the long run if you have friends who can understand your successes and sympathize with your setbacks as only another writer can.

I know this from experience, naturally. The first thing I said to many of my dearest friends in the world was, “So what do you write?”

To which the savvy conference-goer replies — chant it with me now, everyone — the magic first hundred words.

In fact, the first people I told about my first book deal — after my SO and my mother, of course — were people I had met in precisely this manner. Why call them before, say, my college roommate? Because ordinary people, the kind who don’t spend all of their spare time creating new realities out of whole cloth, honestly, truly, sincerely, often have difficulty understanding the pressures and timelines that rule writers’ lives.

I was lucky: I already knew a lot of writers, including my college roommate, who recently sold her first novel to Algonquin. (Well done, Julie!) But the very first words my erstwhile SO’s mother uttered after hearing that my memoir had sold were, “What do you mean, it’s not coming out for another couple of years? Can’t you write any faster than that?”

This kind of response is, unfortunately, common, and frankly, most people’s eyes glaze over about 42 seconds into an explanation of how a print queue works. I don’t think any writer ever gets used to seeing her non-writer friends’ faces fall upon being told that the book won’t be coming out for a year or two, at least, after the sale that’s just happened, or that signing with an agent does not automatically equal a publication contract, or that not every book is headed for the bestseller list.

Thought I got off track from the question of how to keep from getting stressed out, didn’t you? Actually, I didn’t: finding buddies to go through the conference process with you can help you feel grounded throughout both the weekend and your writing life.

Not only are these new buddies great potential first readers for your manuscripts, future writing group members, and people to invite to book readings, they’re also folks to pass notes to during talks. (Minor disobedience is a terrific way to blow off steam, I find.) You can hear about the high points of classes you don’t attend from them afterward.

And who wouldn’t rather walk into a room with 300 strangers and one keynote speaker with a newfound chum than alone?

Making friends within the hectic conference environment will help you retain a sense of being a valuable, interesting individual far better than keeping to yourself, and the long-term benefits are endless. To paraphrase Goethe, it is not the formal structures that make the world fell warm and friendly; friends make the earth feel like an inhabited garden.

So please, for your own sake: make some friends at the conference, so you will have someone to pick up the phone and call when the agent of your dreams falls in love with your first chapter and asks to see the entire book. And get to enjoy the vicarious thrill when your writing friends leap their hurdles, too.

You think it didn’t make my day when Julie’s book sold? It made my month. It showed that being serious, talented, and smart can indeed pay off in the long run.

This can be a very lonely business. Nothing brightens the long, slow slog like opening your e-mail when you’re really discouraged to find a message from a friend who’s just sold a book or landed an agent.

Well, okay, I’ll admit it: getting a call from your agent telling you that YOU have just sold a book is rather more of a day-brightener. As is the call saying, “I love your work, and I want to represent you.”

But the other is still awfully darned good. Start laying the groundwork for it now.

One more little thing that will help keep you from stressing out too much: while it’s always nice if you can be so comfortable with your pitch that you can give it from memory, it’s probably fair to assume that you’re going to be a LITTLE bit nervous during your meetings. So do yourself a favor — write it all down; give yourself permission to read it when the time comes, if you feel that will help you.

Really, it’s considered perfectly acceptable, and it will keep you from forgetting key points. Please humor me by writing on the top of the paper, in great big letters: BREATHE!

Do remember to pat yourself on the back occasionally, too, for being brave enough to put your ego on the line for your work. As with querying and submitting, it requires genuine guts to submit your ideas to the pros; I don’t think writers get enough credit for that.

In that spirit, I’m going to confess: I have one other conference-going ritual, something I do just before I walk into any convention center, anywhere, anytime, either to teach or to pitch. It’s not as courteous or as public-spirited as the other techniques I have described, but I find it is terrific for the mental health. I go away by myself somewhere and play at top volume Joe Jackson’s song Hit Single and Jill Sobule’s (I Don’t Want to Get) Bitter.

The former, a charming story about dumbing down a song so it will stand a better chance of making it big on the pop charts, includes the perfect lyric to hum while walking into a pitch meeting:

And when I think of all the years of finding out
What I already knew
Now I spread myself around
And you can have 3 minutes, too.

If that doesn’t summarize the difference between pitching your work verbally and being judged on the quality of the writing itself, I should like to know what does. (Sorry, Joe: I would have preferred to link above to your site, but your site mysteriously doesn’t include lyrics.)

The latter, a song about complaining, concludes with a pretty good mantra for any conference-goer:

So I’ll smile with the rest, wishing everyone the best.
And know the one who made it made it because she was actually pretty good.
‘Cause I don’t want to get bitter.
I don’t want to turn cruel.
I don’t want to get old before I have to.
I don’t want to get jaded.
Petrified and weighted.
I don’t want to get bitter like you.

I hum that one a lot during conferences, I’ll admit — and not because you can’t throw a piece of bread at a major writers’ conference without hitting someone just delighted to moan about how hard it is to get published these days. Cynicism often masquerades as knowledge. I tend to start humming when a bestselling author who landed his agent 25 years ago, when the task was significantly easier, or a more recent success whose agent is her cousin’s next-door neighbor’s husband tells a roomful of people who have been querying for the past five years that good writing will inevitably find a home.

Perhaps, but certainly not easily. The Agency Fairy just receives too many requests for help these days. Anyone who tells you that the only possible barrier to landing an agent is the quality of your writing simply isn’t familiar with the current reality of the representation market.

What you’re trying to do is not easy or fun, but you can do it. You are your book’s best advocate; act like it. And remember, all you’re trying to do is to get these nice people to take a look at your writing.

No more, no less. It’s a perfectly reasonable request for an aspiring writer to make to an agent, and you’re going to be terrific at making it. How do I know? Because you’ve been sensible and brave enough to face your fears and prepare like a professional.

Kudos to you for taking your writing that seriously. Keep breathing, everyone, and keep up the good work!

August 31, 2011January 19, 2017 - No Comments

Pitchingpalooza, part XXV: riddle me this

A couple of years ago, in the midst of the test of human endurance and sheer grit known as the Seattle Ring Cycle — four Wagner operas over the course of five days, presented by the same group of singers — I saw something I had never seen before: the orchestra leaving its pit during the curtain call, at precisely the moment when the singer playing the lead in Die Walküre was walking forward for her solo curtain call. (And no, that’s not a picture of Brünnhilde; it’s Frank Gorshin as the Riddler on the old Batman show, a national treasure.)

Why would this very respectable and accomplished group of people have done such a rude and unprofessional thing? Were they simply exhausted, as the audience was, by so many consecutive hours of sitting? Did the golden hour of overtime click in thirty seconds hence? Had a swarm of hornets abruptly descended upon the string section?

All valid possibilities, I suppose, but my guess would be that they staged a walk-out for the same reason the audience members in my part of the balcony stopped yelling “Bravo,” sat down, and engaged in barely-audible golf claps when Brünnhilde tripped lightly to the front of the stage. They felt disappointed.

It wasn’t because the singer didn’t have a marvelous voice; far from it, as she demonstrated in Act III. Nor was the problem her acting: the lady was — and is — world-famous for playing this role. Unfortunately, in anticipation of Act III, she had chosen not to sing at full voice in Act II. As a result, the Valkyrie most closely associated with belting out the top notes was barely audible past the tenth row for a good hour.

An hour, alas, that contained the single best-known aria in Western opera, a little ditty that runs something like this:

