Author: ireneg

You know what it is and you have to have it. Some authors are quite good at it and really know how to work the internet. Others, not so much.

I can remember a time, back when dinosaurs roamed the land, when there was no such thing as the internet and nobody cared. You can’t miss what you never knew. But today, you have to have it. Since everyone else has it, you are compelled to join the party. Because if you don’t, everyone else will eclipse you and you will become invisible.

How much should you do? At least once a week, but more is welcome. The whole point is to be out there. It doesn’t have to be terribly substantive or meaningful. As long as you’re somewhere.

If you are a hopeless Luddite who feels this is just not for you, hire someone to do it for you. There are many such people available. Readers love it best when they know it’s coming directly from you, as if they have your ear and you are talking right to them. So always try to achieve that, even if someone else is pretending to be you. But something is better than nothing. And go as big as you can. Big numbers make a real difference.

Any publisher considering you as a new author will be looking you up while they are still on the phone with me. If your social media has strong numbers, that is half the battle. It’s as good as having a brilliant proposal or manuscript. When you have both, you are as close as you can ever get to a sure thing.

When I was fourteen, the Beatles were touring the United States. They came to Detroit, where I grew up, to do a concert. My friends had formed a Beatles fan club and they all bought tickets to the concert. I did not join the club because although I was certainly a fan, I did not see the point in a bunch of girls sitting around and mooning over which of the Fab Four they liked best or who was the cutest. And I didn’t buy a ticket because I figured the concert would be raucous and filled with shrieking girls and I wouldn’t be able to hear a note.

What I didn’t know was that the club had realized pretty quickly that they didn’t have much to do. But everyone had paid dues, and they had a few hundred dollars. They decided to sponsor a Native American child with the money. The Beatles somehow got wind of this and they asked to meet the president of the club after the concert. When the time came (after a concert filled with screaming girls where no one could hear a note), the president of the club was called into the green room. Three of her friends waited for her outside. After a minute she stuck her head out and said that the Beatles wanted all of them to come in. They spent about two hours hanging out and laughing and having a good time. At one point John Lennon tapped my friend Gloria on the shoulder. She turned around and he said, “Yes?” Paul was talking to people and hustling, George was quiet and introspective, and Ringo spent a lot of time looking through a Beatles scrapbook with one of the club members.

I was not there. I thought I was too much of a smarty pants and look what happened. I could have met the Beatles and I didn’t. Because I didn’t show up.

So show up. Go to that meeting or conference or gathering. Listen to that podcast. It may turn out to be a dud. So what? At least you put yourself out there. Because you just never know what might happen. But for sure, nothing will happen if you don’t show up.

Consider the first line of this poem:

To? Or not to? William Shakespeare’s ???little cumslut???♂:

Do you think it’s any good? Is it as good as, say, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

It is, in fact, a deliberately and carefully designed piece of awful and pointless “poetry” created by a man who calls himself Jasper Ceylon because he wanted to make a point.

He sent out several pieces of equally bad so-called poetry to various publications, using fake names such as “Adele Nwanko, a gender fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora”.

Many of them were published.

Another man, Michael Derrick Hudson, sent around a poem called “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve”. It was rejected forty times. Then he changed the name of the poet to Yi-Fen Chou, and it sold immediately.

Do I really need to explain this? Haven’t things gone way too far?

Not too long ago I had a conversation with a Young Adult editor who insisted that she would not even read something I wanted to send her, because it did not sound like it had enough diversity. I told her there was one gay character, but that wasn’t enough for her. It was a lovely and beautifully written story, but she refused to judge it on its merits. Merits?! Heaven forbid.

When did quality become usurped by rigid and extreme social trends? While of course there is a place for all voices and all voices should be considered, it has become necessary to feature ONLY diverse voices.

That means that most of the great classics would not be eligible in today’s market. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE? Forget it. It has homophobia and every single character is white. THE SUN ALSO RISES? Everyone is white and there is blatant antisemitism. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? No way. There is nothing from Tom Robinson’s point of view. It is a white savior book. Well, it is a white savior book. So what? It is from one character’s point of view. So is HUCKLEBERRY FINN a white savior book, but then Percival Everett came along and gave us JAMES, which is a brilliant and important counterpart to Huck Finn’s story. There is a place for both. Should we ban OTHELLO and THE MERCHANT OF VENICE? And because of those plays, should we ban all of Shakespeare? Where will this end?

