Some thoughts on swag

I attended Bouchercon 2015's Author Speed Dating last week.  I'd never been to something like this before and it turned out to be a LOT of fun. Up to six Readers chose a table then two authors had three minutes each to tell us about their books. At the end of six minutes a bell rang, and the authors moved to the next table.

It was like a floor show in Vegas, only no one was naked!

Each author brought give-aways. We saw 30 authors in two hours so that was a LOT of swag.

Hands down the best swag was a copy of the book. Only one author did that, and it's not a reasonable thing to do for most authors because of expense.

The next best was book marks. Professionally rendered, normal size book marks. Not too wide, not too short. An image of the book cover, the title, and the author's website is the essential info. I kept all of those and if past experience is any indicator I'll use them for years. Bookmarks can be a great way to keep yourself in front of a reader.

I did like the idea of bandaids. I have a bunch of tins of bandaids from the Edgars this year, and some other quite festive ones I got for Christmas.  This is for Go Down Hard by Craig Faustus Buck. I kept it. I actually carry bandaids in my reticule. You never know when you'll need to bind up an author's wounds.

A lot of authors brought chocolate which was terrific. One author brought home made chocolate. I guess I'm a true New Yorker: I threw that away. I'm paranoid about anything home made. (We throw away anything home made that arrives in the office if it's sent from someone we don't know, too.)

There are no photos of the chocolate (quelle surprise!) I ate the evidence.

The swag item I both loved and hated had clever origami style packaging: no tape. I instantly set about opening it (very good response to swag) and then testing to see if I could get it BACK to its original condition (not good.) The purpose of swag is to remember the BOOK, not the packaging.

This is too clever by half. And of course, what was IN the packaging did not have the book ANYWHERE on it! I wept for all those tired folding fingers!

Least effective swag: guitar picks. It sounds like a clever idea but it's too small for any kind of information, and useless to anyone who doesn't play guitar. That got tossed first.

Also getting the heave ho:

            Anything on a USB drive.  I'm not putting anything in my computer from someone I don't know. My IT guy would have my asterisk in a sling.

            Baseball-card like sets with character's names and stats for a book I'd never heard of. Useless

            An unsharpened pencil. I don't carry a pencil sharpener around. I'm not sure we even have one in the office anymore. Useless.

            Jewelry! My god, the cost of that just takes my breath away but two authors gave away really lovely pieces of jewelry. Except…no name, no book title to be remembered.  

          "Oh I love your earrings!' 

          "Thank you I got them at Bouchercon from an author!" 

          "oh! Which one" 

          "Ummmmm…."

The goal of swag is to give a reader something to help him/her remember your name and/or book  title.  Therefore something useful with your name/book title on it is the best kind of swag. 

Don't be cute. Don't be fancy.

I bought three books by authors who did speed dating. One I bought simply cause I thought she was terrific and funny, and one cause it was set in NYC and I'm a sucker for that. The third was published by Scholastic and looks like a YA thriller and I was interested in reading it to see what Scholastic is up to with thrillers.

[top to bottom]

For Whom the Bluebell Tolls by Beverly Allen (Berkley Prime Crime)

Code of Honor by Alan Gratz (Scholastic)

Shooting for the Stars by R.G. Belsky (S&S)

BUT, the less than immediate benefit of speed dating is I have several new writers on my radar now. When I see books from them, I'll remember. And I don't mean in the slush pile. I mean reviewed in PW, buzzed on Twitter, that kind of thing.

If you're going to a reader con that offers this kind of meet and greet: DO IT.

For the cost of 100 bookmarks, you'd be nuts not to.

So, about those typos in that query I just sent. You won't care, right?

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After years of toiling away in writer jail and compiling every iota of information that could help me along my writer's journey, I have finished my manuscript and started querying (YAY!). 

However, days after sending out a round of queries, I looked back at my manuscript and started to see typos. Not many, and not to the point that a reader would be confused, but they were there. From reading your site, I know it is in bad taste to contact prospective agents that I have queried with revised documents, so I won't be doing that. 

But, I can't help but wonder how those typos might affect my chances of moving forward in the process.

(1) Do writers get rejections because there are typos in their work?

(2) If the story and the writing is great, are minor spelling/grammar errors overlooked?

(3) I feel I already know the answer to this question, but that writer paranoia is no joke.

(1) yes

(2) no

(3) you're not paranoid.

Your question arrived the same day I replied to a terrific query that was well written, had a great concept and very good writing. I replied "this ms has so many errors I can't request the full." 

Now, you'll notice that was not a rejection, but it was only one step removed. IF by some stroke of genius the writer replies "oh my gosh, silly moi, I sent you the first not the tenth draft, herewith the corrected pages" well, we've got ourselves a ball game.

