Posted on - 3 Comments on Book marketing 101: the pitch proper, part II, or, all together now!

Book marketing 101: the pitch proper, part II, or, all together now!

Yesterday, I introduced those of you new to pitching appointments to its unique joys and stresses. It’s important that first-time pitchers are aware what the environment into which they will be stepping is like.

Why? Because we writers — c’mon, admit it — have an unparalleled gift for freaking ourselves out by imagining all kinds of strange things waiting for us on the other side of our first pitching experience. Like a pitch meeting’s rocketing us to instant fame, or an agent who says, “I hate your plot AND your tie!”

Also the common fantasies about what can happen in such meetings both raise expectations and increase fright. Knowledge really is power, at least in this instance. By learning what to expect, you can prepare more effectively — and psych yourself out less in the process.

If the prospect of pitch preparation appalls you, take heart, my friends: 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? Here’s a hint: first, you’re going to impress ‘em by your professionalism, then you’re gonna wow ‘em with your storytelling ability.

You’re going to play to your strengths, in other words. And yes, your writing has them, to professional eyes. It’s just a matter of presentation the book so that people focused upon marketing notice them.

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: IT IS A MARKETING SPEECH, designed not only to show what your book is about, but also why it is MARKETABLE.

Once you understand that — and once you accept that, in 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 can be seen not as an all-or-nothing referendum on your worth as a writer or as a human being, but as a PROFESSIONAL SELLER OF WRITING’s response to a proposed premise.

Regardless of whether the agent liked your tie or not.

What a formal pitch can and should be is your taking 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: you have already defined your work in those terms: your book’s category (posts of June 15-19), identifying your target market (June 20-21), coming up with selling points and/or a platform for you and your book (June 22, 23, and 25), inventing a snappy keynote statement (June 26-28), pulling all of these elements together into the magic first 100 words (June 29-30), and giving an overview of the central conflict of the book (the elevator speech, July 2-5).

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 (July 6, 9, and 10), which I sincerely hope that those of you who are imminently conference-bound are practicing on everyone you meet.

I’m serious about this. It takes lots of repetition to get used to hearing yourself talking about your work like a pro, rather than like a writer talking to other writers. When we’re in creative mode, we speak amongst ourselves about our hopes, fears, and difficulties — entirely appropriate, because who else is going to understand your travails better than another writer?

But when we’re in marketing mode, as 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.

How might one go about doing that in a formal pitch meeting? I’m so glad you asked. We’ve had the wind-up; now comes the pitch.

Part I: First, you would begin with the magic first hundred words:

”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).”

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,

“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 information! That sounds like a 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…”

If you are pitching nonfiction, this is the step where you will want to mention your platform. For example,

“Hi, my name is Bill Clinton, and I used to be President of the United States. I write political books, buidling upon that expertise. My latest project…”

Part II: After you finish Part I, with nary a pause for breath, you would 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.

“(Protagonist) is in (interesting situation).” + about a 1-minute overview of the book’s primary conflicts or focus, using vivid and memorable imagery.

Do NOT tell the entire plot: your goal here, remember, 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 he’s already read it.

Make sure to identify your protagonist — by name, never as “my protagonist” — in the first line. It’s substantially easier for a hearer to identify with a named character than an amorphous one. 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.)

Part III: Then, to tie it all together, you would give the agent or editor a brief explanation of why this book will sell. 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.

“I’m excited about this project, because of its SELLING POINTS. Currently, there are # (TARGET MARKET members) in the United States, and this book will appeal to them because (more SELLING POINTS).”

Now, you could manage all that in two minutes, right?

Of course you could: with aplomb, with dignity. Because, really, are you are doing here is talking about the work you love, telling your favorite story, in the language that agents and editors speak.

One last thing, then I shall let you run off to ponder what details you would like to append to your elevator speech: 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. Don’t; it won’t help your case. It’s only polite to allow the agent to respond, to be enthusiastic.

It’s in your self-interest, you know. 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 that, my friends, is how I like to give a pitch. Again, 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.

Tomorrow, 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!

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Book marketing 101: but what do I WEAR to put my ego on the line in front of utter strangers prone to rejection?

I’m in the throes of a major deadline, my friends, so I’m trapped inside, despite the fact that this is the kind of glorious midsummer day that those of us in the Pacific Northwest spend all November fantasizing about in nearly pornographic levels of detail. Oh, the writer’s life is glamorous!

So, in keeping with the spirit of the summer vacation I really ought to be taking right now, out seeing everyone’s knees poking out below Bermuda shorts and sunburns on beaches everywhere, I’m going to take a breather before attacking the formal pitch to tackle a fun topic today: what you should wear to a conference in the dead middle of summer.

This is a serious issue, you know. It may be 90 degrees outside, but conference centers are often air-conditioned to the point that ice will not melt in your latte. And a bathing suit with a fur coat thrown over it seems as though it MIGHT send the wrong message about your professionalism.

Although I would dearly love to hear the pitch for the book where that particular outfit would enhance the author’s credibility.

You should be thinking about your credibility as you gaze into your closet in the days before a conference. In many ways, these conferences are job interviews — at least the pitching part. You will want to look professional, not as though you have just stepped off the aforementioned beach.