 

 

 

 

 

I just took one, right before writing this. I came back with a level head and was ready to roll. It’s very important to stop what you’re doing once in a while and hit Refresh. You can read that advice anywhere, but do you actually follow it? Make yourself do it. It will pay off.

Take a walk. Run an errand. Pull some weeds from the garden. Look at shoes or fishing rods or toasters online. Do some jumping jacks. Stop for coffee somewhere–not because you don’t have coffee where you work, but just to put yourself in a different environment. Chat with someone. Soak in the sunshine. Smile.

This does not take time away from your work. It actually helps your work, because you return to it with a clearer head. Everything actually goes faster when you take appropriate breaks. It’s like the French Paradox. where you eat more but don’t gain weight. Take more breaks and you will get more done.

 

 

 

Here are the questions I get asked the most:

 

Q: How do you find clients?

A: All kinds of places. Anywhere, really. But I get a lot through referrals and a lot from cooking up my own ideas and then finding an author to write them.

Q: I sold 78 copies of my family recipes by self-publishing. Why would I need an agent?

A: You don’t.  You made the right move by publishing your own family recipes. No traditional publisher would want a book that sells 78 copies. They want to sell tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of books.

Q: Should I double space a synopsis?

A: Yes, people actually ask that a lot. The answer is YES. Double space everything except your query letter.

Q: How long should a query letter be?

A: Try to keep it to one page, single spaced.

Q: What is a typical advance?

A: There is no typical advance. Advances are based on many things–how your last book sold, how much they believe in it or expect it to sell, how effective your platform is and how much engagement you have, and how other similar books did. An assertive agent will set realistic expectations and then go for it.

Q: How can I get a lot of money up front?

A: By writing a book that’s worth a lot of money.

Q: How important is platform?

A: Very. A strong platform makes all the difference. Before they even start reading, a publisher is likely to look you up and see what they find.

Q: Does it help if I meet an agent or editor at a conference?

A: It doesn’t hurt, but the proof is in the reading.

Q: What is the most money you ever got for a book?

A: Not telling. Would you like me to be broadcasting your income?

Q: What qualifications do you have?

A: I have the passion and the drive. That’s what it really takes. I went to college. I read a lot. I love a negotiation. If you’re looking for some kind of license or certificate, those things don’t exist. Anyone can hang out a shingle and declare themselves a agent. So shop carefully.

The last one is not a question. It was a comment. An interviewer once said to me that she envied me because I get to read all the time. That was a woefully ignorant comment. Of course we read the work of our clients, and that is often a pleasure. We try to keep up with the market and read what’s out there, but that doesn’t mean we love everything we read. And if you’re talking about unsolicited queries, most of those are declined. That means reading a great deal of work we don’t love, can’t sell, and never asked for. It takes stamina, patience, and valuable time. Most reading gets done on nights and weekends. No one sits and reads in the office. There is too much else to do!

How exciting! You have sent a book to an editor and the editor says she loved it. That’s great. And if she loved it, that means she wants to acquire it, right?

Not so fast. Selling a book is never in the hands of one person. Once it goes to the editorial board, things may change.

There may too much of whatever it is already out there. The publisher may have recently bought something that is too similar. The sales manager grumbles that they tried that subject a few years ago, and it didn’t do well. Your last book with another publisher didn’t do well and it will be hard to turn that around. It’s not exactly on-market or it’s not focused enough and they can’t think of a way to break it out.

Selling a book is far more than pleasing one person. You have to please several people who all happen to work for the same publisher. That’s a tall order, but of course it happens. And you want it to happen to you.

A near miss is painful. If you want to avoid it, write the best book you possibly can and then let it sit for a while. Go back and work on it more. Do your homework and know the market. Spend time in bookstores so you know what’s out there and what’s selling. Write something very on-market. They can still turn it down, but give yourself the best possible shot.

 

If you are reading a book and you don’t like it, put it down. Give it away. But there is no law that says you have to keep reading, so don’t.

There was a very successful book that won all kinds of awards and sat on bestseller lists for months. Everyone urged me to read it. I felt trepidation, because it was about something that bothered me. But everyone said no, no, it’s not like that. It’s very uplifting. You’ll love it.

