It was worth the bus trip/s

If I'd known the trip would involve that many buses before I left home, I would have groaned mightily, taken the $500 loss on the pre-paid hotel room and stayed home.

I'm writing this to say Thank All Deities Foreign and Domestic that I did not.

This past weekend I was slated to attend the Biographers International Conference in Boston.  The organizers clearly hadn't realized that May in Boston (graduation season) means most hotel rooms are either booked solid, charging top dollar, or so far away that you might as well commute from New York.  After a lot of searching I finally found a hotel near Logan airport. It has a shuttle service so I knew I could get to the airport, then pick up the T-line which is Boston's cute little version of a subway. (They really don't like it when you call it cute and little either, lemme tell ya.)

What I forgot to do was book train tickets, and by the time I remembered, the price to Boston was $140. Each way. Normally I pay about $49.  I was so annoyed I just figured I'd punish myself by taking the bus.

So, here's how Friday began:
Subway to Port Authority.
(1) Port Authority bus to Boston (6.5 hours due to traffic and rain..normally 4.5 hours) South Station Boston Silver line to Logan.
Which is when I realized the Silver Line isn't a train. It's a bus(2). And it runs on city streets when
it comes above ground. At one point I found myself on the same street I'd been on two hours earlier. The Exact Same Spot.

(3) At Logan I called the shuttle bus to the hotel.
Start to finish: three buses. About 12 hours.

Well, ok, that was crazy but ok. This bus trip after all was designed to make me never EVER forget to buy my train tickets on time.

Saturday:
(4) Shuttle Bus to Logan.
(5) Silver Line to South Station Boston
Red line to UMass/JFK, whoops, no.  To the Broadway station ONE stop from South Station due to construction.
(6) Shuttle BUS from Broadway to UMass/JFK stop.
(7) Shuttle BUS from subway station to college.

Four buses.
One way.

Then that evening, retrace steps.
Total bus tally by Saturday night:  11

Sunday morning: Repeat outgoing trip. Arrive at campus an hour before class starts because the commute time was pretty good (of course when you're late, the commute time sux!)
Bus tally: 15

Return trip:
(16) College shuttle to T-shuttle
(17) T-shuttle to train
Train to bus station
(18) Bus to NY. And it took 45 minutes to go 15 blocks on 12th Ave when we got in at 7pm. And no
they won't let you off even if you tell them you're going to throw up.
Subway home.
Let me tell you I kissed my metro card and vowed to Never Ever Leave Home Again.

Bus rides: 18
In three days.


But in between those 18 bus trips to and fro I got the experience of a lifetime. I sat in on Susan Rabiner's master class on writing the non-fiction book proposal.

In case you're misled by a small electronic footprint, let me just say this: Susan Rabiner is all that and a bag of chips when it comes to serious non-fiction.  She's absolutely the best there is.  And when I got the chance to hear her talk, you can bet I leaped at it.

I'm still synthesizing my notes, and I'm obviously sharing them with clients first, but I'm sure what I learned will be turning up here in the coming days and months.

And in the meantime. make sure you have her book THINKING LIKE YOUR EDITOR. It's required reading for ALL authors, not just those writing non-fiction.

I'm really glad I didn't punish myself by not making the trip, but I will never forget train tickets again as long as I live.

25 Truths about Rejection

Chuck Wendig's blog should be required reading for every writer.
Hell, required reading for ALL of us.


Here's his recent post on 25 things every writer should know about rejection.

The first one give you a sense of the whole list:

1. As Ineluctable As The Tides

If you’re a writer, a writer who writes, a writer who puts her work out there, you’re going to face rejection. It’s like saying, “Eventually you’re going to have to fistfight a bear,” except here it’s not one bear but a countless parade of bears, from Kodiaks to Koalas, all ready to go toe-to-toe with you. Rejection, like shit, happens. Rejection, like shit, washes off. Get used to it.


Read the rest of his list here.

Now, back to reading queries!

...and their replies!

Favorite reply to form letter "not for me" as of today: Thank you for your 'literary' form letter.

Let me crush your hopes and dreams. I live for it.

Sometime back there was a cris de coeur from an author who said agents lived to crush author's hopes and dreams.