Does this mean you should wear a suit? No, not unless you will be pitching a book about business skills, or another sort of NF book where your credibility as an expert in a tradition-bound field is a strong element of your platform. If not, overdressing can come across as insecurity, rather than professionalism, especially to a NYC-based agent or editor.

Why? Well, just as being naturally good-looking makes a BIG difference in first impressions on this coast (come on, admit it), being well and appropriately dressed is important in making good first impressions on Manhattanites. One way that people identify others like themselves on that fair isle is by dress — if you work at a fashion magazine, you dress one way; if you work in a brokerage firm, you dress another.

So to an NYC-based agent, if you wear a suit, depending on the designer’s label within it, he might identify you as a high-powered attorney, a minor official at a state agency, a spy, or a shoe salesman.

So while in theory, this means that you could conceivably skip the makeup, don your jammies, and wear your glasses to your meeting (because that’s what writers look like while they’re working, right?), this is not the time to be shabby. Neatness counts.

So the short answer to what to wear is this: nice pants or a skirt (but not a super-short one, unless you are pitching erotica — and even then, don’t make the world your gynocologist), avoid showing too much cleavage or chest hair, and go light on the cologne.

Unless you are pitching a book about mountaineering, I would avoid much-worn jeans or hiking boots, but to a West Coast conference, you could get away with newish jeans quite happily.

No need for women to wear heels or nylons, though. (That great tumult of joyous noise you just heard, gentlemen, was the female readership of this blog rejoicing.) Unless you are attending a conference in the South, that is, where the nice ladies are more put together than we Westerners in general.

(Things I have been offered the loan of, kindly, at writers’ conferences in the South by well-dressed relative strangers: nylons, a hair dryer, hot rollers, shoe polish, nail polish, and spectator pumps.)

Generally speaking, though, don’t dress up as if you were attending an afternoon wedding — a corsage would be a BIT much, unless you are pitching a book on prom etiquette — but don’t show up in shorts and a T-shirt, either.

Leave the tube top at home, I tell you. Ditto with the Hawaiian shirt with the eye-searing pattern of chartreuse pineapples on a field of rampant pink flamingos — unless you are pitching the definitive Don Ho bio, of course.

Oh, sorry — I didn’t mean to make your brain start humming Tiny Bubbles on a continuous loop. (RIP, bubblemaster.)

Stand back, for I am about to make a prophecy: those of you attending the upcoming PNWA conference will remember this advice vividly when you walk into the conference, because there you will see many, many people there in jeans and T-shirts proclaiming their favorite bands, 5K runs for charity, or membership in the Don Ho fan club. The Pacific Northwest is a pretty casual place.

How casual, you ask? Well, let’s just say that I’ve seen a LOT of knees over the years, and no one is going to offer to loan you spectator pumps.

However, at the risk of sounding like your mother: do as I say, not as they do. Even if EVERYONE else is dressed down, you will still make a better impression if you are appropriately dressed than if you are not.

And besides, if everyone else jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, would you?

Basically, you should wear what you might to the first major reading of your book in a bookstore. This is a terrific rule of thumb anytime you will be meeting with anyone in the industry, actually, because you will be demonstrating to an agent who is considering taking you on as a client, or an editor who is thinking about acquiring your book, that you have enough social sensitivity that they don’t have to worry about you showing up to future interviews or signings in your pajamas — or that Hawaiian shirt I mentioned.

Believe it or not, the ability to dress appropriately is equally helpful whether you write gardening advice or cyberpunk. People in the industry want to work with authors whom they can send into a variety of promotional environments.

If you doubt this, pay attention to what the presenting writers, agents, and editors are wearing at the next conference you attend. You’re not going to see a while lot of prints on the women, for instance; I’ve never been to a writers’ conference where at least one of the publishing professionals WASN’T wearing a plain, clean-lined pantsuit. I’ve seen entire editors’ panels swathed in subdued Ann Taylor crêpe.

As the immortal Laurie Partridge showed us all in my childhood, you can’t go wrong with a nice pantsuit.

Because the publishing industry does tend toward quieter fashions, this is not the best place to trot out the big floral prints (you’ll think about that, too, when you see how many people show up in them), or clothing bearing the insignia of a business or sports team. I don’t want to see your knees at all, under any circumstances, so just don’t pack the shorts or flip-flops with your conference gear.

Trust me on this one. The meeting rooms will be air-conditioned, anyway, sometimes to pneumonia-inducing levels of chill. You’re not going to want to wear anything that bares thigh, lest you die of exposure.

I hear some of you out there grumbling, and rightly so: for most of the conference, you will be sitting around on folding chairs, listening to speakers. So wouldn’t it make MORE sense to wear something comfortable, rather than fussy nice clothes?

In a word, yes — to the parts of the conference where you can reasonably expect to be sitting around on a folding chair, listening to speakers. But for your meetings, no. Would you stroll into an interview for a job you wanted in a halter top and ripped Daisy Dukes?

Okay, would you walk into an interview anywhere but Hooters wearing that?