To an audience committed enough to risk permanent nerve damage to its collective derrière in order to hear the famed lady with the horns on her head call her similarly-hatted sisters home, this was, at best, perplexing. Did Brünnhilde have a sore throat? Had she lost her nerve? Did her command of German fail her? Or did she merely figure that this was Seattle, not New York or Berlin, so she could afford to phone in half of her performance? Performance anxiety or medical excuse, linguistic difficulties or apathy — we in the audience will never know. The only basis we had for judging her was how she had sung that night. Just as, say, an agent or editor hearing a pitch can only respond to what actually tumbles out of the writer’s mouth during the meeting. It doesn’t matter how brilliantly the writer may have described his book out in the hallway 15 minutes ago, or how trenchant and gripping the pitch is on paper, or even how beautifully-written the manuscript may be. If the pitcher is inaudible due to nerves, loses his place in the middle of his tale, or falls prey to any of the million other perfectly understandable contretemps that routinely befall writers approaching agents and editors at literary conferences, the pitch’s chances of success are inevitably going to suffer. Had I mentioned that it would behoove you to practice? Performance anxiety is much on my mind today, campers, because I’m going to be concentrating in this post upon the delicate art of working up nerve to approach agents to pitch. Rather than focusing primarily upon what could go wrong — that way lies madness — I would encourage you to try to think of the pitching process as your interviewing agents as much as their interviewing you. Okay, perhaps not quite as much, given just how competitive the agent-finding market is these days, but certainly, it’s not a meeting to approach uncritically. As, alas, the vast majority of pitchers (and queriers, for that matter) seem to do. Oh, I’m not saying that it isn’t understandable. In the soul-grinding crush of pitching and querying, signing with an agent can start to feel like the end goal, the point at which all of the hard work is going to cease, rather than a victory to be celebrated along the long, long road to publication. Yes, you do want an agent to fall in love with your writing — but never forget that the point of having an agent is to market your book. Before an army of Valkyries shouts, “Well, duh!” at me at a volume certain divas would have done well to emulate, allow me to add a spin to that observation that may not have occurred to some pitchers. Since a pitch meeting is a professional encounter, not a social event, it is very much in your interests to consider whether the person in front of you is a good bet for helping you meet your ultimate goal of publication, rather than whether you happen to like this person. Yes, even if you happen to feel an instant personal rapport with the interesting soul across the pitching table — perhaps especially so. You’d be stunned how often a successful pitcher’s assessment of a meeting that went like gangbusters is not, “Wow, that agent really seems like she would be good at marketing my book, ” but, “I really felt like we clicked.” However simpatico an agent and writer may be at first, a pitching situation is not primarily about making friends or interpersonal chemistry; it’s about both parties trying to figure out whether they would be a good fit to work together on an ongoing basis. There’s more to an agent-writer relationship than friendship, you know. In fact, that’s often a relatively small element. Obviously, you’re going to want to be able to trust your agent, but whether the two of you hit it off during your ten-minute chat is far less important to how well you will work together than your ability to communicate — and, yes, the agent’s contacts with editors who happen to publish books in your category. So the common writerly fantasy that a friendly pitch meeting automatically equals a long-term connection is not only seldom true in actual practice; it can lead aspiring writers do make foolish choices. “Oh, but I felt such a strong connection with Agent Z,” they will protest. “I couldn’t possibly submit those pages Agent Q requested until I hear back from Z.” Sound familiar, conference-goers? No? How about this one: “Since I had such a great pitch session with Agent R, why should I bother to pitch to anyone else at this conference? He’s sure to sign me.” Or the ever-popular: “Yeah, it’s been 10 months since I submitted those pages Agent B requested, but I’m not going to keep querying or contact the agency to see if they have lost my submission packet. She seemed to like me; I don’t want to mess up our relationship.” News flash: you don’t have a relationship with Agent B, or a connection with Agent Z, or a commitment from Agent R. What you did have, pitchers, was a nice conversation at a conference. Period. So all of the statements above reflect poor strategic choices, based upon a misunderstanding of the pitching relationship. Successful pitchers’ hopes often rise sky-high, leading them to confuse a request for pages for an implied commitment. It isn’t, and it shouldn’t be interpreted as such. Far too few pitchers seem to understand that. Here’s a useful rule of thumb: until an actual offer is on the table, a good pitch meeting is just — wait for it — a nice conversation at a conference. But even if a smilingly-presented request for materials did imply more (and it doesn’t), the mere fact of liking an agent personally is not the best determinant of whether this is the right person to represent your manuscript. Or even whether the two of you can work well together under stressful conditions. Yes, I did repeat the phrase work together, now that you mention it, and with good reason. Believe me, the author’s work does not end when the ink dries on the agency contract: its nature merely changes. It’s rare that a manuscript or proposal does not go through at least some revisions after the agency contract is signed, generally at the new agent’s request. The agent will also be the person deciding which editors will be seeing your writing, how many will be seeing it at a time, and how many rejections add up to tabling the project. They will, in short, have a heck of a lot of power over you and your manuscript. So before you think about committing your manuscript or proposal to anyone’s hands, you’re going to want to ask some questions about who these people are, what they typically represent, and how they like to work with writers. Stop cringing — if you’re going to be a successful author, this is crucial information. Why? Well, agenting styles vary wildly. Some are very hands-on, line-editing the work they represent, and some prefer to, as the saying goes, leave the writing to the writers. Some enjoy explaining the publishing process to their clients, and some are infuriated by it. Some want their authors to check in regularly, while others roll their eyes if a client has the temerity to inquire whether the manuscript the agent sent out six months ago has met with any results yet. It’s really in the best interests of everyone concerned, therefore, that such preferences be aired up front. If it drives you nuts when people don’t return phone calls within a day, you’re going to be miserable if that agent with whom you clicked is a habitual message-ignorer, right? By the same token, if the agent is given to supplying his clients with tons of marginalia, he’s going to be unhappy if you’re the type of writer who regards even the slightest revision suggestion as an occasion to challenge the critiquer to a duel. Wordplay at twenty paces. Have your second meet mine at dawn by the unabridged dictionary stand at the nearest public library. I know: a pitch meeting is an intimidating situation, and you don’t want to offend anybody. But remember, these people come to a conference to discover writers like you. Don’t talk yourself out of approaching them — and don’t be intimidated out of finding out what you need to know. Yes, the deck is stacked, but that does not mean that it’s impossible to make it: writers find agents at conferences all the time. Including, incidentally, yours truly. After asking simply mountains of very pointed questions. I was merely being honest about the kind of client I would be. Fortunately, you need not wait until your pitching appointment or you have buttonholed an agent in the hallway to ask: most writers’ conferences feature panels where agents and editors talk about what kind of books they are seeking and how they like to work. Almost invariably, the moderator will ask for questions from the audience. That prospect should make you start rubbing your hands in glee like the villain in a melodrama. Here’s a risk-free chance to ask many agents at once about what they like in a book — and in a client. It’s a golden opportunity, yet much of the time, it is squandered by what I shall politely term apple-polishing, rather than hard-hitting inquiries. Let’s face it, “Isn’t it difficult to choose between so many marvelous submissions?” isn’t exactly cross-examination. Nor is it likely to elicit information that might enable a savvy pitcher to choose which agents to approach in the hallways and which to eschew. Another common question-time misstep: the too-specific inquiry of the conference newbie who thinks being called upon by the moderator constitutes an invitation to make a mass pitch to everyone on the dais. “Would you be interested,” such a fellow will stand up and ask, “in a book about a starship captain who finds himself marooned on a deserted planet where only mistletoe grows, and his only chance of escape is to court the ancient Druidic gods?” Now, personally, I would probably want to take a gander at that particular book, if only for giggles, but that’s not really the issue here. Universally, this kind of approach-disguised-as-question falls flat on its face. Why? Manners, my dears, manners. This guy is trying to side-step the rules by which every other pitcher at the conference has tacitly agreed to abide; why should any of the agents on the panel reward that kind of behavior? Let me reformulate that, as it may sound a bit strange coming from the patron saint of the hallway pitch: the agents’ and editors’ forums should not be construed as pitch sessions. You may, if you can work up the nerve, walk up to the panelists after this forum to try out your hallway pitch, but you will make a much, much better impression if you use the question time for — wait for it, Brünnhilde — questions. Still not convinced? Okay, let’s take a gander at what happens when our misguided friend ignores this dictum — as, I assure you, someone invariably does at every major conference. If the agents are feeling kind that morning, one of them will try to turn this too-specific question into an issue of more general concern, as in, “It’s interesting that you ask that, because the SF market right now is very much geared toward (some other focus entirely that would preclude serious consideration of the pitch above)…” The other, less charitable, and significantly more common response is for the agents all to say no and the moderator to ask for the next question from the audience. End of pitch attempt. Like hallway pitching, the response all depends upon the mood and generosity level of the agents approached — and how politely the writer has made the request. Even if you are Emily Post personified, however, don’t bother with the broadcast pitch approach: it’s not worth the risk. In all probability, the only result will be your getting talked about negatively in the bar that’s never more than 100 yards from any writers’ conference in North America. Trust me on this one. I’ve been there; I’ve heard the anecdotes. A popular variation on this faux pas is a writer’s standing up, describing her book, and asking how much she could expect to receive as an advance. From the writer’s point of view, this certainly seems like a reasonable question, doesn’t it? Yet to industry-trained ears, it says very clearly that the asker has not gone to the trouble of learning much about how publishing actually works. Why is that so evident to the pros? In the first place, advances vary wildly. Think about how deal memos are constructed: pretty much everything that has to do with the author’s cut is a matter of negotiation. (If you have no idea what a deal memo is, you might want to take a gander at the HOW DO MANUSCRIPTS GET PUBLISHED? category on the archive list at right. Even aspiring writers who have done their homework often harbor misconceptions about how the process works.) Second, the manuscript that attracts competitive bidding today may not interest any editor at all six months from now. When an aspiring writer asks such a question, what an agent tends to hear is, “I want you to predict the market value of a book you know absolutely nothing about, which may or may not be any good, and I expect this advice to be applicable at any time I may try to market this book concept.” Again: not really how the writer should be presenting herself, strategically speaking. So how does one use question time correctly, you ask? You’re going to want to keep your question general and, if at all possible, have everyone on the panel answer it, so you don’t appear to be targeting one of them for critique. Oh, it happens. It’s pretty to see how quickly agents — who, after all, are in competition with one another just as much as writers are — will rush to defend one of their own. Another common faux pas is to challenge what an agent on the panel has already said. Often, the writers who go this route will cite another source, for added credibility, “You said X ten minutes ago, but Miss Snark says…” If you take nothing else I say into the Q&A session, remember this: this type of question will not help you win friends and influence people. Human nature, I’m afraid: ho one particularly likes to be contradicted in front of a roomful of people. Being told that someone out there is laying down rules of her conduct is far more likely to raise hackles than provide clarification. And it’s not as though the average agent reads the many writing blogs out there, even if she happens to write one herself. So any name you cite — up to and including Miss S’, who even at the height of her blog’s popularity enjoyed at best a mixed reputation amongst agents — is unlikely to seem like an unimpeachable source. Trust me: as an opening gambit, it just won’t work. Although should you happen to bump into may agent at a conference, you may certainly feel free to preface your remarks to him with, “I really like Anne Mini’s blog,” should you be so moved. He gets a kick out of it. As long, that is, as you did not add immediately thereafter, “…and she says that what you told us a moment ago is wrong.” So what should you ask that intimidating row of agents? Here are few suggestions that designed to elicit information you would probably have a hard time gleaning anywhere else. As a fringe benefit, these will generally provoke interesting comments, rather than the usual bleak diagnoses of how tough the market is right now: “What was the last book each of you picked up at a conference? What made that book stand out from the others you heard pitched?” I love this question, as it gives pitchers hints about how the agents like to hear a book described; darned useful information. “Who is your favorite client, and why?” Agents tend to love this question, as it enables them to promote a client’s work. Make a great show of writing down names, nodding vigorously to indicate that you either you are intending to rush to the nearest brick-and-mortar bookstore the instant the conference is over and buy all of that author’s books or already own that author’s entire literary output and believe that s/he is the best thing to happen to literature since Homer first got the idea of telling the story of the Trojan war. Hey, agents make a living from their clients’ royalties. You think they don’t mention their clients at conferences in the hope of stimulating some book sales? “How long do you stick with a book you really love that’s not selling before you give up on it?” In many ways, this is the single most important thing to know about an agent with whom you’re considering signing — and it’s an agent-friendly question, because they almost invariably answer it by talking about a pet project that was hard to place, but eventually did get published. Word to the wise: while it’s tempting to be impressed by the story about how the agent showed a particular manuscript to 43 editors before it got picked up, it’s worth asking the follow-up question, “Is that your regular practice, or did you especially love that book?” It’s not unheard-of for an established agent to recycle a single heroic incident from the very beginning of his career throughout a couple of decades’ worth of writers’ conference panels. Bear in mind that what he was willing to do for the best manuscript he had ever read back in 1982 isn’t necessarily indicative of how he might handle your book now. “If I were looking to understand what a great first novel (or first book in your chosen category) would read like from an agent’s point of view, what books recently out would you suggest I read?” Another question that tends to be popular with panelists — because, trust me, no agent on earth is going to name a book that s/he DIDN’T represent. “How is selling a first-time author’s book different from selling the work of someone more established?” They’ll like this question less, but it will give you a pretty good idea of who has sold a debut novel lately and who hasn’t. “When you consider a submission, are you looking for a career-long relationship with that writer, or are you only thinking about the book in front of you? If you thinking in the long term, how often do you expect your clients to produce new books?” This last varies a lot, but in the last couple of years, many fiction agents have specifically been on the look-out for career writers, rather than those with only one great book in them. Asking panelists this question will let you know to whom to mention the other three manuscripts you have sitting in a drawer. “How much feedback do you give your clients before you submit their manuscripts? Do you usually ask for a revision before you send a book out? How much do you like to get involved in the revision process?” Yes, this is an enormous, multi-part question, but the agents who never edit at all will usually say so immediately. Translation: they don’t like to take on unpolished manuscripts, even if they have great market potential. Wouldn’t you prefer to know that before you submit, rather than after? “Is there any kind of book you specifically do NOT want to hear pitched this weekend?” Hey, someone’s got to pull the pin on that grenade. Sometimes they will answer this question unsolicited, however, so do keep an ear out during the forum. What was the last book you picked up from a conference pitch and why? What made that pitch stand out to you? The benefits of this question are twofold: it will enable agents to gush about clients whose books have not yet been released (always fun for them), and you might just glean a pitching tip or two. Do be aware, however, that some agents will respond defensively to this type of question, disliking the implication that they might EVER sign a writer without having read the manuscript in question. The usual deflecting response: “Well, I don’t really judge by the pitch; it all depends upon the writing.” The other reason this question can be a bit risky is — you are sitting down, I hope? — there are some agents who habitually attend conferences, but rarely pick up new clients. Perhaps they just like talking to writers, or maybe they just want a tax-deductible excuse to get out of town for a long weekend. For this reason, pay attention to which agents on the panel don’t volunteer to answer this question; you might want to do a little checking about how many first books those agents have sold within the last couple of years. “I’ve been hearing that many of the big agencies employ submission screeners. How many other people need to read a submission before it will reach your desk, and what kinds of comments do you like to see from them?” It can be difficult to get an answer to this question, but it can reveal quite a lot about the unwritten rules of screening. “What’s the worst query letter you ever got, and why?” This is a great question to ask if you’re not planning to do any hallway pitching, but only intend to query the attending agents after the conference. (Beginning your query, naturally, with the magic words, I so enjoyed hearing you speak at the recent XYZ conference…) The responses are usually pretty colorful. Take good notes; every other aspiring writer you know will probably want to see them. Do you have any automatic red flags for submissions? Any pet peeves we all should avoid? This will feel daring as it exits your mouth, but you are well within your rights to ask this one — and everyone in the room will bless you for it. Every agent has a different representation style, and you want to know about any pet peeves or preferences before you stick your pages under their respective noses, right? Fair warning about the response to this one: it’s very, very common for agents to imply that their individual pet peeves are shared by every other agent currently treading the earth’s crust. Sometimes it’s true; sometimes it isn’t. However, should you ever hear an agent mention a personal pet peeve on a panel, scour your work for that problem before you send that agent anything. If an agent makes the effort to warn you, s/he means it. What about the editors’ forum, you ask? After all that, you’ll be pleased to hear that there is really only one question that someone absolutely needs to ask the attending editors — although most of the questions above will work in this context, too. Since most publishing houses now have policies forbidding their editors from picking up unagented work, everyone in the room will be happier in the long run if you just pluck the pin from the grenade: “If you found a fabulous book here at the conference, may I ask which of you could sign the author directly, and which of you would have to refer her to an agent?” Yes, it’s a bit in-your-face, but the fact is, all of the major US publishing houses currently have policies forbidding editors from signing unrepresented writers — a policy of which editors tend to assume that pitchers are already aware. So much so that editors new to conferences are sometimes surprised that writers want to pitch to them. Often, senior editors are at the conference merely to give classes, network, or make connections with the already-established authors that often hang out at their local conferences; they may only have agreed to participate in pitch meetings to fill the time in between. (Hey, some conferences are boring.) Asking to know whether you’ll be pitching to someone who could act directly or not can help you streamline your pitching attempts. Generally speaking, an editor from a small publishing house is more likely to be able to say yes to a manuscript, but if, for instance, an editor at HarperCollins is given to perusing its <a href="http://www.authonomy.com/">online competitive submission site</a>, asking about direct submissions will probably elicit that information. These questions will also help you decide to whom to pitch on a more professional basis than whether the agent or editor struck you as a nice person whilst speaking on the dais. This is not the best criterion to use, and certainly not the best ONLY criterion to use, because: <blockquote> (a) Most people are rather different when speaking to large groups than one-on-one, which is how a signed writer would be dealing with an agent. Thus, your first impression from twenty feet away might not be an accurate predictor of what it would be like to work with them. (b) Agent and editor fora tend to be rather early in the morning, and folks in the arts are often not morning people. (See conclusion on previous point). (c) The pro who comes across as nastiest may in fact just be trying to save writers some chagrin. Telling the hard truth from a podium is not usually a big audience-pleaser, but the truth about the publishing industry is what you paid to come to the conference to hear, right? (d) The pro who just oozes affection for writers and good writing may not have the best track record for picking up clients. </blockquote> Finding out more about these people’s personal tastes and professional interests is also just good manners — and this is an industry where manners do count, to a surprisingly great extent. From a more self-interested perspective, wouldn’t you rather learn in an impersonal forum that Agent A isn’t remotely interested in your kind of book than during a face-to-face, one-on-one meeting? Of course you would. See why I was so adamant about your picking a book category? Once you have figured out which agents and editors from small houses (<a href="/index_p_1120.html">again</a>, all of the major US publishers currently have policies against picking up unagented authors) represent books in your category and like your type of voice (not always the same thing, in practice), try to get appointments with ALL of them. Standing by the appointment desk and listening for cancellations is a good way to do this; so is talking to other prospective pitchers, to see if anyone is looking to switch or was so discouraged by what he heard coming from the dais that he’d changed his mind about pitching at all. Fair warning: both practices can annoy the volunteers manning the appointment desk, so do make sure to request, not demand. Also, many conferences lay down rules barring signing up for extra appointments (unless you pay for them). However, even at such conferences, the eager beaver who happens to be standing by the desk when someone cancels can sometimes nab the extra slot. A great, great time to take your stand: immediately after the agents’ forum. Would-be pitchers who have just heard their assigned agents declare from the dais that the appointment was a mismatch are often overjoyed to switch appointments with someone else, or even just cancel their own. If you can’t get appointments, try to pitch to your likely candidates in the hallways. Again, immediately after the agents’ forum is an opportune moment for this. I felt your chest seize up, but please, don’t be afraid: you’re there to learn how to market your work better, and they are there to pick up new writers. You are not a second-class citizen begging the nobility for a favor, as so many first-time pitchers seem to think. You are trying to find the best collaborators for your writing career. As Francis I of France put it: “The sun shines for me as for others. I should very much like to see the clause in Adam’s will that excludes me from a share of the world.” You deserve to be heard. Don’t let ‘em intimidate you. But if you do find yourself too intimidated to walk up to someone in the industry and gasp out your magic first hundred words, do not despair: that information you gathered at the agents and editors’ forum will still serve you well. After the conference, you can query all of them — or at least the ones on your narrowed-down list. And do you know what I would do in your quivered-in shoes? (Hint: I mentioned it above.) If you said, “By Jove, you would go ahead and write the name of the conference on the outside of the envelope or put it in the subject line an e-mailed query,” give yourself a gold star for the day. Why is this a dandy idea? Because in most agencies, conference-goers are regarded as a bit savvier than the average querier; their queries, therefore, tend to be taken a bit more seriously AND read with greater attention. So it’s well worth your while. Oh, and before I forget: make sure to write REQUESTED MATERIALS in great big letters on the outside of the envelope or place it in the subject line of your e-mail, for the reasons above. (Assuming, of course, that an agent or editor did indeed request those materials. Don’t scrawl it otherwise.) But whatever you do, don’t be a silent wallflower at a writers’ conference. Take a few polite risks, and don’t be afraid to approach editors from smaller presses. The Brünnhilde who perpetually saves her voice for the final act has a hard time making a good first impression. Sing out, Hildy. This could be your big break. Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing a few hints on maintaining your energy throughout what can be a pretty exhausting event — and then, I have a few treats in store for the long weekend. Keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-3718" class="post-3718 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-conference-etiquette category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-how-can-i-keep-myself-from-freaking-out-mid-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-im-a-finalist-what-now category-industry-etiquette category-keeping-the-faith category-must-reads category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-tips category-pitching-to-editors-at-conferences category-pitchingpalooza category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-royalties-and-how-they-work category-should-i-bring-my-manuscript-to-a-pitch-meeting category-what-to-bring-to-a-conference category-when-should-i-not-approach-an-agent-at-a-conference"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/30/pitchingpalooza-part-xxiv-the-bare-necessities-of-conference-life-10/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-30T00:00:00+00:00">August 30, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:11+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/30/pitchingpalooza-part-xxiv-the-bare-necessities-of-conference-life-10/industry-etiquette/#comments">2 Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XXIV: the bare necessities of conference life</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/30/pitchingpalooza-part-xxiv-the-bare-necessities-of-conference-life-10/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XXIV: the bare necessities of conference life</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/gin-and-tonic.JPG"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/gin-and-tonic-1024x768.jpg" alt="" title="gin and tonic" width="512" height="384" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-13740"/></a> Okay, so maybe a gin-and-tonic isn’t actually a necessity of conference life. However, if an alien descended from the planet Targ to make the rounds of a few dozen writers’ conferences, you could hardly blame him/her/it from reaching that conclusion. I’m not saying that people drink a lot at writers’ conferences. I’m just saying that if Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Graham Greene stumbled into the bar that’s never more than a hundred yards from any writers’ conference in North America, they probably would not be drinking alone. Because the hired hands — agents, editors, conference presenters, visiting authors, etc. — have been known to congregate in that bar, it’s typically a pretty good place for an aspiring writer to make some literary connections. Or at least to strike up the ilk of conversation that leads to being asked, “So what do you write?” Word to the wise: you’re going to want to be able to answer this question in a lucid manner, even very late in the evening. If you want to keep in fine pitching fettle — and you do — watch what you’re drinking, and remember to eat something. If you feel the heavy weight of peer pressure (or just don’t want a drink), club soda and lime is cosmetically identical to the aforementioned gin concoction. I just mention. It’s also pretty good for rehydration — and believe me, after spending a day in most conference centers, your body will probably need it. Seem like a frivolous concern, compared to the weightier issues of pitching? Darned right. Since we’ve all been so very good for so very long, I have a fun-but-practical topic for today: what materials should you bring with you to a conference — and, more importantly, to your pitch sessions with agents and editors? Other than strong nerves, an iron stomach, and a firm conviction that your book is the best literary achievement since MADAME BOVARY, of course. At minimum, you’re going to want to bring a trusty, comfortable pen and a notebook with a backing hard enough to write upon, so you can take good notes during seminars, agents’ fora, and the like. If you want to make friends quickly, throw a few extra pens and paper into your bag, for handing around to total strangers less prepared than you. Even if you have no interest in making friends and influencing anyone other than an agent or editor at a conference, consider being the friendly neighborhood pen supplier. They are inexpensive, easily portable, and a small price to pay for making the acquaintance of some kind souls who will buy your books someday. Oh, you weren’t planning on jotting down all of your new writer friends’ contact information, so you could let them know when your first book is about to come out? Why ever not? Who is going to understand better what a triumph that is — or be more likely to understand that the best way to support a writer is to buy her books? You should also tote along all of the paperwork the conference organizers sent you, including a copy of your conference registration, information about your scheduled agent and/or editor appointments, and tickets to any dinners, luncheons, etc. for which you may have paid extra. (As, alas, one almost invariably does now at literary conferences. I can remember when rubber chicken banquets were thrown in gratis, and folks, I’m not particularly long in the tooth.) I’m sensing some shifting in chairs out there, amn’t I? “But Anne,” those of you new to writing great big checks to conference organizers protest, “why would I need to burden myself with all of that paperwork? I already signed up for those events, as well as my pitch appointments. Won’t the conference folks have all that on file?” I hate to burst anyone’s bubble here, but not necessarily. Remember, most writers’ conferences are organized by hard-working, dedicated, and sometimes overwhelmed teams of volunteers, not crack teams of hyper-efficient event organizers assisted by an army of support staff with Krazy Glue on their fingertips. Details have been known to fall through the cracks occasionally. So it’s not very prudent to assume that your paperwork has not been crack fodder — or even that the selfless volunteers working the registration tables will have access to their computers to double-check what you paid to attend or which agent you asked to see. Few literary conferences are held in the offices or homes of the organizers, after all, and while being able to get into the dinner where you paid $60 to hear the keynote speaker may be vitally important to you, the volunteers on site will probably neither have the time nor the inclination to run home to double-check a misprinted list of attendees. If you registered electronically, make sure to bring a hard copy of the confirmation. And if everything goes perfectly when you check in, please remember to thank the volunteer who helped you. As my grandmother used to say: manners cost nothing. And as I said only moments ago, who do you think is going to buy your book? You may well want to be a speaker at this conference someday; be charming. While you’re printing things out, go ahead and produce a hard-copy confirmation of your hotel reservation as well, if you’re not attending a conference that permits you to sleep in your own bed at night. Again, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it is not at all unheard-of for a hotel hosting a conference to over-book. Starting to sound like you’ll be carrying a lot of stuff? You will — so it’s a good idea to bring a shoulder bag sturdy enough to hold all of the handouts you will accumulate and books you will buy at the conference. This is not an occasion for a flimsy purse. Think grad student backpack, not clutch bag. Don’t underestimate how many books you may acquire. It’s rare that a literary conference doesn’t have a room — or at least a table — devoted to convincing you to buy the collected works of conference speakers, local writers, and the fine folks who organized the conference. Don’t expect to receive discounts on books sold at a conference, though: because the conference typically gets a cut of sales, offering a members’ discount seldom seems to occur to organizers. On the bright side, it’s usually child’s play to get ‘em signed. Even if the author is not hovering hopefully behind a pile of his literary output, if he’s at the conference at all, he’s going to be more than happy to autograph it. This is usually the case, incidentally, even if the author in question is a household name. So if you are looking for an excuse to walk up to a world-famous author and burble how much you love her writing, look no farther than this bookstore. It’s rare to find an author so jaded that she will not be willing to take a few minutes to sign the book a fan was kind enough to purchase. Don’t be shy about walking up to ‘em in hallways and after speeches to ask; this is basic care and feeding of one’s readership. And if you’re polite about it — introducing yourself by saying how much you loved the author’s latest work and/or speech last night, perhaps, or via the Magic First Hundred Words — who knows? You might just end up with a marvelous literary friend. Which is one of the reasons you signed up to go to a conference in the first place, right? Again, though, use discretion. No one likes to be accosted with a pen and a hardback in the bathroom, or while deep in conversation with a friend one has not seen for seven years. The words, “Excuse me,” are your friends here. Be aware, too, that when major bookstore chains organize these rooms (and at large conferences, it’s often a chain like Barnes & Noble), they often take an additional payment off the top, so a self-published author may well make less per book in such a venue. And if an author with a traditional publisher has shown up with her own copies, purloined from the sometimes generous stash of promotional copies publishers often provide authors because the expected copies did not show up on time for the conference (yes, it happens), the sales may not count toward official sales totals. This is not to say that you should hesitate to purchase a book from the writer with whom you’ve been chatting in the book room for the last half an hour. You should, if the book sounds interesting. However, you might want to ask the author if s/he would prefer for you to buy it elsewhere. An author with a strong preference will be only too glad to steer you in the right direction. Don’t be surprised if the question results in a book’s being shoved under your nose the next moment, though. The author may well elect to carry around half a dozen copies in his shoulder bag, just in case an eager reader turns up when the bookstore is closed. You may also be treated to a long litany of complaints about how much lower the royalties are when books are sold someplace like Costco (much of that steep discount typically comes out of the author’s end), or how much more work book promotion is for the author now than ten years ago, but that’s precisely the kind of behind-the-scenes insight you came to the conference to glean, right? Speaking of requests folks in the industry are thrilled to get, you can hardly ask an agent or editor a more flattering question than, “Are there any books for sale here that you worked upon? I’d like to read a couple, to get a sense of your taste/style/why on earth anyone would want to spend years on end editing books about flamingos.” Hard for even the surliest curmudgeon scowling at early morning light not to be pleased by that question. By the way, at a conference that offers an agents’ or editors’ panel (and most do), do not even consider missing it. Attendees are expected to listen to what the agents and editors are seeking at the moment and take note where it does not match what was said in the conference guide blurb or on the agents’ websites. Oh, did I forget to tell you to sit down before I mentioned that? Tastes change. So does the market. But blurbs tend to get reused from year to year. Even the standard agency guides, resources that actually are updated yearly, don’t always represent what any given member agent wants right this minute. No comment — except to say that you will be a much, much happier camper if you keep an ear cocked during the agents’ and editors’ forum to double-check that the agent to whom you were planning to pitch a vampire romance isn’t going around saying, “I swear, if I see ONE more vampire romance, I shan’t be responsible for my actions.” Because attendees are expected to memorize such preferences — and, if necessary, to switch pitching appointments accordingly — it’s a good idea to jot ‘em all down. Yes, even if an agent is declaring her undying love for semi-explicit love scenes in science fiction, and you happen to write futuristic Westerns. I guarantee you that at least one of those writers who showed up without pens or paper will be asking within the next few hours, “Wait — what did that SF agent say she was looking for in a manuscript?” Help him out, if only for the karma. And who do you think is going to buy…oh, you know the tune by now. In addition to noting all such preferences in my trusty notebook, I always like to carry a few sheets of blank printer paper in my bag, so I can draw a diagram of the agents’ forum, and another of the editors’. That way, I can remember who was who by who was sitting where. I also note a few physical characteristics for each, along with their expressed preferences in books. Why should I care what they look like and where they were sitting? Well, these fora are typically scheduled at the very beginning of the first full day of the conference — a very, very long day. By the time people are wandering into their appointments at the end of the second day, dehydrated from convention hall air and overwhelmed with masses of professional information, they’re often too tired to recall which editor had struck them the day before as someone with whom to try to finagle a last-minute appointment. Or to be sure that the redhead to whom they were just introduced in the bar was the agent with the romantic tastes in science fiction — or the one who said she was interested primarily in historical fiction about nuns. You wouldn’t want to mix them up after your third gin-and-tonic, would you? Being able to whip out those diagrams for a surreptitious last-minute check can be very helpful. It’s likely to be even more helpful a month or two after the conference, to assist you in remembering which of the dozen agents who spoke struck you as worthwhile to query instead of pitching, and which left you with the impression that they eat books, if not aspiring writers, for breakfast, and consume illustrators for lunch with an amusing côte de Rhone. On my diagrams, the author-consumers tend to be depicted with horns, pitchfork, and tail. But that’s just my little memory-jogging device. I always, always, ALWAYS advise writers to bring a big bottle of water to a conference — even to ones where the organizers tend to be very good about keeping water available. A screw-top bottle in your bag can save both spillage and inconvenience to your neighbors. How so? Well, when you’re wedged into the middle of a row of eager note-takers, it’s not always the easiest thing in the world to make your way to the table with the pitcher on it, nor to step over people’s legs with a full glass in your hand. If I seem to be harping on the dehydration theme, there’s a good reason: every indoor conference I have ever attended has dried out my contact lenses unmercifully. Personally, I prefer to meet people when my lenses are not opaque with grime. I’m wacky that way. I also prefer for my voice to be audible when I speak, rather than rasping. If your eyes dry out easily, consider wearing your glasses instead. Men may not make passes at girls who wear ‘em, to paraphrase the late great Ms. Parker, but looking bookish is seldom a drawback at a writers’ conference. Even if you have perfect vision, there’s a good reason to keep on sippin’. If you are even vaguely prone to nerves — and who isn’t, while preparing to pitch? — being dehydrated can add substantially to your sense of being slightly off-kilter. You want to be at your best. Lip balm can be helpful in this respect, too. Conferences and hotels, like airports, see a lot of traffic, so the week leading up to the conference is most emphatically the time to skip the vitamins. I go one step further: at the conference, I dump packets of Emergen-C into my water bottle, to keep my immune system strong. I’ve also been known to hand out chewable Vitamin C tablets like candy and bars of chocolate like medicine to those waiting in hallways for their pitch appointments. If this seems like frou-frou advice, buttonhole me at a conference sometime, and I’ll regale you with stories about nervous pitchers who have passed out in front of agents. To stave off feeling woozy during a pitch meeting, here are some tips: <blockquote> * Take nice, deep breaths. Not just every so often, but on a regular basis. You might even consider taking it up habitually. * Don’t lock your knees when you’re standing. People who do tend to fall over. * If you need to sit down, say so right away, no matter who happens to be standing in front of you. Trust me, that editor from Random House doesn’t want to have to pick you up off the floor, no matter how much she liked your pitch.. * Don’t drink too much coffee, tea, or alcohol prior to your pitch meeting. (Even though everyone else will be doing so with enthusiasm.) You will want your perceptions sharp, not wired or dulled. * Go outside the conference center every so often. A glimpse of blue sky can provide a lot of perspective. * Make some friends. You’ll have more fun, and you can meet in the hallway later to swap notes about seminars happening simultaneously. * If you’re feeling nervous or scared, talk about it with some nice person you met in the hallway, rather than keeping it bottled inside. * Be willing to act as someone else’s sounding board. Do it for the karma. And who do you think is going to buy your books in years to come? </blockquote> This is a time to be very good to yourself. A conference should not be an endurance test. If I had my way, the hallways at any pitching conference would be lined with massage chairs, to reduce people’s stress levels. While I’m sounding like your mother, I shall add: don’t try to pitch on an empty stomach. I’m very serious about this — no matter how nervous you are, try to eat something an hour or so before your pitch appointment. When I ran the Pitch Practicing Palace (a safe space for those new to the game to run their pitches by agented writers before trying them out on an agent or editor, to weed out potential problems), I used to keep a bowl of candy on hand, simply because so few pitchers had remembered to feed themselves. Trust me, even if your stomach is flipping around like the Flying Wallendas on speed, you’ll feel better if you eat something. If you are anticipating doing a lot of hallway pitching, or dislike the type of rubber chicken and reheated pasta that tends to turn up on conference buffets, you might want to conceal a few munchies in your bag, to keep yourself fueled up. I like to toss a couple of oranges into my conference kit: in a room with stagnant air, the aroma produced in the peeling process can lift everyone’s spirits. Even people who hate oranges may ask for a section. The generous person with the tin of Altoids also tends to be rather popular in the waiting area near the pitching appointments. Even if you don’t aspire to being the waiting room’s Easter Bunny, it’s not a bad idea to bring along some mints or ginger candy for your own use, just in case you start to feel queasy. Since you will most likely be sitting on comfortless chairs for many, many hours over the course of the conference, you might want to bring a small pillow, either to sit upon or for back support. Those metal chairs can be brutal. I once attended a conference where instead of tote bags, the organizers distributed portable seat cushions emblazoned with the writers’ organization’s logo to attendees. You should have heard the public rejoicing. In the spirit of serious frivolity, I’m going to make another suggestion: carry something silly in your bag, a good-luck charm or something that will make you smile when your hand brushes against it. When you’re stressed, it can work wonders to have a concealed secret. Honest, this works. I used to advise my university students to wear their strangest underwear on final exam day, for that reason — it allowed them to know something that no one else in the room knew. (It also resulted in several years’ worth of students walking up to me when they turned in their bluebooks and telling me precisely what they were wearing under those athletic department sweats — and, on one memorable occasion, showing me. So I say from experience: resist the urge to share; it’s disconcerting to onlookers.) If you suspect you would be uncomfortable wearing your 20-year-old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underoos">Underroos</a> or leather garter belt (sorry; you’re going to have to find your own link to that; I suspect it will not be difficult) under your conference attire, a teddy bear in your bag can serve much the same purpose. Anything will do, as long as it is special to you. So far, my advice has been concerned with your comfort and welfare. From here on out, the rest of today’s tips will be all about networking. That’s right, I said networking. Conferences are about CONFERRING, people. Because you will, I hope, be meeting some God-awfully interesting at your next writers’ conference, you will want to bring some easily transferable pieces of paper with your contact information printed on it. A business card, for instance, or comparably sized sheets from your home printer. I mention this now, so you may prepare in advance. Having to scrabble around in your tote bag for a stray scrap of paper upon which to inscribe your vitals every time you meet someone nice gets old fast. Besides, if you file a Schedule C to claim your writing as a business, the cost of having the cards made is usually tax-deductible –- and in the US, you don’t necessarily have to make money as a writer in every year you file a Schedule C for it. I’m not a tax attorney, though, so talk to a tax advisor experienced in working with writers — not just artists. Heck, all of those books you buy might just be deductible as market research. Seriously, it is worth your while to have some inexpensive business cards made, to print some up at home, or to ask Santa to bring you some professional-looking jobs for Christmas. It’s always a good idea to be able to hand your contact info to an agent or editor who expresses interest in your work. They don’t often ask for it, but if they do — in a situation, say, where an editor from a major press who is not allowed to pick up an unagented book really wants to hook you up with an agent — it’s best to be prepared. Even if the agent of your dreams just ends up using your card as a bookmark, she will see your name again. Second, unless you make a point of sitting by yourself in a corner for the entire conference, you are probably going to meet other writers that you like. Maybe even some with whom you would like to exchange chapters, start a writers’ group, or just keep in contact to remind yourself that we’re all in this together. Or to add to that Notify When the Book Comes Out list I sincerely hope you have been maintaining for years. (How do you think all of those people who have said, “Gee, I’d like to read some of your work sometime,” will find out about your book if you do not tell