Dear readers,

Welcome behind the scenes! ForeWord has offered me the opportunity to blog this month about the publishing world from the view inside a literary agency. Enjoy! If you post comments here, I will do my best to respond to any questions that may come up.
 
I am the assistant (also known as “the reader”) at Nelson Literary Agency (www.nelsonagency.com). We are actively acquiring clients who write science fiction, fantasy, romance, young adult, middle grade, commercial fiction, literary fiction and memoir. As most of you probably know, a literary agent works with a writer in order to sell their manuscript to a publishing house.
 
So, if you are a writer interested in being published, you may be hunting for an agent. And, how do you attract the attention of an agent? With an outstanding query letter!!!  A query letter includes a brief bio and a short description of your work. Nelson Literary Agency receives 100 or so submissions a day (35,000 query letters in 2007). My job is to read them all, send out the standard rejection letter for those that don’t fit our agency, and ask for sample pages (the first 30 pages of the work) for those query letters that pique our interest. Sounds like fun, huh?
 
In my experience, the query letter accurately represents  the quality of a manuscript. That’s how important it is. The question writers tend to ask me is, “What are you looking for? How can I make my query letter better?” Here are some answers:
1)    DO YOUR RESEARCH! Before you send your query letter make sure you understand the submission guidelines for any agency to which you would like to submit! The vast majority of rejection letters I send out go to writers that didn’t read our website and are submitting incorrect information. For example, we accept only email queries, but some agencies want snail mail, and some agencies want synopses instead of queries, and some want the first 100 pages of the book, etc.

2)    Get a good grasp of the genre of your work. Is your work a sexy regency historical romance or a paranormal young adult fantasy? You don’t have to be able to rattle off all the genres and subgenres out there, but you should know in general where your work falls. If you feel like you need direction, here’s a suggestion: walk into a bookstore and look around. Would you think to find your book on the shelves marked “fantasy” or “mystery” or “horror” or “romance.” That’s a good place to start. If it really isn’t that easy, try this, “My book is a completed work of fiction.” That’s enough for me! The trouble is that many, many query letters I read are for self-help books, or picture books, or spy novels. We don’t represent works in any of these genres. Of course, this goes back to point number one, which is read the submission guidelines before sending in your work. But also – know your genre!

3)    Make sure your work is completed – really completed. You query letter should read like this, “I have a COMPLETED work of fantasy” or “I’d like to submit my FINISHED 100,000 word romance novel.” If interested in your query letter, my first step is to request the first 30 pages of your work. It can be very frustrating to request a work and have someone email back, “well, it’s only in it’s first draft, can I check back with you when I’m finished?” I will have gone through tens of thousands of other submissions by then and my energy will be focused on someone else. Of course, we accept works that need editing, but in general edit, polish and double check your work before starting your agent hunt.

4)    Remember to include the title of your work, your contact information (especially your email address), and your name. These are little details that help us and make your query letter more professional.

5)    The meat of your query letter should be a paragraph (or two) which we call “the pitch.” It should sound exactly like the back cover of a novel – short, exciting, engaging, descriptive. To repeat the instructions above, we don’t want a synopsis (although some agencies do), and we don’t want character profiles or chapter titles, or plot points. If you want good practice at this, pick up some of the novels in your house (or at the bookstore again) and read the back cover. Then, try to copy the energy, the focus and the length of that type of paragraph and that is exactly what I am looking for.

6)    This may seem obvious, but remember to make your query letter short. Your bio can take up a paragraph and your pitch can take up a paragraph or so. And, that’s about it. Remember that I see about a hundred of these a day, so the more professional and concise the better chance that I will ask for sample pages.

7)    Despite the fact that I just said to make it short, I do want to see details. A sentence like this is powerful: “The hero and heroine don’t realize the king has hired them to defeat a slobbering were-bear when they accept a simple call to arms at the castle.” A sentence like this is not: “The hero and heroine have many adventures.”

8)    Finally, avoid reviewing your work. This is another way of reiterating that the pitch should sound like the back cover of a book. But, sentences like this do not help promote your work, “my writing is fast and exciting,” or “this book is geared toward teenage girls,” or “the voice of the hero is authentic.” Describe your work, don’t review it.