There’s no law, however, that says you can’t leave your nicely-pressed shirt on a hanger in your car, or in the closet of your hotel room, to change into an hour before your appointment. In fact, re-robing just before your formal pitch meeting can be a good preparation ritual.

Two caveats about the preceding. First, if you plan on taking the brave route of approached agents to pitch at them in the hallways, do plan on being dressed up a bit the whole time, so you are always ready to make a good impression. The Flashdance look may be charming on you, especially the legwarmers, but you don’t want to have to think twice about accosting that agent next to you in the hotel elevator, lest your apparel suggest that you are proposing something different than you actually are.

You’ll understand that last sentence when you’re older, children.

Second — and this may seem a trifle frivolous, but it is nevertheless true — the lighting in virtually every conference center in North America makes everyone look positively ghastly. Red tones tend to do better in that light than yellows. And if you’re like me, and pale, you might want to spring for a little rouge or lipstick, so you don’t look as though you have spent the last year typing away on your opus in an unusually depressing crypt.

Unless, of course, you write about vampires, in which case you may feel free to look a trifle Goth. Other than that, stock up on the vitamin C, and smile.

Speaking of which, I now need to lock myself in my crypt and get back to work. Enjoy high summer, everybody, and keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Book marketing 101: the evolution of the pitch — and the industry

Book marketing 101: the evolution of the pitch — and the industry

As those of you who have been reading my blog for a while have no doubt already figured out, my take on the publishing industry does not always conform to the prevailing wisdom. (I know: GASP! Alert the media!) The problem with the prevailing wisdom, as I see it, is that it is so often out of date: what was necessary to land an agent 20 years ago is most emphatically not the same as what is necessary today, or what will be necessary 5 years from now.

And it is now every bit as hard to land an agent as it used to be to land a book contract. Heck, it’s significantly more difficult than it was when I signed with my current agency — and honeys, I’m not that old.

My point is, the industry changes all the time, and very quickly. If you doubt this, chew on this: when I signed the contract for my memoir, A FAMILY DARKLY: LOVE, LOSS, AND THE FINAL PASSIONS OF PHILIP K. DICK, in March of 2005, it naturally contained the standard contractual provisions about truthfulness; the contract specified that my publisher believed that I believed that I was telling the truth in my book. (Which I am, in case you were wondering.)

Yet if I signed a standard NF contract for the same book today, it would almost certainly contain some provision requiring me as the author to obtain signed releases from everyone mentioned in the book.

What happened in that intervening 2+ years to alter the standard contract, you ask? A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, that’s what.

The very tangible result: industry rumor has it that last year, a major publishing house required a writer who spent a significant amount of time living with cloistered nuns to obtained signed releases from each and every one of the wimpled ones, swearing that they would not sue the publisher over the book.

Yes, you read that right. Correct me if I am wrong, but don’t nuns generally take vows of poverty? And doesn’t cloistered mean, you know, not wandering up and down the aisles at Barnes & Noble, checking out your own publicity? Yet such is the prevailing paranoia that the publishing house was legitimately concerned that suddenly the little sisters of St. Francis of Assisi would metamorphose into a gaggle of money-hungry, lawyer-blandishing harpies.

Oh, and for the last year and a half, writers have been hearing at conferences, “Oh, it’s impossible to sell memoir right now.” Which is odd, because the trade papers seem to show that plenty of houses are in fact still buying memoirs aplenty.

So you’ll pardon me, I hope, for saying that it always pays to look over the standard truisms very carefully, both to see if they still apply and to see if they’re, you know, TRUE. Many, I am sad to report, are neither.

You can tell I am gearing up to saying something subversive, can’t you?

Yes, I am: I would specifically advise AGAINST walking into a meeting with an agent or editor and giving the kind of 3-sentence pitch that you will usually see recommended in writers’ publications — and practically mandated in the average conference brochure.

Or, to put it another way: I think it is a common mistake to assume that the structure that works for pitching a screenplay can be adapted without modification to books.

“Wait just a second, Anne!” I hear some of you shouting. “I have a conference brochure right here, and it tells me I MUST limit myself to a 3-sentence pitch!”

Well pointed out, imaginary shouters — this is quite standard boilerplate advice. But think about it: the average conference appointment with an agent is 10-15 minutes long, and if you are like most writers, you will probably be very nervous.

So I have one question to ask you: do you really want to have only a minute’s worth of material prepared?

Seriously, I’ve heard many, many agents and editors complain that writers pitching at conferences either talk non-stop for ten minutes (not effective) or stop talking after one (ditto). “Why aren’t they using the time I’m giving them?” they wonder in the bar. (It’s an inviolable rule of writers’ conferences that there is always a bar within staggering distance. That’s where the pros congregate to bemoan their respective fates.) “Half the time, they just dry up. Aren’t they interested in their own books?”

Oh, the 3-sentence pitch definitely has its utility: it is helpful to have one ready for when you buttonhole an agent in an elevator, when you might genuinely have only a minute and a half to make your point. That’s why it’s called an elevator speech, in case you were wondering; it’s short enough to deliver between floors without pushing the alarm button to stop the trip.