them?) It works the other way, too, of course. The easier you make it for those nice writers to contact you, the more likely they are to remain in contact. It’s just that simple. I’m sensing some ambient rustling again. “But Anne,” some rustlers exclaim, “I’m going to the conference to meet folks in the industry who can help me get my work published. Why would I waste my time chatting up other aspiring writers, who are ostensibly there for precisely the same reason?” A very good question, oh rustlers, and one that deserves a very direct answer: because it’s far from a waste of time. Besides, avoiding the unpublished is just a wee bit snobbish, isn’t it? I would urge you to avoid the extremely common mistake of walking into any writers’ gathering thinking that the only people it is important for you to meet are the bigwigs: the agents, the editors, the keynote speakers. It requires less energy to keep to yourself, true, but it is a tad elitist, not to say short-sighted: in the long run, casting a wider acquaintance net will pay off better for you. Why? For one very, very simple reason — and it’s not that these are the loyal friends who will not only buy your books, but sneak into bookstores across this fine land of ours and turn them cover-out, so browsers are more likely to notice them. The more writer friends you have, the easier it is to learn from experience. Why make your own mistakes, when you can learn from your friends’, and they from yours? What better source for finding out which agents are really nice to writers, and which are not? And who do you think is going to come to your book signings five years from now, if not that sweet writer with whom you chatted about romantica at lunch? Obviously, if you can swing a one-on-one with the keynote speaker, go for it. (An opening line that I’ve seldom seen fail: “Excuse me, but I wanted to thank you for that speech. You said exactly what I needed to hear right now.” Few public speakers, no matter how talented, are so secure that they won’t want to know what in particular struck you so.) But try not to let star-gazing distract you from interacting with the less well-known authors teaching the classes — who are there to help you, after all — or the writer sitting next to you in class. I have met some of the best writers I know by the simple dint of turning to the person rummaging through the packaged teas on the coffee table and saying, “So what do you write?” Don’t tell me that you’re too shy to handle this situation — I happen to know that you have a secret weapon. Remember those magic first hundred words? This is the time to use ‘em. Someday, some of your fellow conference attendees are going to be bigwigs themselves. Realistically, can you rule out the possibility that the person sitting next to you in the session on writer’s block isn’t the next Stephen King? Won’t you want to be able to say that you knew them when? And even if this were not true (but it is), writing is an isolating business. For every hour that even the most commercially successful writer spends interacting with others in the business, she spends hundreds alone, typing away. The more friends you can make who will understand your emotional ups and downs as you work through scenes in a novel, or query agents, or gnaw your fingernails down to the knuckle, waiting for an editor to decide whether to buy your book, the better. Even the world’s most charmed writer, blessed with immense talent AND vast quantities of pure, dumb luck, has days of wondering whether all the effort is worth it. Not all of us are lucky enough to live and work with people who appreciate the necessity of revising a sentence for the sixth time. Writers’ conferences are the ideal places to find friends to support you, the ones you call when your nearest and dearest think you are insane for sinking your heart and soul into a book that may not see print for a decade. So stuff some business cards into your conference bag. While you’re at it, toss in a folder containing several copies of your synopsis and the first five pages of your book, as a writing sample. Why five pages, specifically? Well, not all agents will want to see them, but many, when they are seriously taken with a pitch, will ask to see a few pages on the spot, to see if the writing is good enough to justify the serious time commitment of reading the whole book. It’s the same basic principle governing agency submission guidelines that request a few pages to be tucked into the query packet. Having these pages ready to whip out at a moment’s notice will make you look substantially more professional than if you blush and murmur something about printing it out, or simply hand the agent your entire manuscript. Especially if you had the foresight to carry them in a folder, so they would not wrinkle, and to print them on 20-lb or better bright white paper. Don’t, however, bother to bring your entire manuscript with you to the conference, unless you are a finalist in one of the major categories of the conference’s literary contest. You will never miss an opportunity by offering to mail or e-mail it instead. In fact, agents almost universally prefer it. This is often true, bizarrely, even if they insist that they want to read it on the airplane home. Why the exception for the contest finalists? Well, I don’t think it should come as much of a surprise to anyone that agents tend to be pretty competitive people. The primary reason that an agent asks for the whole thing right away, in my experience, is if he is afraid that another agent at the conference will sign you before he’s had a chance to read it. The writers who tend to be the objects of such heart-rending scenes of jealousy are almost invariably those sporting blue ribbons. So while I have known agents to read a chapter or two of a contest winner’s work in their hotel rooms, the chances of its happening in the normal run of a pitch day are roughly the same as finding the complete skeleton of a dinosaur in your back yard. It could happen — but it doesn’t really make sense to plan your life around a possibility that remote. Don’t hurt your back lugging the manuscript box around; the sample will do just as well. And don’t bother to bring an electronic copy of your book — it’s actually considered rather rude to hand out CD-ROMs willy-nilly. Why? Well, because not everyone is as polite as my lovely readers. It’s not at all uncommon for a total stranger to come charging up to an agent, editor, or someone like yours truly at a conference, shove a soft copy into our astonished hands, and disappear, calling back over her retreating shoulder, “My contact information’s on there, so you can let me know what you think of it.” Without exception, electronic media presented in this manner ends up in the trash, unread. Why? Well, apart from the general impoliteness involved in insisting that just because someone is in the industry, s/he has an obligation to read every stranger’s work, there’s also the very real risk that a stranger’s disk is going to be infected with a computer virus; it would be rather imprudent even to try to check out its contents. Even if the recipient happened to have a really, really good firewall, this method also conveys a tacit expectation that the recipient is going to go to the trouble and expense of printing the book out — or risk considerable eyestrain by reading an entire book onscreen. Not very likely. These days, if an agent or editor wants an electronic copy of your book, s/he will ask you to e-mail it. Trust me on this one. Regardless, your 5-page sample should be in hard copy. Ideally, it should be the opening of the book, but if you feel that an excerpt from the end of the book showcases your work better, use that. Using the first five pages is widely considered more professional, though — it just exudes more confidence in your writing, as these are the first pages a screener would see in a submission. From the writer’s perspective, the sole purpose of the writing sample is to get the agent to ask you to send the rest of the book, so although I hammer on this point about twice a month here, I’m going to say it again: as with everything else you submit to any industry pro, make sure that these pages are impeccably written, totally free of errors, and in standard format. Seriously, this is not a moment when you want your pages to cry out, “The author’s unfamiliar with the norms of the industry!” You want the formatting to be unprovocative, showcasing rather than distracting from your writing. If the fact that there is a standard format for manuscripts — and that it does not resemble the formatting of published books — is news to you, rush into the archives at right immediately, and take a gander at the HOW TO FORMAT A BOOK MANUSCRIPT category. Even if you’re relatively sure you’re doing it right, it isn’t a bad idea to double-check. Stop groaning, long-time readers; we all could use a refresher from time to time. As long as I am writing this blog, no reader of mine is going to have his or her work rejected simply because no one told him or her what the rules of submission were. Again, I’m funny that way. Okay, that’s enough practicalities for one day. Avoid dehydration, make some friends, and, as always, keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4087" class="post-4087 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-after-you-have-queried-or-pitched category-after-you-receive-a-request-for-pages category-after-youve-made-a-successful-pitch category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-being-an-agents-dream-client category-but-ive-heard category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-how-much-of-a-book-must-be-written-before-i-can-pitch-or-query-it category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-industry-etiquette category-keeping-the-faith category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-a-multiple-protagonist-novel category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-tips category-pitching-to-editors-at-conferences category-pitchingpalooza category-post-conference-etiquette category-post-pitch-etiquette category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-should-i-bring-my-manuscript-to-a-pitch-meeting category-what-are-the-polite-ways-to-approach-an-agent category-what-do-i-do-if-my-pitch-works category-what-not-to-say-to-an-agent-interested-in-your-work category-why-might-i-consider-pitching-instead-of-querying category-why-might-my-pitch-get-rejected"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/29/pitchingpalooza-part-xxiii-how-soon-is-too-soon-how-much-information-is-too-much-and-other-burning-questions-of-conference-life-19/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-29T00:00:00+00:00">August 29, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:12+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/29/pitchingpalooza-part-xxiii-how-soon-is-too-soon-how-much-information-is-too-much-and-other-burning-questions-of-conference-life-19/industry-etiquette/#respond">No Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XXIII: how soon is too soon, how much information is too much, and other burning questions of conference life</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/29/pitchingpalooza-part-xxiii-how-soon-is-too-soon-how-much-information-is-too-much-and-other-burning-questions-of-conference-life-19/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XXIII: how soon is too soon, how much information is too much, and other burning questions of conference life</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lie-detector.jpg" alt="lie-detector" title="lie-detector" width="493" height="337" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6280"/> Remember back at the beginning of this series, when I introduced you to <a href="/index_p_15559.html">the world’s worst salesman</a>, that genial soul who evinced continual exasperation because consumers insisted upon wandering into his flooring emporium and demanding, well, flooring? If only all of the benighted souls pursuing Marmoleum and carpet would leave him alone for a while, perhaps he could get some real work done — like, say, selling some flooring. I may have met his match over the weekend: a delightful gentleman whom Home Depot had, perhaps unwisely, entrusted with the task of translating the customer’s choice of paint chip into a bucket of something that might conceivably resemble that hue if applied judiciously to a wall. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly match that,” he told me in a tone that implied I was a mad scientist, bent upon world domination through vicious color manipulation. “I’d have to special-order the base for something like that. Might take weeks.” The color in question was, should you care to know it, royal blue. The wall behind him was painted approximately the same color as my proffered paint chip. I could, had I been so inclined, simply reached onto the shelf immediately behind his head and grabbed a can of spray paint in the shade I was requesting. Besides, he had said something quite similar to the beige-loving lady in front of me in line. I waved paint chips from three different manufacturers under his nose, suggesting that if he did not have the base for my first choice in stock, he might conceivably be able to try one of the others. He snorted derisively. “Yeah, but I’d have to go into the back for either of those.” He was visibly surprised when this piece of sterling logic did not instantly dissuade me from wanting to paint anything, ever. He pointed out that he would actually have to walk all the way to the back of the store in order to fulfill my madcap request, but I remained adamant. “Maybe you could come back tomorrow,” he suggested. Eventually, I cajoled him into attempting to mix some royal blue for my trim, just to see if it was possible. If it turned out not to be, I assured him, I would follow his advice and paint the room in question flat white. But at least the question of whether royal blue was a color extant only in theory would have been resolved for the ages. Mirabile dictu, it is in fact feasible for a well-equipped hardware store to produce a can of non-white paint. Feeling that the paint gods were on my side, I recklessly requested a couple of gallons of light blue paint for the rest of the room. He sighed so gustily that customers in adjacent aisles wheeled around to see who had been punched in the gut. “Lady, if you want colors like that, you should go to a specialty store. Now, if you could pick something more reasonable…” “Well, I could gold-leaf the room, but that might be a trifle hard on the eyes.” He appeared pleased with the suggestion. “That would be beautiful. Of course, we don’t carry anything like that here.” Clearly, the man was a minion of the wallpaper industry. By dint of persistent cross-examination, however, I did manage to elicit an admission that a light blue could in fact be produced by — I hope I’m not giving away an artist’s secret here — mixing a blue tint with white paint. Who knew? Not wanting to press my luck, I apprehended my paint cans and fled. I was halfway through turning the third wall light blue before I was forced to resort to the second gallon. The paint within appeared to be a brilliant orange. “Well, that happens,” my hero informed me when I returned. “Some of these tints are unstable.” Why am I sharing this story of woe and disillusionment toward the end of Pitchingpalooza, you ask? Because like this paint-monger, many a conference pitcher seems to believe, wrongly, that communicating his resentment about having to pitch at all will not fundamentally color his hearer’s perception of whether he knows what he is talking about. Judging by the tone and speed of many conference pitches, quite a few pitchers’ primary goal is just to get the agent or editor listening to it to decamp as swiftly as possible. But we know better, right? Pop quiz: what’s the actual purpose of a conference pitch? Help yourself to a gold star out of petty cash if you instantly shouted, “Why, to convince the agent or editor to ask to see pages!” But if your first instinct was to say, “Um, to survive my pitch meeting without dying of fright?” we need to talk. Conference pitching was not invented by sadists in order to torture innocent writers, you know — in theory, it’s intended to save aspiring writers some time. Instead of having to proceed through a tedious and often protracted querying process that does not always result in requests for pages, a writer can approach several agents at a conference, present her book’s premise convincingly, and walk out with one or more materials requests. But that doesn’t mean that the people hearing your pitch won’t notice if you appear to be hurried, hostile, or just plain petrified; how you present yourself and your book does matter. It’s okay to acknowledge that you’re nervous; it’s not okay to act as though the agent or editor harbors a grudge against writers in general and you in particular, simply because she asks what category would most comfortably fit your book. Resentment of the process shows up beautifully within the context of a tense pitching appointment, and for good reason. Just as a query that begins Since agents like you have set yourself up as the gatekeepers of the publishing industry, I guess I have to go through you to get published is much less likely to succeed than on that introduces one’s book politely, a pitch accompanied by a bitter denunciation of the business that keeps the hearer shod, fed, and with a roof over her head is substantially less likely to engender a request to see pages than one that doesn’t. Go figure. Remember, it’s human nature to prefer to work with upbeat, friendly people, rather than angry, sullen ones. A good agent will expect to have a lot of contact with his clients; you’re going to want to come across as easy to work with on a long-term basis. You don’t have to smile constantly, naturally, or heap the agent with compliments on her attire. (“A blue suit — well, I can certainly see that you live in the fashion capital of North America.”) Just be pleasant, will ya? I sense some disgruntlement out there. Go ahead, get it out — far better that you air it here than in a pitch meeting. “But Anne,” the annoyed many cry, “that’s not fair! I want my book to be judged on its writing and my great premise, not how likable I am.” Seriously? If the agent of your dreams asks to see the first 50 pages of your manuscript, you’re going to quibble about why? But okay, if you insist: logically, it is impossible for an agent or editor to assess anyone’s writing based upon a verbal pitch alone. The pro can glean quite a bit of information about whether he is likely to be a good fit for a particular book project from a pitch — the book’s category, for instance, or its target audience, the inherent excitement of its central conflict, whether the intended reader will sympathize with the protagonist’s dilemma — but if the only way that you will accept representation is if the agent reads your first two sentences and falls in love with your voice, pitching is not going to produce the outcome you want. Sorry to be the one to break it to you. If, however, you are the kind of writer who approaches conference pitching as a means of leap-frogging over the query stage and straight to submission, it’s in your best interest to be as pleasant as possible. It will get your great premise a more hospitable hearing. Is everyone clear on that? If not, please speak up; that’s what the comments section is for, people. Remember, too, that in addition to maintaining a positive attitude, striving for clarity, rather than mere accuracy of description, will help you win friends for your book. Aspiring writers very, very frequently forget this, but the author is not the only one who is going to have to pitch any given book. Your agent will be pitching it to editors; the editor that picks it up will be pitching it to an editorial committee. Indeed, it’s scarcely an exaggeration to say that one of the main points of conference pitching is to render pitching a book someone else’s responsibility. Making it pellucidly clear what your book is about will go a long way toward convincing an agent that it would be worth her time to take a gander at your pages. Obviously, clarity of presentation is especially challenging for writers of multiple-protagonist novels. <a href="/index_p_15794.html">Earlier in this series</a>, I went over a few reasons that it’s a better idea to pitch the overall story of a multiple-perspective book, rather than try to replicate the various protagonists’ personal story arcs or talk about voice choices. It tends to be substantially less confusing for the hearer this way, but there’s another very good reason not to overload the pitch with too much in-depth discussion of how the story is told, rather than what the story is. So please, I implore you, do not open your pitch with, “My novel is a multi-perspective first-person narrative, alternating between the point of view of a color-blind house painter, a tone-deaf piano teacher, and a pianist who has entirely lost the sense of touch.” It’s not that these characters are uninteresting; your hearer will want to hear the story. Don’t make that face at me, multiple perspective-lovers. Presumably, you chose the multiple POV narrative style because it fits the story you want to tell, not the other way around, right? That’s the writer’s job, figuring out the most effective means of telling the tale. That doesn’t change the fact that in order for an agent to sell the book to an editor, or the editor to take the book to committee, he’s going to have to be able to summarize the story. That’s right — precisely the task all of you would-be pitchers out there have been resenting for a month now. And inveterate queriers have been resenting for years. If the story comes across as too complex to be able to boil down into terms that the agent or editor will be able to use to convince others that this book is great, your pitch may raise some red flags. It really does behoove you, then, not to include every twist and turn of the storyline — or every point of view. If you get stuck about how to tell the overarching story of a book with multiple protagonists (or multiple storylines, for that matter), you could conceivably pick one or two of the protagonists and present his/her/their story/ies as the book, purely for pitching purposes. Ooh, that suggestion generated some righteous indignation, didn’t it? “But Anne,” I hear some of you upright souls cry, “isn’t that misleading?” Not really. Remember, the point of the pitch is not to distill the essence of the book: it is to convince the agent or editor to ask to read it. No one on the other side of the pitching table seriously expects to learn everything about a book in a 2-minute speech, any more than he would from a synopsis. If it were possible, how much of a storyline could there possibly be? Why, in fact, would it take a whole book to tell it? “But Anne,” the upright whimper, “I don’t want to lie. Won’t I get in trouble for implying that my book has only two protagonists when it in fact has twelve?” Trust me, this strategy is not going to come back and bite you later, at least not enough to fret over. What makes me so sure of that? Frankly, it would require the memory banks of IBM’s Big Blue for a pitch-hearer to recall everything he heard over the average conference period. Blame it on pitch fatigue. After an agent or editor has heard a hundred pitches at a conference this weekend, and two hundred the weekend after that, he’s not going to say when he receives your submission, “Hey! This has 4 more characters than the author told me it did!” I know, I know: we all want to believe that our pitches are the exception to this — naturally, the agent of our dreams will remember every adjective choice and intake of breath from OUR pitches, as opposed to everyone else’s. But that, my dears, is writerly ego talking, the same ego that tries to insist that we must get our requested submissions out the door practically the instant the agent or editor’s request for them has entered our ears. In practice, it just isn’t so. And shouldn’t be, actually, in a business that rewards writing talent. Given the choice, it’s much, much better for you if the agent of your dreams remembers that the writing in your submission was brilliant than the details of what you said in your 10-minute meeting. As to the question of being misleading…well, I’ll get back to the desirability of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth a little later in this post. For now, let’s move on to the next reader’s question. Insightful long-term reader <a href="/index_p_554.html">Janet wrote in some time ago to ask</a> how to handle the rather common dilemma of the writer whose local conference occurs whilst she’s in mid-revision: “What do you do when you realize that you might have to change the structure of the novel?” she asked. “Pitch the old way?” I hear this question all the time during conference season, Janet. The answer really goes back to the pervasive writerly belief I touched upon briefly above, the notion that an agent or editor is going to remember any given pitch in enough detail down the road to catch discrepancies between the pitch and the book. But realistically, they’re going to be too tired to recall every detail by the time they get on the plane to return to New York, much less a month or two from now, when they get around to reading your submission. Stop deflating, ego — this isn’t about you. It’s about them. At a conference, the average agent or editor might be hearing as many as hundred pitches per day. Multiply that by the number of days of the conference — and multiply THAT by the number of conferences a particular agent or editor attends in a season, not to mention the queries and submissions she sees on a daily basis, and then you can begin to understand just how difficult it would be to retain them all. I hate to bruise anyone’s feelings, but now that you’ve done the math, I ask you: how likely is it that she’s going to retain the specifics of, say, pitch #472? You shouldn’t fret about that, because — pull out your hymnals, long-term readers — the purpose of a book pitch is to get the agent or editor to ask to read it, not to buy the book sight unseen. Since that request generally comes within a few minutes of the writer’s uttering the pitch, if it’s going to come at all, what you need to do is wow ‘em in the moment. Although it is nice, admittedly, if yours is the pitch that causes an agent to scrawl in her notes, “Great imagery!” That’s why, in case you’ve been wondering, I’ve been harping so much throughout Pitchingpalooza about the desirability of including memorable details in your pitch. You have the pitch-hearer’s attention for only a few moments, and 9 times out of 10, she’s going to be tired during those moments. A vividly-rendered sensual detail or surprising situation that she’s never heard before is your best bet to wake her up. Under the circumstances, that’s not an insignificant achievement. Don’t lessen your triumph by insisting that she be able to reproduce your pitch from memory six weeks hence — or that you need to get those requested materials to her before she forgets who you are. Accept that she may not remember you by the time she gets on the plane to go home from the conference, and take the time to whip your manuscript into shape before submission. The upside of short memory spans: you don’t really need to worry if your story changes between the time you pitch or query it and when you submit the manuscript pages. That’s par for the course. Writers rewrite and restructure their books all the time; it’s not considered particularly sinister. That being said, your best bet in the case of a book in the throes of change is to tell the story that you feel is the most compelling. If you haven’t yet begun restructuring, it will probably be the old one, as it’s the one with which you are presumably most familiar, but if you can make a good yarn out of the changes you envision, it’s perfectly legitimate to pitch that instead. It honestly is up to you. As long as the story is a grabber, that is. While we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the ethics of not mentioning those aspects of the book one is afraid might negatively influence a pitch-hearer’s view of the manuscript. The most popular proposed omissions: the book’s length and whether it is actually finished on the day of the pitching appointment. Let me take the second one first, as it’s easier to answer. There is a tacit expectation, occasionally seen in print in conference guides, that a writer will not market a novel until she has a complete draft in hand, because it would not be possible for an agent to market a partial first novel. In fact, most pitching and querying guides will tell you that you should NEVER pitch an unfinished work. Except that it isn’t quite that simple. Agented writers pitch half-finished work to their agents all the time, for instance. Does that mean that you should? Well, it depends. It would most definitely be frowned-upon to pitch a half-finished book that might take a year or two to polish off — unless, of course, the book in question is nonfiction, in which case you’d be marketing it as a book proposal, not as an entire manuscript, anyway. Let me repeat that, because it’s important: nonfiction books are typically sold on proposals, not the entire manuscript. Yes, even if it’s a memoir; although some agents do prefer to see a full draft from a previously unpublished writer, the vast majority of memoirs are still sold in proposal form. So I ask you: could you realistically have your novel in apple-pie order within the next six months? If so, that’s not an unheard-of lapse before submitting requested materials. And if you have a chapter of your memoir in terrific shape, could you pull a book proposal together within that timeframe? (For some guidance on what that might entail, please see the aptly-named HOW TO WRITE A BOOK PROPOSAL category on the archive list at the bottom right-hand side of this page.) If the answers to all of those questions are a resounding “No, by gum!” you should consider holding off. Unless, of course, you’d just like to get in some pitching practice while the stakes are still low. But if you are pitching a novel just to get the hang of it (a marvelous idea, by the way), don’t make the mistake of saying that the manuscript isn’t done yet. It’s considered rude. You’re supposed to have a fiction project completed before you pitch or query it, you know. Confused? You’re not alone. Like so many of the orders barked at conference attendees, the expectation of market-readiness has mutated a bit in translation and over time. Take, for instance, the prevailing wisdom that maintains you should have a full draft before you pitch because an agent or editor who is interested will ask you for the entire thing on the spot. As in they will fly into an insensate fury if you’re not carrying it with you at the pitch meeting. But as I have mentioned earlier in this series, demanding to see a full or even partial manuscript on the spot doesn’t happen all that often anymore (and the insensate fury part never happened in the first place). 99.9% of the time, even an agent who is extremely excited about a project will prefer that you mail it — or e-mail it. Seriously, she’s not in that great a hurry — and trust me, she’s not going to clear his schedule in anticipation of receiving your submission. I’ll bring this up again when I go over how to prep a submission packet (probably in September; I want to go over query basics first, so PLEASE, if you have pitched within the last few weeks and are impatient to send things off, read through the HOW TO PUT TOGETHER A SUBMISSION PACKET category before you drop anything in the mail) but I always advise my clients and students not to overnight anything to an agency or publishing house unless the receiving party is paying the postage. Yes, even if an agent or editor asks you to overnight it. I heard that horrified gasp out there, but the fact is, it’s a myth that overnighted manuscripts get read faster — yes, even if the agent asked you to send it instantly. That request is extremely rare, however; most submitters simply assume that they should get it there right away — or that their work will be seem more professional if it shows up in an overnight package. That might have been true 20 years ago, when overnighting a manuscript would have been a rarity but here’s a news flash: FedEx and other overnight packaging is just too common to attract any special notice in a crowded mailroom these days. If you’re worried about speed, Priority Mail (which gets from one location to another within the US in 2-3 days) is far cheaper — and if you write REQUESTED MATERIALS in great big letters on the outside of the package, might actually get opened sooner than that spiffy-looking overnight mail packet. Besides, even if you did go to the trouble and expense to get your manuscript onto the requester’s desk within hours of the request, it can often be months before an agent reads a manuscript, as those of you who have submitted before already know. Which means, in practical terms, that you need not send it right away. And that, potentially, means that a savvy writer could buy a little time that could conceivably be used for revision. Or even writing. Catching my drift here? After all, if you’re going to mail it anyway…and the agent is going to be on vacation until after Labor Day…and if you could really get away with sending requested materials anytime between now and Christmas…and if the agent has asked for only the first three chapters… Or, to put it in querying terms: if the agencies are going to take a month to respond to the letter…and then ask for the first 50 pages…and that has to get by a couple of screeners before they can possibly ask for the rest? Starting to get the picture? There’s no reason not to work those predictable delays into your pitching and querying timeline. Naturally, I would never advise anyone to pitch a book that isn’t essentially done, but let’s face it, it may well be months before the person sitting across the table from you in a pitch meeting asks to see the entire manuscript. And you know what? You’re under no obligation to send it out instantly, even then. If you can get requested materials out the door within a few months, you should be fine. Although I would not encourage any of you to join the 40% of writers who are asked to submit requested materials but never do, anyone who has ever written a novel can tell you that where writing is concerned, there is finished — as in when you’ve made it all the way through the story and typed the words THE END on the last page — and then there is done — as in when you stop tinkering with it. Then there’s REALLY done, the point at which you have revised it so often that you have calculated the exact trajectory of the pen you will need to lob toward Manhattan to knock your agent or editor in the head hard enough to get him to stop asking for additional changes. And then there’s REALLY, REALLY done, when your editor has changed your title for the last time and has stopped lobbying for you to transform the liberal librarian sister into a neo-conservative professional squash player who wrote speeches for Ronald Reagan in his spare time. But frankly, from the point of view of the industry, no manuscript is truly finished until it is sitting on a shelf in Barnes & Noble. Until the cover is actually attached to the book, it is an inherently malleable thing. The fact that everyone concerned is aware of this, I think, renders a bit of sophistry on the writer’s part over the question of whether a manuscript is completed somewhat pardonable. This does NOT mean, however, that it is in your best interests to waltz into a pitch meeting and announce that the book isn’t finished yet — in a word, don’t. Because agents and editors are, as a group, perfectly aware that writers are prone to levels of tinkering that would make Dante’s inferno appear uncomplex, it’s actually not a question that gets asked much. If you are asked? Sophistry, my dears, sophistry, of the type that agented and published writers employ all the time: “I’m not quite happy with it yet, but I’m very close.” You are close to finishing it, aren’t you? And you aren’t completely happy about every syllable of the current text, right? The question of whether to mention manuscript length is a bit more tortured, as it tends to generate a stronger knee-jerk response in pitches and query letters than the question of submission timing. Or so I surmise, from the response to the inevitable moment at every writers’ conference I have ever attended when some stalwart soul stands up and asks how long a book is too long. Without fail, half the room gasps at the response. I hesitate to give limits, for fear of triggering precisely the type of literalist angst I deplored a couple of days ago, but here are a few ballpark estimates. Currently, first novels tend to run in the 65,000 – 100,000 word range — or, to put it another way, roughly 250 – 400 pages. (That’s estimated word count, by the way, 250 x # of pages in Times New Roman, standard format. For the hows and whys of estimation vs. actual word count, please see the WORD COUNT category at right.) Standards do vary a bit by genre, though — check the recent offerings in your area to get a general sense. If your book runs much over 400 pages, be prepared for some unconscious flinching when you mention the length. Or just don’t mention the length in your pitch; it’s not a required element. And remember, these are general guidelines, not absolute prohibitions. Few agency screeners will toss out a book if it contains a page 401. Do be aware, though, that after a book inches over the 125,000 word mark (500 pages, more or less), it does become substantially more expensive to bind and print. (For more on this point, please see the <a href="/index_p_1126.html">rather extensive exchange</a> in the comment section of a past post.) If at all possible, then, you will want to stay under that benchmark. If you have not, don’t mention the length in your pitch or query. Not just for marketing reasons, or at any rate not merely to preclude the possibility of an instinctive response to a book’s length. If a manuscript is too long (or too short, but that is rarer since the advent of the computer), folks in the industry often have the same response as they do to a manuscript that’s not in standard format: they assume that the writer isn’t familiar with the prevailing norms. And that, unfortunately, usually translates into the submission’s being taken less seriously — and often, the pitch or query as well. If your book is over or under the expected estimated length for your genre, you will probably be happier if you do not volunteer length information in either your pitch or your query. This is not dishonest — neither a pitcher nor a querier is under any actual obligation to state the length of the manuscript up front. I’m not recommending that you actually lie in response to a direct question, of course — but if the question is not asked, it will not behoove you to offer the information. Remember, part of the art of the pitch involves knowing when to shut your trap. You will not, after all, be hooked up to a lie detector throughout the course of your pitch. Although that would be an interesting intimidation strategy, one I have not yet seen tried on the conference circuit. Given the current level of distrust aimed at memoirists these days, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it come into fashion. Yes, I know: many experts will tell you that you MUST include word count in your query, but as far as I know, no major agency has a policy requiring Millicent to reject queries where it’s not mentioned. Some agents will say they like to see it, for the simple reason that it makes it easier to weed out the longest and the shortest manuscripts — but if your book would fall into either of those categories, is it really in your interest to promote a knee-jerk rejection? I’ll answer that one for you: no, it isn’t. For any reason. Keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4254" class="post-4254 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-3-line-pitch category-after-you-have-queried-or-pitched category-annotated-table-of-contents category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-approaching-agents-online-or-by-e-mail category-but-ive-heard category-but-isnt-revising-to-make-my-work-more-marketable-compromising-my-artistic-vision category-changing-nature-of-publishing category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-dealing-with-fear-of-rejection category-e-mailing-queries category-editors category-how-selling-nonfiction-is-different-from-selling-fiction category-how-to-write-a-nonfiction-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-keeping-the-faith category-literary-fiction-pitching category-meeting-fellow-writers-and-other-kindred-spirits category-memoir-book-proposals category-memoir-craft-and-marketing category-nonfiction-pitching category-nonfiction-proposals category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-a-nonfiction-book category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-or-querying-nonfiction category-pitching-tips category-pitchingpalooza category-platform-demonstration-in-a-pitch category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-queriers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-rejection-letters-decoded category-strategizing-a-writing-career category-what-not-to-say-to-an-agent-interested-in-your-work"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/28/pitchingpalooza-part-xxii-and-then-theres-the-finesse-part-or-the-advantages-of-lingering-on-the-right-track-21/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/approaching-agents-online-or-by-e-mail/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-28T00:00:00+00:00">August 28, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2021-04-15T14:23:21+00:00">April 15, 2021</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/28/pitchingpalooza-part-xxii-and-then-theres-the-finesse-part-or-the-advantages-of-lingering-on-the-right-track-21/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/approaching-agents-online-or-by-e-mail/#comments">1 Comment on Pitchingpalooza, part XXII: and then there’s the finesse part, or, the advantages of lingering on the right track</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/28/pitchingpalooza-part-xxii-and-then-theres-the-finesse-part-or-the-advantages-of-lingering-on-the-right-track-21/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/approaching-agents-online-or-by-e-mail/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XXII: and then there’s the finesse part, or, the advantages of lingering on the right track</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/on-the-right-track.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1168" title="on-the-right-track" src="/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/on-the-right-track.jpg" alt="" width="128" height="160" /></a> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/on-the-right-track.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1168" title="on-the-right-track" src="/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/on-the-right-track.jpg" alt="" width="128" height="160" /></a> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/on-the-right-track.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1168" title="on-the-right-track" src="/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/on-the-right-track.jpg" alt="" width="128" height="160" /></a> My apologies for the unexpected mid-series hiatus; I honestly had not anticipated that Pitchingpalooza would carry us into September. (Especially as I have some genuinely juicy treats in store for you over Labor Day weekend.) Blame the muses’ notoriously perverse sense of humor for arranging to have two — count ‘em, two — of my editing clients’ acquiring editors announcing that they were moving on to pastures new last week. Everyone concerned wishes them happy trails, of course, but with a certain amount of trepidation: with any changing of the editorial guard inevitably comes changed expectations for the handed-over manuscript. Okay, I’m not entirely clear on what that massive collective gasp of horror out there in the ether meant. Were some of you unaware that in recent years, it has become not at all uncommon for the acquiring editor not to remain with the publishing house long enough to see a book she just loved as a submission all the way through the publishing process? Or was the shock — and I suspect it was — that editors will often ask for major changes in manuscripts after they have acquired them, for both fiction and nonfiction? Oh, I’m sorry; I should have warmed all of you memoirists out there before I sprung that last bit, especially those of you who have been slaving over the Annotated Table of Contents in your book proposals in anticipation of a post-Labor Day submission blitz. I know that you have been working hard, trying to cobble together a plausible and entertaining story arc in a series of chapter summaries — so it may well be dispiriting to hear that it’s far from rare for an acquiring editor, or even an agent offering representation to a nonfiction author, to tell the point-blank that some of those chapters will need to go. Or that others should be added. Starting to make more sense now that nonfiction is typically sold on a book proposal, not a completed manuscript? While most of the book is theoretical, it’s easier to conceive of changing it. Yes, even if the writer believes that it is already finished. No matter how complete a memoir or nonfiction book may be in the author’s mind, from a publishing perspective, everything is up for negotiation until it is actually in print and sitting on a bookstore shelf. What is and isn’t finished is the publisher’s call, not the author’s. That assumption pervades the submission stage, and even the pitching/querying stage of a proposal’s progress. From the acquiring editor’s point of view, the proposal is essentially a job application: the writer is making the case that she is the best person currently wandering this terrestrial sphere for the publishing house to hire to write that particular book. See why I’ve spent this series urging all of you nonfiction writers to spend this series thinking about your platform, and figuring out ways to work it into your pitch? I sensed all of you novelists relaxing over the course of the last couple of paragraphs, but perhaps you shouldn’t have: agents and editors ask fiction writers to change their manuscripts all the time, too, even absent an editorial changing of the guard. Little things, usually, like whether the ending of the book is dramatically satisfying or whether a complex literary voice constitutes overwriting or is just right. And while we’re massaging the text, need the protagonist’s sister be gay? Or a deep-sea fisherperson with marked propensities toward disestablishmentarianism? Oh, you may laugh, but with the high turnover at publishing houses these days, a savvy writer needs to be prepared to be flexible. Just don’t modify your only electronic copy of your original manuscript; it’s not beyond belief that the editor who takes over tomorrow from the person who took over yesterday will like the same things about your book that the acquiring editor did. Are your heads spinning, campers? Good: you’re in a perfect mindset to think about conference pitching. After the last couple of Pitchingpalooza posts we talked about how to pull everything we’ve learned throughout this series into a formal 2-minute pitch. Couldn’t you feel the excitement crackling in the air? The moment nearly brought a tear to the eye: the public rejoiced, the heavens opened, lions and lambs lay down together, and agents all over New York spontaneously flung their arms around the nearest aspiring writer, gurgling with joy. What, you missed all that? Even the good folks cleaning up the ticker tape parade? Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a trifle. And maybe those of you who aren’t planning to attend a conference and pitch anytime soon didn’t find it all that goosebump-inducing. “Let’s get on with it, Anne,” some nonambulant writers scoffed. “Let’s get back to the type of stuff that writers do at home in the solitude of their lonely studios: writing, rewriting, querying, rewriting some more…” Patience, scoffers: as I may have mentioned once or twice in the course of this admittedly rather extensive series, learning to pitch is going to make you a better querier. And perhaps even a better writer, at least as far as marketing is concerned. Did I just hear the scoffers snort derisively again? Allow me to ask a clarifying question, smarty-pantses (astute slacksers?): hands up, every querying veteran out there who now wishes devoutly that s/he had known more about how the publishing industry thinks about books before querying for the first time. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /> That’s quite a response. Keep ‘em up if you sent out more than five queries before you figured out what your book’s selling points were. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6141" title="bdy3" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/bdy3.gif" alt="bdy3" width="80" height="60" /> Or — sacre bleu! – your book’s category. That last one is so common that I decided to spare you the artistic representation, so there would still be room on the page for the rest of today’s post. The very idea of querying without knowing makes me cringe: how can you even guess which agents to query before you’ve come up with that? Which is precisely why it’s a good idea for even writers who would never dream of pitching their books in person to learn how to do it. Not only are many of the same skills required to construct a winning pitch and a successful query letter, but many of the actual building blocks are the same. Oh, you hadn’t noticed that? Rest assured, it’s all been part of my evil plan. After Labor Day, we are going to delve once again into the wonderful world of querying. After a few well-deserved treats and perhaps a couple of short forays into craft, of course. Why wait until after Labor Day, you ask? Long-time readers, chant it with me now: because a hefty hunk of the NYC-based publishing industry goes on vacation from the second week of August through Labor Day. And when they get back, guess what’s piled up high on their already-cluttered desks? Uh-huh. Might as well hold off until they’ve had a chance to dig through those thousands of piled-up queries. Trust me, you certainly have time to ponder the mysteries of pitching, glean a few insights, and think about your book’s selling points before our old pal, Millicent the agency screener, will wade her way through the backlog. Heck, you would also have time for a mastoid operation and a trip to the Bahamas; for a good week or two into September, Millie’s going to need be rejecting at a speeded-up clip, just to get through the backlog. Not to mention the thousands of queries that will dumped on her desk just after Labor Day, because so many aspiring writers had heard that they shouldn’t query in August. I can already feel some of you gearing up to query up a storm that weekend, but honestly, you might want to hold off for a week or two. And whatever you do, do not send an e-mailed query over a long weekend; the probability of getting rejected skyrockets. Why, you shriek in horror? Millie’s inbox overfloweth on pretty much any Monday, because writers tend to have more time on the weekends. Labor Day weekend is especially popular, because so many of you have been tapping your toes impatiently, waiting for agencies to become populated again. By restraining yourself until, say, Wednesday, your e-mailed query “But Anne,” I hear some reformed scoffers point out, “why shouldn’t I add my query letter to that pile? Won’t they answer them in the order received?” Well, more or less. However, Millie’s been known to be a mite grumpy until she has cleared enough desk space to set down her latte. Any guesses what the quickest way to clear a desk of queries is? Wait until the second week of September. At least. In the meantime — which is to say: for the next few days — I want to round off Pitchingpalooza with some in-depth discussion of how to navigate a writer’s conference. Yes, yes, I know, we’ve been talking about conferences for the last month, but be fair:: I visit the topic only once per year. It’s been a long visit this time, admittedly, of the type that may well make some of you long for the houseguests to go home, already, but still, I don’t talk about it that often. Perhaps that’s a mistake, since writers’ conference attendance has been skyrocketing of late. Blame the hesitant economy; writing a book is a lot of people’s fallback position. Interesting, given how few novelists actually make a living at it, but hey, a dream’s a dream. Literary conferences can be pretty hard to navigate your first time around — and that’s unfortunate, because the darned things tend not to be inexpensive. Like pitching and querying, there are some secret handshakes that enable some aspiring writers to hobnob more effectively than others, as well as norms of behavior that may seem downright perplexing to the first-time attendee. Up to and including the fact that there’s more to getting the most out of a conference than just showing up, or even showing up and pitching. So I’m going to be talking about the nuts and bolts of conference attendance, with an eye to helping you not only pitch more successfully, but also take advantage of the often amazing array of resources available to aspiring writers at a good conference. Not to mention feeling more comfortable in your skin while you’re there. Last week, I brought up a couple of the more common conceptual stumbling-blocks writers tend to encounter while prepping their elevator speeches and formal pitches. The first and most virulent, of course, is coming to terms with the necessity of marketing one’s writing at all — in other words, to begin to think of it not just as one’s baby, but as a product you’re trying to sell. Half of you just tensed up, didn’t you? I’m not all that surprised. From an artistic perspective, the only criterion for whether an agent or editor picks up a manuscript should be the quality of the writing, followed distantly by the inherent interest of the story. For many writers, the burning question of whether a market for the book already demonstrably exists doesn’t even crop up during the composition process; they write because they are writers — and writers write. Is anyone but me sick of that well-worn tautology, by the way? Is it actually any more profound than saying that spelunkers explore caves, or that orchard-tenders have been known to pick the occasional apple? I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but books do not get published simply because someone has taken the trouble to write them — or even because they are well-written. An aspiring writer must make the case that her book is not only a great yarn, but one that will fit into the current book market neatly. And, as many a pitcher and querier knows to her sorrow, she will need to make that case before anyone in the industry be willing to take a gander at the actual writing. I know, I know: it seems backwards. But as I believe I have mentioned approximately 1704 times before, I did not set up the prevailing conditions for writers; I merely try to cast them in comprehensible terms for all of you. If I ran the universe — which, annoyingly, I still don’t, as nearly as I can tell — writers would be able to skip the pitch-and-query stage entirely, simply submitting the manuscripts directly with no marketing materials, to allow the writing to speak for itself. Every submitter would receive thoughtful, helpful, generous-minded feedback, too, and enchanted cows would wander the streets freely, giving chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk to anyone who wanted it — or soy milk to the lactose-intolerant. I might even spring for wandering pixies wielding juicers, to bring orange, mango, and kale juice to a neighborhood near you. Being omniscient, I would also naturally be able to tell you why the industry is set up this way. I’d be so in the know that I could explain why Nobel Prize winner José Saramago was so hostile to the conventions of punctuation that he wrote an entire novel, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2139519/">SEEING</a>, without a single correctly punctuated piece of dialogue. And I would be able to issue all of you well-meaning aspiring writers who think unpunctuated dialogue looks nifty on the page a blanket pardon, so Millicent would not be allowed to reject you on the grounds that you evidently don’t know how to punctuate dialogue. I would be that generous a universe-ruler. But I do not, alas, run the universe, so Señor Saramago and certain aspects of the publishing industry are likely to remain mysteries eternal. (What harm would it have done him to use a period at the end of a sentence occasionally? Or a question mark at the end of a question?) Long-time readers, chant it with me now: no matter how talented you are, if you hope to get published, the marketing step is a necessity. Even if you were Stephen King, William Shakespeare, and Madame de Staël rolled into one, in the current writers’ market, you would still need to approach many, many agents and/or editors to find the right match for your work — and your work would stand a much, much better chance if you talk about it in the language of the industry. That’s true, incidentally, even if you approach an agent whose submission guidelines ask writers to send pages along with the initial query, instead of by special request afterward (as used to be universal). If the marketing approach is not professionally crafted, chances are slim that those pages will even get read. Oh, there you go, gasping again, but honestly, this is a simple matter of logistics. Remember, a good agency typically receives somewhere between 800 and 1500 queries per week. If Millicent isn’t wowed by the letter, she simply doesn’t have time to cast her eyes over those 5 or 10 or 50 pages the agency’s website said that you could send. That’s not being mean. That’s trying to get through all of those queries without working too much overtime. Unfortunately, the imperative to save time usually also dictates form-letter rejections that the querier entirely in the dark about whether the rejection trigger was in the query or the pages. (Speaking of realistic expectations, please tell me that you didn’t waste even thirty seconds of YOUR precious time trying to read actual content into it didn’t grab me, I just didn’t fall in love with it, it doesn’t meet our needs that this time, or any of the other standard rejection generalities. By definition, one-size-fits-all reasons cannot possibly tell you how to improve your submission.) All of which is to say: please, I implore you, do not make the very common mistake of believing that not being picked up by the first agent whom you pitch or query means that your work is not marketable. Or of adhering to the even more common but less often spoken belief that if a book were really well written, it would somehow be magically exempted from the marketing process. It doesn’t, and it isn’t. Unrealistic expectations about the pitching — and querying — process can and do not only routinely make aspiring writers unhappy at conferences the world over, but frequently also prevent good writers from pitching well. Yes, you read that correctly. Operating on misinformation can genuine hurt a writer, as can a fearful or resentful attitude. Part of learning to pitch — or query — successfully entails accepting the fact that from the industry’s point of view, you are presenting a PRODUCT to be SOLD. Not, as the vast majority of writers believe, and with good reason, a piece of one’s soul ripped off without anesthesia. So it is a teeny bit counter-productive to respond — as an astonishingly high percentage of first-time pitchers do — to the expectation that they should be able to talk about their books in market-oriented terms as evidence that they are dealing with Philistines who hate literature. To clear up any possible confusion for the high-browed: you should, and they don’t. Why do so many pitchers respond to the pros as though they were evil demons sent to earth for the sole purpose of tormenting the talented and rewarding the illiterate? Selling books is how agents and editors make their livings, after all: they have to be concerned about whether there’s a market for a book they are considering. They’re not being shallow; they’re being practical. Okay, most of them are not just being shallow. My point, should you care to know it: a pitching appointment is not the proper venue for trying to change the status quo. Querying or pitching is hard enough to do well without simultaneously decrying the current realities of book publishing. And yes, in response to that question your brain just shouted, aspiring writers do bring that up in their pitches and queries. All the time. Heck, it’s not all that unusual for a pitcher to mention that the book has been rejected before, and how often. Don’t emulate their example. Trust me on this one: it’s not going to make your book seem more market-ready to bring up that you’ve already queried it 700 times. That isn’t just poor strategy — it’s symptomatic of a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes an author successful. Selling is a word that many writers seem to find distasteful when applied to trying to land an agent, as if there were no real distinction between selling one’s work (most of the time, the necessary first step to the world’s reading it) and selling out (which entails a compromise of principle.) C’mon — you know what I’m talking about; if not, just bring up the issue over a sandwich at your next writers’ conference. This is a real, vitriol-stained topic in writers’ circles. When aspiring writers speak of marketing amongst themselves, it tends to be with a slight curl of the lip, an incipient sneer, as if the mere fact of signing with an agent or getting a book published would be the final nail in the coffin of artistic integrity. While practically everyone who writes admires at least one or two published authors — all of whom, presumably, have to deal with this issue at one time or another — the prospect of compromising one’s artistic vision haunts many a writer’s nightmares. That’s a valid fear, I suppose, but allow me to suggest another, less black-and-white possibility: fitting the square peg of one’s book into the round holes of marketing can be an uncomfortable process, but that doesn’t mean it is inherently deadly to artistic integrity. It also doesn’t mean that any writer, no matter how talented, can legitimately expect to be commercially successful without going through that process. That is not to say there are not plenty of good reasons for writers to resent how the business side of the industry works — there are, and it’s healthy to gripe about them. Resent it all you want privately, or in the company of other writers. But do not, I beg you, allow that resentment to color the pitch you ultimately give. Or the query letter. I know, I know: if you’ve been hanging out at conferences for a while, deep-dyed cynicism about the book market can start to sound a whole lot like the lingua franca. One can get a lot of social mileage out of being the battle-scarred submission veteran who tells the new recruits war stories — or the pitcher in the group meeting with an editor who prefaces his comments with, “Well, this probably isn’t the right market for this book concept, but…” To those who actually work in the industry, complaining about the current market’s artistic paucity will not make you come across as serious about your work — as it tends to do amongst other writers, admittedly. The pros just hear it too often. As a result, such complaints are likely to insult the very people who could help you get beyond the pitching and querying stage. Yes, you may well gulp. To an agent’s ears, writers who complain about how much harder it is to get one’s work read than even ten years ago — it’s not your imagination — tend to sound, well, naïve. Of course it’s hard to break into the business; simple math dictates that. “What does your perhaps well-founded critique of how the industry works have to do with whether I want to read your manuscript?” the pros murmur as writers lecture them on how it really should be easier. “I’m sitting right here — wouldn’t this time be better spent telling me what your book is about?” Besides, neither a pitch meeting nor a query letter is primarily about writing, really. They’re both about convincing agents and editors that here is a story or topic that can sell to a particular target audience. If your pitch convinces them that your work falls into that category, then they will ask to see pages. Out comes the broken record again: <blockquote><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/broken-record5.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-10490" title="broken-record5" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/broken-record5-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a>Contrary to what the vast majority of aspiring writers believe, the goal of the pitch (and the query letter) is not to make the business side of the industry fall in love with your writing, per se — it’s to get the agent or editor to whom it is addressed to ask to see manuscript pages or a proposal. </blockquote> Then, and only then, is it logically possible for them to fall in love with your prose stylings or vigorous argument. I’ve said it before, and I’ll doubtless say it again: no one in the world can judge your writing without reading it. This may seem obvious outside the context of a pitching or querying experience, but it’s worth a reminder during conference season. Too many writers walk out of pitching meetings or recycle rejections from queries believing, wrongly, that they’ve just been told that they cannot write. It’s just not true. But by the same token, a successful verbal pitch or enthusiastically-received query letter is not necessarily a ringing endorsement of writing talent, either. Both are merely the marketing materials intended to prompt a request to see the writing itself. Which means, of course, that if you flub your pitch, you should not construe that as a reflection of your writing talent, either; logically, it cannot be, unless the agent or editor takes exception to how you construct your verbal sentences. I know, I know, it doesn’t feel that way at the time, and frankly, the language that agents and editors tend to use at moments like these (“No one is buying X anymore,” or “I could have sold that story ten years ago, but not now”) often does make it sound like a review of your writing. But it isn’t; it can’t be. All it can be, really, is a statement of belief about current and future conditions on the book market, not the final word about how your book will fare there. Just as with querying, if an agent or editor does not respond to your pitch, just move on to the next prospect on your list. Does any of that that make you feel better about the prospect of walking into a pitch meeting? Did it at least permit you to get good and annoyed at the necessity of pitching and querying, to allow all of that frustration to escape your system? Good. Now you’re ready to prep your pitch. Did I just sense some eye-rolling out there? “But Anne,” I hear some chronically sleep-deprived preppers cry, “can’t you read a calendar? I’ve been working on my pitch for weeks now. I keep tinkering with it; I know I have the perfect pitch in me, but I can’t seem to bring it out.” I know precisely what you mean. After staring for so long at a single page of text (which is, after all, what a formal pitch ends up being, at most), it can feel like it’s taken over one’s life. As with any revision process, either on one’s own work or others’, one can become a touch myopic, both literally and figuratively. How myopic, you ask? Let me share an anecdote of the illustrative variety. A couple of years ago, I went on a week-long writing retreat in another state in order to make a small handful of revisions to a novel of mine. Small stuff, really, but my agent was new to the project (having inherited it when my original agent went on maternity leave) and wanted me to give the work a slightly different spin before he started submitting it. Basically, he wanted it to sound a bit more like his type of book, the kind editors had grown to expect from his submissions. Perfectly legitimate, of course (if it doesn’t sound like that to you, please see both the GETTING GOOD AT ACCEPTING FEEDBACK and HOW TO BE AN AGENT’S DREAM CLIENT categories on the list at right before you even consider getting involved with an agent), and I’m glad to report that the revisions went smoothly. At the end of my week of intensive revision, a friend and her 6-year-old daughter were kind enough to give me, my computer, and my many empty bottles of mineral water (revision is thirsty work, after all, and the retreat did not offer glass recycling) a ride back from my far-flung retreat site. Early in the drive, my friend missed a turn, and made a not entirely flattering reference to her Maker. Nothing truly soul-blistering, mind you, just a little light taking of the Lord’s name in vain. Fresh from vacation Bible school, her daughter pointed out, correctly, that her mother had just broken a commandment and should be ashamed of herself. (Apparently, her school hadn’t yet gotten to the one about honoring thy father and thy mother.) “Not if God wasn’t capitalized,” I said without thinking. “If it’s a lower-case g, she could have been referring to any god. Apollo, for example, or Zeus. For all we know, they may kind of like being berated in moments of crisis. It could make them feel important.” Now, that was a pretty literal response, and one that generated a certain amount of chagrin when the little girl repeated it in her next Sunday school class. Not that I wasn’t technically correct, of course, but I should have let the situation determine what is an appropriate response. Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow. That’s true in pitching, too. Hyper-literalism can cause quite a bit of unnecessary stress during conference prep. In part, that’s the nature of the beast: since aspiring writers are not told nearly enough about what to expect from a pitching appointment (or a potential response to a query), they tend to grasp desperately at what few guidelines they are given, following them to the letter. To a certain extent, that makes perfect sense: when going into an unfamiliar, stressful situation, it’s natural to want to cling to rules. The trouble, as I have pointed out throughout this series, is that not everything writers are told about pitching, querying, or even — dare I say it? — what does and doesn’t sell in writing is applicable to their individual situations, or even up-to-date. Adhering too closely to the wrong rules can be a serious liability. Anyone who has ever attended a writers’ conference has seen the result: the causalities of hyper-literalism abound. Since not all of you are nodding sagely, allow let me take you on a guided tour: there’s the writer who lost precious hours of sleep last night because her prepared pitch is four sentences long, instead of three; there’s the one who despairs because he’s been told that he should not read his pitch, but memorize it, but stress has turned his brain into Swiss cheese. The guy over here is working so many dashes, commas, and semicolons into his three-sentence pitch that it goes on for six minutes — but has only three periods. In another corner mopes the romance writer who has just heard an agent say that she’s not looking for Highland romances anymore; naturally, the writer hears this as no one is looking to acquire your kind of book any more. You get the picture. As writers listen to litanies of what they are doing wrong, and swap secrets they have learned elsewhere, the atmosphere becomes palpably heavy with depression. By the end of the conference, the truisms all of these individuals have shared will have bounced around, mutating like the messages in the children’s game of Telephone. That, combined with days on end of every word each attending agent, editor, and/or teacher utters being treated with the reverence of Gospel, there is generally a whole lot of rule-mongering going on. And if a writer has a sound analytical mind, he is apt to notice that a heck of a lot of those rules are mutually contradictory. Take a nice, deep breath. The industry is not trying to trick you. What it is trying to do is get you to adhere to under-advertised publishing norms. While some of those norms are indeed inflexible — the rigors of standard manuscript format, for instance — most of the time, you will be fine if you adhere to the spirit of the norm, rather than its letter. So those of you who are freaking out about a few extra words in your elevator speech: don’t. It needs to be short, but it is far better to take an extra ten seconds to tell your story well than to cut it so short that you tell it badly. No agent or editor in the world is going to be standing over you while you pitch, abacus in hand, ready to shout at you to stop once you reach 101 words in a hallway pitch, any more than she will be counting its periods. Admittedly, they may begin to get restive if you go on too long — but in conversation, length is not measured in number of words or frequency of punctuation. It is measured in the passage of time. Let me repeat that, because I think some pitchers’ concerns on the subject are based in a misunderstanding born of the ubiquity of the three-sentence pitch: the purpose of keeping the elevator speech to 3-4 sentences is not because there is some special virtue in that number of sentences, but to make sure that the elevator speech is short enough that you could conceivably blurt it out in 30-45 seconds. Thus the term. The elevator speech should be sufficiently brief to leave your lips comprehensibly between the time the elevator shuts on you and the agent of your dreams on the ground floor and when it opens again on the second floor. Remember, though, that no matter what you may have heard, an elevator speech is not a formal pitch but a curtailed version of it. The elevator speech, hallway pitch, and pitch proper are primarily differentiated by the length of time required to say them. So if you feel the urge to be nit-picky, put that energy to good use: it actually makes far more sense to time your pitch than it does to count the words. Try to keep your elevator speech under 45 seconds, your hallway pitch to roughly 60 — 75 seconds max, and your pitch proper to 2 minutes or so. But do not, I beg you, rend your hair in the midnight hours between now and your next pitching opportunity trying to figure out how to cut your pitch from 2 minutes, 15 seconds down to 2, or plump it up from a minute seventeen to 2, just because I advise that as a target length. I’m not going to be standing there with a stopwatch, any more than an agent is. And until I rule the universe, I can pretty much guarantee that no agent or editor, even my own, is ever going to say, “Well, that WOULD have been a great pitch, but unfortunately, it was 17.4 seconds longer than Anne Mini says it should be, so I’m going to have to pass.” Even if I did rule the universe (will someone get on that, please?), no one would ever say that to you. It’s in your best interest to adhere to the spirit of my advice on the pitch — or anyone else’s — not necessarily the letter. How might one go about doing that? Well, remember that elevator speech I wrote a couple of weeks ago for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE? <blockquote>19th-century 19-year-old Elizabeth Bennet has a whole host of problems: a socially inattentive father, an endlessly chattering mother, a sister who spouts aphorisms as she pounds deafeningly on the piano, two other sisters who swoon whenever an Army officer walks into the room, and her own quick tongue, any one of which might deprive Elizabeth or her lovely older sister Jane of the rich husband necessary to save them from being thrown out of their house when their father dies. When wealthy humanity-lover Mr. Bingley and disdainful Mr. Darcy rent a nearby manor house, Elizabeth’s mother goes crazy with matchmaking fever, jeopardizing Jane’s romance with Bingley and insisting that Elizabeth marry the first man who proposes to her, her unctuous cousin Mr. Collins, a clergyman who has known her for less than a week. After the family’s reputation is ruined by her youngest sister’s seduction by a dashing army officer, can Elizabeth make her way in the adult world, holding true to her principles and marrying the man she passionately loves, or will her family’s prejudices doom her and Jane to an impecunious and regretful spinsterhood?</blockquote> Because I love you people, I went back and timed how long it would take me to say: sixty- two seconds, counting gestures and vocal inflections that I would consider necessary for an effective performance. That’s perfectly fine, for either a hallway speech or pitch proper. Actually, for a pitch proper, I would go ahead and add another sentence or two of glowing detail. To be fair, though, it is a bit long for an elevator speech, if I intended to include any of the magic first hundred words as well. If I had just spent a weekend prowling the halls, buttonholing agents for informal hallway pitches, I would have tried to shear off ten seconds or so, so I could add at the beginning that the book is women’s fiction and the title. Oh, and to have the time to indicate that my parents loved me enough to give me a name, and manners enough to share it with people when I first meet them. But seriously, I would not lose any sleep over those extra ten seconds, if I were pinched for time. Nor should you. Brevity is not, however, the only virtue a pitch should have, any more than every single-page letter in the world is automatically a stellar query. If you’re marketing a novel, you need to demonstrate two things: that this is a good story, and that you are a good storyteller. Similarly, if you are pitching a NF book, you need to show in your pitch that this is a compelling topic, and that you are the world’s best-equipped person to write about it. As any good storyteller can tell you, compelling storytelling lies largely in the scintillating details. I have been listening to writers’ pitches for significantly longer than I have been giving them myself — in addition to my adult professional experience, I also spent part of my wayward youth trailing a rather well-known author around to SF conventions; aspiring writers were perpetually leaping out from behind comic books and gaming tables to tell him about their book — so I can tell you with authority: far more pitches fail due to being full of generalities than because they have an extra fifteen seconds’ worth of fascinating details. Embrace the spirit of brevity, not the letter. If you must add an extra second or two in order to bring in a particularly striking visual image, or to mention a plot point that in your opinion makes your book totally unlike anything else out there, go ahead and do it. Revel in this being the one and only time that any professional editor will ever tell you this: try not to be too anal-retentive about adhering to pre-set guidelines. It will only make you tense. As <a href="http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/pippin/therighttrack.htm">the song</a> says, keep those spirits high, pulses low. Oh, and keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4089" class="post-4089 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-freshness-in-a-pitch category-how-to-write-a-nonfiction-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-literary-fiction-pitching category-nonfiction-pitching category-pitch-examples category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-a-multiple-protagonist-novel category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-or-querying-nonfiction category-pitchingpalooza category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-the-little-things-that-drive-the-pros-nuts category-voice-choices-and-your-pitch category-what-not-to-say-to-an-agent-interested-in-your-work category-why-might-my-pitch-get-rejected"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/22/pitchingpalooza-part-xxi-learning-from-the-masters-or-how-to-get-to-wow-ive-never-heard-that-before-16/editing-your-own-manuscript/the-little-things-that-drive-the-pros-nuts/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-22T00:00:00+00:00">August 22, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:13+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/22/pitchingpalooza-part-xxi-learning-from-the-masters-or-how-to-get-to-wow-ive-never-heard-that-before-16/editing-your-own-manuscript/the-little-things-that-drive-the-pros-nuts/#comments">4 Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XXI: learning from the masters, or, how to get to “Wow, I’ve never heard that before.”</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/22/pitchingpalooza-part-xxi-learning-from-the-masters-or-how-to-get-to-wow-ive-never-heard-that-before-16/editing-your-own-manuscript/the-little-things-that-drive-the-pros-nuts/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XXI: learning from the masters, or, how to get to “Wow, I’ve never heard that before.”</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/TelemachusMentor.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/TelemachusMentor.jpg" alt="" title="TelemachusMentor" width="266" height="320" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-15796"/></a> Wouldn’t you have assumed, campers, that yesterday’s little foray into obscure editorial pet peeves would have worked some nit-picking vim out of my system? Not so, apparently. This evening, my dinner companion and I made the mistake of allowing the waitress in our neighborhood sushi place to seat us near a comely matron lecturing her rather obnoxious college-age daughters. They lectured right back at her, sometimes simultaneously. All three spoke in tones that, while perhaps not quite capable of waking the dead, would at least prompt the critically wounded to drag themselves bodily into another room, if not another county, in order to escape the non-stop barrage of chatter. And you know how I’m always pointing out that while realistic dialogue is wonderful on the page, real-life dialogue tends to be stultifying, due to its tendency to repeat itself? Had this trio been providing the listen and repeat audio for a college language lab, they could hardly have reused phrases more. Adding to the fun, the younger daughter had such an unparalleled gift for cliché that the average greeting card would have found her observations unbearably banal. Since carrying on a conversation at our table was hopeless, I did what any self-respecting editor would have done: toyed with my asparagus tempura and mentally trimmed entire paragraphs out of the dialogue blasting through the restaurant. I was busily engaged in running a mental red pencil line through the younger daughter’s third “you can’t judge a man until you walk a mile in his moccasins” of the evening when the mother’s monologue veered abruptly into a discussion of DON QUIXOTE. Frankly, I thought that I was dreaming (speaking of clichés). Although the lady seemed to have trouble recalling author’s name, her analysis was surprisingly trenchant — so much so that I almost stopped editing it. (The younger daughter’s frequent observation that the book was a classic still had to go, however.) She began talking about how a young friend of hers had responded to the book. It sounded as though they might have been reading it together. She referred to her co-reader as — oh, I tremble to relate it — her mentee. As in the person who sits at the feet of a mentor, drinking in wisdom. I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Protégé,” I said, loudly enough to be heard over the ambient din. “You mean protégé. Unless, of course, you are referring to the Mentor of classical myth, in which case the student would be Telemachus.” Dead silence from the other table, but several other diners spontaneously burst into applause. The mother waved frantically at the waitress for her check. As they left, glaring at me viciously, I thought about informing them that the author of DON QUIXOTE was Miguel Cervantes. But as he wrote the immortal line, “A closed mouth catches no flies,” I thought better of it. See to what extremes a life of editing drives otherwise perfectly reasonable people? Naturally, I was aware that the mother had not coined the term mentee on the spot; based on her highly redundant anecdotal style, she lacked the essential creativity to add a new word to the language. It’s one of those annoying business-speak terms that has somehow worked its way into everyday speech. I might have let it pass had the speaker and her progeny not spent half an hour boring me and everyone else in the restaurant to the verge of extinction. That level of touchiness is roughly what the average pitch-hearer reaches by the tenth or twelfth similar pitch of the conference. By the fiftieth or sixtieth, she’s not only ready to correct the verbal gaffes of passersby — she’s praying that some kind muse will take pity on her and drop an anvil on her head. Anything, so she does not have to listen to yet another cliché-ridden summary of a plot that sounds suspiciously like the first TWILIGHT book. Chant it with me now, campers: the first rule of pitching is thou shalt not bore. The second is the pitcher is there to hear your original ideas and language. Stock phrases, no matter how apt, are unlikely to make your premise shine; a description so general that your book will merge in the hearer’s mind with a dozen others is not the best way to make yours memorable. You’re a writer, are you not? Is there a reason that your pitch should not demonstrate that you have some talent in that direction? Why, we were just talking about that, weren’t we? Last time, I went over the basic format of a 2-minute pitch, the kind a writer is expected to give within the context of a scheduled pitch meeting. Unlike the shorter elevator speech or hallway pitch, the formal pitch is intended not merely to pique the hearer’s interest in the book, but to convey that the writer is one heck of a storyteller, whether the book is fiction or nonfiction. In case that’s too subtle for anyone, I shall throw a brick through the nearest window and shout: no matter what kind of prose you write, your storytelling skills are part of what you are selling here. How might a trembling author-to-be demonstrate those skills? Basically, by dolling up her elevator speech with simply fascinating details and fresh twists that will hold the hearer in thrall. At least for two minutes. After that, the agent’s going to have to ask to read your book to find out what happens. Because sounding scintillating to the pitch-fatigued is a genuinely tall order, it is absolutely vital that you prepare for those two minutes in advance, either timing yourself at home or by buttonholing like-minded writers at the conference for mutual practice. Otherwise, as I mentioned in passing last time, it is very, very easy to start rambling once you are actually in your pitch meeting. Frankly, the length of the pitch appointment typically doesn’t allow any time for rambling or free-association. Rambling, unfortunately, tends to lead the pitcher away from issues of marketing and into the kind of free-form discussion he might have with another writer. All too often, pitchers will digress into artistic-critical questions (“What do you think of multiple protagonists in general?”), literary-philosophical issues (“I wanted to experiment with a double identity in my romance novel, because I feel that Descartian dualism forms the underpinnings of the modern Western love relationship.”), and autobiographical observations (“I spent 17 years writing this novel. Please love it, or I shall impale myself on the nearest sharp object.”) . Remember, you are marketing a product here: talk of art and theory can come later, after you’ve signed a contract with this agent or that editor. For now, your job is to wow ‘em with the originality of your book concept, the freshness of your approach, and the evocative language of your pitch. Don’t forget that that the formal pitch is, in fact, is an extended, spoken query letter; it should contain, at minimum, the same information. Like any good promotional speech, it also needs to present the book as both unique and memorable. Oh, you would like to know how to go about that, would you? Glad you asked. Time to whip out one of my famous lists of tips. (1) Emphasize the most original parts of your story or argument One great way to increase the probability of its seeming both is to include beautifully-phrased telling details from the book, something that the agent or editor is unlikely to hear from anybody else. What specifics can you use to describe your protagonist’s personality, the challenges he faces, the environment in which he functions, that render each different from any other book currently on the market? See why I suggested earlier in this series that you might want to gain some familiarity with what is being published right now in your book category? Unless you know what’s out there, how can you draw a vibrant contrast? I sense a touch of annoyance out there, don’t I? “But Anne,” a disgruntled soul or two protests, “I understand that part of the point here is to present my book concept as fresh, but I’m going to be talking about my book for two minutes, at best. Do I really want to waste my time on a compare-and-contrast exercise when I could be showing (not telling) that my book is in fact unique?” Well, I wasn’t precisely envisioning that you embark upon a master’s thesis on the literary merits of the current thriller market; what I had in mind was your becoming aware enough of the current offerings to know what about your project is going to seem most unusual to someone who has been marinating in the present offerings for the last couple of years. Regardless of how your book is fresh, you’re going to want to be as specific as possible about it. Which leads me to… (2) Include details that the hearer won’t be expecting. Think back to <a href="/index_p_15661.html">the elevator speech I developed earlier in this series for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE</a>. How likely is it that anybody else at the conference will be pitching a story that includes a sister who talks philosophy while pounding on the piano, or a mother who insists her daughter marry a cousin she has just met? Not very — which means that including these details in the pitch is going to surprise the hearer a little. And that, in turn, will render the pitch more memorable. (3) Broaden your scope a little. In a hallway pitch, of course, you don’t have the luxury of including more than a couple of rich details, but the 2-minute pitch is another kettle of proverbial fish. You can afford the time to flesh out the skeleton of your premise and story arc. You can, in fact, include a small scene. So here’s a wacky suggestion: take fifteen or twenty seconds of those two minutes to tell the story of ONE scene in vivid, Technicolor-level detail. I’m quite serious about this. It’s an unorthodox thing to do in a pitch, but it works all the better for that reason, if you can keep it brief AND fresh. Yes, even if the book in question is a memoir — or a nonfiction book about an incident that took place in 512 BC, for that matter. To render any subject interesting to a reader, you’re going to need to introduce an anecdote or two. This is a fabulous opportunity to flex your show-don’t-tell muscles. Which is, if you think about it, why a gripping story draws us in: good storytelling creates the illusion of being there. By placing the pitch-hearer in the middle of a vividly-realized scene, you make him more than a listener to a summary — you let him feel a part of the story. (4) Borrow a page from Scheherazade’s book: don’t tell too much of the story; leave the hearer wanting more. Remember, the pitcher’s job is not to summarize the plot or argument — it’s to present it in a fascinating manner. After all, the point of the pitch is to convince the agent or editor to ask to read the manuscript, right? So focusing on making the premise sound irresistible is usually a better plan than trying to cram the entire story arc into a couple of breathless paragraphs. Don’t be afraid to introduce a cliffhanger at the end of your pitch– scenarios that leave the hearer wondering how the heck is this author going to get her protagonist out of THAT situation? can work very, very well in this context. (5) Axe the jargon. Many pitchers (and queriers, actually) assume, wrongly, that if their manuscripts are about people who habitually use an industry-based jargon, it will make their pitches more credible if that language permeates the 2-minute speech. In fact, the opposite is generally true: terminology that excludes outsiders usually merely perplexes the pitch hearer. Remember, it’s never safe to assume that any given agent or editor (or Millicent, for that matter) has any background in your chosen subject matter. It would behoove you, then, to use language in your pitch that everybody in the publishing industry can understand. Unless, of course, your book is about the publishing industry, in which case you may be as jargon-ridden as you like. (6) Delve into the realm of the senses. Another technique that helps elevate memorability: including as many sensual words and images as you can in your pitch. Not sexual ones, necessarily, but referring to the operation of the senses. As anyone who has spent even a couple of weeks reading submissions or contest entries can tell you, the vast majority of writing out there sticks to the most obvious senses — sight and sound — probably because these are the two to which TV and movie scripts are limited. So a uniquely-described scent, taste, skin sensation, or pricking of the sixth sense does tend to be memorable. I just mention. How might you go about this, you ask? Comb the text itself. Is there an indelible visual image in your book? Work it in. Are birds twittering throughout your tropical romance? Let the agent hear them. Is your axe murderer concentrating his professional efforts on chefs? We’d better taste some fois gras. And so forth. The goal here is to include a single original image or scene in sufficient detail that the agent or editor will think, “Wow, I’ve never heard that before,” and ask to read the book. Which leads me to ask those of you whose works are still in the writing phase: are there places in your manuscript where you could beef up the comic elements, sensual details, elegant environmental descriptions, etc., to strengthen the narrative and to render the book easier to pitch when its day comes? Just something to ponder. (7) Make sure that your pitch contains at least one detailed, memorable image. There is a terrific example of such a pitch in the Robert Altman film THE PLAYER, should you have time to check it out before the next time you plan to pitch. The protagonist is an executive at a motion picture studio; throughout the film, he hears many pitches. One unusually persistent director chases the executive all over the greater LA metro area, trying to get him to listen to his pitch. (You’re in exactly the right mental state to appreciate that now, I’m guessing.) Eventually, the executive gives in, and tells the director to sell him the film in 25 words or less. Rather than launching into the plot of the film, however, the director does something interesting: he spends a good 30 seconds setting up the initial visual image of the film: a group of protestors holding a vigil outside a prison during a rainstorm, their candles causing the umbrellas under which they huddle to glow like Chinese lanterns. ”That’s nice,” the executive says, surprised. “I’ve never seen that before.” Pitching success! If a strong, memorable detail of yours can elicit this kind of reaction from an agent or editor, you’re home free. Give some thought to where your book might offer up the scene, sensual detail, or magnificently evocative sentence that will make ‘em do a double-take. Or a spit-take, if your book is a comedy. Which brings me to… (8) Let the tone of the pitch reflect the tone of the book. This one’s just common sense, really: an agent or editor who likes a particular kind of book enough to handle it routinely may reasonably be expected to admire that kind of writing, right? So why not write the pitch in the tone and language you already know has pleased this person in the past? A good pitch for a funny book makes its premise seem amusing; a great pitch contains at least one line that provokes a spontaneous burst of laughter from the hearer. By the same token, while a good pitch for a romance would make it sound like a fun read, a great pitch might prompt the hearer to say, “Is it getting hot in here?” Getting the picture? I’m tempted to sign off for the day to allow all of you to rush off to stuff your pitches to the gills with indelible imagery, sensual details, and book category-appropriate mood-enhancers, but I know from long experience teaching writers to pitch that some of your manuscripts will not necessarily fit comfortably into the template I’ve laid out over the last couple of posts. To head off one of the more common problems at the pass, I’m going to revive a reader’s excellent question about the pitch proper from years past. (Keep ‘em coming, folks!) Somewhere back in the dim mists of time, <a href="/index_p_551.html">sharp-eyed reader Colleen</a> wrote in to ask how one adapts the 2-minute pitch format to stories with multiple protagonists — a more difficult task than it might appear at first glance. By definition, it would be pretty hard to pitch it as just one of the characters’ being an interesting person in an interesting situation; in theory, a good multiple-protagonist novel is the story of LOTS of interesting people in LOTS of interesting situations. So what’s the writer to do? Tell the story of the book in the pitch, not the stories of the various characters. Does that sound like an oxymoron? Allow me to explain. For a novel with multiple protagonists to work, it must have an underlying unitary story — it has to be, unless the chapters and sections are a collection of unrelated short stories. (Which would make it a short story collection, not a novel, and should be pitched as such.) Even if it is told from the point of view of many, many people, there is pretty much always some point of commonality. That area of commonality should be the focus of your pitch, not how many characters’ perspectives it takes to tell it. Strip the story to its basic elements, and pitch that. Those of you juggling many protagonists just sighed deeply, didn’t you? “But Anne,” lovers of group dynamics everywhere protest, “why should I limit myself to the simplest storyline? Doesn’t that misrepresent my book?” Not more than other omissions geared toward pitch brevity — you would not, for instance, take up valuable pitching time in telling an agent that your book was written in the third person, would you? (In case the answer isn’t obvious: no, you shouldn’t. Let the narrative choices reveal themselves when the agent reads your manuscript.) Even in the extremely unlikely event that your book is such pure literary fiction that the characters and plot are irrelevant, concentrating instead upon experiments in writing style, your book is still about something, isn’t it? That something should be the subject of your pitch. Why? Because any agent is going to have to know what the book is about in order to interest an editor in it. And it’s unlikely to the point of hilarity that she’ll stop you immediately after you say, “Well, my novel is told from the perspectives of three different protagonists…” with a curt, “I’ve heard enough; I’ve been looking for a good multiple-perspective novel. Allow me to sign you on the spot.” How you have chosen to construct the narrative is not information that should be in your pitch. The agent or editor is going to want to know what the book is about. “Okay,” the sighers concede reluctantly, “I can sort of see that, if we want to reduce the discussion to marketing terms. But I still don’t understand why simplifying my extraordinarily complex plot would help my pitch.” Well, there’s a practical reason — and then there’s a different kind of practical reason. Let’s take the most straightforward one first. From a pitch-hearer’s point of view, once more than a couple of characters have been introduced within those first couple of sentences, new names tend to blur together like extras in a movie, unless the pitcher makes it absolutely clear how they are all tied together. Typically, therefore, they will assume that the first mentioned by name is the protagonist. So if you started to pitch a multiple protagonist novel on pure plot — “Bernice is dealing with trying to run a one-room schoolhouse in Morocco, while Harold is coping with the perils of window-washing in Manhattan, and Yvonne is braving the Arctic tundra…” — even the most open-minded agent or editor is likely to zone out. There’s just too much to remember. And if remembering three names in two minutes doesn’t strike you as a heavy intellectual burden, please see my earlier post on <a href="/index_p_515.html">pitch fatigue</a>. It’s easy to forget that yours is almost certainly not the only pitch that agent or editor has heard within the last 24 hours, isn’t it, even if you’re not trying to explain a book with several protagonists? Often, pitchers of multiple-protagonist novels will make an even more serious mistake than overloading their elevator speeches with names. They will frequently begin by saying, “Okay, so there are 18 protagonists…” Whoa there, Sparky. Did anyone in the pitching session ASK about your perspective choices? Actually, from the writer’s point of view, there’s an excellent reason to include this information: the different perspectives are an integral part of the story being told. Thus, the reader’s experience of the story is going to be inextricably tied up with how it is written. But that doesn’t mean that this information is going to be helpful to your pitch. I mean, you could conceivably pitch Barbara Kingsolver’s multiple-narrator <a href="http://www.kingsolver.com/bookshelf/poisonwood_bible.asp">THE POISONWOOD BIBLE</a> as: <blockquote> A missionary takes his five daughters and one wife to the middle of Africa. Once they manage to carve out a make-do existence in a culture that none of them really understand, what little security the daughters know is ripped from them, first by their father’s decreasing connection with reality, then by revolution. </blockquote> That isn’t a bad summary of the plot, but it doesn’t really give much of a feel for the book, does it? The story is told from the perspectives of the various daughters, mostly, who really could not agree on less and who have very different means of expressing themselves. And that, really, is the charm of the book. But if you’ll take a gander at Ms. Kingsolver’s website, you’ll see that even she (or, more likely, her publicist) doesn’t mention the number of narrators until she’s already set up the premise. Any guesses why? Okay, let me ask the question in a manner more relevant to the task at hand: would it be a better idea to walk into a pitch meeting and tell the story in precisely the order it is laid out in the book, spending perhaps a minute on one narrator, then moving on