So I read it. It was well written, but I didn’t love it. And I did not find it uplifting. The thing that bothered me was not okay. It bothered me.

Now imagine that you are an editor. You have 40 manuscripts waiting to be read. You are very busy and have no time to waste. You start reading. And it’s not bad, but you don’t love it. A few pages later, you start to realize that you’re forcing yourself to read it. At that moment, you stop. You might be on page 10 or you might be on page 100, but if you know you’re not going to love it, there is no point in continuing.

If you think that editors read the entire manuscript, you are wrong. They rarely read more than 100 pages. Don’t think you don’t know what it’s like to be them. You do know. Because the last time you put a book down because you weren’t loving it, you were in their position. There is a lot more to being an editor than just that, but that’s where it starts. The proof is in the reading.

 

Here’s a fun technique that might help you out of a jam.

When you need to come up with a new idea and your brain isn’t cooperating, here’s what to do. Make a List of 20.

That means you sit down with a pen and a piece of paper. You leave your phone in the other room. You turn off any devices that might distract you. A glass of water is okay, but nothing else. You’re not allowed to get up from that chair until you have twenty.

And then you start to make a list.

The first few ideas will come easily. They were probably already in your mind. Then you will crank out a few more. Keep thinking. A few more ideas will come.

And then you will get stuck. You can’t think of anything else. This is where the fun begins.

You can’t sit there forever, so you start to get wacky. You start coming up with ideas that are off the wall or  crazy.

And then a small miracle occurs. You look at one of those wacky ideas and you think–wait a minute. That could actually work. Maybe it’s not so bizarre after all.

And then it gets better. You realize that you could combine #3 with #18. And #9 is really too skimpy, so you add a dose of #11.

Keep doing this until you have twenty. You may not use all of them. Doesn’t matter. The point is that you have expanded your expectations and gone into uncharted territory.

This method works. Try it. Tell everyone around you that you are not to be disturbed and then sit yourself down. You may be surprised by what happens.

You have to keep up with the market. You have to know what’s out there, what is selling, what is peaking, and what is upcoming.

The best way to learn that, short of working in the publishing industry, is to take a walk around a bookstore. Look at everything. Check out what is being featured. Publishers often pay for things like endcaps or summer reading tables, but the bookstores themselves can make their own choices based on what they are selling.

This should be a pleasant homework assignment, because you don’t need to anything you don’t want to do. Look at whatever interests you. You never know what that might be inside the treasure trove of a bookstore. You might think you’re not interested in sample college prep tests, but then something catches your eye, and you pick one up. You check it out and then you put it back. And you learned one small thing. Maybe you will never use it. But it’s filed away in your brain.

Or you might notice that a particular kind of fun mystery seems prevalent. If you don’t like mysteries, you don’t have to read one, but you now know something you didn’t know before. Knowledge is power. The genres are always changing. A romance novel today bears little resemblance to one that was published ten years ago. You can keep up by cruising around and keeping your eyes open. Sit down with a few books and read the cover copy and the first few pages. Then get another batch and do it again. Of course you can buy books and you should, but you can’t buy out the entire store.

You could also do a variation of this online, but there is nothing like actually being there, with the entire market at your fingertips.

If you don’t think this is important, you may find yourself out of luck when you spend two years working on a novel only to find out that it’s hopelessly out of style and it has a slim to none chance of selling.

This should be your first step if you want to write a book. See what’s out there and how you can fit into it. This should precede even your first germ of an idea. You are asking to enter a world that has its own rules, its own customs, and its own lingo. Learn the ropes before you jump in. And all you have to is take a walk.

There is a great deal an agent can do for you. But there are also things we either can’t do or don’t want to. Here’s a list.

 

WE CAN:

get you the best possible deal–enough to make the commission more than worth it

listen when you need an ear

stand up for you and fight your battles, with passion, experience and skill

read and make suggestions as to salability

be on your side no matter what

update you as to the state of the market

inform you of changes and trends in the business

talk you off a ledge

 

WHAT WE CAN’T OR WON’T DO

Sell a book that isn’t good

Tolerate unprofessionalism or lying

Lend you money

Ask for unreasonable things on your behalf

Be available to you any minute of the day or night

Work when we’re sick

Work for free