It’s also very useful in preparing your query letter, where you can use it as the paragraph that describes the book. Once you have a really effective marketing paragraph written, you can use it many contexts.

So I will definitely be walking you through how to construct one. However, an elevator speech should not be confused with a full-blown book pitch. To do so, I think, implies a literalism that cannot conceive that a similar process called by the same name but conducted in two completely unrelated industries might not be identical.

News flash to the super-literal: the noun bat refers to both a critter that flies and a piece of wood used to hit a ball. Learn to live with it.

There’s another reason not to use the same pitch format as everybody else: pitch fatigue, the industry term for when a person’s heard so many pitches in a row that they all start to blend together in the mind. It’s surprisingly tiring to listen to pitches; there’s so much emotion floating in the air, and it’s so vital to pay attention to every last detail. Even with the best intentions, after the third pitch in any given genre in any given day, the stories start to sound alike.

Even stories that are nothing alike can begin to sound alike.

I can tell you from experience that pitch fatigue can set in pretty quickly. Last year, at the Conference That Dares Not Speak Its Name, a group of intrepid writers, including yours truly, set up the Pitch Practicing Palace, collectively hearing over 325 individual pitches over the course of three very long days.

Now, all of us on the PPP staff are both writers and chronic readers, so our sympathies, I think it is safe to say, were pretty much always on the writer’s side of the pitching desk. And we heard quite a number of truly exceptional pitches. But by the end of the first day, all of us were starting to murmur variations on, “You know, if I had to do this every day, I might start to think the rejection pile was my friend.”

Part of the problem is environmental. Agents and editors at conferences are generally expected to listen patiently while sitting under flickering fluorescent lights in uncomfortable chairs, being rapidly dehydrated by punishing convention center air conditioning. You can hardly blame them for zoning out from time to time, under the circumstances.

I know: poor, poor babies, forced to endure precisely the same ambient conditions as every writer at the conference, without the added stress of trying to make their life-long dreams come true. But I’m not mentioning this so you will pity them; I’m bringing it up so you may have a clearer picture of what you will be facing.

Gather up all of those environmental factors I described above into a neat mental picture, please. Pretend you are an agent who has been listening to pitches for the past four hours.

Got it? Now: which is more likely to snap you out of your stupor, a three-sentence pitch, which forces you to go to the effort of drawing more details about the book out of the pitcher? Or a slightly longer pitch that explains to you not only what the book is about, but who is going to buy it and why?

Or, to consider the other common advice about structuring pitches, would you be more likely to pay attention to a pitch that is rife with generalities, glossing lightly over themes that are common to many books? Or a pitch stuffed full of briefly-described scenes, embellished attractively with a few well-chosen significant details?

Exactly. You don’t want to hand them the same vanilla ice cream cone that everyone else has been offering them all day; you want to hand them the deluxe waffle cone stuffed with lemon-thyme sorbet and chocolate mousse.

And that, dear friends, is why I’m spending the next month talking about how to market your work in ways that make sense to the industry, rather than just telling you to cram years of your hopes and dreams into three overstuffed sentences. By the time we reach the end of this series, my hope is that you will not only be able to give a successful pitch AND elevator speech — I would like for you to be prepared to speak fluently about your work anytime, anywhere, to anybody, no matter how influential.

In short, to help you sound like a professional, market-savvy writer, rather than the nervous wreck most of us are walking into pitch meetings. I know you’re up for it.

But to achieve that, a writer needs to learn to describe a book in language the industry understands. The first building block of fluency follows tomorrow. In the meantime, keep up the good work!

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Assumptions, assumptions, part III: editorial suggestions

Those of you who read yesterday’s post may well be wondering: why did the shipping-box/manuscript analogy spring to mind right now, while in mid-revision on my novel? Well, it’s never a good idea to be TOO specific about deals before they go though, so let’s just posit a hypothetical situation and analyze that. (And fair warning: this post will make a LOT more sense, I suspect, if you have already read Assumptions, Assumptions, Part II.)

Let’s say an editor at a house-that-shall-remain-nameless-until-it-makes-an-offer has asked a novelist to change a book in certain very specific ways before they will proffer a deal. Let’s assume further that the vast majority of these, shall we say, strongly suggested changes are fine, perfectly sensible, and even praiseworthy. Paragons of feedback, they are. A couple, however, while not precisely things that the book’s protagonist would never do, are conceptually problematic.

So much so that I believe I can derive a general revision axiom from it: NEVER assume that an editor who is interested in your book will necessarily know much about its subject matter. Especially if it’s fiction. You honestly do need to explain yourself in a submission, EVEN IF YOUR TARGET MARKET IS A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO WILL ALREADY BE FAMILIAR WITH YOUR SUBJECT MATTER.

Why? Because even if you’re writing for experts, unless you are dealing with a publishing house that specializes in your particular field, your submission will probably not be landing on the desk of an editor with your target reader’s background. In fact — and I tremble to bring this up, but often it’s true — your book may actually be the editor’s introduction to your particular slice of your subject.

Counterintuitive, isn’t it? You’d expect an editor who specialized in gardening books to know his way around a potting shed, wouldn’t you? And it would make sense that if an editor was going through a spate of acquiring books about Paris, she would have a pretty good grasp of how the Metro works, whose picture is on French money, etc.