to the next, and so on? In a word, no. Because — you guessed it — it’s too likely to confuse the hearer. Hey, do you think that same logic might apply to any complicated-plotted book? Care to estimate the probability that a pitch-fatigued listener will lose track of a grimly literal chronological account of the plot midway through the second sentence? If you just went pale, would-be pitchers, your answer was probably correct. Let’s get back to Barbara Kingsolver. Even though the elevator speech above for THE POISONWOOD BIBLE does not do it justice, if I were pitching the book (and thank goodness I’m not; it would be difficult), I would probably use it, with a slight addition at the end: <blockquote> A missionary takes his five daughters and one wife to the middle of Africa. Once they manage to carve out a make-do existence in a culture that none of them really understand, what little security the daughters know is ripped from them, first by their father’s decreasing connection with reality, then by revolution. The reader sees the story from the very different points of view of the five daughters, one of whom has a mental condition that lifts her perceptions into a completely different realm. </blockquote> Not ideal, perhaps, but it gets the point across, without presenting the perspective choice as the most important thing about the book. But most pitchers of multiple POV novels are not nearly so restrained, alas. They charge into pitch meetings and tell the story as written in the book, concentrating on each perspective in turn as the agent or editor stares back at them dully, like a bird hypnotized by a snake. And ten minutes later, when the meeting is over, the writers have only gotten to the end of Chapter 5. Out of 27. I can’t even begin to estimate how often I experienced this phenomenon in my pitching classes, when I was running the late lamented Pitch Practicing Palace at the Conference-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless, and even when I just happen to be passing by the pitch appointment waiting area at conferences. All too often, first-time pitchers have never talked about their books out loud before — a BAD idea– and think that the proper response to the innocent question, “So what’s your book about?” is to reel off the entire plot. And I do mean ENTIRE. By the end of it, an attentive listener would know not only precisely what happened to the protagonist and the antagonist, but the neighbors, the city council, and the chickens at the local petting zoo until the day that all of them died. Poor strategy, that. If you go on too long, they may well draw some unflattering conclusions about the pacing of your storytelling preferences, if you catch my drift. This outcome is at least 27 times more likely if the book being pitched happens to be a memoir or autobiographical novel, incidentally. Again, bad idea. Because most memoir submissions are episodic, rather than featuring a strong, unitary story arc, a rambling pitching style is likely to send off all kinds of warning flares in a pitch-hearer’s mind. And trust me, “Well, it’s based on something that actually happened to me…” no longer seems like a fresh concept the 783rd time an agent or editor hears it. Word to the wise: keep it snappy, emphasize the storyline, and convince the hearer that your book is well worth reading before you even consider explaining why you decided to write it in the first place. And yes, both memoirists and writers of autobiographical fiction work that last bit into their pitches all the time. Do not emulate their example; it may be unpleasant to face, but nobody in the publishing industry is likely to care about why you wrote a book until after they’ve already decided that it’s marketable. (Sorry to be the one to break that to you.) Which brings me to the second reason that it’s better to tell the story of the book, rather than the stories of each of the major characters: POV choices are a writing issue, not a storyline issue per se. While you will want to talk about some non-story elements in your pitch — the target audience, the selling points, etc. — most of the meat of the pitch is about the story (or, in the case of nonfiction, the argument) itself. In other words, the agent or editor will learn how you tell the story from reading your manuscript; during the pitching phase, all they need to hear is the story. Don’t believe me? When’s the last time you walked into a bookstore, buttonholed a clerk, and asked, “Where can I find a good book told from many points of view? I don’t care what it’s about; I just woke up this morning yearning for multiplicity of perspective.” I thought not. Although if you want to generate a fairly spectacular reaction in a bored clerk on a slow day, you could hardly ask a better question. Dig deep for those memorable details, everybody, and keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4090" class="post-4090 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-agents category-annes-editorial-pet-peeves category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-being-an-agents-dream-client category-building-blocks-of-a-pitch-or-query category-but-ive-heard category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-do-i-need-to-memorize-my-pitch category-editing-the-opening-pages category-freshness-in-a-pitch category-how-can-i-keep-myself-from-freaking-out-mid-pitch category-how-to-write-a-nonfiction-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-industry-etiquette category-literary-fiction-craft category-literary-fiction-pitching category-nonfiction-pitching category-pitch-examples category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-or-querying-nonfiction category-pitching-tips category-pitchingpalooza category-post-pitch-etiquette category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-the-little-things-that-drive-the-pros-nuts category-the-mythical-right-words-to-use-in-a-pitch category-what-actually-happens-in-a-pitch-meeting category-what-not-to-say-to-an-agent-interested-in-your-work"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/21/pitchingpalooza-part-xx-stacking-all-of-those-building-blocks-into-a-rock-solid-pitch-23/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-21T00:00:00+00:00">August 21, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:13+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/21/pitchingpalooza-part-xx-stacking-all-of-those-building-blocks-into-a-rock-solid-pitch-23/industry-etiquette/#respond">No Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XX: stacking all of those building blocks into a rock-solid pitch</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/21/pitchingpalooza-part-xx-stacking-all-of-those-building-blocks-into-a-rock-solid-pitch-23/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XX: stacking all of those building blocks into a rock-solid pitch</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/pigeon-in-a-niche-1024x768.jpg" alt="pigeon-in-a-niche" title="pigeon-in-a-niche" width="512" height="384" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-6108"/> No, I didn’t pose that pigeon; she volunteered to be today’s illustration of a book happily inhabiting a niche market atop a well-constructed pitch. It would be a better visual metaphor if there weren’t also bricks above her, of course, but you focus on a medieval bridge, you take your chances, right? Before I launch into today’s task in earnest, my mother has charged me to pass along an editorial admonition to you — and believe me, we do not take such decrees lightly chez Mini. Madame Mini senior desires me to inform all conscientious writers everywhere that she is darned tired of reading books and manuscripts that use each other and one another interchangeably. That’s one of my pet peeves, too, doubtless due to my strenuously literary upbringing: each other refers to interactions between two characters, entities, or objects; one another is activity amongst 3 or more. My parents used to correct this one in conversation, as well as on the page. And yes, that practice did rather startle anecdote-spouting dinner guests, now that you mention it. One’s standards do not evaporate just because one happens to be serving a soufflé, however. So abandon hope, all ye who were hoping to get a sentence like Marni, Monique, and Murgatroyd looked at each other past a good, old-fashioned editor. While you’re at it, Madame Mini would also like you to start making a distinction between farther (refers to physical distance) and further (conceptual distance). There’s a pretty good reason that one doesn’t hear farthermore in casual conversation, after all. In answer to those of you busily engaged in picking your jaws off the floor: yes, these are nit-picky distinctions, but little things like this drive classically-trained professional readers nuts. It’s inconceivable to an editor of my mother’s experience that anyone would not have learned these precepts, if not actually at their parents’ knees, then at least by the end of the fourth grade. She flatly refuses to believe that I constantly meet talented writers who — sacre bleu! — claim that they were never taught the rules governing when to use to, two, and too or there, their, and they’re. “What do these writers do, then?” Madame Mini scoffs. “Guess?” Judging by the average manuscript submission, I would have to say that is precisely what a lot of aspiring writers do. That, and rely too heavily upon their word processing programs’ spell- and grammar-checkers. I have yet to break it to my mother that my version of Microsoft Word not only doesn’t make the necessary each other/one another or farther/further distinctions; it frequently suggests that I should use the incorrect form of there, their, and they’re. My neighbors who work at the Lazy M Ranch profess to have no idea why this might be the case. “Poor elementary school education?” one of them suggested. “I wasn’t sure about that rule until I was in college.” Please don’t tell my mother. She might faint from the shock. Actually, while we’re on the subject of looking, would you mind if I ask you to avoid a pet peeve of my own? Novelists, would you at least consider giving the phrases they looked at each other and she gave him a look a rest, please? Millicent the agency screener scarcely sees a manuscript these days that does not include one or the other within the first chapter, and often both. It’s not merely the percussive effect of seeing the same sentences so often across so many manuscripts in any given reading day that gets her proverbial goat, you know; it’s the fact that the overwhelming majority of aspiring writers seem to believe that eye movement is an inherently interesting enough activity to deserve page space in an otherwise tightly-written narrative. From a professional reader’s perspective, it seldom is. Remember, from a professional reader’s point of view, the bare fact that a character might have done something isn’t necessarily reason enough to for a narrative to mention it; especially in fiction and memoir, we tend to go for the character-revealing stuff. Unless the reader is shown the emotional intensity of a look, or what thoughts the author believes are being conveyed telepathically when two characters look at each other (or seventeen look at one another; it helps to see the rules in practice), all of that looking can come across as simply a substitute for more character- or situation-illuminating reactions. Oh, it feels good to have gotten that one off my chest. Let’s get to work. Last time, perhaps unwisely, I introduced those of you brand-new to verbal book pitching to <a href="/index_p_15763.html">the unique joys and stresses of a garden-variety conference pitching room</a>. Why on earth would I scare you like that, you ask? Well, I think it’s important that first-time pitchers are aware what the environment into which they will be stepping is like. Why, you ask again? Because we writers — c’mon, admit it — have an unparalleled gift for freaking ourselves out by imagining all kinds of strange things that might be waiting for us on the other side of the pitching table. Like, for instance, an agent who cuts a writer off three sentences into a pitch given within the context of a formal meeting: “Oh, that’s the third period, I’m afraid, and you had not even gotten halfway through establishing your premise. I’m sorry; industry standards prevent me from listening to even one more word from you.” Or an agent who shouts, “I hate your plot, your hairdo, and your tie! Begone, and never cause me to choke on my latte again.” Or a writer’s rocketing to instant fame, fortune, and publication as a result of a particularly well-given pitch. “Oh, I don’t need to read the manuscript,” the agent in this fantasy says, clapping the lucky pitcher on the back. “Someone who can talk about a book as well as you can is obviously a talented writer. Let me introduce you to that editor standing over there at the bar that’s never more than a hundred yards from any writers’ conference in North America, so we may sign a contract immediately. Would you be available to go on Oprah next week?” Please believe me when I say that in years and years and years of attending conferences as both would-be pitcher and presenter, I have not even heard of any of these extremes actually occurring in real life. Honest. And Oprah’s off the air, at least on network television. As I may have hinted a few times over the last couple of weeks, adhering to the common fantasies about what can happen in a pitch meetings both raise expectations to unreasonable levels and increase anticipatory fright to the point of being crushing. Knowledge really is power, at least in this respect. No, really. By learning what to expect, you can prepare more effectively for your appointment with an agent or editor — and psych yourself out much less in the process. Feeling a little better about the prospect of pitch preparation? No? Okay, here’s a bit more good news to gladden your heart: if you have been following this series step by step and doing your homework, you already have almost all of the constituent parts of a persuasive formal pitch constructed. How is that possible, you cry? Well, for starters, you’ve already wrestled some of the most basic fears most writers harbor about pitching until they lay panting, gone over <a href="/index_p_15523.html">how to narrow down your book’s category</a>, figured out who <a href="/index_p_15539.html">your target market</a> is, brainstormed <a href="/index_p_15559.html">selling points for your book</a>), as well as <a href="/index_p_15673.html">a platform for those of you who write nonfiction</a>, and constructed <a href="/index_p_15563.html">a snappy keynote statement</a>. We’ve seen how to introduce ourselves and our work with <a href="/index_p_15608.html">the magic first 100 words</a>, to keep it pithy with <a href="/index_p_15633.html">the elevator speech</a>, and to take advantage of the happy accidents chance may provide with <a href="/index_p_15680.html">a well-conceived hallway pitch</a>. Today, with all that under your proverbial belt, we’re going to begin to pull it all together into a two-pronged strategy for a stellar formal pitch: first, you’re going to impress ‘em by your professionalism, then you’re gonna wow ‘em with your storytelling ability. Piece o’ cake, right? Actually, it’s a heck of a lot easier than it sounds, once you understand what a formal pitch is and what you’re trying to achieve with it. To that end, I’m going to let you in on a little trade secret that almost always seems to get lost in discussions of how to pitch: contrary to popular opinion, a formal pitch is not just a few sentences about the premise of a book, nor is it a summary of the plot, or even a statement of the platform for a nonfiction book. A formal book pitch is A MARKETING SPEECH, designed not only to show what your book is about, but also precisely how and why it is MARKETABLE. Once you understand this — and once you accept that, within a publishing context, your book is not merely your baby or a work of art, but a PRODUCT that you are asking people who SELL THINGS FOR A LIVING to MARKET FOR YOU — an agent or editor’s response to your pitch is a much, much less frightening moment to contemplate. It’s not an all-or-nothing referendum on your worth as a writer or as a human being, but a PROFESSIONAL SELLER OF WRITING’s response to a proposed BOOK CONCEPT. Regardless of whether the agent liked your tie or not. And your hair is fine, I tell you. If only you would stop thinking in all of those capital letters. What a formal pitch meeting can and should be is the extraordinary opportunity of having an agent or editor’s undivided attention for ten minutes in order to discuss how best to market your work. For this discussion to be fruitful, it is very helpful if you can describe your work in the same terms the industry would. Why, what a coincidence: if you will be so kind as to cast your eye back over my breakdown of Pitchingpalooza above, you will see that you have already defined your work in those terms. Aren’t you clever, to be so well prepared? Really, you’re almost there. If it came right down to it, you could construct a quite professional short pitch from these elements alone. Oh, wait, here is another remarkable coincidence: you already have. It’s called your hallway pitch, and I sincerely hope that those of you who are imminently conference-bound have already begun trying it out on everyone you meet. It’s a serious mistake not to speak it out loud prior to your scheduled pitch meeting, or even to the conference. Why? Out comes the broken record again: <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/broken-record4.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/broken-record4-150x150.jpg" alt="" title="broken-record4" width="150" height="150" class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-10491"/></a>It takes lots of repetition to get used to hearing yourself talking about your work like a pro, rather than like a serious writer talking to other serious writers. Or a hobbyist writer talking to someone at a party kind enough to say, “Oh, you write? What kind of books?” Why shouldn’t you talk about your work to the pros the way we talk about amongst ourselves or at a non-literary cocktail party? Well, when we’re in creative mode, we tend to speak with other writers about our hopes, fears, and difficulties — entirely appropriate, because who else is going to understand your travails better than another writer? But in a formal pitch meeting, it’s time to put aside those complicated and fascinating aspects of the creative process, and talk about the book in terms the non-creative business side of the industry can understand. It’s time, to put it bluntly, to speak of your book as a commodity that you might conceivably want someone to buy, not as a reason to like or respect you as a creative human being. (Hey, I warned you it was going to be blunt.) Recognizing that is not the first sign of selling out, as so many aspiring writers seem to believe: it’s an absolutely necessary step along the undiscovered (and unpaid) artist’s road to fame, fortune, and large readerships. Or even small ones. Besides, walking into a conference believing that agencies and publishing houses are primarily non-profit institutions devoted to the charitable promotion of good art tends to lead to poor pitching. A savvy pitcher understands that good marketing and good art can are not natural enemies. It’s imperative that your formal pitch reflect that understanding. Think about it: reputable agents and editors make their livings by selling books, after all; they are unlikely to the point of hilarity to be even remotely sympathetic to an aspiring writer who feels that his book will seem less artistically worthwhile if he knows anything about how — or even to whom — it might be sold. That can work to your advantage: because art vs. commerce is such a common attitude, even amongst writers who have plopped down a considerable amount of money to pitch at a conference, presenting yourself as one of the few who has taken the time to learn how publishing actually works and how your book might fit into the current market will at least enjoy the benefit of novelty. And a thousand hands just shot into the air. “I want to be the exception, Anne,” eager pitchers everywhere cry, “but I’m not sure how to force my book’s premise into a form that makes sense from a marketing perspective. How might one go about satisfying the demands of both art and commerce in a formal pitch meeting?” I’m so glad you asked. I feel a theoretical structure about to emerge. Step I: First, begin with your magic first hundred words: <blockquote> ”Hi, I’m (YOUR NAME), and I write (BOOK CATEGORY). My latest project, (TITLE), is geared toward (TARGET MARKET). See how it grabs you: (KEYNOTE).” </blockquote> As in a query letter, if you can work in a flattering reference to a specific past project upon which the agent or editor has labored, even if it’s not in your genre, just after your name is a great place to do it. As in, <blockquote> “Hi, my name is J.K. Rowling, and I got so excited when you said on the agents’ panel earlier that you are looking for YA books where children solve their problems without adult guidance! That sounds like a back jacket blurb for my novel. My latest project, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE is middle-grade fiction aimed at kids who feel like outsiders. See how it grabs you…” </blockquote> If you are pitching nonfiction, this is the step where you will want to mention your platform. For example, <blockquote> “Hi, my name is Bill Clinton, and I used to be President of the United States. I write political books, building upon that expertise. My latest project…” </blockquote> Everyone on board with that? Good. Let’s press on. Step II: After you finish Step I, with nary a pause for breath, launch into an extended version of your elevator speech, one that introduces the protagonist, shows the essential conflict, and gives a sense of the dramatic arc or argument of the book. The resulting equation would look like this: <blockquote> “(Protagonist) is in (interesting situation).” + about a 1-minute overview of the book’s primary conflicts or focus, using vivid and memorable imagery. </blockquote> Again, do not even attempt to tell the entire plot. Your goal here is to get your hearer to ask to read the book you’re pitching, not to convey the plot in such detail that your hearer feels she has already read it. This structure will work equally well for a memoir, of course. The trick is to present oneself as the protagonist — and to do that, you’re going to have to think of yourself as a character in your book, as well as its writer. <blockquote> “I was in (interesting situation).” + about a 1-minute overview of the book’s primary conflicts, using vivid and memorable imagery. </blockquote> For a nonfiction book that isn’t a memoir, present the central question your book will address, along with why a reader would care about it. In considering that last part, remember, you can’t safely assume that the agent or editor to whom you will be pitching will be forearmed with any prior knowledge of your subject matter. This structure tends to work: <blockquote> “The world is facing (interesting situation); if it is not resolved, (insert dire consequence here).” + about a 1-minute overview of the book’s primary focus, using vivid and memorable imagery. </blockquote> For fiction or memoir, make sure to identify your protagonist in the first line of your pitch– by name, never as “my protagonist,” or you will sound like you are giving a book report. Yes, yes, I know that you learned in English class that it’s spiffy to speak in terms of protagonists and antagonists, as well as to say things like, “At the climax of the book…”, but a verbal pitch is the wrong context to talk about a book as if you were writing an essay about it. It’s distancing, and many pros find it more than a bit pretentious. (True in query letters as well, by the way.) Here’s an even better reason to identify your protagonist by name: it’s substantially easier for a hearer to identify with a named character than an amorphous one. Even better, introduce her as an active struggler in the conflict, rather than a passive victim of it. (And if you don’t know why a story about a passive protagonist is usually harder to sell than one about her more active cousin, please see the PURGING PROTAGONIST PASSIVITY category at right before your next pitch appointment.) Step III: Then, to tie it all together, you would give the agent or editor a brief explanation of why this book will sell to your intended readership. Not a boast, mind you: analysis that demonstrates the extent of your market research. If you have demographic information about that target market, or a comparison to a similar book released within the last five years that has sold very well, this is the time to mention it: <blockquote> “I’m excited about this project, because of its (SELLING POINTS). Currently, there are (# of TARGET MARKET members) in the United States, and this book will appeal to them because (more SELLING POINTS).” </blockquote> Add a little charm and stir, and voilà: the two-minute pitch. Admittedly, my method is a trifle unusual, a little offbeat structurally, but in my experience, it works. It sounds professional, while at the same time conveying both your enthusiasm for the project and a sense of how precisely the worldview of your book is unique. Not to mention quite doable. You could manage all three of those steps in two minutes, right? Of course you could: with aplomb, with dignity. Because, really, all you are doing here is talking about the work you love, telling your favorite story, in the language that agents and editors speak. Once again, a forest of hands arises before my eyes. “But Anne,” some confused souls point out, “didn’t you say that most scheduled pitch meetings are around 10 minutes long? If that’s the case, why do I have to limit myself to a 2-minute pitch? Couldn’t it be, you know, 3? Or 8?” Good question, confused ones, and here’s the answer: no, because if you went much over 2, there would not be time for subsequent conversation. Or for the agent of your dreams to interrupt you in the course of your speech in order to ask trenchant and enlightening questions. Or to allow for time for a panicking pitcher to take a moment to compose herself, if necessary and appropriate. Aspiring writers aren’t tape recorders, you know, and most agents and editors honestly do want to give ‘em a chance to give their pitches. The 2-minute pitch usually takes place at the very beginning of a pitch meeting; thus the imperative to introduce oneself. (You wouldn’t believe how many pitchers get so excited that they omit this essential information. Or the title of the book.) See why it’s so important to make your pitch a good yarn? No? Was there so much going on in these last two posts that you forgot to look for a moral hidden in the midst of it all? Excellent, if so — because that IS the moral: there’s going to be so much going on during your pitch appointment that it’s prudent to assume that it will be darned difficult to make even the most elegant story sound fresh and pithy. Especially if you find yourself, as so many pitchers do, having a meeting under ear-splitting conditions. Remember, a high probability that you — and the agent sitting across the table from you — will be able to hear the other pitches and conversations going on around you. It’s easy for a hearer to get distracted, especially after pitch fatigue — the inevitable numbing effect on the mind of hearing many pitches over a short period of time — has started to set in. Heck, you may find it hard to concentrate on your storyline — and you won’t even be the one who has already heard fifty pitches that day. Counterintuitive as it may seem, buttonholing an agent at a crowded luncheon or after a well-attended seminar for a hallway pitch is often a significantly quieter option than giving a 2-minute pitch during a scheduled appointment. And yes, if I ruled the universe, this would not be the case, but apparently, conference centers fall outside the range of my scepter. Yet conference organizers are not actively trying to weed out the shy, the agoraphobic, and the noise-sensitive — although that is often the effect of a well-stocked pitching room. It’s just that space is often at a premium at a literary conference, and many conference centers have really lousy acoustics. Or really good acoustics, depending upon how badly you want to hear the pitcher 20 feet away from you describe the gory mass murder at the center of his thriller. Thus your goal is not merely to make the case that your book is a good one — it is to tell a story so original, in such interesting language, and with such great imagery that it will seem fresh in a pitching environment. That’s equally true for fiction and nonfiction, by the way, and even more so for memoir. How might one go about that? In a frequently chaotic-feeling pitching situation, including vivid, surprising details is the best way I know for a good storyteller to make an exhausted agent sit up and say, “Wait a minute — I’ve never heard a tale like THAT before!” Does this advice seem just a touch familiar? It should — it’s that old saw show, don’t tell, transplanted from the page to the pitching environment. The essence of good storytelling, after all, lies in evocative specifics, not one-size-fits-all generalities. The higher the ratio of one-of-a-kind details to summary in your pitch, the greater the probability of its being memorable. And terrific. Oh, there are all of those raised hands again. “But Anne,” some of these wavers protest, “I’m likely to be too nervous to remember the name of my book during my pitch meeting, much less any brilliantly vivid and pithy details I might have thought up in the solitude of my quiet room. Isn’t it just a touch unreasonable to expect me to be able to blurt ‘em out on command?” Not really — as long as you don’t rely solely on your memory to help you through. There’s no earthly reason not to write out your 2-minute pitch on an index card or piece of paper and have it in front of you throughout the meeting. Honest, it won’t render your pitch less impressive. As I mentioned last time, reading a formal pitch is completely acceptable; if you remember to look up occasionally, no one will fault you for reading your pitch, rather than blurting it out from memory. That way, you will be sure to hit all of those important points, as well as to include each and every memorable detail. And no, you will not get Brownie points for reciting it from memory. This isn’t your 5th grade class’ Americana pageant, and this isn’t the Gettysburg Address — which, incidentally, Abraham Lincoln was too experienced a public speaker to attempt to give from memory. Actually, at 267 words, the Gettysburg Address is a pretty good length guideline for a formal pitch. It’s also proof positive that it is indeed possible to work expressive language and strong imagery into a 2-minute speech. Take a gander: <blockquote> Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot consecrate…we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion –that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. </blockquote> Great speech, eh? Admittedly, my editorial hand itches to excise some of the structural redundancy, as well as some of those extraneous heres, and smooth out some of those slightly awkward subordinate clauses. (Had I mentioned that editors tend to be nit-picky?) There’s no denying, though, that this is a magnificently constructed argument. Ever heard the story about why it’s so short? It wasn’t that Lincoln didn’t have a lot to say — he was scheduled to speak immediately after one of the greatest of living orators, Edward Everett. The opening act’s light-hearted little lecture lasted for two solid hours. Who could compete? Lincoln knew better. Rather than fight fire with fire, he did one of the smartest things someone making a speech can do if he wants to be remembered fondly by his hearers: he made his point, and then he stopped talking. In memory of that excellent strategic choice, let’s add another step to our formula for a formal pitch: Step IV: once you have gone through all of the steps above, shut up and let your hearer get a word in edgewise. Most pitchers forget this important rule, rambling on and on, even after they have reached the end of their prepared material. Or even after the agent or editor has said, “Great; send me the first chapter.” Don’t keep trying to sell your book; it won’t help your case. It’s only polite to allow the agent to respond, to be enthusiastic. Besides, it’s better storytelling. If even you’re going to hand your listener a cliffhanger worthy of the old Flash Gordon radio serials, it is likely to fall flat if you don’t leave time for your listener to cry, “But what happened NEXT?” A good storyteller always leaves her audience wanting more — and a good salesperson knows when to take yes for an answer. Most of us have been turned off by a too-hard sell in other contexts, right? If your primary concern in choosing a vehicle is the gas mileage, you’re going to start to feel impatient if the car dealer keeps rattling off details about how many bags of groceries you could fit in the trunk. By rambling, you’ll be missing out on a golden opportunity to demonstrate what a good listener you are. Remember, you’re not only trying to convince the agent or editor that your book is well-written and interesting — you’re also, if you’re smart (and I know you are), attempting to convey that you’d be an absolute dream to work with if they signed you. I don’t know why this point so seldom comes up in pitching classes or in agent and editor Q&As at conferences, but being a considerate, careful listener is a definite selling point for a writer. So is the ability to ask thoughtful questions and an understanding that agents and editors in fact have jobs that are extraordinarily difficult to do well. Treating them with respect during your pitch session will go a long way toward demonstrating that you have been working those delightful skills. These are interesting human beings, after all, not publication-granting machines. Why, there’s yet another coincidence: if you’ve been following this series from the very beginning, you have been building the knowledge base to handle your pitch encounters as professional meetings, not as Hail Mary shots at a target nearly impossible to hit. You’ve done your homework about the people to whom you are intending to pitch (or query), so you may speak to them intelligently about their work; you have performed a little market research, so you may discuss your target market and sales trends for your type of book; you have figured out why people out there will want to buy your book as opposed to any other. Okay, you’ve caught me: I’ve been pursuing a dual agenda here. I’ve not only been helping you prepare to pitch, but I’ve been pushing you to develop the skills that will make you a great client for an agency and a wonderful writer for a publishing house. Call me zany, but I like win-win outcomes. Next time, I shall tackle how to track down those vivid little details that will make your pitch spring to life. In the meantime, keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4253" class="post-4253 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-after-youve-made-an-unsuccessful-pitch category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-but-ive-heard category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-do-i-need-to-memorize-my-pitch category-freshness-in-a-pitch category-how-can-i-keep-myself-from-freaking-out-mid-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-industry-etiquette category-literary-fiction-pitching category-nonfiction-pitching category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-a-nonfiction-book category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-or-querying-nonfiction category-pitching-tips category-pitchingpalooza category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-should-i-bring-my-manuscript-to-a-pitch-meeting category-what-actually-happens-in-a-pitch-meeting category-what-is-conference-pitching-and-why-would-i-want-to-do-it category-what-to-bring-to-a-conference category-why-might-my-pitch-get-rejected"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/19/pitchingpalooza-part-xix-mustering-the-wherewithal-to-deliver-the-pitch-proper-or-hey-watch-out-for-that-tree-16/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-19T00:00:00+00:00">August 19, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2021-04-15T13:48:53+00:00">April 15, 2021</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/19/pitchingpalooza-part-xix-mustering-the-wherewithal-to-deliver-the-pitch-proper-or-hey-watch-out-for-that-tree-16/industry-etiquette/#comments">1 Comment on Pitchingpalooza, part XIX: mustering the wherewithal to deliver the pitch proper, or, hey, watch out for that tree!</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/19/pitchingpalooza-part-xix-mustering-the-wherewithal-to-deliver-the-pitch-proper-or-hey-watch-out-for-that-tree-16/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XIX: mustering the wherewithal to deliver the pitch proper, or, hey, watch out for that tree!</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/lou-gehrig-farewell-speech.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-15765" title="lou gehrig farewell speech" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/lou-gehrig-farewell-speech.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="298" /></a> Perhaps I am inspired by this genuinely gorgeous photo of Lou Gehrig — taken, I am reliably informed, in the midst of the famed “I am the luckiest man in the world” speech — but I’ve been feeling the urge to blog about memoir-writing lately, campers. I know, I know: I generally spend the annual publishing world holiday stretching from the second week of August until after Labor Day filling your heads with practical details aplenty; I am still planning to talk about querying in September. After I wrap up Pitchingpalooza next week, however, I think I shall indulge myself with some in-depth discussion of the writing about the real, both as memoir and as fiction. So start digging up those scraps of paper marked ask Anne about this. As always, I like to incorporate readers’ concerns, questions, and ideas into all of my series. And call me psychic, but I’m willing to bet a nickel that somewhere out there at this very moment, some member of the Author! Author! community is rending her garments over some seemingly insurmountable problem in holding, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature. Oh, and I may be announcing a new contest next week. It’s been a while since I’ve offered my readers the chance to generate any new Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy (ECQLC), after all. Back to the matter at hand: here comes the attraction for which you have all been waiting so patiently. Today, I shall begin to talk about the pitch proper, the full 2-minute marketing statement a writer is expected to give at an honest-to-goodness, meet-’em-in-the-flesh appointment with an agent or editor at a conference. Goosebump-inducing, isn’t it? Don’t worry; you’re up for it. So far in this series, we’ve been learning how to describe our work in terms that make sense to the publishing industry, as well as how to benefit from an impromptu pitch opportunity. Now, we are ready to stack up all of those building blocks into, well, a building. But not right away; I shall be presenting you with step-by-step guidelines this weekend. First, because there are so many misconceptions floating around out there about what that building should look like, how many rooms it should contain, whether to call where you drink coffee the porch, the veranda, or the lanai, and someone please extricate me from this metaphor before I spontaneously begin producing blueprints, I’m going to begin not by telling you immediately how to do a pitch right, but by pointing out what the vast majority of 2-minute pitchers do wrong. Here, for your cringing pleasure, are the most popular formal pitching faux pas, so that you may avoid them. To echo the title of this post, watch out for that tree! <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6057" title="crooked-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/crooked-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="crooked-tree" width="150" height="150" />(1) As with the keynote and the elevator speech, most pitchers make the mistake of trying to turn the pitch proper into a summary of the book’s plot, rather than a teaser for its premise.</blockquote> That’s going to be a Herculean task for a book whose plot’s complexity is much beyond the Dr. Seuss level. No wonder so many pitchers just start at page one and keep retailing details of the plot until the agent or editor says gently, “Um, I’m afraid it’s time for my next appointment.” By which point, naturally, the pitcher has made it all the way to page 42 in a 387-page novel. Which leads me to another low-hanging branch to avoid: <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6060" title="lonely-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/lonely-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="lonely-tree" width="150" height="150" />(2) Most pitchers don’t stop talking when their pitches are done.</blockquote> Yes, yes, I know: all throughout the posts on hallway pitching, I have been harping on the advisability of getting out there, saying your pitch, and then ceasing to have any sound coming out of your gullet. That’s as good advice for a formal pitch as for the elevator variety. A 2-minute pitch means just that: the pitcher talks for two minutes about her manuscript. Possibly a bit more, if the agent or editor interrupts to ask questions (which is a good sign, people — don’t freeze up if it happens), but the pitch itself should not run longer. In case I’m being too subtle here: plan to stop talking at that point. Why? Well, among other things, you’re going to want to hear what the agent of your dreams has to say about your book project, right? Also, an active resolve to say what one has planned to say and then stop can be a powerful tool to keep a writer from rambling. And why do writers tend to ramble in their formal pitches, other than pure, unadulterated nervousness? Glad you asked. <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6061" title="trees-without-leaves" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/trees-without-leaves-150x150.jpg" alt="trees-without-leaves" width="150" height="150" />(3) The vast majority of conference pitchers neither prepare adequately nor practice enough.</blockquote> Now, if you have been working diligently through this series, you shouldn’t fall prey to the first problem; here at Author! Author!, we always have our fine-toothed combs at the ready, do we not? I’ve noticed , however, that my magic wand seems to have lost the ability to compel my students to say their pitches out loud to at least 25 non-threatening human beings before they even dream of trying it out on a big, scary, Bigfoot-like agent. Okay, so maybe I was exaggerating about the Bigfoot part. Or maybe I wasn’t: having spent years holding first-time pitchers’ hands at writers’ conferences, I’m not entirely sure that some of them would have been more terrified if they were about to be trapped in a room with a yeti. Why? Well… <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6065" title="negative-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/negative-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="negative-tree" width="150" height="150" />(4) Most pitchers harbor an absurd prejudice in favor of memorizing their pitches, and thus do not bring a written copy with them into the pitch meeting.</blockquote> This one drives me nuts, because it is 100% unnecessary: no reasonable human being, much less an agent accustomed to listening to nervous writers, is going to fault you for consulting your notes in a pitch meeting. Or even reading the pitch outright. This is not an exercise in rote memorization, people; you don’t get extra credit for being able to give your pitch without cue cards. A successful pitch is a communication between two individuals about a manuscript. Everyone concerned loves books — so why on earth would an agent or editor object to a demonstration that you can read? More to the point, having the text (or at least an outline) of what you want to say in your perspiring little hand is not only acceptable — it’s a grand idea. It’s smart. Its time has come. It’s also a good idea to invest some pre-pitching energy in ramping down the terror level, because, let’s face it, this is a scary thing to do. Not because a writer might muff any of the technical aspects of pitching, but because of what’s at stake. <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6068" title="green-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/green-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="green-tree" width="150" height="150" />(5) Most pitchers don’t realize until they are actually in the meeting that part of what they are demonstrating in the 2-minute pitch is their acumen as storytellers. If, indeed, they realize it at all.</blockquote> Raises the stakes something awful, doesn’t it? Relax — for someone who legitimately is a talented storyteller, coming across as one isn’t as hard as it sounds, as long as you avoid Tree #1, the temptation to summarize. Rightly understood, the 2-minute pitch is substantially more intriguing than a mere summary: it’s an opportunity to introduce the premise, the protagonist, and the central conflicts in language and imagery that convinces the hearer that not only is this a compelling and unusual story, but that you are uniquely gifted to tell it. Doesn’t that sound like a lot more fun than trying to cram 400 pages of plot into seven or eight breaths’ worth of babbling? I’m going to assume that giant gasp I just heard was the prelude to a yes and move on. While your elevator speech is the verbal equivalent of the introduce-the-premise paragraph in your query letter (a good secondary use for an elevator speech, as I mentioned a few days back), the pitch itself is — or can be — a snapshot of the feel, the language, and the texture of the book. Wait — is that another tree I see heading straight for us? <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6071" title="joshua-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/joshua-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="joshua-tree" width="150" height="150" />(6) Few pitches capture the voice of the manuscript they ostensibly represent. Instead, they tend to sound generic or vague.</blockquote> Often, running afoul of Tree #6 is the result of getting bonked on the head of Tree #1: most pitchers become so obsessed with trying to stuff as many plot points as humanly possible into their limited time face-to-face with the agent that they abandon voice altogether. As is often (unfortunately) true of synopses, summary for its own sake is seldom conducive to graceful sentence construction. Neither, alas, is a hard sell. Is that a tree I see sneaking up behind you? <blockquote><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/christmas-tree.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-15773" title="christmas tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/christmas-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a>(7) Too many pitches sound more like back jacket copy than a serious statement of the book’s premise and central conflict or question — and a disturbingly high percentage of these are riddled with descriptive superlatives.</blockquote> You wouldn’t believe how many pitches sound like standard advertising copy. But a writer does not go to a formal pitch meeting to review her own book — she’s there to describe it. Trust me on this one: from the pitch-hearer’s perspective, every pitch that strays into advertising-speak is going to sound very similar. All of those soi-disant the next great bestsellers, Great American Novels, the book you won’t want to misses, novels that will appeal to every woman in North America, and it’s a natural for Oprahs (which people still use, believe it or not) have one thing in common: their pitchers are wasting time that could be used to describe what is genuinely unique about the book in puffing the book concept in terms that no agent is going to believe, anyway. Lest some of you have gotten lost whilst wandering around in that epic last sentence, let me restate that simply: boasts about the importance of a book simply do not work in pitches. Agents are accustomed to making up their own minds about manuscripts; why would they look to the writer, of all people, to provide them with a review? So what should a savvy pitcher do instead? Here’s an idea: rather than talking about the book, why not use the 2-minute pitch as your opportunity to give the agent or editor a sense of what it would be like to READ it? To borrow from that most useful piece of nearly universal writing advice, this is the time to show, not tell. Yes, your time is short, but you’re going to want to include a few memorable details to make your pitch stand out from the crowd. Ah, I see we are about to run afoul of another tree. <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6072" title="desert-trees" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/desert-trees-150x150.jpg" alt="desert-trees" width="150" height="150" />(8) Very few pitches include intriguing, one-of-a-kind details that set the book being pitched apart from all others.</blockquote> Do I hear some incredulous snorts out there? “Details in a 2-minute speech?” the scoffers say. “Yeah, right. Why not advise me to tap-dance, wave sparklers, and paint an abstract in oils at the same time? In two minutes, I’ll barely have time to brush the edges of my plot with generalities!” That’s an understandable response, but actually, cramming a pitch with generalities is a rather poor strategy. It’s the unholy fruit of Tree #1. Counterintuitive? Perhaps, but the straightforward “This happens, then that happens, then that occurs…” method tends not to be very memorable, especially within the context of a day or two’s worth of pitches that are pretty much all going to be told chronologically. Strong imagery, on the other hand, sensual details, unusual plot twists — these jump out at the pitch-hearer, screaming, “Hey, you — pay attention to me!” To understand why vivid, story-like pitches tend to be effective, sneak with me now into a garden-variety conference pitch appointment room. For the benefit of those of you who have never experienced a pitch session first-hand, let this serve as a warning: if you were expecting a quiet, intimate, church-like atmosphere, you’re bound to be surprised. If not actually stunned, because… <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6073" title="snowscape-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/snowscape-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="snowscape-tree" width="150" height="150" />(9) Most pitchers assume that a pitch-hearer will hear — and digest — every word they say, yet the combination of pitch fatigue and hectic pitch environments virtually guarantee that will not be the case.