But if the writer replies with "isn't it your job to correct the mistakes?" well, the ball just went flat and the Sharks are going home.***

You've also made one erroneous assumption: "From reading your site, I know it is in bad taste to contact prospective agents that I have queried with revised documents"

I'm not sure where you got that on this blog because it's simply not true. I want to see your best work. I'd rather have you email again saying "holy horsefeathers SharklyOne, I really screwed up, here are the revised pages" than read something that makes me think you're unfamiliar with the difference between retch/wretch; discrete/discrete discreet/discrete (ha! hoist on my own postard!); try and/try to; penchant/pension; past/passed; coarse/course.

And if you've got misspelled words that your spellcheck should have caught: AIEEEEE.

Every time you flub up on the page, it brings me out of the narrative. That's BAD in pages in a query. It's DEATH in pages in a novel.

If I see a bunch of errors on the pages you include with your query, I know for an ironclad fact I'll see them in your manuscript.

My job is not copyediting your manuscript. Not now. Not EVER.

If you find errors, fix them and requery.

NEVER hope that someone will overlook that stuff. Most of us do NOT.






***update. Writer did get in touch. Was deeply chagrined. Is taking steps to remedy. I'll be reading revised pages with high hopes.

Published versus unpublished: the topic that will not die

Yes, you did recently answer a question titled "What does unpublished mean?"  Your answer may have been too advanced for me and to my reading didn't quite answer my question (or maybe it did and I'm just too inexperienced to see the answer when placed right in front of my face).  

To clarify: I've been spending time on critiquecircle.com  and they mention over and over that if a manuscript is submitted only to their members, by a member, for a critique on critiquecircle.com  , it is never considered "published."  Therefore, it is safe for me to submit my writing for critique as under those circumstances (only reviewed by members and not available to the Internet as a whole) the manuscript will never be considered "previously published" by an agent or a publisher.
However, from what I am seeing on your blog, and other sources, it may not be that cut and dried.  Some may consider manuscripts submitted to these member-only sites as published, some may not.
If it isn't as clear cut as the websites indicate, I do not want to submit to them for critique and potentially lose my "unpublished" status.  
So, am I possibly putting my unpublished status in peril by submitting to websites such as critiquecircle.com   or absolutewrite.com for critique?
I apologize if I am being tedious or dense.  I just don't want do something that may have unexpected negative consequences down the road.

The problem with XYZ.com telling you that your work won't be considered published if posted on their site, is that the one deciding what's considered published is NOT XYZ.com  It's the next site down the submission path: JETREIDFUSSYPANTS.com


If JetReidFussyPants has submission guidelines that  say "if you've put this up on a website for reader input we consider it published" it doesn't matter what Critique Circle says.  It doesn't matter what Absolute Write says. They don't set the rules for JRFP.com


HOWEVER!


Book publishers generally don't give a fig if something has been posted for reader comment or even if it's been published with an ISBN number. That does NOT preclude them from publishing it at all. In fact, they publish things as reprints ALL the time. The only thing they want to know is can they make more money from it?


Where you run in to this published/unpublished dichotomy is with contests and magazines. They have much more stringent rules about what they'll consider.  And the rules are THEIRS.  They can say "nothing that's ever seen the light of day" and that's that.


Frankly, I wouldn't worry about this.  It seems like a lot of people are spinning their woodland creature rodent wheels on this topic and mostly it's not going to matter at all.


I'm one of the most conservative agents on "nothing previously published" that I know of, and my benchmark is an ISBN and offered for sale.

Try not to fret about getting feedback on a work in progress. It's more important to get better at your craft right now than worry about some potential contest down the road.

Did my agent fire me and I just don't know it?

I've had an agent for some nine years now. About three years ago we had a fall-out and didn't speak for some time. I've sent her several scripts in the interim and she acknowledges receipt of them very politely, but never gets back to me. I'd doubt she's really pushing them but I've no way of knowing.
My question is; should I accept she's no longer my agent and look for another one? Is this just how an agent terminates a relationship?  By being polite and not getting back on anything important. Or should I confront her and ask what she wants to do - does she still want to work with me?
She's my first and only agent and I've no idea how it works. 

There's a term for this now in social situations: ghosting. 

It is however completely unacceptable in business transactions.

First, if you have a written agreement with an agent there should be a clause about how the representation is severed. My clause says written notice and 30 days later, done. From either party.

If you do NOT have a written agreement, you have an oral agreement. You still need to sever it in writing.

The reason you need this in writing is because if you sell another book, and the first agent says "hey I'm your agent" you better have written evidence she's not, or you're going to be forking over 15% to her for a project she didn't sell.

And you know when people come out of the woodwork with their hand out? When there's money at stake. 

She's no longer your agent in practice, but she's your agent of record. You need to talk to her directly and ask if she still wants to work with you. If she's just been sitting on your work for years, you might want to find out why that's happened as well.