However, editors at the major publishing houses, like agents, can no longer afford to be quite the specialists that they once were. Take a look at the average editor’s last few years of acquisitions, and the breadth of subject matter may astonish you. Even within books on a particular subject, there may still be quite a range: Lonely Planet Savannah, Charleston & the Carolina Coast and MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL were both NF books set in Georgia, after all.

Among fiction editors, subject matter breadth is generally even more extreme: the same editor, Anika Streitfeld of MacAdam/Cage (at the time; now she’s at Random House — remember how I told you people move around a LOT in this industry?) acquired THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE and THE MADHOUSE MEMOIR OF MARY TODD LINCOLN. In the same year.

So just because an editor likes your novel, it does not necessarily follow that she will have a background in its underlying subject matter. They are generalists, even if they deal in only one genre — and this can be problematic at submission time.

Although most of us novelists harbor a secret belief that the writing is actually what our books are about, and folks in the industry make a fairly sharp distinction between character-driven and plot-driven novels, the vast majority of fiction is about SOMETHING other than the relationships between its characters. If your protagonist is a coal miner, for instance, coal mining is obviously going to play a fairly significant role in the book, right? (In fact, in a character-driven novel, background tends to be more important than in a plot-driven book.)

If the acquiring editor had no prior experience with this underlying something, or is prey to misconceptions about it, you and she may well have different ideas about how that something should be treated. Which would present a fairly considerable field of potential conflict between the editor and the author.

At our hypothetical author’s stage of the process — requested revisions with an eye to an eventual acquisition — there is no conflict per se, for the exceedingly simple reason that one of the things an editor buys with a publishing contract is the right to speak with the author directly. In the buying stages, everything goes through the agent.

So at this point, 100% of the author’s information about the changes that this editor — whom, lest we forget, the author has never met, and thus whose personal tastes she does not know, beyond the fact that the editor likes the author’s writing — wants come from an extremely flattering 2-page editorial memo and such snippets of the author’s agent’s discussions with her (also flattering) as have been passed on.

In other words, the agent opened the box, took a look at the contents, and successfully pitched it to the editor. The editor, in turn, rummaged through the contents and liked what she saw but, not knowing the sender, relied upon what her life experience told her about certain aspects of the book should play out. She did want the wineglasses, but she thought perhaps the stems should be shortened and the bowl made shallower: basically, she wanted to drink white wine out of glasses that were designed for red.

Which, naturally, is a prospect that would make a giver who, say, grew up near a winery blanch.

However, in this kind of offer — that is, where the author is expected to revise first and get paid later, as opposed to the kind offer that comes with competitive bidding, where changes are generally made AFTER the publishing contract is signed — the author really had only two options here, to make the requested changes or to take the book elsewhere.

Almost everyone, as you might well imagine, opts for making the changes. Even when some of those changes are primarily to cater to an incorrect notion of a phenomenon described in the book. And this might mean, for instance, having to come up with a new way to approach a protagonist’s medical condition, a spin that will conform more closely with the editor’s ideas about it. So in the interests of verisimilitude, the hapless author may well be reduced to bugging specialists thither and yon, trying to come up with a compromise pathology.

All part of the biz, my friends, in this kind of situation. The moral of the story, I think, is multifold. First, the box had better be packaged right, or it’s not going to get in the front door. Second, publishing types, agents and editors in particular, do not see the contents of the box as set in stone until it is actually set in print. In their eyes, a manuscript is always ripe for revision until they like what they see without reservations.

Which is not, to put it as gently as possible, how we writers tend to view our own work. But to succeed in the publishing world, it is very helpful to know that our views on the subject are not universally shared, any more than each of our backgrounds or knowledge set.

Cultivate flexibility, my friends, so you are ready to rise to such challenges! And, as always, keep up the good work!

Posted on - No Comments on Very practical advice, Part II

Very practical advice, Part II

Hello, readers –

For those of you who missed yesterday’s post, I’m in the midst of doing a series on how to read agents’ blurbs in conference brochures, as well as giving you some idea what you can turn up on agents through standard industry background research. I’m hoping that this will save you some time (and give you easier access to some of this information) as you are carefully considering your rankings for your agent appointments at this summer’s PNWA conference. The wonderful volunteers at the PNWA honestly do screen potential agents very carefully before inviting them; I just thought those of you new to querying could use some help telling them apart.

Again, some standard disclaimers: I am listing the agents scheduled to attend this summer’s conference in alphabetical order here, not ranking them. I am not going to give you a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on any individual agent; my dual intent here is to teach you how to read a blurb and to give you enough background, wherever possible, so you can weigh your options. (My agency is not represented this year, alas, so I have no stake in pushing one or another.) I have gathered this information from the standard industry databases, and so cannot be sure that it is all 100% up-to-date. So if you find out that I’ve conveyed some misinformation here, please let me know, so I can pass the correct information on to my readers.