</blockquote> Don’t take it personally. It honestly is the nature of the beast. In the first place, pitch appointments are notorious for being both tightly booked and running long, frequently more and more of the latter as the day goes on. But while it’s not at all uncommon for an appointment booked for 4 PM not to commence until 5:23, obviously, a pitcher cannot afford to show up late, lest his agent be the one who zips through appointments like Speedy Gonzales. The result: the writer usually ends up waiting, gnawing her nails like a rabbit on speed, in a crowded hallway filled with similarly stressed-out people. Not an environment particularly conducive to either relaxation or concentration, both of which are desirable to attain just before entering a pitching situation. Eventually, the writer will be led to a tiny cubicle, or perhaps a table in the middle of a room, where s/he is expected to sit across a perhaps foot-and-a-half table’s width away from a real, live agent who in all probability has drunk far more coffee that day than the human system should be able to stand, possibly to counteract the lingering effects of that big party the conference’s organizers were kind enough to throw the night before. I don’t mean to frighten the timid by bringing up that last detail, but it’s actually not beyond belief that you might be seated close enough to the pitch recipient to smell the coffee on her breath. Or the vodka seeping out of her pores. Heck, you might be close enough to take a whiff of all kinds of people. At a big conference, other pitchers may well be close enough for our hero/ine to reach out and touch; one may need to speak in a near-shout to be audible. Indeed, at some conferences, the pitchers simply move one seat to the right (or left, depending upon how the room is set up) to pitch to the next agent or editor. It’s rather like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. In this relaxing environment, the writer introduces him to the agent (if he remembers his manners, that is), and then spends approximately two minutes talking about his book. Then — brace yourself for this — the agent responds to what the writer has said. Possibly even while the writer was saying it. Which leads us straight into the path of another tree — or perhaps a thicket. <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6076" title="white-trees" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/white-trees-150x150.jpg" alt="white-trees" width="150" height="150" />(10) Few pitchers are comfortable enough with their pitches not feel thrown off course by follow-up questions.</blockquote> Oh, you thought it was an accident that I’ve kept bringing up this possibility every few days throughout Pitchingpalooza? Au contraire, mon frÃ¨re: I was poking you in the ribs during practice so you would develop the sure-footedness not to lose your balance during the performance. If a writer is prepared to have an actual conversation about her book, this part of the pitch meeting can be, if not actually pleasant, then at least informative. The agent might ask a question or two, to try to figure out how the manuscript might fit into his agency’s current needs; at this point, a writer may feel free to ask questions about the agency or the market for your type of book as well. But I’m not going to lie to you — sometimes, the agent’s first response is to say that she doesn’t handle that type of book, or that kind of story isn’t selling well right now, or any of a million other reasons that she isn’t going to ask to see pages. (Yes, they will usually tell you why; generic pitch rejections are not as common as form-letter rejections.) Either way, at some point in the meeting, the agent is going to tell the writer whether the book sounds like it would interest her as a business proposition. She’s not saying whether she liked it, mind you — whether she thinks she can sell it. You will be a much, much happier pitcher if you cling to that particular distinction like an unusually tenacious leech. Not to mention steering clear of our next obstacle… <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6077" title="fruit-tree" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/fruit-tree-150x150.jpg" alt="fruit-tree" width="150" height="150" />(11) Far too many pitchers labor under the false impression that if an agent or editor likes a pitch, s/he will snap up the book on the spot. In reality, the agent or editor is going to want to read the manuscript first.</blockquote> Believing otherwise only makes aspiring writers unhappy. It sounds like a truism, I know, but realistic expectations are the most important things a writer can carry into a pitch meeting. In that spirit, let me alert you to two things that will not happen under any circumstances during your pitch meeting, no matter how good your pitch is (or even your platform): the agent’s signing you on the spot, without reading your work, or an editor’s saying, “I will buy this book,” just because he happens to like the pitch. If you walk into your pitch meeting expecting either of these outcomes — and scores of writers do — even a positive response is going to feel like a disappointment. Let me repeat that, because it’s vital to your happiness: contrary to common writerly fantasy, no reputable agent will offer representation on a pitch alone. Nothing can be settled until she’s had a chance to see your writing, period. And no viable promise exists between a pitcher and an agent or editor until both parties sign a formal contract documenting it. Donâ€™t feel bad, even for a nanosecond, if you have ever thought otherwise: the implied promise of instant success is the underlying logical fallacy of the verbal pitch. There are plenty of good writers who don’t describe their work well aloud, and even more who can speak well but do not write well. The practice of verbal pitching is undermined by these twin facts — and yet conference after conference, year after year, aspiring writers are lead to believe that they will be discovered, signed by an agent, and lead off to publication fame and fortune after a simple spoken description of their books. It just doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. Chant it with me now, long-term readers: the purpose of the formal pitch is not to induce a decision on the spot on the strength of the premise alone, but to get the agent to ask you to send pages so she can see for herself what a good writer you are. Anything more, from an interesting conversation to praise for your premise, is icing on the cake: it’s nice if it’s on the menu, of course, but not essential to provide a satisfying dessert to the pitching meal. So once again, I beg you, don’t set yourself up to be shattered: keep your expectations realistic. Professionally, what you really want to get out of this meeting is the cake, not the frosting. Here is a realistic best-case scenario: <blockquote><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6080" title="cake" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/cake-150x150.jpg" alt="cake" width="150" height="150" />If the agent is interested by your pitch, she will hand you her business card and ask you to send some portion of the manuscript — usually, the first chapter, the first 50 pages, or for nonfiction, the book proposal. If she’s very, very enthused, she may ask you to mail the whole thing.</blockquote> Mail is the operative term here. A request to see pages should never be construed as an invitation to hand her the whole thing on the spot. Seriously. Not even if you happen to have a complete copy in the backpack at your feet. Why? Well, manuscripts are heavy; agents almost universally prefer to have them mailed or e-mailed) rather than to carry them onto a plane. (If you think that your tome will not make a significant difference to the weight of a carry-on bag, try carrying a ream of paper in your shoulder bag for a few hours.) Yes, I know: you have probably heard other pitching teachers — ones who got their agents a long time ago, for the most part, or who have not tried to land an agent recently — urge you to lug around a couple of complete copies of your book. It’s not even all that uncommon for conference brochures to recommend this method. This is WILDLY outdated advice, sort of like advising a 16-year-old nervous about taking her driver’s license test to bring along a buggy whip, in case the horse gets restless. Just say neigh. No one is going to fault you for not pulling a manuscript out of your hip pocket. At most, the agent may ask on the spot if you have a writing sample with you, but trust me, he will have a few pages in mind, not 300. If you’d like to be prepared for this eventuality, the first five pages of a book is a fairly standard writing sample. You could also use the first few pages of a favorite scene. In the extremely unlikely event that the agent asks for more right away, murmur a few well-chosen words about how flattered you are by his interest, and offer to pop anything he wants into the mail as soon as it’s feasible. In the interests of covering the gamut of reasonable expectations, I’m afraid I must, at least briefly, take us on a walking tour of the other logical possibility: it’s imperative to understand what a no means as well. (I’d number that, too, but I’ve run out of tree pictures. What, you thought they just grew on…oh, never mind.) When an agent or editor says, “Well, that’s not for me,” it is not always because the story is a bad one, or the pitch was incoherent (although pitch-hearers routinely encounter both): it is very frequently because they don’t handle that type of book, or a similar book just bombed, or someone who can’t stand family sagas has just been promoted to publisher, or… Getting the picture? Rejection is very, very seldom personal — at least from the point of view of the rejection-bestower. Try not to take it as if it is. Regardless of the outcome, remember to thank the agent or editor for his or her time. Politeness always counts in this industry, so do be nice, even if it turns out that the agent simply doesn’t represent your kind of book. (Trust me — if this is the case, the agent will tell you so right away. For a fuller discussion of how and why mismatched meetings happen and how to handle them, please see <a href="/index_p_15510.html">my earlier post on the subject</a>.) Is your mind reeling, trying to picture this situation in full and vivid detail? Good; that means you’re grasping its complexity. If you find yourself interrupted mid-pitch by a terse, “Sorry, but I don’t represent that kind of book,” express regret BRIEFLY — and ask for recommendations for other agents to approach with your work. Chances are pretty good that she will know all of the agents attending; wouldn’t you like to be able to begin a hallway pitch with, “Excuse me, but agent Selective Notforme recommended that I speak with you. Would you have a moment to hear my pitch?” Whatever you do, don’t panic; you can avoid the wicked trees with relative ease. Over the next few posts, I am going to give you a template for presenting your story — fictional or not — in a vivid, exciting, memorable manner. I know that this prospect is daunting, but believe me, you’re gaining the skills to pull this off beautifully. Trust me on this one. Keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4092" class="post-4092 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-3-line-pitch category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-but-ive-heard category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-do-i-need-to-memorize-my-pitch category-elevator-speech category-hallway-pitching category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-im-a-finalist-what-now category-industry-etiquette category-keeping-the-faith category-literary-fiction-pitching category-nonfiction-pitching category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-tips category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-what-are-the-polite-ways-to-approach-an-agent category-when-should-i-not-approach-an-agent-at-a-conference category-writers-conferences category-writing-advice-truisms"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/18/pitchingpalooza-part-xviii-location-location-and-did-i-mention-location-13/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-18T00:00:00+00:00">August 18, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:14+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/18/pitchingpalooza-part-xviii-location-location-and-did-i-mention-location-13/industry-etiquette/#comments">2 Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XVIII: location, location, and did I mention location?</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/18/pitchingpalooza-part-xviii-location-location-and-did-i-mention-location-13/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XVIII: location, location, and did I mention location?</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/overkill-signage.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/overkill-signage-768x1024.jpg" alt="" title="overkill signage" width="512" height="683" class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-15749"/></a> Is it me, or did someone assume that the folks driving the delivery trucks needed just a tad more prompting about where to drop those packages than a reasonable person might in fact need? Wouldn’t everyone’s life have been a whole lot simpler if the manager of this facility just sprung to have a sign made that would blare LOOK — IF YOU HAVE A DELIVERY, COME DOWN THIS ROAD. EVERYONE ELSE SHOVE OFF or some similarly blunt and unambiguous statement? You know me, folks — I’m a huge fan of clarity. (Oh, that didn’t occur to you during last January’s 23-part series on how to format a book manuscript? Next winter, it will be 24 parts — a reader asked a really good question in the archives.) I’m also, when it comes to hallway pitching, a big fan of writers’ being absolutely clear on where and when it is and is not appropriate to accost an agent in a hallway (or bar) at a writers’ conference, politely ask if s/he could spare thirty seconds, and give the shortened version of your pitch known as the elevator speech. Where is particularly important. And not only because the single most frequently-expressed concern writers have about hallway pitching is appearing rude. It’s not surprising that first-time pitchers tend to be worried about this — a hefty percentage of the information on conference pitching floating around out there consist of some form of there are agents and editors who just hate it when a writer comes up to them at a conference and pitches a book without an appointment. Therefore, all agents and editors must hate it. Even if a writer happens to find herself seated next to the agent of her dreams at a rubber chicken luncheon, under no circumstances should she even consider preparing a coherent answer to the friendly question, “So what do you write?” I get that fear; honestly, I do. If you happen to have heard an agent say point-blank in an interview that he hates being buttonholed in hallways, by all means, do not buttonhole him in hallways. But to assume that all agents and editors share identical opinions on this subject is to fall into the same trap that aspiring writers so often do about querying and submission: it doesn’t take very many repetitions for a single agent’s personal preference, expressed on a conference dais or on a blog, to get magnified by that great game of Telephone we call the Internet into a dictum ostensibly crafted to be applicable to every pitching opportunity, anytime, anywhere: thou shalt not pitch at all outside a scheduled pitch meeting — and if the conference organizers schedule you for an appointment with someone who does not represent your kind of book, well, too bad. Better luck at next year’s expensive conference. I’ve spoken at some length in this series about the vast difference between a polite, professional pitch — one that includes delightful and emollient phrases like, “Excuse me, may I disturb you for a moment?” “You mentioned at the agents’ forum that you represent books like mine, and I could not obtain an appointment with you,” and/or “Thank you very much for your time. I shall be going now.” — and the kind of rude, blustery pitch that most hallway pitch-haters have in mind when they express negative opinions about it. While it might be safe to draw a general conclusion about the inadvisability of being rude to any stranger one wants to approach to ask any favor, it seems like overkill (rather like the signage above) to swear off the possibility of making a connection with an agent who might love your work because some other agent got offended once. It just isn’t logical. But it makes a whole lot more sense if one bears in mind the possibility that the original, “Ooh, I hate it when aspiring writers stop me in the hallway to pitch,” statement was part of a sentence that continued, “when I am trying to race to the bathroom,” does it not? And who could blame the agent — or indeed, any agent — for feeling that way? I suspect, though, that the primary appeal of the surprisingly pervasive conference circuit truism against hallway pitching is not so much its underlying logic as its implicit permission — nay, admonition — for a would-be pitcher at a conference not muster the courage to walk up to that agent who is three feet away and ask politely to pitch. For the nervous, the ostensible ban on hallway pitching is a virtual Get Out of Pitching Free card, relieving them of the obligation to try to find an agent via a face-to-face approach. Unfortunately, many literary contest winners and finalists regard their status (and the fact that at many conferences that give out such awards, winners and placers are singled out for public praise, always delightful) as a Get Out of Pitching Free card, too. They expect — wrongly, usually, but not without reason — that having done so well in the contest sponsored by the same organization that is throwing the conference, the agents and editors in attendance would seek them out, not the other way around. Or at least that the conference’s organizers would go out of their way to throw contest winners and agents who might snap ‘em up together in the same room. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this happens surprisingly seldom. Most of the time, contest winners and finalists are given no more pitching opportunities than other conference attendees, and it’s far from the norm that contest winners are automatically mobbed by agents. The latter are usually more receptive to winners and finalists, but by and large, it’s the writer’s responsibility to walk up and make that connection. Which generally entails — wait for it — giving a hallway pitch. I say this, incidentally, not just as the writers’ booster who often ends up holding contest-winners’ hands at the end of the conference as they say over and over again, “I can’t believe that no agent asked me to submit pages!” I also say this as a writer who has actually been in this position. When I won my first big award for my memoir, I was lucky: the president of the award-granting organization actually did corral yours truly and the winner of the main fiction award, lecture us on the importance of not wasting any or all of the pitching opportunities that the rest of the conference would afford, and herded us into a party with a couple of dozen agents. We both pitched more or less non-stop for the rest of the conference. Fortunately, I had come prepared for it: several friends of mine had won similar contests, so I had been on the receiving end of many a pep talk. I walked out of it with more than a dozen requests for pages. As a direct result, I had the luxury of choosing between offers from several agents. How many requests do you think I would have generated had I not pitched like a fiend? Ask the winners from subsequent years, the ones who did not heed the president’s pep talk. I’ve ended up holding their hands at the end of conferences, too. I’m bringing this up not to gloat about my success, but because not all contest winners and finalists were as lucky as I was to know that it was my job, not the attending agents’, to take advantage of that first-place ribbon fluttering from my name tag. I’m hoping my experience will believe me when I tell you a basic truth of conference pitching: while the pitch you are bold enough to make might get rejected, the pitch you never work up nerve to give will certainly be rejected — by you. Please, contest winners and finalists, do not remain passive here: although contest wins are undoubtedly excellent Eye-Catching Query Letter Candy (ECQLC), at no place or time will your having done so well in that contest be as easy to parlay into a conversation with an agent as when that agent has just seen you handed a ribbon. How might a savvy contest winner initiate such a conversation? How about like this: “Excuse me, but could you spare me a moment? I’ve just won Award X for my book, and you mentioned at the agents’ forum that you represent work in that book category. Would you be interested in hearing a quick pitch?” I can already hear those of you whose entries did not do quite so well breathing a sigh of relief. “Okay, Anne,” the time-conscious cry, “that lets me out. Unless I just happen to fall into conversation with an agent — if, say, someone digs a large pit in the middle of a conference center’s hallway and we both tumble into it at the same time — probably won’t be pitching. But even assuming that I’m willing to prepare a pitch for that particular eventuality, I’m not going to memorize two different speeches. If the elevator speech is so effective at piquing interest, why shouldn’t I just use it as my pitch in my meetings with agents and editors? Since I’m already crunched for time to write, let alone to find an agent, why do I need to invest the time in preparing more than one conference pitch?” The short answer: so you can be flexible. As I pointed out last time, you never know when — or where — you may end up pitching. The long answer: let’s face it, it’s not as though simply memorizing a pitch, be it 3-sentence or 2-minute, is sufficient to prepare a writer for a meeting with an agent or editor who might be interested in the book. In fact, a pretty good argument could be made for not memorizing either, but reading one’s pitch from a handy piece of paper, index card, etc., to avoid the glassy-eyed, zombie-like delivery that regurgitation of memorized material. Besides, as intrepid reader Dave likes to point out each time we discuss pitching (and bless you for it, Dave), a full-scale pitch is an interactive process, not a speech declaimed to an audience who can only clap or boo at the end. If an agent or editor likes your hallway or full pitch, she’s probably going to ask some questions. Perhaps — and this comes as a substantial shock to most first-time pitchers — even DURING your pitch. Do you really want to be caught tongue-tied and unable to speak coherently about your book? Stick your head between your knees until the dizziness induced by that last image passes. I’ll wait. That’s why I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to nudge all of you away from the all-too-common notion of the three-line pitch, practiced over and over as if they were lines in a play. If you concentrate too much on the words themselves, and the short amount of time you have to say them, it’s too easy to freeze up when an unexpected question knocks you off script. Call me zany, but in my experience, helping people learn to talk about their work professionally and comfortably in a broad variety of contexts works far better in practice than ordering people to write, memorize, and blurt a specific number of lines of text. The rules lawyers out there aren’t satisfied with those excellent reasons, though, are they? “But Anne,” I hear some of you protest, “I can always add to my pitch on the fly, but I can hardly subtract from it. So why wouldn’t I be best off just preparing the 30-second version and using it no matter where I’m called upon to pitch?” Okay, okay, I’ll admit it: a lot of people do use the 3-sentence elevator speech as their only pitch; to be fair, it has been known to work, just as hallway pitches work. Just let me ask you a couple of questions: a 30-second pitch leaves quite a bit of a 10-minute appointment unused, doesn’t it? And why would you want to trade an opportunity to say MORE about your book for a format that forces you to say LESS? I have another, more strategic reason for advising you to prepare both a short and a long pitch: not all conferences are equally open to hallway pitching. Especially, I’ve noticed, the ones that charge would-be pitchers per pitching appointment. Not too astonishing, I suppose. Brace yourself, because I’m about to be subversive again: my experience has been that even at pay-for-pitch conferences, a brave writer can pretty much always buttonhole an agent or two after an agents’ forum or in the lunch line. It’s pretty difficult for conference-organizers to prevent any extra-appointment chance encounters between agents and the writers who came to the conference to pitch to them. However, even at some conferences that don’t charge by the appointment, the organizers do try to discourage hallway pitching. I’ve seen many a conference brochure that featured rhetoric telling attendees that it is always rude to pitch outside a formal appointment, for example, or that forbade attendees to switch appointments after their assigned agents announced from a dais that they’re no longer accepting a particular kind of book. Other conferences offer only a small handful of appointment times on a first-come, first-served basis, so late registrants are left with only the options of hallway pitching or not pitching at all. It’s also not at all uncommon for agents and editors to be whisked away to private parties or hospitality suites, so that they are seldom seen in the hallways for accosting purposes. Seldom seen sober, at any rate (allegedly). Not much point in pitching to someone who thinks you’re just one of the dancing pink elephants. Even when the rules and/or schedule do not discourage casual pitching, it can require significant bravery to place oneself at the right place at the right time. Even at fairly inclusive conferences, attendees often report feeling like comparative outcasts, unwelcome at the luncheon tables where the bigwigs hobnob. I’ve been to many a conference where the organizers and invited guests sat on one end of a banquet hall, and the paying attendees on the other. Heck, I stopped by a conference (which shall remain nameless) a couple of years back where the visiting literati were whisked off their respective airplanes, driven immediately to a party at a local NYT bestselling author’s house for abundant merry-making, and then plied with alcohol so steadily throughout the course of the conference that the following Monday morning, one of the agents e-mailed me from New York to ask what had happened over the weekend. Rumor has it that some of the invited guests did not even show up for scheduled a.m. pitch meetings. Which, I imagine, played some havoc with those pitchers whose assigned pitchees did not appear. My point is, writers often pay a lot to attend these conferences, yet find themselves with relatively few pitching opportunities — and not always the ones they expected to have. Sometimes, a writer has to be pretty creative in order to snag those precious few moments for pitching, at least without coming across as obnoxious. Which brings me to <a href="/index_p_5647.html">a perfectly marvelous question posted earlier in this series by insightful first-time commenter Penelope</a>. So trenchant was it that I’ve been saving it to share with the entire class: <blockquote> This is a wonderful post! I especially like the advice on what to do in the case that you’re paired with an agent who doesn’t represent your genre; which I had no idea could happen. I do find one part of this post confusing, though. I have read on the internet (agent’s blogs, mostly) of how much agents despise being cornered and pitched to in places like elevators, hallways, bars, etc, yet you seem to be saying that this is okay. Is there a certain way to go about pitching in an elevator (for example) that would help an agent be more open to the pitch? </blockquote> I find this question excellent — rather than passively accepting that what I’ve been advising is true, Penelope has thought it over, weighed advice from a variety of sources, and asked for clarification. This is a great strategy when dealing with anyone who has been immersed in the biz for a good, long while — as counter-intuitive as its ins and outs may be, once one gets used to them, their underlying logic can start to seem obvious, believe it or not. Bear that in mind the next time you hear confusing pronouncements from the dais at a literary conference, please. Back to the matter at hand: Penelope is quite right that there are some agents out there who hate, loathe, and detest aspiring writers asking to pitch outside scheduled appointments. Perhaps because they’ve never been in the position of a writer assigned to meet with an inappropriate match, these agents don’t believe that a polite writer would ever accost them in a hallway. Fortunately, the relative few who feel this way — and they are few, at least amongst agents who habitually go to writers’ conferences — tend to be quite vocal about it. They post it on their websites; they announce it from the conference dais; they write articles and give interviews about it. Thus, they have good reason to be insulted if an aspiring writer walks up to them and just starts pitching: they could hardly have made their preferences clearer. Approaching them on the fly, then, is every bit as likely to offend as picking up the phone and cold-calling an agent instead of sending a query letter. Or querying an agency that states on its website or in the standard agency guides that it is not currently accepting queries. The result of ignoring these stated preferences will be the same: instant rejection. So here is my advice: do not, under any circumstances, attempt to pitch informally to an agent who has ever stated publicly that s/he abhors it. How can a writer new to the biz avoid this faux pas, you ask? At the risk of repeating myself, do your homework. Performing a simple Google search on each attending agent before you head off to the conference should turn up any statements on the subject. If not, listen closely to what the various agents have to say at the agents’ forum. Chances are, though, that you won’t turn up too many hallway-haters; it’s a common enough practice that folks who are seriously turned off by it tend to avoid the conference experience altogether. (Hey, it’s stressful for the pitch-hearers, too — listening to that many people’s hopes and dreams is mighty tiring.) After all, agents go to conferences in order to pick up clients, and it honestly is a waste of everyone’s time if they only hear pitches from the 10 writers who happen to be assigned formal appointments with them, if there are 75 writers there who write what they’re looking to represent. Especially if 5 of those appointments turn out to be mismatches, where writers are pitching types of books that they do not represent. If a writer’s polite about approaching, it’s usually fine. That’s a big if, though — unfortunately, there are PLENTY of rude aspiring writers up there who will simply walk up to an agent they’ve never met before and start launching into a pitch, without so much as a “Hello” or “Could you spare me thirty seconds to tell you about my book?” Typically, when agents complain about informal pitches, that’s the kind they’re talking about, by the way, not the nice folks who approach them respectfully. You can’t really blame them for resenting the rude approach: anyone would despise being accosted right after he had just swallowed a mouthful of pasta or as she was unlocking the door to her hotel room. Yes, it happens — but I cling firmly to the belief that none of my lovely readers would be that obnoxious. Use your common sense, be polite at all times, and be prepared for the possibility that any given agent may have a personal pet peeve about being disturbed in some specific locale. As far as I have been able to tell in a couple of decades of going to writers’ conferences, the only UNIVERSALLY agreed-upon do-not-pitch zone is the bathroom. Other than that, whether the smoking area or the make-up mirror in the ladies’ lounge is off-limits honestly is a personal preference. Hey, not everyone considers that part of the bathroom per se. I would err on the side of caution and avoid pitching at all between the WOMEN’S sign and the stalls, but hey, that’s me. The trick to approaching gently lies in both timing and courtesy. If an agent is lying prone on a hallway bench with a wet towel over her face, clutching her head and moaning about a migraine, that might not be the best time to try to catch her eye, for instance. Nor is the moment just after she walks out of the room where she has been listening to pitches all day, or when she is deep in conversation with an author she hasn’t seen in 25 years. Remember, she is under no obligation to agree to hear you out. Listening to an informal pitch is a favor, and should be treated as such. So don’t, for instance, walk up to an agent who is laughing with her friends, tap her on the shoulder, and start talking about your book. Instead, walk up to the dais after she’s given a talk, wait politely until it’s your turn, and say something along the lines of: <blockquote> “Excuse me, but I was enthralled by how you talked about your clients. I couldn’t get a pitch appointment with you, but I think you may be interested in my book. May I give you my thirty-second pitch? Or if now is not a good time, could we set up an appointment later?” </blockquote> Hard to find that offensive. It clearly gives the agent the opportunity to say no, but still makes it flatteringly plain that you are taking her time seriously. Works in an elevator, too, as long as the would-be pitcher remembers that no really does mean no. And no, in response to what some timorous souls out there just thought very loudly indeed, none of this is particularly pushy; it’s being smart about promoting your work. By preparing to be able to speak about your book in a variety of contexts, social and official both, you can be ready to take advantage of that chance meeting with the agent with whom you found it impossible to make a formal appointment. In, say, an elevator. The other way a hallway pitcher can avoid seeming rude is to keep the hallway pitch BRIEF. If you ask for 30 seconds of the agent’s time, do not take up more unless he asks follow-up questions. I’m quite serious about this: don’t go overboard. This is not the appropriate time to give your full-fledged 2-minute pitch; save that for a scheduled pitch meeting or, if you’re lucky, the appointment the agent you caught in the hallway agreed to give you later in the conference. This is where the formula we discussed last time will save your bacon: MAGIC FIRST 100 WORDS + ELEVATOR SPEECH = HALLWAY PITCH. If you follow this prescription (oh, there I go again; the book doctor is apparently in), you should not go over the promised 30 seconds. That means that you won’t have to keep checking your watch while you’re talking. See why I’ve been so adamant about urging you to prepare an elevator speech in advance? An audience granted at the last minute is no time to wing it. Out come the broken record and the dead horse again: by emphasizing the 3-sentence pitch to the exclusion of all others, I think the standard sources of writerly advice have left first-time pitchers ill-prepared to address those other vital issues involved in a good pitch, such as where the book will sit in Barnes & Noble, who the author thinks will read it, why the target market will find it compelling… In short, all of the information contained in the magic first 100 words. All that being said, if an agent has stated publicly (on an agent’s panel, for instance) that he hates informal pitches, steer clear — but don’t necessarily write that agent off as a possibility. Instead, send a query letter after the conference, beginning, “I enjoyed your talk at Conference X, and since I was not lucky enough to obtain a pitch appointment with you…” But whatever you do, don’t swear off hallway pitching just because a few agents dislike being pitched informally. Not everything every agent says is applicable to all agents — nor do the agents who make such pronouncements necessarily expect everything they say in public on the subject to become codified as The Law Eternal. Sometimes, a personal preference is just that: personal. By preparing yourself to talk about your work in a variety of contexts, you will be substantially less likely to be caught with nothing coherent to say when the pitching opportunity of your dreams presents itself. Trust me, you will be happier in the long run if you don’t self-reject your pitch. Try it on the agent of your dreams; the results might be spectacular. Oh, I’m sensing some impatient seat-shifting out there again, amn’t I? “I get it, Anne,” some of you say, rolling your eyes, “you believe that I’ll be happier in the long run if I prepare to be able to give my pitch in a house, with a mouse, in a hat, near a rat, and anywhere else that an agent with a successful track record selling books in my category happens to be. Fine — I’m going to practice my elevator speech AND my pitch. But I’m hardly going to forget my own name or the title of my book. I do have social skills — I don’t seriously need to practice introducing myself, do I?” I’m sure that you have social skills that are the pride and joy or your mother under normal circumstances, but hear me out, please: while it may seem a tad silly to have to practice saying your own name, or to remind yourself to mention that your book is a novel (or a memoir, or a nonfiction book), most writers are nervous when they pitch. I know; shocking. Practice will help you remember to hit the important points, no matter how brief or how strange the locale of your pitching experience. Especially if you practice saying them in a number of different ways. Yes, you did extrapolate correctly: I am seriously suggesting that you do dry runs where you have only a minute, only thirty seconds, five minutes, etc., in order to get comfortable talking about your work. And I’m not just saying that because I once found myself stuck in the same tiny airport with a very famous agent for five hours, waiting for the same flight. True story. Nice guy. But surprise openings are not the only reason practicing rolling with the punches is a good idea. You’d be amazed (at least I hope you would) at how many first-time pitchers come dashing into their scheduled pitch appointments, so fixated on blurting those pre-ordained three sentences that they forget to: <blockquote> (a) introduce themselves to the agent or editor, like civilized beings, (b) mention whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, (c) indicate whether the book has a title, or (d) all of the above. </blockquote> I find this sad: these are intelligent people, for the most part, but their too-rigid advance preparation has left them as tongue-tied and awkward as wallflowers at a junior high school dance. We’ve all been there, right? And don’t even get me started on the sweat-soaked silence that can ensue after the 3-sentence pitcher has gasped it all out, incontinently, and has no more to say. In that dreadful lull, the agent sits there, blinking so slowly that the pitcher is tempted to take a surreptitious peek at his watch, to make sure that time actually is moving forward at a normal clip, or stick a pin in the agent, to double-check that she isn’t some sort of emotionless android with its battery pack on the fritz. “And?” the automaton says impatiently after approximately 150 years of silence. “Are you done?” Call me unorthodox, but I don’t think this is a desirable outcome for you. But that doesn’t mean that you should just prepare a hallway pitch and trust your luck to be able to handle questions about it for the rest of your pitch appointment. You will be happier in that meeting if you have prepared at least the outline of a 2-minute pitch. (And yes, Virginia, we are going to talk about that next time.) And, by the way, you should time it as you say it out loud, to make sure it can be said in under two minutes without leaving you so breathless that oxygen will have to be administered immediately afterward. Why? Well, even more common than pitchers who dry up after 45 seconds are writers who talk on and on about their books in their pitch meetings so long that the agent or editor hasn’t time to ask follow-up questions. You really do want to keep your pitch to roughly two minutes (as opposed to your hallway pitch, which should be approximately 30 seconds), so that you can discuss your work with the well-connected, well-informed industry insider in front of you. A pitch meeting is a conversation, after all, not a stump speech: you want it to start an interesting exchange, not to engender stony silence, right? Come prepared to talk about your work — and in terms that will make sense to everyone in the industry. In a box, with a fox — or balanced in a crabapple tree with a dirt-encrusted good luck charm. (I thought I wouldn’t make you guess that time.) Trust me, you can do this. I have faith in you. Okay, now we’re coming up on the main course: the two-minute pitch. But that, my friends, is a subject for another day. Thanks for the fabulous questions, Penelope and the rest of you who contacted me privately. (You’d be amazed at how often the floating voices I cite here are the result of ex parte approaches; just for the record, I vastly prefer that questions be posted as comments on the blog, so everyone may benefit from the answers.) Keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4093" class="post-4093 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-3-line-pitch category-after-youve-made-a-successful-pitch category-after-youve-made-an-unsuccessful-pitch category-annes-favorite-posts category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-but-ive-heard category-changing-nature-of-publishing category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-elevator-speech category-hallway-pitching category-how-can-i-keep-myself-from-freaking-out-mid-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-how-will-i-know-if-my-pitch-did-work category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-industry-etiquette category-keeping-the-faith category-literary-fiction-pitching category-nonfiction-pitching category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-tips category-pitchingpalooza category-post-pitch-etiquette category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-queriers category-realistic-expectations-for-submitters category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-requested-revisions category-strategizing-a-writing-career category-the-magic-first-hundred-words category-the-mythical-right-words-to-use-in-a-pitch category-what-are-the-polite-ways-to-approach-an-agent category-what-should-i-do-if-my-pitch-doesnt-seem-to-be-working category-when-should-i-not-approach-an-agent-at-a-conference category-why-havent-i-heard-back-yet"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/11/pitchingpalooza-part-xvii-there-are-boundaries-and-there-are-boundaries-15/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-11T00:00:00+00:00">August 11, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:15+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/11/pitchingpalooza-part-xvii-there-are-boundaries-and-there-are-boundaries-15/industry-etiquette/#comments">11 Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XVII: there are boundaries, and there are BOUNDARIES</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/11/pitchingpalooza-part-xvii-there-are-boundaries-and-there-are-boundaries-15/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XVII: there are boundaries, and there are BOUNDARIES</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/oath-of-the-horatii.jpg" alt="oath-of-the-horatii" title="oath-of-the-horatii" width="474" height="359" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5985"/> Before I launch into Pitchingpalooza’s much-anticipated step-by-step guide to approaching a real, live agent to ask if you may pitch without an appointment, would everyone please stand and salute? Today may not be a national holiday in the country at large, but here at Author! Author!, it could hardly be more important. As of today, I have been writing this blog for six years. That’s 1,442 posts, about 5,000 questions, and so many thousands of pages of text that I actually don’t have time right now to sit down and tote them up. The publishing world has changed quite a bit over that period, has it not? Back when we first began confabbing about the life literary, aspiring writers would complain about the necessity of promote their work to agents; published writers would grumble about the imperative to show up for readings and book signings scheduled by their publishing houses. Pretty much everyone on the writing side of the equation was vaguely disgruntled about having to put in that level of effort, or at least the fact that a first-time author’s advance no longer enabled her to take any serious time off work to make requested revisions. One might, if one was lucky, be able to purchase a used car, but unless one happened to toss off a surprise bestseller, small-but-serious authors often did not quit their day jobs until their fourth or fifth book was doing rather well. At the time, we writers liked to get together and bemoan how much harder it was to get published and have one’s books sell well than it had been a dozen years before. Those concerns seem almost quaint now, don’t they? In the interim, we’ve all watched in hushed anticipation as the publishing industry has been declared dead, not just once, but over and over again. Not since the advent of television had so many prophesied so much literary doom so often. Forget the fact that used book sales actually went up during this period, e-books have taken off, U.S. self-publishing releases have risen to three times the annual rate of traditional publishing (which, contrary to popular opinion, has hovered around a quarter of a million releases per year), and the increase in library patronage has almost exactly matched the decline in the new book sales market. As of 2008, we were all told, the world simply stopped reading. Poppycock. If you look at even new book sales in the U.S. today, they are up in every major category. The book market is expanding. People haven’t stopped reading, bless their literature-loving hearts; they are simply doing it in different venues and in different formats. That doesn’t mean, however, that we’re necessarily going to see a reversal in all or even any of the shifts in how writers are expected to relate to their books. Now, aspiring writer not only need to market themselves in an ever-more-competitive agent-seeking market, but first-time authors also frequently end up as their books’ primary pusher to the reading public at large. It’s common for an editor to tell the author of a newly-acquired to ramp up her web presence on her own, and pronto; authors often schedule their own book signings, as budgets for book tours have dried up. This, at a juncture when the average advance on a first novel often is not enough to purchase a new laptop upon which to write the second. As editing staffs at the major publishers have dwindled, it has become commonplace for the acquiring editor not to follow the book all the way through publication, and for the new sheriff in town to want to take the book in a different direction; I’m constantly hearing from authors flabbergasted at learning that their book has just fallen into the hands of its fourth or fifth editor. Editorial staffs are more crunched for time, too, as are agencies. In the face of less hands-on support and greater competition for readers’ attention, many authors now chooses to bring in book docs like me to help whip their manuscripts into shape before plopping them into the print queue. And because we writers are so devoted to seeing our words in print, as a group, we have done all of this largely without complaining (well, at least in front of company), during a period when we have seen advances for celebrity memoir and established bestselling novelists skyrocket, but advances for first novels drop precipitously. It’s not our imagination; it genuinely is harder than it used to be, by quite a bit. Yet if the members of the Author! Author! community have groused about anything, it has tended to be about manners. And who could blame you? Six years ago, most first-time submitters considered it rude if their submissions were rejected by form letters at the end of two-month reading periods. I used to field incredulous comments from writers who had not yet heard back a couple of weeks after sending out queries. Three weeks used to be standard for exclusives. Today, we barely blink at agency websites that announce up front that they will not respond at all to queries if the answer is no. Six- to eight-month turn-around times are the norm now, even if the writer grants an exclusive, and it’s not unheard-of for a writer to be left wondering nine or ten months after sending off requested materials if the manuscript is still being considered, has been rejected without notice (as is increasingly common), or just didn’t arrive in the first place. These have been a hard six years to be a writer, but still, I have tried to remain upbeat through it all. There have been times — and now that they are behind me, I can admit this with impunity — when ambient conditions have been so bad that I have felt a trifle guilty for continuing to be your practical-minded cheerleader, urging you to keep moving forward down the path to publication. There have been weeks when I simply couldn’t bring myself to look at the lists of new book acquisitions, because I knew I would find so few first-time authors there. I had moments, days, and even months when, as I boldly answered questions about whether it is okay to contact an agent who has had your manuscript for four months to ask what’s going on (it isn’t) or whether a writer can submit adult fiction to the major publishing houses directly (you can’t) or whether it was still possible to land a first novel that didn’t include a supernatural element (it has always been, but sometimes just barely), I wondered bleakly if I should be advising you instead to rush out and become a celebrity in another field, so that you could get a book published in your chosen one. And let’s not even talk about the many, many dark nights of the soul where I bearded heaven with my bootless cries of, “Why do I seem to be the only writing guru talking about standard format, when there actually is only one way to present a manuscript properly to a U.S. agent? And why are my mother and I apparently the only people in the nation who still wince when writers mix up farther and further, much less to, too, and two?” It’s important to have standards: surely, I felt, there must still be at least a small cadre of us who believe that the distinction between imply and infer should be recognized and maintained by all right-thinking people, even though it’s difficult even to remember now the literary outrage in the 1980s when newscasters first began using impact as a verb. When did feeling this way stop being the norm amongst writers? I did not start out with ambitions to be a literary radical. But now that I’ve been besmirched (or honored, depending upon how one chooses to look at it) with the moniker, there’s something else I’ve been dying to get off my chest: real vampires do not sparkle. Under any circumstances, really. Refraction requires the ability to reflect light, so a beastie who cannot admire himself in a mirror will in all probability have a hard time bouncing those light particles back at easily-dazzled virgins. Especially if he is prone to bursting into flames the instant a stray shaft of sunlight hits him. I’m just saying. If a writer decides to present the world with a physically-limited being, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that writer to respect those boundaries. These have indeed been trying times to be literate. Let’s hear it for all of us for hanging in there, scrambling to bolster the printed