9)    As an added bonus, here are some helpful websites for more information on query letters and the query process:

Pubrants.blogspot.com  - (Kristin’s publishing blog. She has posted the original query letters for many of our clients – talk about a great resource!)

Evileditor.blogspot.com  - (an editor posts query letters, reviews them, comments and makes changes. See the evaluation process as it happens!)

www.writers.net  -  a great online resource for writers including feedback on query letters

Posted by: Sara Megibow

During my career as author, I've had four agents, two publishers and many, many "please sends." It was a long, long journey to success, and patience is really called for, but I'll share what I've learned as an author.

My master plan as author, back in 1993 was to pitch a NONFICTION project that no one could resist. Get published. Then use my credential to get an agent. Up until then, I had good success with "please sends" from agents but I'd get variations on "loved your book, but not for us." (Those were the polite ones).

Thank goodness I had a background in marketing, and my living was established, because as a writer (other than as an ad copywriter - my day job) I'd be starving. Plus, I parlayed my marketing expertise into my non-fiction project.

I learned five lessons from my fifteen year journey:

LESSON ONE: Unsolicited Proposals to publishers work! Yipee!

1. I received FIVE please sends from publishers, and a SIMON & SCHUSTER editor PHONED ME (I remember that day... I was in the Apple Store buying my first Mac laptop... a big, happy day all around). While I was fishing for my credit card, she phoned and made me a pre-emptive offer with a $65,000 advance.
2. Of course I didn't think about it. I probably should have, because I did get two other offers.
3. So, here's the lesson I learned: NO agents responded to my query, even months later. FIVE publishers gave please sends. Simon & Schuster bought by phone with a big advance.

So, to me, this meant: agents aren't necessary to get published, even with the big five. That lesson stuck with me. I think my advance was probably as high as any agent would have secured.

I did parlay my nonfiction project into many "please sends" for my fiction projects, which resulted in ten years of with agents who couldn't close my novels. I assumed I needed an agent because every book and expert gave variations on: "Fiction writers must have an agent or they will never be published."

So I locked myself up with agent after agent.

LESSON TWO:
Top agents can be closed by authors, but do you want to? They all gave variations on "love this book, this will sell."

But, as it turned out, (and I'm generalizing a bit) these top agents seemed only interested in the top five publishers. Now, once one of these agents pitches and loses to these top five, the next big agent has no chance. It's been pitched already. It's dead.

So, agent after agent I fired. I found new ones. Similar stories. Finally, all the top agents were gone. The big lesson... they don't pitch to the indy's and they only want the big deal.

SO. That suggests smaller agent right? NOT REALLY.

LESSON THREE:
Smaller agents have no great chance of getting you read than YOU DO. I've learned that, too. That's lesson three. Most indie publishers will read without agented sumissions.

Finally, I peeled off and represented myself. I started submitting to INDIES (like Kunati, but, of course, back then Kunati didn't exist... small publishers with vision, though. I had many please sends from indy's. So, who cares if it's not Simon & Schuster.

LESSON FOUR:
Publishers expect authors to market themselves, even the big publishers. Smaller publishers tend to partner with authors (with a better possible outcome, if the author is a hard-working promoter).

So, I came to believe, with near religious zeal, that Indy's are the way to go for DEBUT authors. The advances are small but you save a lot of time by submitting WITHOUT an agent, and if they sign you, you've built a direct pipeline to the publisher, editor-in-chief, marketing people... it's wonderful.

LESSON FIVE:
The only secret is to "take control of your own destiny." If you sign with an agent, make it short term and control the relationship. if you are debut, I'd suggest you try the indy's first -- and built your brand and author name. Larger publishers will remember your first book when considering your second. Learn the lessons on your debut novel with a publisher who will support, nurture and work with you and help you:
- do events
- speaking engagements (this is why I got the big advance above)
- blog
- arrange  signings
- radio publicity
- press releases.

You'll never be disspointed if you research, plan and take charge of your own careers. Agents can't do that. Neither can publishers. But, most of my author friends seem to believe agents and publishers make or break authors. It has never been so. You make or break your career.

Posted by: Derek Armstrong