Okay, next on the alphabetical Loretta Barrett of Loretta Barrett Books. Here is her official blurb, lifted from the PNWA website:

”Loretta A. Barrett (Agent) is a literary agent and president of Loretta Barrett Books, Inc. in New York. She founded the agency in 1990. Prior to that she was Editor-in-Chief of Anchor Books and Vice President and Executive Editor at Doubleday. She is a member of AAR, and has representation in every major foreign market, East and West.

”Ms. Barrett’s nonfiction interests cover a wide range of topics. These include psychology, science and technology, religion, spirituality, current events, biography and memoir. She represents the New York Times bestseller Symptoms of Withdrawal, by Christopher Kennedy Lawford; the New York Times bestseller Mother Angelica, by Raymond Arroyo, the national bestseller The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil, and Stressed-Out Girls, by Roni Cohen-Sandler, Ph.D. Other notable clients include George Weigel, Ann Douglas, Wayne Muller and Stephen Levine.

”Her fiction preferences are largely mainstream and contemporary. She is particularly drawn to women’s fiction and thrillers. Her current fiction list includes the New York Times bestseller Cold Truth, by Mariah Stewart, and national bestseller The Lake of Dead Languages, by Carol Goodman. In addition, she represents noteworthy novelists such as Gary Birken, MD, Laura Van Wormer, M.J. Rose and Dora Levy Mossanen. For a complete list of clients, as well as submissions guidelines, please visit www.lorettabarrettbooks.com .”

What can we learn from this blurb? First of all, when an agent gives her website in her blurb, VISIT IT BEFORE YOU SELECT HER AS ONE OF YOUR TOP CHOICES. I would bet a nickel that there is information there, particularly in the submissions guidelines, that will prove useful to you in both your decision-making process and in prepping for your meeting at the conference.

(Fear not; as the conference draws closer, I shall be giving you tips on how to pitch your work more impressively in these meetings – and in hallways. They are very different venues, and require different approaches!)

Second, judging from this blurb, I would suspect that Ms. Barrett is pretty sympathetic to writers: she has gone to the trouble of including enough information here that an aspiring writer could glean a sense not just of the genres she likes, but of the kind of WRITING. If you will be listing her as a top choice, it will be well worth your while to spend a few moments in the big bookstore nearest to you, reading a few pages from the works of the authors she lists.

Why? I’m guessing that you’re going to see some stylistic patterns amongst her clients. And if you can walk up to an agent and say, “My writing style is very similar to that of your client, X,” the agent’s eyes will generally light up.

See, I’m trying to make the conference a better experience for the agents, too. I’m just generally hospitable.

She has also, I notice from checking her recent sales, provided in this blurb quite a nice mix of very recent sales and ones made longer ago, to give a better impression of her interests as they stand now. No book on this list, as nearly as I can tell, was sold more than 5 years ago, and she has sold books by some of these clients within the last few months. Nice of her; it saves you some trouble in your research.

Third, she mentions that she’s a member of AAR, which saves you the effort of looking it up. Why should you care? Well, AAR members agree to adhere to certain professional standards in dealing with writers – most notably, members cannot charge reading fees. (They can, however, charge editing fees. For a list of other membership restrictions, see most of the standard agent guides.) Also, AAR members are not supposed to do nasty things like sell lists of authors who query them to editing services or writers’ publications, nor are they allowed to make working with a particular editing service a precondition of their reading your work.

The idea here is that an AAR member agency will make the bulk of its income through commissions on sales of its authors’ writing, rather than by charging eager aspiring writers for the opportunity to have an agency screener read a chapter of the book. In the long run, this is for your benefit: if an agency cannot sell your work, being signed with it will not help you much.

Not every non fee-charging agent is a member of AAR, of course, so you should not necessarily write off any agent who is not. (Especially if you write screenplays: many, many screenplay agents are not AAR members.) Some agencies choose not to become members because they are set up as management agencies, which means that they reserve the right to bundle their clients into package deals (novelist + screenwriter + director, for instance).

Being an AAR member does not guarantee that an agent is a decent human being (although it helps), but it does guarantee that if something goes terribly wrong down the line, you will have a court of appeal. For instance, AAR specifies that its members can charge only reasonable fees for photocopying, so if you signed with an agent, and then found you were being charged $2.00/page, you could pick up the phone, and AAR would straighten it out for you.

Ms. Barrett has also been kind in defining her interests with precision: in fiction, mainstream, contemporary, women’s, and thrillers (translation: novels with wide market appeal); in NF, psychology, science and technology, religion, spirituality, current events, biography, and memoir. If you have even the vaguest doubt about the category into which your book falls (and, no, Virginia, “it’s sort of a cross between thriller and literary” isn’t going to fly here; we’re talking where your book would be shelved in a bookstore), check out my blogs for February 13-16. And if you have any doubt about whether your work is mainstream enough for Ms. Barrett, check out her website and her authors’ work for comparison.

A quick aside about pitching NF at a conference: there are usually fewer NF writers at a literary conference, which does make one stand out a bit. However, the first thing that ANY agent will ask a writer pitching NF is, “What is your platform?” In other words, what background do you have that makes you a credible author for this book?

(And P.S., you need to be able to state your platform for a memoir, too. Yes, it’s your life, but memoirs are generally about something else, too. Why are you the best person to write on that secondary topic? And why is your life so compelling that it needed to be turned into a memoir?)