page’s apparently crumbling plaster ceiling while the same types of Chicken Littles who had placed the written word on the critical list sometime in the middle of the Boer War have run around screaming that the entire building is about to crash to the street. But people are still reading. And good writers are still producing great books. I like to think that we here at Author! Author! have done our small part in perpetuating that. Three cheers for persistence! <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fireworks.gif"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fireworks.gif" alt="" title="fireworks" width="100" height="100" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5030"/></a><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fireworks.gif"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fireworks.gif" alt="" title="fireworks" width="100" height="100" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5030"/></a><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fireworks.gif"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fireworks.gif" alt="" title="fireworks" width="100" height="100" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5030"/></a> That’s enough frivolity for one day, I think. Let’s get back to work. This pitch-preparing series been a long road, hasn’t it? And not an easy one: I’ve been blithely asking each and every one of you to knuckle down and take your own work seriously enough to learn to talk about it in the language of the publishing industry. I’m aware that it’s been hard, intensive work, both time- and emotion-consuming. But trust me: all of this effort will feel very worthwhile indeed ten minutes before your first scheduled pitch meeting. Or thirty-two seconds into your first hallway pitch. Feeling positively faint at the prospect of the either, particularly the latter? Don’t worry; more timorous souls than you have braved the hallway pitch and survived it. Oh, they may not have enjoyed it while it was going on, but I’ve never yet had a pitching student keel over at the moment of truth. Honest. I wouldn’t put you through the pain of creating an elevator speech unless I were very confident that you’d actually be able to put it to some use. And yet, I feel as though I have been discussing elevator speeches — those 3-4 line gambits for use in informal pitching situations, as opposed to the 2-minute pitch reserved for formal appointments and other actual sit-down conversations — so intensely over the past few post that I may be inducing a phobia of lifts in my readers. (Not the shoes, the elevators.) So I’m going to take out my magic wand and relieve you of a bit of that tension. <blockquote> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/glinda-the-good-150x150.jpg" alt="glinda-the-good" title="glinda-the-good" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-5995"/>As of this moment, you have my permission to get into an elevator with an agent or editor without pitching, if you so desire. Live long and prosper. </blockquote> Feel better? Good. In return, I am going to ask something else of you. Here and now, raise your dominant writing hand (or both of ‘em, if you work primarily on a keyboard) and repeat after me: <blockquote> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/johnson-taking-the-oath-of-office-150x150.jpg" alt="johnson-taking-the-oath-of-office" title="johnson-taking-the-oath-of-office" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6002"/>I hereby solemnly swear that I shall not have learned the magic first hundred words and elevator speech in vain. The next time I attend a writers’ conference, I will pitch to at least three agents or editors with whom I do not have a previously-scheduled appointment. </blockquote> I’m going to hold you to that, you know. Oh, and you can put your hand(s) down now. Why did I foist such a dreadful oath upon you? Because I know from experience that the only thing better than walking out of a conference with a request to send pages to an agent you like is walking out with 5 requests to send pages to agents you like. Is that not a good enough reason for some of you? Okay, here’s an even better one: I’ve heard from no less than seven members of the Author! Author! community that at a certain local literary conference that shall remain nameless, every single available agent appointment was booked. That meant that those attendees who were mistakenly assigned to meet with agents who did not represent their book categories were simply out of luck. Too bad; come back next year and try again. You weren’t in a hurry to find an agent for your work or anything, were you? In instances like this, the only other alternative is hallway pitching. So even if you think that you will never, ever, EVER be able to work up the nerve to buttonhole the agent of your dreams outside of a pre-arranged meeting, I strongly recommend coming up with a plausible hallway pitch. You just never know when you’re going to need it, do you? But even if you never (knock on wood) find yourself in the unenviable position of not being able to pitch formally at a conference whose main selling point is pitching appointments, a savvy writer honestly does need to be aware of her own book’s selling points and how to market them. Why, you ask? Well, in this economy and the current publishing market — see above — it’s actually not all that astonishing that the Conference That Shall Remain Nameless’ appointments sold out. Writing a book is a LOT of people’s Plan B, after all. Predictably, that fact translates into higher writers’ conference attendance in slow economic times, a greater volume of queries and submissions arriving at well-established agencies, and, ultimately, significantly heightened competition for both agents and publishing contracts. Sorry to depress you, but one of the reasons you keep visiting Author! Author! because you know I won’t whitewash the truth just because it’s unattractive, right? So let’s take arms against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, shall we? Let’s talk about how to instigate a hallway pitch. I just felt you tense up, but relax. You already have in your writer’s tool bag all of the elements you need for a successful hallway pitch — or, indeed, an informal pitch in virtually any social situation. Did that one creep up on you? I swear, it’s true: <blockquote> <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/singing-in-the-rain-150x150.jpg" alt="singing-in-the-rain" title="singing-in-the-rain" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6006"/>MAGIC FIRST 100 WORDS + ELEVATOR SPEECH = HALLWAY PITCH. </blockquote> Ta da! It honestly is that simple. You thought I was talking at random when I made you promise that at the next conference you attended, you would pitch to at least three agents or editors with whom you do NOT have a pre-arranged appointment, didn’t you? Well, gotcha: I already knew that you the skills to do it. How did I know? Well, we’ve been working hard for weeks on your toolkit. We’ve gone over <a href="/index_p_15523.html">how to narrow down your book’s category</a>, <a href="/index_p_15539.html">identify your target market</a>, as well as coming up with <a href="/index_p_15539.html"> graceful ways of letting an agent know how big that audience might be</a>, <a href="/index_p_15559.html">brainstorm selling points for your book</a>,) and <a href="/index_p_15673.html">a platform for you</a>, and construct <a href="/index_p_15563.html">a snappy keynote statement</a>. We’ve seen how to introduce ourselves and our work with <a href="/index_p_15608.html">the magic first 100 words</a>, as well as how to tease the premise with <a href="/index_p_15633.html">the elevator speech</a>. Not only that, but we’ve also wrested some of the most basic fears most writers harbor about pitching out from under that space under the bed that they share with the bogeyman and dealt with ‘em as they came up. So you have all of the requisite tools. All that you need to add to that mix is the guts to walk up to an agent who represents your type of book, smile, and begin: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/salesman.jpg" alt="salesman" title="salesman" width="99" height="124" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6010"/> <blockquote>“Hi, I’m (YOUR NAME), and I write (BOOK CATEGORY). My latest project, (TITLE), is geared toward (TARGET MARKET). See how it grabs you: (KEYNOTE).” Wait for encouraging look, nod, or ask if it’s okay to continue. “(ELEVATOR SPEECH).”</blockquote> I’m not saying that working up the guts to do this is easy; it certainly isn’t, especially the first time. But if you watch the flow of bodies at conferences, as I do, you will notice something: except for when the agents and editors are in assigned locations — on a dais, teaching a class, in pitching appointments — or socializing amongst themselves, they have two states of social being: swamped and alone. With virtually no significant chunk of time that cannot legitimately be categorized as one or the other. Sit in a corner and watch — you’ll see that I’m right. In social situations, there will always be many, many more writers giving an agent or editor a wide berth, in order to avoid the possibility of having to give a hallway pitch, than walking up and saying hello. For this reason, it’s often easier than one might think to engage an agent or editor’s attention at a conference. Especially if the people in question happen to smoke. At any literary shindig thrown within the continental United States, the designated smokers’ area outside the hotel or conference center will be positively swarming with agents looking for a light. Be there to offer it to them, strike up a conversation along with the match — and then, after a discreet interval, ask if they would be willing to spare a moment or two to hear your 30-second pitch. As with any alone-phase approach, the key is to be unobtrusive and polite. Ask before you pitch, and always give the agent the opportunity to say she’s too tired or busy to hear a pitch right now. You can always offer to meet her later in the conference, if another time is better for her. Your mother was right, you know: good manners are the best calling card. Don’t be shy; you’re prepared for this now. Just walk right up to ‘em. Remember, they come to the conference in order to meet writers — writers, in fact, provide their bread and butter on a daily basis. Actually, it’s not uncommon for an agent or editor not to know anyone at a conference, other than other agents and editors. If the agent of your dreams is standing alone, waiting for his turn in the coffee line, he may not mind at all if you introduce yourself. He might, believe it or not, actually be grateful. (He will mind, however, if you pursue this line of logic in the bathroom, the swimming pool, the sauna, the shower in the hotel’s gym, or anyplace else that finding oneself barricaded in a small space with a stranger might be a tad, well, uncomfortable. Trust me on this one; there’s a fine line between persistent and creepy.) Public venues are safer: hallways, seminar rooms, and banquet halls, especially just after the keynote speaker has signed off for the night. Agents tend to get swamped in those places, true, but at least you don’t need to worry about whether you’re imposing. Another fringe benefit to choosing one of the more conventional venues: the approach is typically easier. Heck, if you choose to walk up to an agent immediately after the agents’ forum, you may even be able to stand in line with other would-be informal pitchers. In fact, if it’s your first time giving a hallway pitch, I would recommend going and standing in one of those let-me-talk-to-you line. That way, you can watch others in action before you jump in yourself. Where would I recommend you try after that? Moments when a formal presentation is giving way to whatever is scheduled next tend to be rife with informal pitching opportunities. Between the morning’s last seminar and the rubber chicken luncheon, for instance, or immediately after the dinner’s speaker has reclaimed her seat. Or during the break in a seminar the agent happens to be teaching, just before it starts or right after it ends. Another popular choice: remember that bar I keep mentioning, the one that is reliably a hundred yards or less from any writers’ conference? Guess where the pros — agents, editors, authors in town to promote their books, local authors seeking companionship amongst their own kind, vampires savvy enough to realize that if they want to talk literature, it would behoove them to track down those who love to chat about it late into the night — tend to hang out in their spare moments? Suppose that’s a good place to find pitching prospects? One very important caveat about bar or party pitching: if an agent or editor is already engrossed in social conversation in said bar, it is considered a trifle rude to interrupt that conversation so you can give your hallway pitch. The accepted method is to act as though this were any other party, introducing yourself and chatting until someone asks you, “So, Georgette, what do you write?” Yes, that IS the invitation you think it is. Grab it. Don’t equivocate, as so many aspiring writers do, by sighing and giving an evasive or 20-minute answer. Instead, smile and answer like the professional writer that you are: <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/mr-smith-goes-to-washington-150x150.jpg" alt="mr-smith-goes-to-washington" title="mr-smith-goes-to-washington" width="150" height="150" class="alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-6014"/> <blockquote>“I write (BOOK CATEGORY). My latest project, (TITLE), is geared toward (TARGET MARKET). See how it grabs you: (KEYNOTE). Would you like to hear more? Yes? (ELEVATOR SPEECH).” </blockquote> After you have said all this, though, both etiquette and strategy dictate that you do one thing more. Chant it with me now, campers: stop talking. Most hallway pitchers — at least, the ones who muster the nerve to go through with it — get so excited that they have absolutely no idea when to shut up. Don’t let nervousness prompt you to keep chattering. This is a social situation, after all, not a pitch appointment: if the agent or editor who asked what you write is intrigued, trust me, she’ll ask you to continue. Or, if you really hit the pitch out of the park, she’ll hand you a card and ask you to send pages. If she does neither, don’t push. Treat it like any other business interaction that hasn’t gone as you would like: smile, thank the agent for her time, and retreat. The same rules apply to the bar and the smokers’ area, by the way. These are public spaces, true, but they are also designated as relaxation places, rather than places of business. If the agent of your dreams is disinclined to shop talk, you are honor-bound to honor that preference. (Oh, and if you plan to pitch in the bar, keeping the refreshments light on the alcohol is an excellent idea. I usually settle for club soda and lime — the better to keep my wits about me, my dear.) Regardless of the locale you pick for your informal speech, stick to the script. That way, you will know for a fact that you’re not rambling on endlessly. I’m not kidding about this. Other than serving as a reliable, professional-sounding introduction for yourself and your work, this formula for a hallway pitch has another benefit: if you put it together properly, you will not have to waste precious seconds of informal pitching time checking your watch. The hallway pitch is self-timing, you see. With advance preparation and practice, you should be able to say all of it comprehensibly within 30 – 45 seconds, certainly a short enough time that you need not feel guilty about turning to the agent next to you in the dinner line, or walking up to her after that interminable class on nonfiction proposals, and asking if she can spare a minute to hear your pitch. To set your conscience at ease, we’re not talking about a big imposition here: if you follow the guidelines above, you will be taking up less than a minute of her time. So you may feel professional, not intrusive, by giving your hallway pitch immediately after saying, “Please pass the rolls.” I had I mentioned that you should always ask first to make sure it’s okay, right? Oh, and because hallway pitches are almost invariably delivered standing, do me a favor: just before you start speaking, bend your knees a little. No need to do a deep, ballerina-style plié; just soften those joints. Pitching with locked knees can make a person get light-headed. Which means that she can faint. Don’t think about it too much; it will only give you nightmares. As should a vampire that sparkles, but I guess there’s no accounting for taste. The hallway pitch and its constituent parts are tools of the trade, nothing more. It’s up to you to use them effectively and appropriately. How? Well, as many benefits as a pre-prepared hallway pitch offers for interacting with agents and editors, the elevator speech also gives you a concise, professional follow-up after ANYONE you meet at a conference responds to your magic first hundred words with, “Wow. Tell me more.” Yes, you read that correctly. Don’t be afraid to give your hallway speech to other writers at the conference — it’s great practice, and it is absolutely the best way imaginable to meet other people who write what you do. Other than starting a blog, of course. Conservatively, I’d estimate that in the last six years, it’s been the medium of my meeting in the neighborhood of 15,000 writers at various stages of their careers. Not reaching that many readers, mind you — my statistics have been stronger than that — but making actual personal connections. Top that, sparkle boy. The elevator speech has other uses as well. It makes a stellar describe-your-book paragraph in your query letter. There, too, you will be incorporating the elements of the magic first hundred words — minus the “Hi, my name is” part, they make a terrific opening paragraph for a query. We have, in short, been pulling together a complex set of implements for your writer’s tool bag. A hammer is not going to be the right tool for a job that requires a screwdriver, but that doesn’t mean that a hammer doesn’t have a heck of a lot of uses. All of which is a nice way of saying: while you might not want to give everyone you see at a conference a 5-minute pitch, you could conceivably work the magic first hundred words into any conversation. But now that you have the tools to make a hallway pitch, get out there and do it! But let the agent finish her drink, for heaven’s sake. She’s only just gotten rid of that pesky vampire. Happy sixth anniversary, campers, and keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-4252" class="post-4252 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-3-line-pitch category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-bad-laughter category-but-ive-heard category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-elevator-speech category-freshness-in-a-pitch category-hallway-pitching category-hollywood-hooks category-how-long-is-it-likely-to-be-between-a-successful-pitch-and-the-books-hitting-the-shelves category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch-only-three-sentences-long-if-you-must category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-industry-etiquette category-keeping-the-faith category-literary-fiction-pitching category-pitch-examples category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-tips category-pitchingpalooza category-post-conference-etiquette category-post-pitch-etiquette category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-scheduling-pitch-meetings category-what-if-i-miss-my-pitching-appointment category-what-not-to-say-to-an-agent-interested-in-your-work category-what-should-i-do-if-i-cant-make-my-scheduled-pitching-appointment category-writers-conferences"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/08/pitchingpalooza-part-xvi-take-a-deep-breath-you-have-not-blown-it-irretrievably-14/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-08T00:00:00+00:00">August 8, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2021-04-14T23:47:39+00:00">April 14, 2021</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/08/pitchingpalooza-part-xvi-take-a-deep-breath-you-have-not-blown-it-irretrievably-14/industry-etiquette/#comments">2 Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XVI: take a deep breath. You have not blown it irretrievably.</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/08/pitchingpalooza-part-xvi-take-a-deep-breath-you-have-not-blown-it-irretrievably-14/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XVI: take a deep breath. You have not blown it irretrievably.</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/shocked1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-15710" title="shocked1" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/shocked1.jpg" alt="" width="384" height="474" /></a> Smack dab in the middle of this last weekend’s Conference that Shall Remain Nameless, I received one of the most pitiful types of calls a pitching coach can get: a frantic “What do I do now?” cri de coeur from a talented aspiring writer who had just realized that she had missed one of her scheduled pitching appointments. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really; he had simply written down the wrong day in her calendar. In the midst of trying to navigate a busy conference schedule, it isn’t all that hard to do. In fact, it’s not all that uncommon a snafu. (So in response to what a third of you thought very loudly while reading the last paragraph: yes, there are agents and editors who do read this blog, but no, the petitioning writer would not be identifiable from this description. He probably wasn’t even the only scheduled pitcher who missed an appointment at this conference; because people have been known to panic at the last minute, agents and editors are used to no-shows.) My first thought was for him, of course, but my second thought was for you, campers. It ran a little something like this: my God, is it possible that I have never covered this situation on Author! Author! at any point within the last 6 years? (My third thought, should you care to know it: wait, aren’t we coming up on our iron anniversary any day now? Indeed we are: I posted for <a href="/index_p_295.html">the first time</a> as the Organization that Shall Remain Nameless’ Resident Writer on August 11th, 2005. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of one single thing a blogger might actually need that is made of iron, other than a hammer to batter home a point or two, but I’m open to suggestions.) My alarmed second thought was, alas, depressingly accurate. Not only have I never written anything here about this rather common conference faux pas; a panicked would-be pitcher who realized with a start at 2:15 that his meeting with the agent of his dreams had been a 12:15 — oh, for the loss of a digit! — might end up scrolling through dozens of posts searching for an answer. Obviously, that’s not acceptable to me; I try very hard to make this site panic-friendly. I hope all of you who are not planning to pitch anytime soon will forgive me, therefore, if I devote part of today’s post to addressing this question, so I may establish a category for it on the archive list toute suite. The first thing to do upon realizing that one has spaced out (or chickened out; no shame in that) of a scheduled appointment with an agent or editor is to relax. The pro is not going to hate you for all eternity, nor is s/he going to regale all of her friends in the publishing industry with the tale of how (insert your name here) didn’t show up for the meeting. As I said, it’s just too frequent an occurrence to generate much umbrage — and it’s definitely too common a conference phenomenon to make a good anecdote. “Oh, that’s happened to all of us,” the tellers coworkers will say, yawning. “Writers get too stressed out to pitch all the time.” You feel better already, don’t you? Excellent. What you should do next is march up to the meeting-scheduling desk (or, if it’s closed, march up to the nearest well-marked member of the conference’s organizing committee) and boldly admit that you got your scheduling wires crossed. “Is there any way at all,” you should ask politely, “that I could reschedule?” Yes, really. Try dangling your head between your knees until the urge to faint passes. You’d be surprised how often the schedulers will say yes, provided that you are hugely apologetic about imposing upon their time. Pitchers cancel appointments all the time; they may be able to give you an abruptly emptied appointment, if you are willing to hang around on the off chance that one might open. Why do they tend to be willing to do that? Well, rescheduling meetings is part of their job. Not only do first-time pitchers come tiptoeing up to them to whisper regrets about suddenly having developed a case of laryngitis; It’s also not unheard-of for — brace yourselves — an agent or editor to miss a scheduled meeting. In either case, they’re going to need to do some appointment-shuffling. Head back from its second field trip between your knees yet? “But Anne,” excited pitchers everywhere gasp, “how on earth is that possible? I prepared for weeks for that meeting — what do you mean, they might not show up?” I mean that as powerful as aspiring writers perceive agents and editors to be, they do not control flight schedules; if a plane gets delayed at JFK, they might well be late arriving at a conference in Austin. If (heaven forfend) a child gets sick, a parent might very well decide not to arrive in St. Louis to hear pitches until the next day. I’ve even heard rumors (mostly over bloody Marys the day after a conference party) that people simply oversleep. It happens. If it happens to you, your first and second steps should be precisely the same: take a nice, deep breath, remember that it wasn’t the conference organizers’ fault, and go make a polite request to reschedule. Believe me, courtesy counts here: if the agency decided at the last minute to send a different agent with different tastes at the last minute because the one originally scheduled has a client whose revision deadline just got moved up by a month (again, it happens), plenty of writers will be scrambling to switch appointments. Stand out from the crowd by being the one who is nice about it, especially if you are willing to stick around and wait for any last-minute openings. Say, because someone forgot about a pitching appointment. Their gaffe may be your gain. Please remember, though, that it’s in your interest to be polite even if the answer is no. Think about it: when a slot opens up unexpectedly three hours later, who is the scheduler more likely to flag down for it, the writer that yelled at her, or the one who commiserated with the craziness of trying to juggle so many irate people’s demands? If you cannot make a fresh appointment (as is likely to happen, if the agent does not turn up at the conference at all), don’t lose hope; you still have two quite good options, the gutsy and the shy. The gutsy route involves doing precisely what we’ve been discussing over the last few posts: walking up to an agent or editor in the hallway or other non-bathroom conference venue, courteously attracting her attention, and asking if you can pitch. Wow, you are prone to attacks of dizziness, aren’t you? Have you tried not locking your knees? Actually, a pro is more likely to say yes to a hallway pitch if the requester mentions a missed pitching appointment. No need to say why you weren’t there (or to remind the agent that he was the one who didn’t show); just apologize briefly if it was your doing, and ask if you can have some time now. Or later. Can’t imagine yourself saying it? Come on, it’s easy. <blockquote>Writer (edging up to agent chatting with editor at the end of rubber chicken luncheon): Excuse me for disturbing you, Ms. Pickyperson, but may I have a moment? Agent (clutching her coffee cup; she didn’t get a lot of sleep last night): Yes? Writer: I’m terribly sorry, but there was a mix-up, and I missed our appointment this morning. Is there any possibility that you could make a few minutes for me? I’d be happy to work around your schedule. Agent (shoving out a chair with her foot so she need not remove the coffee cup from her mouth): I’ll give you two minutes right now.</blockquote> See? Your mother was right; politeness pays. Do be prepared to be equally polite, however, if she gives you a different time to meet, or if says no. <blockquote>Writer: I’d be happy to work around your schedule. Agent (glancing at her watch): I’m afraid that I just don’t have time. My plane leaves in two hours. Writer (disappointed, but hiding it well): Oh, I understand. May I send you a query? Agent (hoisting her carry-on bag): Yes, that would be fine.</blockquote> Wasn’t our writer clever to suggest that last option? He could also just have gone there directly, if he was shy, skipping the face-to-face approach altogether and dispatching a query that builds upon the missed meeting. I prefer e-mail for these sorts of missives, if the agency accepts them; that way, it’s apparent that the writer is trying to follow up as soon as possible on that canceled appointment. Again, there is no need to raise the issue of fault. <blockquote>SUBJECT LINE: I missed you at the Greenwater Conference Dear Ms. Pickyperson, I am so sorry that our scheduled appointment at Greenwater did not happen; I was looking forward to talking to you about my romance novel, OOPS, I LOST MY CALENDAR. I hope that you are still interested in hearing about it now. (Follow with the body of your regular query, absent the usual first paragraph.)</blockquote> Perfectly polite and reasonable, isn’t it? This method can also work delightfully well for agents whom one did not have the nerve to buttonhole in the hallways. <blockquote>SUBJECT LINE: post-Greenwater Conference query Dear Mr. EyeofSharpness, I enjoyed your talk at the recent Greenwater Conference. Unfortunately, I could not obtain an appointment to speak with you about my thriller, THE BUTLER DID IT TWICE. (Follow with the body of your regular query, absent the usual first paragraph.)</blockquote> What you should most emphatically not do — but need I add that these are the most popular choices in practice? — is either dash up to the scheduling desk to demand a fresh appointment on the spot, trail weeping after the agent in the hallways, loudly berating yourself for having spaced out on your meeting, or decide in humiliated silence to do nothing at all. None of these methods is likely to turn a missed opportunity into a saved one. Is everybody clear on that? Please feel free to pepper the comments with follow-up questions and hypothetical situations, if not. I would much, much rather that you ask me now than send me a breathless e-mail as you hyperventilate at a conference a month hence. Call me zany, but I prefer it when my readers can breathe. They tend to think more clearly that way. Back to our originally scheduled programming. Next time, I shall be talking about how to make the actual approach for a hallway pitch, because it requires a certain amount of finesse not to end up as the subject of an anecdote about how pushy aspiring writers can be. Today, however, I want to bring up another common trait of the successful hallway pitcher: freshness. As I pointed out a couple of days ago, the first commandment of a winning elevator speech is THOU SHALL NOT BORE. Actually, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb for any pitch, query letter, or submission, but if a hallway pitch is snore-inducing, the results can be instantly fatal. Not boring is a while lot harder than it sounds, you know. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but most 3-line pitches sound a great deal alike, at least to someone who has been hearing them for three days straight. <blockquote>Agent (eying the bottom of her empty coffee cup): Tell me about your book. Writer: Well, it’s called GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL, and it’s the story of (insert protagonist’s name, age, profession, if any, and geographic location here), a (insert adjective) man/woman/group who face (insert conflict here). The stakes couldn’t be higher, because (insert barrier to achieving goal here). In pursuing his/her/its collective dream and/or saving his/her/its (insert treasured resource here), he/she/they will discover (insert life lesson here).</blockquote> Agent (overcome by certain sense of déjà vu): Hmm. Sounds interesting. Tell me more. The structure is, let’s face it, awfully darned restrictive. No wonder the people who hear them for a living tend to remember my students: the mere fact of their introducing themselves prior to pitching is out of the ordinary. Add to that structural similarity all of the pitches for books that sound suspiciously like the big bestseller from two years ago, as well as the ones that lift plots, character traits, and situations from movies, TV shows, pop culture, and good, old-fashioned clichés, and is it still surprising that pitches start to blur together in the hearer’s mind after a startlingly short while? Hands up, anyone who still doesn’t understand why that agent who requested the first fifty pages of a manuscript last Saturday might not recall the details of the pitch today. (On the bright side, that agent was probably downright grateful when her eighteenth pitch appointment was a no-show; it gave her time to grab an extra cup o’ joe.) Is that abject terror I’m sensing creeping around out there, or have the trees outside my window suddenly taken up moaning for fun and profit? “Gee, Anne,” the newly nervous pipe up, “I had no idea that part of the goal of my pitch — 3-line or otherwise — was to strike the agent or editor as original. Now I’m quaking in my proverbial boots, petrified that the agent of my dreams will burst into laughter and shout, ‘Is that the best you can do? I’ve heard that story 15 times in the last week!’” Take a nice, deep breath; it’s the too-common structure that is snore-inducing, not necessarily any individual pitch’s subject matter. Besides, no agent or editor can possibly judge the quality of your writing solely through a verbal pitch, so even in the unlikely event that a pro said something like that to your face, it would be a response to your book’s premise or plot as you have just presented it, not to the book itself. As practically everybody in the industry is fond of saying, it all depends on the writing. And I have even more good news: if you can make your elevator speech resemble your narrative voice, it is far, far more likely to strike the hearer as original. Yes, you read that correctly: I’m advising you to work with your elevator speech or pitch until it sounds like YOUR writing, rather than like a pale (or even very good) replica of an author whom you happen to admire. Or like a pitch for a book that’s already on the bestseller list. Was that giant thud I just heard the sound of the jaws of all of you who have attended conferences recently hitting the floor? “But Anne,” these astonished souls protest, cradling their sore mandibles, “you’re got that backwards, don’t you? I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard agents and editors say at conferences, ‘Oh, THAT kind of book isn’t selling anymore.’ Wouldn’t it be better strategy for me to imply that my book is just like something that is selling well right now?” Perhaps, if your manuscript actually is similar to a current bestseller. Even if you find yourself in this position, though, you’re going to want to figure out what makes your book original and work some inkling of it into your pitch. After all, any agent who represents those types of books will have been inundated with carbon copies of that bestseller since about a month after it hit the big time. Seriously, do you have the slightest idea how many YA vampire books Millicent the agency screener sees in any given week? In the maelstrom of advice aimed at writers trying to land an agent, the issue of voice often falls by the wayside, as if it were not important. Or writers might even — sacre bleu! — derive the erroneous impression that their work is SUPPOSED to sound as if it had been written by someone else. To be precise, by an author on the current bestseller list. Can’t imagine where so many aspiring writers get this idea. Unless it’s from all of those conferences where agents, editors, and marketing gurus speak from behind the safety of podiums (podia?) about how helpful it is to mention in a pitch or a letter what bestseller one’s opus most resembles. Listen: fads fade fast. (And somnambulant Sally sells salacious seashells by the sordid seashore, if you’d like another tongue-twister.) Even after a writer signs with an agent, it takes time to market a book to editors — and after the ink is dry on the publication contract, it’s usually at least a year before a book turns up on the shelves of your local bookstore. Often two. A bestseller’s being hot now doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the same kind of voice will be sought-after several years hence. If you doubt this, tell me: have you met many agents lately who are clamoring for the next BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY? Or even the next DA VINCI CODE? How about something that’s selling immensely well in your book category right now? In the long run, I believe that a writer will be better off developing her own voice than trying to ape current publishing fashions. As long, that is, as that voice is a good fit for the project at hand. That’s as true of a pitch as it is for a novel or memoir, you know. A generic pitch isn’t going to show off an honestly original voice, or even a fresh story — it’s just going to sound like two-thirds of the other pitches an agent or editor has heard that day. See why I so discourage writers I like from embracing the ubiquitous 3-line pitch formula? The way that new pitchers are typically encouraged to do it tends to flatten original stories. Squashes some of ‘em flat as pancakes, it does. “Wait just a minute,” that Greek chorus of conference-goers pipes up again. “I’m confused. We’ve been talking for a couple of weeks here about making my book project sound marketable. So if I make it sound like something that’s already a bestseller, why won’t that lend my pitch the shine of marketability?” An excellent question, with two even more excellent answers. First, there’s just no getting around the fact that a pitch (or query, or manuscript) that sounds too similar to a well-known publication is inevitably going to come across as derivative. Which, in case any of you had been wondering, is why those periodic experiments where some wag tries to query and submit the first five pages of some classic like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE in order to demonstrate that good writing no longer stands a chance are not actually measuring agents’ responses to high-quality writing. At this point in literary history, the first five pages of any Jane Austen novel would strike any literate Millicent as being derivative of Jane Austen. Not that quite a few authors haven’t made a killing in recent years being derivative of Jane Austen, mind you. So much so that even copying her style has been done. The second answer is that what is already in print isn’t necessarily indicative of what agents and editors are looking for NOW. (If you’re not sure why, I refer you back to that section above where I talked about the usual lapse between acquisition and publication.) The third answer — I’ll throw this one in for free — is that not all published writing exhibits an original narrative voice, so copying it is going to seem even less fresh. That “Wha–?” you just heard was Author! Author!’s own Pollyanna chorus. Take a bow, everyone. “But Anne,” these intrepid souls cry as soon as they have regained their gasped-out breath, “I’ve been going to conferences and writing seminars for years, and unless I wasn’t paying attention, published writing and good writing were used as essentially synonymous terms. At minimum, I’ve always assumed that writing needs to be good to get published. But how is that possible, if not all published work has a unique voice?” Whoa there, gaspers — take a nice, deep breath. I’m not going out on a particularly lengthy literary limb by suggesting — or even stating categorically — that not all published writing is good. (A long pause while everyone waits to see if a vengeful deity is going to strike me down for sacrilege.) I seem still to be standing, so allow me to continue: books get published for all kinds of reasons. The platform of the writer, for instance, or the fact that he’s a movie star. (I’m looking at you, Ethan Hawke, not Rupert Everett — although, on the whole, I would prefer to gaze upon the latter, for aesthetic reasons.) An eagerness to replicate the success of a freak bestseller. (Ask anyone who tried to sell historical fiction in the five years before COLD MOUNTAIN hit the big time.) Having been a Pulitzer winner’s ex-husband. (One hears rumors.) But in the vast majority of instances, a published book without a strong, distinctive narrative voice will be clear. Perhaps not full of insights or phraseology that makes you squeal and run for your quote book, but at least unobtrusively straightforward, informative, and decently researched. You know, like newspaper writing. Clear, non-threatening, generic, ostentatiously objective, and strenuously pretending that any issue affecting humanity has two equal sides — and only two sides. But the author is not going to lean toward either. Uh-uh. Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent. To have a literary voice, though, is to take a side. At least one’s own. For some stories, that’s not the best option. In fact, your more discerning professional readers have been known to wrinkle their august brows over a manuscript and ask, “Is the voice the writer chose for this appropriate for the story?” Not all voices fit all material, after all — and if you doubt that, would you want to read a novel about a grisly series of child murders written in the light-hearted voice of a Christmas card? A political thriller whose first-person narrator is a senator by day, a hacker by night, but speaks all the time like a Barbary pirate? What about a bodice-ripper romance told in the vocabulary of a not-very-imaginative nun? I’m guessing not. At the moment, I work in three distinct voices: in descending order of perkiness, my blog voice, my fiction voice, and my memoir voice. (My memoir is funny, too, but as a great memoirist once told me, part of the art of the memoir is feeling sorry enough for yourself not to make light of your personal tragedies, for there lies your subject matter.) Why not write everything in my favorite voice? Because it would not be the best fit for everything I choose to write. Nor would it best serve my literary purposes to pitch my fiction in the same voice as my memoir. Honestly, if I used my wistful-yet-tough memoir voice here to discuss the sometimes-grim realities of how the publishing industry treats writers, I would depress us all into a stupor in 42 second flat. Because Author! Author!’s goal is to motivate you all to present your work’s best face to the world, I use a cheerleading voice. Minion, hand me my megaphone, please. I have some masses to mobilize. One of the great things about gaining a broad array of writing experience is developing the ability to switch voices at will; you have to come to know your own writing pretty darned well for that. I’ve written everything from political platforms to fashion articles to promotional copy for wine bottles to lectures on Plato. Obviously, my tone, vocabulary choice, and cadence needed to be different for all of these topics, because the audiences were very different. Granted, not all of those writing gigs were particularly interesting (although believe me, you need some pretty good comic timing to keep hung-over frat boys awake throughout the entirety of an 8 a.m. lecture on ancient Athenian political theory), and I would not be especially pleased if I were known throughout recorded history as primarily as the person who penned the platitude tens of thousands of people read only when their dinner date left the table for a moment and the only reading matter was on the wine bottle. Yet all of my current voices owe a great deal to this experience, just as playing a lot of different roles in high school or college drama classes might give a person poise in dealing with a variety of situations in real life. Just as there are millions of different ways to tell any given story, there are millions of different ways to pitch it. Tone, voice, vocabulary choice, rhythm — a skillful writer may play with all of these tools in order to alter how a reader or pitch hearer receives the story. Speaking of stories, let me tell you one that you may find enlightening. Right after I graduated from college, I landed a job writing and researching for the <a href="http://www.letsgo.com/">LET’S GO</a> series of travel guides. The series’ method of garnering material, at least at the time, was to pay very young, very naïve Harvard students a very small amount of money to backpack around a given area. Alone. All summer. In my case, throughout the wildlife-rich Pacific Northwest. I awoke once near Mt. St. Helens to find a ground squirrel tap-dancing on my head; something with awfully big paws made off with my frying pan outside of Bend, and a tourist bureau employee in Walla Walla told me I was “asking for it” by wandering around town, inquiring about motel rates. (He offered to explain over dinner what “it” was, but I declined.) My gig was heaven, however, compared to my friend who got a switchblade in his gut while asking some perfectly straightforward questions about the freshness of the fish in a bar in Barcelona. The job was jam-packed with irony: I was supposed to do restaurant and motel reviews, but my per diem was so small that I slept in a tent six nights per week and lived on ramen cooked over a campfire. You might want to remember that the next time you rely upon a restaurant review published in a travel guide. (See earlier comment about not all published writing’s necessarily being good.) Not entirely coincidentally, Let’s Go’s tone at the time was very gung-ho, a sort of paean to can-do kids having the time of their lives. But when one is visiting the tenth municipal museum of the week — you know, the kind containing a clay diorama of a pioneer settlement, a tiny, antique wedding dress displayed on a dressmaker’s form, and four dusty arrowheads — it is hard to maintain one’s élan. Yet I was expected to produce roughly 60 pages of copy per week, much of it written on a picnic table by candlelight. Clearly an assignment that called for simple, impersonal clarity, right? Not so. I can tell you the precise moment when I found my travel guide voice: the evening of July 3, a few weeks into my assignment. My paycheck was two weeks overdue, so I had precisely $23.15 in my pocket. It was raining so hard on the outskirts of Eugene that I could barely find the motel I was supposed to be reviewing. When I stepped into the lobby, a glowering functionary with several missing teeth informed that the management did not allow outsiders to work there. “Excuse me?” I said, thinking that she had somehow intuited that I was here to critique her obviously underdeveloped customer service skills. “I just want a room for the night.” “The night?” she echoed blankly. “The entire night?” Apparently, no one in recent memory had wanted to rent a room there for more than an hour at a stretch. The desk clerk did not even know what to charge. (If you’re too young to understand why this might have been the case, please do not read the rest of this anecdote. Go do your homework, please, and don’t accept any job offers that involve hitchhiking.) I suggested $15, a figure the clerk seemed only too glad to slip into her jeans after checking around the corner for the manager. After I deposited my backpack in my phoneless room with the shackles conveniently already built into the headboard and screams of what I sincerely hoped was rapture coming through the walls, I ran to the pay phone at the 7-11 next door and called my editor in Boston. “Jay, I have $8.15 to my name.” The combination of the rain noisily battering the phone booth and the angry mob urging me not to impinge upon their territory rendered his response inaudible. â€œThe banks are closed tomorrow, and according to the itinerary you gave me, you want me to spend the night a house of ill repute. What precisely would you suggest I do next?” He had to shout his response three times before I could understand what he was saying. “Improvise?” he suggested. I elected to retrieve my $15 and find a free campground that night, so Independence Day found me huddled in a rapidly leaking tent, scribbling away furiously in a new-found tone. I had discovered my travel writing voice: a sodden, exhausted traveler so astonished by the stupidity around her that she found it amusing. My readers — and my warm, dry editor back in Boston — ate it up. He’s an extremely respectable English professor at a well-known liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest now. He tells me that he thinks about my motel adventure every time he meets a student from Eugene. I told you this story not merely because it is true (ah, the glamour of the writing life!), but to make a point about authorial voice. A professional reader would look at the story above and try to assess whether another type of voice might have conveyed the story better, as well as whether I maintained the voice consistently throughout. How would a less personal voice have conveyed the same information? Would it have come across better in the third person, or if I pretended the incident had happened to a close friend of mine? Appropriateness of viewpoint tends to weigh heavily in professional readers’ assessments, and deservedly so. Many, many submissions — and still more contest entries — either do not maintain the same voice throughout the piece or tell the story in an absolutely straightforward manner, with no personal narrative quirks at all. In other words, presenting the story in the same flat, just-the-fact voice that dogs the average conference pitch. You’d be surprised at how many pitches for interesting, imaginative books come across with all of the stylistic verve of a police report. Don’t believe me? Okay, let’s take a gander at my Let’s Go anecdote, compressed into a standard 3-line pitch: <blockquote>A 22-year-old woman, soaked to the skin, walks into a motel lobby and tells the clerk she wants a room for the night. When the clerk tells her they do not do that, she responds with incredulity, but the manager confirms the information. Noting the 7′ x 10′ wall of pornographic videotapes to her right and the women in spandex and gold lamé huddled outside under the awning, flagging down passing cars, the young woman suspects that she might not be in the right place and telephones the editor who sent her there.</blockquote> Not the apex of colorful, is it? It’s the same story, essentially, but an agent or editor hearing this second account and think, “Gee, this story might have potential, but the viewpoint is not maximizing the humor of the story. I think I’ll pass.” Millicent would probably just yawn and yell, “Next!” I might not garner precisely the same reactions if I pitched this story in the style of a bestselling writer, but the end result — “Next!” — would probably be the same. