Query Shark!

 14 brave souls have risked life and limb in the shark tank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't quote rejection letters in a query

Ever.

That's just a rule.

Not even if you think they are "glowing."
Not even if the rejecter suggests you try another market.

Not EVER.

It's bad salesmanship for starters, and it makes me realize before I've ever read your stuff that it isn't something everyone is dying to get their mitts on.

Most of the projects I'm offering on these days have three or more agents in the mix, offering representation.

I'm not looking for a diamond in the rough.

Don't quote your rejection letters.

Any questions?

Gone to Boston!

I'll be at Muse in the Marketplace over the weekend, hanging out with my posse of criminally minded pals Ben Leroy, Sorche Fairbank and other assorted co-conspirators. Thankfully Eric Stone sent me those two bottles of scotch so I'll be the most popular girl at the conference.

If you're having a confab with me just remember I'm not going to bite you, yell at you, or sneer at you. Really. Don't be nervous. If it will help, write down a list of questions you want to ask. For those of you meeting me anytime before noon, coffee is our friend.

The other thing to remember is while I'm at the conference, I'm there to help you. Feel free to talk to me any time. Ask every question you can think of, or just sit around listening as we gab in the bar. Yes, you'll find us in the bar if we're not actually doing a panel or a confab session. Maybe not at 8am, then you'll find me prone at the Coffee IV station.

It's going to be a fun festive conference and I encourage everyone to get their money's worth. You're paying a lot of dough to be there; rise to the occasion.

You're making me crazy here!

Look, send pages will ya??

You write these horrible query letters that are all bravado about how great the novel is, and you don't include pages.

Worse, you send me query letters that sound pretty good and STILL don't send pages.

What am I missing here? How is it that you have my name and address and email and you don't see SEND PAGES.

Perhaps some of you on the other end of the query rope can advise me on this.

Meanwhile, send the fucking pages. Sheesh.

What I'm watching instead of dialing for dollars

I love this city, I do!

The Power of a VERY good agent

This is in this morning's Shelf Awareness, a website about the book trade that sends daily email.

The Art of Meeting an Author in a Cafe

Two years ago, before the Shelf had offices or employees, our mail went to a post office box in Seattle. Once a week, my ritual was to collect the mail, go to a café and eat lunch--just to get out and feel social.

One day at the luncheonette counter, I saw the owner of the restaurant sidle up to a man sitting three stools down from me and say, "Hey Garth! How's the book coming?" I glanced sideways over at the man. He looked, well, not scary. (Okay, fine. He's spiffy.) I wondered: do I introduce myself? Could he be the feared author who gloms on to anyone in publishing? I took the risk. It turned out that he knew about the Shelf and that he wasn't the glom-my type. So, about once a month we'd meet for lunch and talk book biz. A few months later, he came to lunch with a large box--the manuscript. Gulp.


Of course, we all have stories in this biz about loving a book, hating the author, and vice versa. I liked Garth and his family. We were neighbors. I really didn't want to hate his book.
I took the manuscript home and stared at it for a week. The title page read "The Art of Racing in the Rain." Hmm. Okay. Good title. I dove in.


The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein is told from the point of view of a dog named Enzo who aspires to be a racecar driver like his owner, Denny. The TV is left on during the day while Enzo's owner is working, so he's learned a lot about the world. (He's often quite miffed at not possessing opposable thumbs.) Through Enzo, we learn the story of how his master fell in love with his wife, Eve, the addition of their daughter Zoey, and how it all tragically unraveled. Have a box of Kleenex near.


Early on in my reading, I kept trying to meld the baker from The Godfather (the only other Enzo I've known) with the early moments of the movie Splash where Daryl Hannah the mermaid learns to speak English from watching TV. But I quickly learned there were no models for Enzo. He was completely original and calming in a Zen-like way. You're totally under the spell of a dog who's telling us his completely believable and authentic story.


The test of a good book for me is to read it, put it away, then see if I can still hear the voices, miss the characters and wish it hadn't ended. I said nothing to anyone about Garth's book for three weeks after I had read it. Later as I was playing with marketing ideas for it, I knew it was special and brilliant. (I'm still very partial to a campaign based around "What Would Enzo Do?")


When I called Garth to tell him what I thought, he said, "Well, I'm glad you liked it, because my agent just turned it down." Then began the saga. During the next few months, several more agents passed on this gem. The rejections came with explanations like, "It's not what they are looking for." "No one knows how to market it." "Too much (or too little) like everything else."

What the--? Hello? Did you even read it? Arrgh! I was incensed. I think it's one of the hardest things to bear in this biz: when the good books don't make it.


But finally, Garth found an agent who understood The Art of Racing in the Rain. It went out, and the offers started to come in. They started small and progressively got, well, almost other-worldly. Keep in mind that Garth had published two other books to critical acclaim, but without significant sales numbers.


In the end, the fine folks at HarperCollins won it for $1.2 million, English-only rights. I saw Garth about a week after this, running along the lake, near the neighborhood where we both live. I stopped him by asking if he was that "rock star author Garth." He laughed and answered, "My Mom calls me everyday lately and says, 'Really? Are you sure they want it? Did you hear that number right?' "


The Art of Racing in the Rain will be out in mid-May. Get ready. Read this wreckingly great novel. Meet Garth. Get him in your store.


We at the Shelf think it's going to be huge. I'm almost afraid of walking into Target one day and seeing little stuffed movie tie-in Enzos everywhere.


No one should begrudge Garth a smidgeon of his success. I certainly can't. This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that my daughter stars in his book trailer. Ahem. Click here to see it.--Jenn Risko

Now, what Jenn Risko doesn't tell you is that Garth's new agent is Jeff Kleinman of Folio Literary Management. I know how Jeff sold that book: he called up editors and said "I loved it, you will too." And editors know Jeff is a very very smart guy. They did read it, they did love it, and now you can see if you agree.

Garth Stein didn't need an agent, he needed the right agent. When he found Jeff, it was Jeff's reputation that got the book read. It's the SAME book other people turned down. The only thing different was Jeff.

Now, I have to dust off that list of the seven deadly sins cause I think jealousy and envy are right there in the mix.

Footer notes

I'll be up at Muse in the Marketplace in Boston this weekend with Ben Leroy, and Sorche Fairbank among others. One of the things Muse has us do is read pages ahead of time and then meet with the authors for 20 minutes. I much much much prefer this to those horrid pitch sessions that are the spawn of Satan so common at conferences these days.

I dove in to the pages this weekend. One author's work was pretty good. Good enough in fact that I'm hoping to read more.

Now, if this fellow had put his email address on the header or footer, I would have emailed him and requested additional pages ahead of time, read them, and we could have used our upcoming appointment to cover any issues cropping up in the entire ms. Because it wasn't there, I'll just ask for the pages when I see him. What I'm NOT going to do is ask the conference coordinator for his email because I don't want give her one more thing to do in the frantic run up before a conference. She's already got enough to deal with.

So, word to the wise: if you're taking your pages with you to a conference, or sending them ahead for a critique, put your email address in the footer. You do NOT need to do this on a regular submission to my office of course. This is just for the pages that come to me in strange and unusual ways. Some of the strange ways you do NOT want to employ are listed here

What are you lookin' at?

One of my clients just moved and sent me a picture of the view from her window.




I stare across the desk at Gary Heidt most days. To the left and right are beautiful paintings, one by Gary's girlfriend Nathalie Vogel, the other by Jimmy McDonough, is an abastract expressionist painting I love so much I'm hoping he forgets he lent it to me!


What are you looking at?