You mention a "falling out" after which you didn't speak for a while. That's a pretty big clue that something is very very wrong here. 

If you decide to sever, a written notice, sent via a service like UPS or FedEx that gives you a delivery receipt is required.



 

Dealing with unreliable narrators in a query

How do you mention your narrator is an unreliable narrator in your query? The current book I'm querying has such a narrator but it isn't revealed until the very end so I don't mention it in the query. I'm wondering if this is better mentioned in the synopsis (it is) or if this is something that needs to be addressed in the query right from the beginning.

While I am indeed the source of all wisdom in publishing (ow! LIGHTNING just hit me!) one good way to find the answer to questions like this is to see how other books with similar devices/plot twists  are handled.

That means you have to know what books have unreliable narrators which is a good thing since those are your comp titles.

And that leads you to the answer to your question:

You do not EVER tell anyone in the query that it's an unreliable narrator. That's akin to giving away all the plot.

You can however use books with unreliable narrators as your comp titles, and a discerning agent will think "aha! a clue!"

As for how unreliable narrators are covered in the query, here's  Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? by Agatha Christie:

Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Then, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.

But the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information. Unfortunately before he could finish reading the letter, he was stabbed to death.

Who killed Roger Ackroyd?

The query doesn't start with the hero (Hercule Poirot, the detective) or what he wants or what's at stake. It sets up the premise of the mystery.

Check out other examples, and find ones that are closer to your book than this one is. Use that as a template.

How to make the most of a group critique at a conference

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I will soon be attending an “agent roundtable.” Here I will sit with six other authors, and we will have our manuscript’s first 750 words critiqued by an agent and the other authors at the table. There are also two marked “networking” opportunities during breakfast and lunch with the agents. We will be able to query these agents (several of whom are otherwise closed to queries) for two months after the event. Do you have any tips on how a shy, clueless woodland creature (who has never attended anything like this before) can make the most of this opportunity)?

oh god this sounds like hell.
I've DONE this to authors and it still sounds like hell.
In fact, this kind of thing is what prompted this post for one of the Rules for Authors: Be Brave

But there you are, all set to march into hell so here are some things to remember:

1. Do NOT argue. Not with the agents, not with the other authors.

2. Take notes on what is said. That means bring a SEPARATE note pad and pen for this critique. Do not use your regular writing notebook, or anything else that you need to use during the rest of the conference.

Here's the reason for that: you're going to take those notes, and then put them away for a while. Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month.

Going through one of these kinds of critique sessions can shatter an author. Otherwise good advice can't be heard if you're in shock. Or tears. Put the comments away and get them out again when you've had time to regain your poise.

Even if you feel ok, don't read them right away. Give yourself some time to absorb the conference. Do NOT obsess about the critique. Tell yourself you will read the notes later. Give yourself a date if you need to.

Example: I will not think about the notes until After Noon on Tuesday.  Say that out loud to yourself every time you feel your mind sliding back over to the obsession place.

Time to think and reflect and absorb the experience will help.

If you absolutely can not follow this advice and you read the notes and feel yourself falling into wallow: PUT THE NOTES AWAY. Have a drink. Eat a chocolate. Watch Love Actually (twice if need be). Then get BACK to the conference and get some new experiences in your head to divert your brain.

3. Don't expect anyone to say anything nice, ever. It's a whole lot easier to find things that don't work than to find things that do.

4. If they do say nice things: BELIEVE THEM. Do NOT fall in to the trap of "they're just saying that to be nice."


5. It's entirely possible everyone who critiqued your manuscript is wrong. It's entirely possible they're godawful readers.  If you get notes that you think are clearly wrong wrong wrong, don't doubt yourself first.  Consider the notes coolly (later) but have confidence in yourself.

6. The most helpful thing early readers can do is tell you if the manuscript starts in the right place. Pay close attention to comments that say "my interested engaged HERE" and it's not sentence one, page one.

7. The other most helpful thing early readers can tell you is if your writing doesn't have energy. Using words that are tepid, with sentences that are too convoluted (or just plain too long)  drain energy from a book. Listen for critiques that mention those kinds of things.

8. Even if your writing sux, you do not suck as a writer.  Every writer alive and dead has written things that suck. It's part of the process. It's a necessary, horrible terrible no good no fun part of the process. Your writing will get better. It will get better as you do more of it, and as you develop your ability to evaluate critiques from people reading your work.  You're at the start of that right now. You will get better, but ONLY if you keep going.


And, let us know how it goes ok?
 

sorry for the delay

Argh! All day on the train, home from Bouchercon!
NO WIFI on the train!!!!

Wifi on the train TO Raleigh of course,
but not on the way back.

Will try to be back on track tomorrow.