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (which I sincerely doubt), then bestselling authors must spend a heck of a lot of time blushing over how often aspiring writers pitch and submit books that bear suspicious similarities to theirs. To an experienced pitch-hearer, the resemblance doesn’t have to be too overt for the kinship to be obvious, if you catch my drift. You wouldnâ€™t believe how many stories were told by the deceased in the years following the success of THE LOVELY BONES, for instance, or how many multiple-perspective narratives followed hot on the heels of THE POISONWOOD BIBLE. All that being said, I’m not going to lie to you — there is no denying that being able to say that your work resembles a well-known author’s can be a useful hook for attracting some agentsâ€™ and editorsâ€™ attention, at least on the Hollywood hook level: <blockquote>“My memoir is ANGELA’S ASHES, but without all of that pesky poverty!” “My chick lit manuscript is BRIDGET JONESâ€™ DIARY set in a rehab clinic!” “The story is SCHINDLER’S LIST, only without the Nazis or the death!”</blockquote> However, as the late great Mae West liked to point out (and I like to remind my readers she liked to point out), while copycats may hit the big time in the short term, for the long haul, what audiences find memorable is originality. That’s as true for a pitch as for a manuscript, you know. Perhaps that is one of the best measures of how effective a pitch is this: three days after an agent has heard it, will he remember it on the airplane back to New York? Even if the storyline escapes him, will he remember the interesting way in which the pitcher told it, the narrative voice, the details he’d ever heard before? In 99% of 3-line pitches, the answer is no. Partially, that’s the fault of the flattening format. Partially, it isn’t. So at the risk of boring you, allow me to repeat the advice I’ve been hawking for the last couple of posts: the best use of your pre-pitching time — or pre-querying time — is to figure out precisely how your book is different from what’s currently on the market, not trying to make it sound like the current bestseller. A fresh story told in an original manner is hard for even the most jaded pro to resist. Provided, of course, it’s presented in a polite, professional manner. Next time, I’ll give you some tips on how to give a hallway pitch without impinging upon the hearer’s boundaries. In the meantime, keep up the good work! </div> </div> </article> <article id="post-3271" class="post-3271 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-2-minute-pitch category-3-line-pitch category-after-youve-been-rejected category-after-youve-made-an-unsuccessful-pitch category-annes-favorite-posts category-approaching-agents-at-conferences category-conference-etiquette category-conference-faux-pas category-conference-lore category-conference-pitching category-conferences-that-cater-to-writers category-elevator-speech category-hallway-pitching category-how-can-i-keep-myself-from-freaking-out-mid-pitch category-how-to-write-a-pitch category-how-will-i-know-if-my-pitch-did-work category-im-a-finalist-what-now category-ive-just-signed-up-to-give-a-conference-pitch-what-do-i-do-now category-industry-etiquette category-keeping-the-faith category-literary-fiction-pitching category-nonfiction-pitching category-pitch-examples category-pitch-rejection category-pitching-faux-pas category-pitching-memoir category-pitching-tips category-pitching-to-editors-at-conferences category-pitchingpalooza category-realistic-expectations-for-pitchers category-realistic-expectations-for-writers category-what-are-the-polite-ways-to-approach-an-agent category-what-should-i-do-if-my-pitch-doesnt-seem-to-be-working category-why-might-my-pitch-get-rejected category-your-next-book"> <header class="entry-header"> <div class="entry-meta">Posted on <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/06/pitchingpalooza-part-xv-youve-got-moxie-kid-and-other-delightful-responses-to-hallway-pitching-11/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2011-08-06T00:00:00+00:00">August 6, 2011</time><time class="updated" datetime="2017-01-19T06:36:16+00:00">January 19, 2017</time></a> - <a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/06/pitchingpalooza-part-xv-youve-got-moxie-kid-and-other-delightful-responses-to-hallway-pitching-11/industry-etiquette/#respond">No Comments on Pitchingpalooza, part XV: “You’ve got moxie, kid!” and other delightful responses to hallway pitching</a></div><h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/2011/08/06/pitchingpalooza-part-xv-youve-got-moxie-kid-and-other-delightful-responses-to-hallway-pitching-11/industry-etiquette/" rel="bookmark">Pitchingpalooza, part XV: “You’ve got moxie, kid!” and other delightful responses to hallway pitching</a></h2> </header> <div class="entry-content"> <div class="entry"> <a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/grant-and-west.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/grant-and-west.jpg" alt="" title="grant and west" width="288" height="222" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-15682"/></a> Okay, so that’s not really what Our Lady of the Quips was saying to her young admirer in this particular instance. Nor, apparently, is Mae about to say, “My, but that’s an original book concept. I haven’t heard anything like it at this writers’ conference, even though I have been listening to pitches all weekend.” But clearly, the lady likes what she is hearing. Please imbed this image in your brainpan, so you may recall it while you are pitching. In hallway pitching, as in life in general, you can tell a lot about how open a hearer is to suggestion by paying attention to expression and body language. No, I didn’t mean that; what minds you people have. I’m talking about basic common sense here: if an agent’s eyes start to glaze over, you might want to think about cutting it short, thanking her for her time, and walking away with your dignity intact. Yes, really. Standing there talking while your fine writer’s instincts are screaming that your hearer has lost interest can feel pretty terrible — and believe me, it will feel worse in retrospect. I’ve never attended a pitching-oriented writers’ conference where I didn’t overhear at least one poor soul say something along the lines of, “Oh, it was so awful, but I just couldn’t stop talking! I knew the answer was no, but I just kept piling on more and more detail!” Actually, you can stop talking, and you should. Brevity is the essence of a hallway pitch, after all, so unless the agent asks to hear more — and we all hope she might — you’re going to want to stop talking after about 30 seconds, anyway. Ditto in a formal meeting, when you reach the end of your prepared (yes, we’re getting to it) 2-minute pitch. And that’s going to be hard, if you’re like most writers, whether the agent seems to be interested or not: since this is a solitary craft, it’s not at all uncommon for a pitcher to be so relieved at being able to talk about his book to someone in a position to comment knowledgeably upon its publication prospects that he hears himself just keep babbling on and on in one continuous run-on sentence not unlike this one until he’s practically ready to perish from oxygen deprivation or the agent glances at her watch and announces it is time for her next scheduled appointment. You even stopped breathing while you were reading that, didn’t you? Take a moment to restock your lungs; I’ll wait. That impulse is understandable, of course, when an agent is leaning forward like a bird dog that’s spotted a partridge, eyes moist and mouth dry with mercantile lust, firing questions at you about your book. You’re going to want to remember to breathe, and you’re going to want to shut up and allow her time to speak, but it won’t be easy. It’s pretty nice to have someone looking at you as though you’re her next meal and she’s famished, at least in this context: to a savvy agent, an exciting new writer is her next meal, in a manner of speaking; she’s planning to be dining out on the proceeds of that writer’s work for years. Shall I pause again to allow you to revel in that mental image? Or may I move on? Unfortunately, the tendency to talk too much is not limited to pitches that a perceptive observer could tell from the other end of the hallway are going well. For many pitchers new to the game — and it is a game, lest we forget, with standing rules — the impulse to babble becomes even stronger when the pitch seems to be falling flat. While reason may be battering on the inside of the writer’s hippocampus, bellowing, “Jamie! Didn’t you hear her just say that she doesn’t think she can sell a book about tennis right now? Stop pitching, thank her for her time, and walk away!” poor James keeps hearing himself describing that ball flying back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Adrenaline kicks in either way, you see. So does, alas, that third grade teacher in all of our heads that likes to shout at us to try, try again, and harder. That teacher was wrong. So was your Little League coach, at least as his advice applies to this type of pitching. (Oh, you thought I’d be able to resist the pun throughout this entire series?) In this game, while working up the nerve to step up to the plate is a necessary prerequisite to winning, the umpire’s not going to be judging you on effort. You’re going to have to swing. And in order to become a good player, you’re going to need to develop an eye for assessing when it’s time to let a ball go by when it’s outside your batting range. I think I’ve mined just about all of the available ore out of that metaphor, don’t you? There’s a reason I’ve mentioned in at least every other Pitchingpalooza post that it’s not worth your energy to pitch to an agent who does not already represent your type of book: not only are the chances of generating a request for pages much, much lower than with an agent that habitually sells manuscripts like yours; even if the former did fall in love with your work, he might not have the connections at publishing houses to sell it in the current hyper-competitive market. The same holds true for an agent who hasn’t sold a book like yours recently: editorial turnover at the major publishers has been astronomical over the last couple of years. This is, after all, a connections-based business; your manuscript has to land on the right editorial desk before a publisher can snap it up. So when an agent who used to sell your kind of book stands up at the agents’ forum and announces that she’s not longer looking for new clients who write it, it’s in your interests to believe her. Don’t waste energy fretting over it; just take your pitch elsewhere. Don’t even try to pitch to her informally — and if it’s a big conference, don’t be afraid to ask to change a scheduled pitch meeting. Yes, even if you signed up to meet with her specifically because her blurb in the conference brochure said that she did represent books in your category. The literary market changes fast; trust that she knows what she can and cannot sell right now. No matter how good your pitch is, you’re not going to alter that perception. The same logic holds true even if you don’t find out until you are already face-to-face with her that she does not handle books like yours. Or if she’s disinclined to try selling another, because she’s still chagrined that she couldn’t place the last similar manuscript. Or if she’s just broken up with a professional lacrosse player, and your novel is set at a lacrosse camp. How could you possibly have anticipated that she would never want to hear the word goal again? Don’t bother to argue. If she’s decided it’s ix-nay on the ports-say, there’s nothing you can do about it. Stop pitching, thank her for her time, and walk away. Oh, you’ll want to scream and engage in some heavy battery on the nearest padded surface (in a conference center, a couch is always a nice choice), but I can tell you now that’s not going to help. Listen to me as if I were your third-grade teacher: in the long term, it’s best for your writing career if you handle this contretemps with aplomb. After all, just because that agent is not interested in your current book doesn’t mean that she won’t be fascinated by your next. Or that she won’t be opening an agency two years from now with the agent of your dreams. And had you considered the possibility that her sister might have been your future editor’s college roommate? Your brain-batterer was right, Jamie: stop pitching, thank her for her time, and walk away. Not only is she quite likely to be grateful for your professionalism; your response will be memorable for its novelty. You’re probably not going to be the only pitcher who runs afoul of her no net sports policy at that conference, but it’s entirely possible that you will be the only one to take the news well. She’ll appreciate that you understand the industry well enough to get that she’s not rejecting your book per se; she’s rejected the notion of spending her days reading about balls of any sort. (You should have seen her ex flying down the field after that ball. Sheer poetry. But she’s not going to think about it any more, darn it.) You’re almost certainly going to be the only pitcher, hallway or not, who has the great good sense and courtesy to stop talking immediately after she’s indicated that she’s averse to sports stories. (Her sister’s roommate will be able to fill you in on why. For all you know, that agent covered hockey, soccer, and water polo for her college paper with a zeal that made the Journalism Gods glance down from Olympus and murmur, “Really?”) That will be smart of you: you’re sensitive enough to realize that by now, she’s darned sick of explaining herself. And of arguing with aspiring writers bent upon foisting stories about basketballs upon her. Oh, the pitchers in question probably didn’t think of it as argument, but if they’re trying to change her categorical no into a yes, how else could she take it? From the pro’s point of view, how many pitchers seem not to be able to hear the sound spelled N-O until it’s hit their eardrums half a dozen times is one of the great eternal mysteries. (Another is why so many writers seem to hear, “I’m sorry, but I don’t represent books in that category,” as “I am rejecting you personally. Your writing is terrible — something I know telepathically, so I shan’t bother to read it — and you should just give up. Begone from my sight, loser.” It honestly is just a professional choice.) To be fair, though, what sounds like a no to a nice person who spends her days rejecting people doesn’t always sound like rejection to an excited pitcher in love with his book. The exchange often runs a little something like this: <blockquote> Writer (cornering agent after she’s just participated in a panel): Hi. I really enjoyed your talk. You had said at the agents’ forum this morning that you were looking for murder mysteries with tough female protagonists, but I couldn’t get an appointment with you. Do you have time for a 30-second pitch for a mystery as we walk to the rubber chicken luncheon? Agent: Yes, if it’s quick. Writer (overjoyed): Thank you! Here goes: when Allan, a roguishly handsome lacrosse player… Agent (turning the dull green of day-old pea soup): I’m sorry, but I don’t represent books about sports anymore. Writer: …a real ladies’ man, is found dead after he’s just jilted a beautiful-but-naïve journalist… Agent (clutching her roiling abdomen): Really, there’s no market right now for novels about field sports. Writer: …the police are stumped. Honestly, given the wide swathe he cut through the newspaper world romantically… Agent (looking around frantically for an escape route): I wouldn’t be a good fit for this. Writer: …the likely suspect pool seems to encompass half the female population. Knowing that the authorities have their eye on her, the journalist starts tracking down the other 57 women he had been seeing over the past month… Agent (contemplating murder herself): Ah, here’s the restroom. Will you excuse me? Writer (mentally kicking himself): Darn, I broke the cardinal rule of hallway pitching: never accost an agent on her way to the restroom. How could I have made such a basic mistake? </blockquote> From the agent’s point of view, she was practically shouting, “Please don’t take it personally, but this is the last book in the world I would consider spending the next year of my life trying to sell. Go away! Now, if at all possible!” Her mother brought her up to be nice, though, so she expressed herself gently. Unfortunately, our lacrosse-loving writer got too caught up in spitting out his prepared elevator speech to pay attention to the not-so-subtle indications she was giving him that he was wasting both of their time by continuing. How should he have handled it, you ask? Do I really need to repeat today’s mantra? Hint: it begins with stop talking. Let’s see that exchange again. <blockquote> Writer (cornering agent after a panel): May I speak with you for a moment? I really enjoyed your talk. Agent: Thanks. Writer: At the agents’ forum this morning, you said that you were looking for murder mysteries with tough female protagonists, but I couldn’t get a pitch appointment with you. Do you have time for a 30-second pitch for a mystery that might be right up your alley? Agent (wincing at the bowling reference): Yes, if it’s quick. Writer (delighted): Thank you! The book’s called LACROSSE MY HEART AND HOPE TO DIE. Agent (blood draining from her visage): I’m sorry, but I don’t represent books about sports anymore. Writer: Oh, I’m so sorry — I didn’t know that. (Begins to back away.) Thank you for your time. I really did get a lot out of your talk. Agent (astonished that he is taking it so well): Wait. A friend of mine just loves sports novels. She works at another agency, so I can’t give you her card, but here’s her name. (Spells her sister’s college roommate’s name for him.) Writer (scribbling frantically on the back of his notebook): Thank you so much. And may I say that you recommended I query her? Agent: Yes. She might get a kick out of that, actually. </blockquote> Of course, it does not always work out quite that well, but as my aphorism-addicted third grade teacher might have said (over and over), you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. And a stitch in time saves nine. Oh, you thought that I was born spouting proverbs? That sort of thing is learned. In Mrs. Eliopoulos’ classroom, by a level of phrase repetition that would have made Patty Hearst’s kidnappers think, “Darn — why didn’t we think of that?” And that, my friends, is how little girls with long braids and good eyes for curve balls grow up to become editors scrawling in margins, “You have already used this metaphor twice,” 234 pages after its first appearance and 42 pages after its second. We were the 8-year-olds visibly shaking with the effort of not screaming, “Cut that entire last speech! It was utterly redundant,” as we bent our rebellious little heads over our multiplication tables. Paying attention to your pitch-hearer’s reactions is also learned behavior, and as such, benefits from practice. Were you able to hit the first curve ball that came flying at you? If you are planning to engage in any pitching at all, hallway or otherwise, it’s very worth your while not to reserve the first, second, or even thirtieth time you say your elevator speech out loud for when an agent or editor is standing in front of you. Do some dry runs with kith, kin, and that guy sitting next to you right now at that café with the good tables for laptop use, taking note of any changes in their facial expressions or body language. You may be stunned by how obvious it is when a hearer has lost interest. Or how often people will begin to zone out around the time you need to take your first breath. Think that’s a good place to work in that startling metaphor you were saving for pp. 138, 372, and 413? Or to mention a surprising twist? Or would you rather go droning on about lacrosse? I sense some of you tuning me out right now. “I get what you’re saying, Anne,” some conference-attendees drawl, “but I’m not planning to do any hallway pitching. Too scary. Within the context of a scheduled pitch meeting, I at least know that the agent will hear me out. So why should I waste my energies preparing to assess the nuances in a situation in which he might not?” Two reasons, drawlers. First, if an agent does not represent your type of book, he’s actually quite likely to interrupt you to say so, even in a formal meeting. Knowing that you have the option of stopping your pitch, thanking him for his time, and walking away can spare you both the 9 1/2 uncomfortable minutes remaining in your 10-minute appointment. Oh, pick your jawbones off the floor; it’s considered perfectly acceptable, as long as you exit politely. Do you think that agent wants to spend those 9 1/2 minutes watching you glower at him and pipe plaintively, “But why?” Or arguing about whether he really meant to say no? Second, writers often find themselves pitching unexpectedly. You might have an opportunity to give your elevator speech at a luncheon, for instance, when an off-duty agent or editor sitting across the table asks, “So what do you write?” Or you might decide during a seminar that the agent teaching it is perfect for your book. I speak from experience here. I once found myself pitching at a behind-the-scenes conference party at 4 am while fending off a senior editor from a major publishing house’s astonishingly persistent attempts to convince me to accompany him into a nearby hot tub. Something about his approach did not strike me as completely professional. Or so I surmised from his body language, facial expression, and the fact that he kept tugging my arm in the direction of steam. But when one’s agent is at one’s elbow, hissing, “Give him your pitch,” a good writer obeys. Then one gets the heck out of there. As Mrs. Eliopoulos would have been happy to tell anyone several dozen times, discretion is the better part of valor. Since informal pitch opportunities generally entail speaking up gamely under less-than-ideal circumstances, it can take some guts to take advantage of them. Let’s face it, not every writer has the pure, unadulterated moxie to stop a well-known agent in the buffet line and say, “I’m sorry to bug you while you are nabbing your third dessert, but I’ve been trying for two days to get an appointment with you. Could you possibly spare thirty seconds after dinner to hear my pitch?” And, frankly, not every conference organizer is going to be thoroughly pleased with the writers brave enough to do it. Allow me to let you in on a little professional secret, though: if you did an anonymous poll of agented writers who found representation by pitching at conferences (including, incidentally, your humble correspondent), most of them would tell you that they’ve engaged in hallway pitching. Shamelessly. And constantly, at conference after conference, until they have landed an agent. “Quitters never win,” Mrs. Eliopoulos used to say. “And winners never quit.” Statistically, it makes perfect sense: the more agents to whom one pitches, the greater one’s probability of being picked up. (In the signed-by-an-agent sense, mind you; stop thinking about that editor at the publishing house that shall remain nameless. In his defense, he claimed he had just broken up with his girlfriend — a lacrosse player, no doubt.) At most conferences that offer pitch meetings, writers are given only one or two appointments, so simple math would tell us that those who generated their own extra pitching opportunities would be more likely to land agents. That level of persistence need not involve being rude to anybody. I know a perfectly respectable author who landed his agent by the simple expedient of beginning at one end of a conference dais immediately after a panel and moving sideways like a crab for the next 15 minutes, pitching to every agent remotely likely to be interested in his writing. The agent of his dreams turned out to be waiting in the eighth chair, her eyes glazed over after listening for several minutes to a writer talking about a book that she knew she did not have the connections to sell. How did he pull that off without alienating anyone? By paying attention to subtle hints like facial expression, eye-glazing, and the agent in front of him saying, “Sorry, that’s not my cup of tea,” to tell him when to stop pitching, thank her for her time, and walk away. Sensing a pattern here? I hope so. All too often, pitchers perceive themselves to be entirely powerless in the situation, supplicants at the feet of a whimsical monarch magically empowered to speak for the entire publishing industry. But that’s just not true. A pitch is a conversation, and as a participant in it, you may chose to terminate it if you feel it is not going well. Remember that, please, if the agent you picked for your field hockey romantica manuscript because her blurb mentioned that she successfully represented LACROSSE THE RIVER LOVE, NETTED BY PASSION, and HEY, LADY, MY STICK HAS A NET ON IT. Don’t torture her or yourself by pitching a book she has already told you she will not consider representing. Move on, even if that means working up the nerve for unplanned hallway pitching. You came to that conference to find an agent, didn’t you? As long as you are polite, that goal need not be unattainable simply because you didn’t know that agent’s preferences had changed when you signed up to pitch to her. Oh, dear, I said goal, didn’t I? I beg your pardon; I’m going to walk away now. 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Author!</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1364"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/so-why-arent-you-published/">"So why aren't you published?"</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1362"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-january-isnt-necessarily-the-best-time-to-act-upon-your-new-years-resolution-to-query-or-submit/">*Why January isn't necessarily the best time to act upon your New Year's resolution to query or submit</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1251"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/a-one-post-guide-to-what-a-book-manuscript-should-look-like/">A one-post guide to what a book manuscript should look like</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-956"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/help-im-scared-to-send-out-the-pages-that-agent-requested/">Help! I'm scared to send out the pages that agent requested!</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-928"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/how-are-book-manuscripts-different-from-published-books/">How are book manuscripts different from published books?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1229"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/if-you-read-only-one-post-on-author-author-this-should-be-it/">If you read only one post on Author! Author — this should be it</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-484"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/if-you-read-only-one-post-on-querying-this-should-be-it/">If you read only one post on querying — this should be it</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-194"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/new-years-resolutions-on-writing/">New Year's resolutions on writing</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-151"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/query-letters-for-beginners/">Query letters for beginners</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1113"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/the-manuscript-formatting-rules/">The manuscript formatting rules</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-879"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/what-is-conference-pitching-and-why-would-i-want-to-do-it/">What is conference pitching and why would I want to do it?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-979"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/what-should-my-submission-look-like/">What should my submission look like?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-562"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-are-author-author-posts-so-long/">Why are Author! Author! posts so long?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1381"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-are-the-explanations-here-at-author-author-so-extensive/">Why are the explanations here at Author! Author! so extensive?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-372"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-are-there-so-many-different-sets-of-writing-rules-online/">Why are there so many different sets of writing rules online?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-488"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-is-there-so-much-conflicting-advice-about-queries/">Why is there so much conflicting advice about queries?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-201"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-shouldnt-i-just-query-every-agent-i-can-find/">Why shouldn't I just query every agent I can find?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1348"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-you-might-not-want-to-send-out-requested-pages-immediately-after-a-successful-pitch/">Why you might not want to send out requested pages immediately after a successful pitch</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1387"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-you-should-be-making-regular-backups-of-your-writing/">Why you should be making regular backups of your writing</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1292"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/start-here-if-you-are-a-beginner-at-trying-to-get-published/why-you-should-not-submit-your-manuscript-the-second-after-you-finish-drafting-it/">Why you should not submit your manuscript the second after you finish drafting it</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-940"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/academic-writing/">Academic writing</a> </li> 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href="https://www.annemini.com/category/advances-and-how-they-do-and-dont-work/may-i-reasonably-expect-my-advance-to-permit-me-to-take-time-off-work-to-promote-my-book/">May I reasonably expect my advance to permit me to take time off work to promote my book?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-543"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/advances-and-how-they-do-and-dont-work/may-i-reasonably-expect-the-advance-on-my-first-book-to-be-large-enough-to-enable-me-to-quit-my-day-job-and-write-full-time/">May I reasonably expect the advance on my first book to be large enough to enable me to quit my day job and write full time?</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1375"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after-youve-received-a-request-for-pages-as-an-exclusive/">After you've received a request for pages as an exclusive</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1721"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/">After…</a> <ul class='children'> <li 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href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-have-published-the-first-book-in-a-series/">After you have published the first book in a series</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-848"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-have-published-your-first-book-what-then/">After you have published your first book — what then?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-204"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-have-queried-or-pitched/">After you have queried or pitched</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-688"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-land-a-publisher/">After you land a publisher</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-359"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-land-an-agent/">After you land an agent</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-205"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-receive-a-request-for-pages/">After you receive a request for pages</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-790"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-you-submit/">After you submit</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-206"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-youve-been-rejected/">After you've been rejected</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1152"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-youve-finishing-writing-your-first-draft/">After you've finishing writing your first draft</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-554"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-youve-made-a-successful-pitch/">After you've made a successful pitch</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1220"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/after-youve-made-an-unsuccessful-pitch/">After you've made an unsuccessful pitch</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-556"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/getting-that-submission-out-the-door/">Getting that submission out the door</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-961"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/after/help-ive-granted-an-agent-an-exclusive-and-another-agent-just-asked-to-see-pages/">Help! 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href="https://www.annemini.com/category/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/why-you-should-never-grant-an-exclusive-at-the-querying-stage-unless-an-agencys-submission-guidelines-specifically-ask-for-it/">Why you should never grant an exclusive at the querying stage unless an agency’s submission guidelines specifically ask for it</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1738"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/why-you-should-not-assume-that-the-agent-you-liked-so-much-at-a-conference-should-have-an-exclusive-look-at-your-manuscript/">Why you should not assume that the agent you liked so much at a conference should have an exclusive look at your manuscript</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1205"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/why-you-should-not-just-pick-up-the-phone-and-call-your-favorite-authors-agent/">Why you should not just pick up the phone and call your favorite author's agent</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1111"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/agents-landing-the-right-one-for-your-book/why-you-shouldnt-query-every-agent-in-the-country/">Why you shouldn't query every agent in the country</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1521"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/agentseditors-who-used-to-attend-the-ctsrn/">Agents/Editors who used to attend the CTSRN</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-766"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/annes-book-picks/">Anne's Book Picks</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-160"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/annes-editorial-pet-peeves/">Anne's editorial pet peeves</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-191"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/annes-favorite-posts/">Anne's favorite posts</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-161"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/art-of-revision/">Art Of Revision</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-470"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/author-bio/">Author bio</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-502"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/author-photo/">Author photo</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1068"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/author-readings-and-why-you-should-attend-them/">Author readings and why you should attend them</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-388"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/author-author-awards-for-expressive-excellence/">Author! 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cat-item-1331"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/book-categories/how-specific-should-i-be-about-my-books-category-in-my-query/">How specific should I be about my book's category in my query?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-404"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/book-categories/how-to-figure-out-your-books-category/">How to figure out your book's category</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-931"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/book-categories/should-i-indent-the-first-paragraph-of-a-chapter-if-published-books-in-my-chosen-genre-sometimes-do-not/">Should I indent the first paragraph of a chapter if published books in my chosen genre sometimes do not?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1120"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/book-categories/should-i-mention-the-book-category-on-my-title-page/">Should I mention the book category on my title page?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-422"><a 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cat-item-606"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/character-development/relationship-development/">Relationship development</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-628"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/character-development/secondary-characters/">Secondary characters</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1283"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/character-development/selecting-distinctive-character-names/">Selecting distinctive character names</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-599"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/character-development/showing-not-telling-character/">Showing (not telling) character</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1021"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/character-development/subtle-ways-to-make-characters-seem-more-or-less-intelligent/">Subtle ways to make characters seem more or less intelligent</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-282"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/collaboration/">Collaboration</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-461"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/conference-etiquette/">Conference etiquette</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-462"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/conference-faux-pas/">Conference faux pas</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-276"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/conference-lore/">Conference lore</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-361"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/conference-pitching/">Conference pitching</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-898"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/conference-selection/">Conference selection</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-875"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/conferences-that-cater-to-writers/">Conferences that cater to writers</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1728"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/">Contests and how to enter them successfully</a> <ul class='children'> <li class="cat-item cat-item-300"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/contest-entry-bugbears/">Contest entry bugbears</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-761"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/contest-entry-prep/">Contest entry prep</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-393"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/contest-judging-criteria/">Contest judging criteria</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-301"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/contest-rules-and-how-to-follow-them/">Contest rules and how to follow them</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-302"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/contest-synopsis-writing/">Contest synopsis-writing</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-303"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/entering-us-literary-contests-from-outside-the-us/">Entering US literary contests from outside the US</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-716"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/entering-writing-contests-with-aplomb-and-a-chance-of-winning/">Entering writing contests with aplomb — and a chance of winning</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-896"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/finding-the-right-contest-to-enter/">Finding the right contest to enter</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1147"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-can-i-tell-if-entering-a-contest-is-worth-the-entry-fee/">How can I tell if entering a contest is worth the entry fee?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1070"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-can-i-tell-if-im-entering-the-right-category/">How can I tell if I'm entering the right category?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-490"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-serious-are-contest-judges-about-length-restrictions/">How serious are contest judges about length restrictions?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1075"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-should-i-format-my-contest-entry/">How should I format my contest entry?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1141"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-to-construct-a-title-page-for-a-contest-entry/">How to construct a title page for a contest entry</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1144"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-to-read-a-writing-contest-entry-form/">How to read a writing contest entry form</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-722"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/how-to-write-a-1-page-synopsis-for-a-contest/">How to write a 1-page synopsis for a contest</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-764"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/im-a-finalist-what-now/">I'm a finalist — what now?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1148"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/is-it-okay-to-enter-writing-in-a-contest-and-submit-it-to-agents-simultaneously/">Is it okay to enter writing in a contest and submit it to agents simultaneously?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1176"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/is-the-humor-in-my-entry-likely-to-amuse-mehitabel/">Is the humor in my entry likely to amuse Mehitabel?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1074"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/must-i-submit-the-opening-pages-of-my-manuscript-to-a-contest-with-categories-for-book-length-works/">Must I submit the opening pages of my manuscript to a contest with categories for book-length works?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1142"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/poetry-contest-entries/">Poetry contest entries</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-813"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/realistic-expectations-for-contest-entrants/">Realistic expectations for contest entrants</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1072"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/should-i-ever-consider-writing-something-new-for-a-contest/">Should I ever consider writing something new for a contest?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1315"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/should-i-ever-pay-a-fee-to-enter-a-writing-contest/">Should I ever pay a fee to enter a writing contest?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1678"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/should-my-entrys-title-page-be-included-in-the-page-count/">Should my entry's title page be included in the page count?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1136"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/the-make-us-want-to-eat-it-literary-competition-a-step-by-step-guide-to-preparing-an-entry/">The Make Us Want to Eat It Literary Competition — a step-by-step guide to preparing an entry</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1016"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/the-make-us-want-to-eat-it-literary-competition-of-2012/">The Make Us Want to Eat It Literary Competition of 2012</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1139"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/the-sensual-surfeit-literary-competition-a-step-by-step-guide-to-formatting-your-entry/">The Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition — a step-by-step guide to formatting your entry</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1258"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/the-sensual-surfeit-literary-competition-of-2012/">The Sensual Surfeit Literary Competition of 2012</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1145"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-and-how-to-enter-them-successfully/wait-read-this-post-before-you-mail-off-that-entry/">Wait! Read this post before you mail off that entry!</a> </li> </ul> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1711"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/contests-that-are-worth-your-time-to-enter/">Contests that are worth your time to enter</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-564"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/copyright-issues/">Copyright issues</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1658"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/">Craft and plenty of it</a> <ul class='children'> <li class="cat-item cat-item-425"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/action-scenes/">Action scenes</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-533"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/at-the-risk-of-repeating-myself/">At the risk of repeating myself…</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-808"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/avoiding-killing-your-darlings/">Avoiding killing your darlings</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-426"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/backstory-and-how-to-work-it-into-a-plot/">Backstory and how to work it into a plot</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-389"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/beginning-and-ending-a-book/">Beginning and ending a book</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-615"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/building-suspense/">Building suspense</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-534"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/but-i-like-that-phrase-why-shouldnt-i-use-it-twice/">But I like that phrase! 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Why should I worry about a reader's reaction?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-428"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/character-blurring/">Character blurring</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-809"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/character-naming/">Character naming</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1401"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/cliche-avoidance/">Cliché avoidance</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1045"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/comic-voice-and-how-to-develop-it/">Comic voice and how to develop it</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-639"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/conflict-building/">Conflict-building</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-163"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/consistency-and-why-it-is-important-to-develop/">Consistency and why it is important to develop</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-392"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/constructing-a-narrative/">Constructing a narrative</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1064"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/continuity-and-why-it-is-important-to-maintain/">Continuity and why it is important to maintain</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-394"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/craft-in-depth-analysis/">Craft! 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class="cat-item cat-item-605"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/narrative-consistency/">Narrative consistency</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-434"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/pacing-a-scene/">Pacing a scene</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-626"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/passive-protagonists/">Passive protagonists</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-728"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/passive-voice-and-why-you-should-eschew-it/">Passive voice and why you should eschew it</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-520"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/plausibility/">Plausibility</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-627"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/plot-development/">Plot development</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-407"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/protagonist-likability/">Protagonist likability</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-408"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/protagonist-memorability/">Protagonist memorability</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-514"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/real-stories-told-as-fiction/">Real stories told as fiction</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-436"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/realistic-dialogue/">Realistic dialogue</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1158"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/reimagining-a-classic-tale/">Reimagining a classic tale</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1178"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/run-on-sentences-and-why-professional-readers-dont-like-them/">Run-on sentences and why professional readers don't like them</a> 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format thought in a manuscript?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-581"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/what-makes-a-great-page-1/">What makes a great page 1?</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-625"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/why-sounding-like-your-favorite-author-from-a-decade-ago-might-not-work-well-now/">Why sounding like your favorite author from a decade ago might not work well now</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-1163"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/why-sounding-like-your-favorite-comedian-might-not-result-in-funny-writing/">Why sounding like your favorite comedian might not result in funny writing</a> </li> <li class="cat-item cat-item-549"><a href="https://www.annemini.com/category/craft-and-plenty-of-it/why-what-worked-in-the-19th-century-might-not-work-on-the-page-today/">Why what worked in the 19th century might not work on the page today</a> </li> <li 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