I bring this up in the context of Ms. Barrett’s blurb, because I notice that many of the areas she lists are ones that generally require professional platforms: people who write psychology, science, or technology books tend to have Ph.D.s after their names, for instance; religion and spirituality books tend to be written by those with extensive experience with their subjects, and current events books are generally written by journalists. Not that this should discourage you from pitching these kinds of books here – just be very, very well prepared to answer the platform question before you walk into the meeting.

If you are planning to be pitching fiction, do be aware that Ms. Barrett represents many heavy hitters in the industry, and thus may be rather difficult to impress. (One reason I think so: I noticed only one fiction sale in the last three years specifically identified as a debut novel, anthropology professor Lila Shaara’s debut literary thriller “about a former model turned college professor whose scarily obsessed students create a website of doctored photos from her previous career, and soon the danger they pose to her and her two young sons becomes shockingly real.” However, this Feb. 2005 sale was part of an apparently terrific two-book deal to a major publisher.)

I think it’s safe to assume, then, that she may not be as hungry as a less well-established agent. (Hungry is an industry term: it means to be very, very eager to sell books; typically, the better-heeled agents are less hungry than those newer to the game.) So if you’re going to pitch to Ms. Barrett, I would suggest taking the time before the conference to make your book sound as appetizing as possible. Plan to walk into your meeting with her very, very prepared to make your book sound like the best novel since, well, ever.

More agent blurb deciphering follows in the days to come, but before I end today, let me add what I’ve heard on the writers’ grapevine: I have heard from many who have pitched to her (as I have not) that she is a good person to ask for recommendations for OTHER agents who might be interested in a particular book. That, too, is a good thing to know before you walk into a pitch meeting.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini

Posted on - No Comments on Nonfiction book categories (and no, I couldn’t think of a catchier title for it)

Nonfiction book categories (and no, I couldn’t think of a catchier title for it)

Hello, readers –

Here we are at our last installment of book category choices, the nonfiction array. Granted, most of the sections of the PNWA contest are devoted to various flavors of fiction, but as a memoirist myself, I would be the last to slight all of you brave and excellent writers of nonfiction.

Like genre, NF categories are the conceptual boxes that books come in, telling agents and editors roughly where it would sit in a bookstore. By telling an agent up front which category your book is, you make it easy for her to tell if it is the kind of book she can sell.

In a way, nonfiction writers have an easier time boxing their books, for the nonfiction categories give a much rougher indication of shelf location than the fiction. In fact, the categories used in the publishing industry are not necessarily the same as those used by bookstores. In my own area, for instance, I have noticed that Barnes & Noble tends to shelve biography, autobiography, and memoir together; Amazon lumps memoir into the autobiography category. Go figure.

As when you are querying fiction, the category designation belongs in the first paragraph of your query letter, as well as on the title page of your book and as part of your verbal pitch.
As an aside, do bear in mind that the first things an agent or editor now tends to look for in a NF book query is not just a great idea, but the platform of the writer. Platform is the industry term for a writer’s credentials or background to write a particular book. Your job in the query letter will be to sell yourself as the world’s best-qualified person to write this book.

So if, hypothetically speaking, you were entering the nonfiction/memoir category of a major regional writers’ contest, do you think it would be to your advantage if your synopsis gave some indication of your platform?

On to the categories. Fortunately, most of the them are pretty self-explanatory.

ENTERTAINING: no, not a book that IS entertaining; one ABOUT entertaining.

HOLIDAYS: a book about entertaining people at particular times of year.

PARENTING AND FAMILIES: this includes not only books about children, but books about eldercare, too.

HOUSE AND HOME: so you have a place to be PARENTING and ENTERTAINING your FAMILIES during the HOLIDAYS. This is for both house-beautiful books and how-to around the home. At some publishing houses, it also includes GARDENING.

HOW-TO: explains how to do things OTHER than house- and home-related tasks or cooking.

SELF-HELP: a how-to book for the psyche. If you have ANY platform to write one of these, do so. These are the books that can land you on Oprah if you’re NOT James Frey.

COOKBOOK: I suspect that you’ve seen one of these before, right?

NARRATIVE COOKBOOK: where the recipes are presented as part of a story, most often a memoir. Ruth Reichl’s COMFORT ME WITH APPLES is the usual example given, but my favorite narrative cookbook is Sylvia Thompson’s FEASTS AND FRIENDS.

FOOD AND WINE: where you write ABOUT the food and wine, not tell how to make it.

LIFESTYLE: Less broad than it sounds.

HEALTH: body issues for laypeople. If your book is for people in the medical professions, it should be classified under MEDICAL. Diet books are sometimes listed here (if there is a general philosophy of nutrition involved), sometimes under FOOD (if it is less philosophical), sometimes under COOKBOOK (if there are recipes), sometimes under FITNESS (if there is a substantial lifestyle/exercise component).

FITNESS: exercise for people who consider themselves to be out of shape. Usually includes diet tips, as well as exercise.

EXERCISE: fitness for people who consider themselves to be in relatively good shape, and thus do not need many diet tips.

SPORTS: exercise for competitive people in all shapes.

HISTORICAL NONFICTION: Your basic history book, intended for a general audience. If it is too scholarly, it will be classified under ACADEMIC.

NARRATIVE NONFICTION: THE hot category from a few years ago. Basically, it means using fiction techniques to tell true stories; while IN COLD BLOOD is the classic example simply everyone gives, it would today be classified as TRUE CRIME.

TRUE CRIME: what it says on the box.

BIOGRAPHY: the life story of someone else.

MEMOIR: the life story of the author, dwelling on personal relationships.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY: the life story of the author, focusing on large, generally public achievements. The memoirs of famous people tend to be autobiographies.

ESSAYS are generally published in periodicals first, then collected.

WRITING: technically, these are HOW-TO books, but editors love writing so much that it gets its own category.

CURRENT EVENTS: explanations of what is going on in the world today, usually written by journalists. In this category, platform is especially important. Why? Well, if you are not already a recognized expert in a current event field, your book probably will not be rushed to market, and thus perhaps will not be on the market while the event you have chosen is fresh in the public mind. Bear in mind that most books are not published until over a year after a publisher buys the book. This really limits just how current the events a first-time writer comments upon can be.

POLITICS: About partisan ideology.

GOVERNMENT: about the actual functions, history, and office holders of the political realm.

WOMEN’S STUDIES: a rather broad category, into which history, politics, government, and essays related to women tend to migrate. Logically, I think it’s a trifle questionable to call one book on labor conditions in a coal mine in 1880 HISTORY, and call a book on labor conditions in a predominantly female-staffed shoe factory in 1880 WOMEN’S STUDIES, but hey, I’m not the one who makes the rules.

GAY AND LESBIAN: Much like WOMEN’S STUDIES, this category includes works from a varied spectrum of categories, concentrating on gay and lesbian people. Again, were I making the rules…

LAW: This includes books for the layman, as well as more professionally-oriented books. Some publishers compress this category with books about dealing with governmental bureaucracies into a single category: LAW/GOVERNMENT.

ARTS: a rather broad category, no? Books on the history of painting or ballet go here.

PHILOSOPHY: thought that is neither overtly political nor demonstrably spiritual in motivation.

RELIGION: books about the beliefs of the major established religions.

SPIRITUALITY: books about beliefs that fall outside the major established religions. Often, the Asian religions are classified under SPIRITUALITY, however, rather than RELIGION. Go figure.

EDUCATION: books about educational philosophy and practice. (Not to be confused with books on how to raise children, which are PARENTING AND FAMILIES.)

ACADEMIC: books written by professors for other professors. Tend not to sell too well.

TEXTBOOK: books written by professors for students. Tend to sell quite well.

REFERENCE: books intended not for reading cover-to-cover, but for looking up particular information.

MEDICAL: books for readers working in medical fields. (Not to be confused with HEALTH, which targets a lay readership.)

ENGINEERING: I’m going to take a wild guess here – books written by and for engineers?

PROFESSIONAL: books for readers working in white-collar fields that are not medical, legal, or engineering.

TECHNICAL: books intended for readers already familiar with a specific field of expertise, particularly mechanical or industrial. Unless the field is engineering, or computers, or cars, or medical…

COMPUTERS: fairly self-explanatory, no?

INTERNET: again – speaks for itself.

AUTOMOTIVE: I’m guessing these aren’t books for cars to read, but to read about cars. (Sorry, I couldn’t think of anything remotely funny to say about this. I’m pretty stressed today.)

FINANCE: covers both personal finances and financial policy.

INVESTING: finance for those with more than enough money to pay the rent.

BUSINESS: this is another rather broad category, covering everything from tips for happy office interactions to books on executive manners.

CAREERS: books for people who are looking to break into a field. Includes books on how to find a job, how to interview, how to write a resume…

OUTDOORS AND NATURE: again, rather broad, as it logically encompasses everything outside a building that does not involve SPORTS, EXERCISE, FITNESS…

TRAVEL: books on how to get there and what to do when you do get there. I used to write these, once upon a time, so if you want to know how to scrawl copy for a tight deadline while balancing a camp light on a rickety picnic table and simultaneously watching out for bears, I’m your gal.

TRAVEL MEMOIR: first-person stories about someone who went somewhere.

PHOTOGRAPHY: both books about and books of.

COFFEE TABLE BOOK: books with big, gorgeous pictures and relatively little writing.

GIFT BOOK: small books, intended as impulse buys.

Looking at this list, it strikes me as rather incomplete set of categories to explain all of reality. However, these are indeed the major categories – and as with fiction, you definitely need to specify up front which your book is.

One final word on the contest front: typically, nonfiction categories are underrepresented; most of the entries in your garden-variety NF contest will be either memoirs, history, or narrative nonfiction. Where are the cookbooks? the contest judges cry. Where is the really well-written how-to book?

I just mention. Don’t write off literary contests just because your work may not be, well, traditionally literary. A well-written book is a well-written book, and I, for one, would not be inclined to sneeze in its general direction.

Keep up the good work!

– Anne Mini