Given I make my living from finding good writers and helping them get published, that statement sounded exactly right. So, I adopted it for my catch phrase, and often times now I'll sign off on Twitter with "off to crush authorial hopes and dreams" accompanied by a .wav of an evil laugh.

Thus it was with delight that I read this question over at Editorial Anonymous.

Let's have a pop quiz!

Sucked up from the comments column is the driving force behind tonight's pop quiz:

I noticed you mentioned TNR 12-pt. font. At Seattle's PNWA conference in August, a book doctor told me to switch my manuscripts from TNR to Courier.

Got any advice, oh wise sage of the Publish-o-sphere?

Question: Which font should I use in manuscript pages sent to agents (assuming a particular font is not specified in the guidelines)

A: a literary agent says Times New Roman

B: A book doctor says Courier

Which one is right?

think carefully.

A or B?


Not sure?

Let's try another one:

Question: Do you need to know someone in publishing, ie have connections, to secure representation by a literary agent?

A: a literary agent says no

B: the authors in a survey are divided; some say yes, some say no

Still not sure?


One more, just for fun.

Question: If you want to find out who the agent is for a book (and it's not listed in the acknowledgements or dedication) should you call the publisher and ask for the editor of the book?

A: A switchboard operator at RandomHouse says "one moment, please" and drops you into the publicity department voice mail.

B. The switchboard operator at PenguinPutnam says "one moment, please" and drops you into the subrights department's voice mail.

C. An industry blog says "yes, the editor's assistant will be happy to tell you."


Still not sure of the right answer?

Here's the key: follow the advice of the person who actually DOES the job that you're asking questions about.

Don't follow some goofball book doctor's advice about query letters instead of an agent's.

Don't follow some unknown author's prognostications about how agents choose clients instead of an agent's.

Don't follow some well-intentioned but bone-headed advice from people who don't actually answer the phone at a publishing company.

It galls me to no end to see people slavishly following misguided instructions about query letters given by people who don't work in a literary agency, don't read queries, and don't know anything beyond their own experience.

It galls me further to see people repeat things as gospel which are absolutely and totally wrong; things they heard were true from people who don't work in literary agencies, don't sign clients and don't have the first clue about how this works (but have a lot of experience in how it doesn't.)

And it amuses the hell out of me to see people tell you to call publishers to ask for information.
Publishers are not in retail or reader customer service. They're also not the library. Their job is NOT to provide writers with information about agents.

I won't tell you how to write good novels, if you'll stop telling people how to get an agent. Deal?

Answers: A, A, and none of the above

As usual, Ed Anon gets it exactly right

If you want your book to be entirely under your control, then that's what self publishing is for. If you want your book to have the benefit of a team of people who know the industry and how to sell books, that's when you submit it to publishers.

Ed Anon's full blogpost

I can't tell you the number of queries I get that specify what the book should look like, the trim size, the layout, and often the cover. I can't tell you because those queries don't even reach the query bin, they're pretty much instantly rejected.

The brutal reality of publishing is that the contract you will sign when I sell your book gives the publisher complete control over all those things. I can often negotiate the phrase "with consultation, approval not to be unreasonably withheld" into the contract, but in the end, the publisher decides what the book will look like.

There is no out of town opening any more

Years ago stage plays opened in New Haven to work out the kinks before hitting "the real deal" on Broadway. Josh Logan has some wonderful anecdotes about opening out of town in his marvelous memoir Movie Stars, Real People, and Me.

Opening where the critics weren't close at hand was also a welcome idea.

Those days, thanks to the internet, are gone forever.

What does that have to do with you?

If you keep a blog, and you post about your submission travails, I get to read it along with everyone else. Particularly if you link to your blog in your query letter. If you have a handy little category labelled "agents" "editors" "submissions" "rejections" you BET I'm going to read those.

So, tonight, I now know a query I was considering has been rejected elsewhere, AND what the author's response to that rejection was.





I urge you, caution you, warn you, beg you: there is no privacy on the web. Post it, and the world knows it.

Why You get Form Letters

QUERY:

Hi-ho Agent Reid:

Insincere boilerplate introduction modeled off of internet form letters segueing into the pitch for my new novel, The Madness of Method, which goes a little sumthin' like this…

No one wants to be ordinary. Least of all those who feel they're wallowing in it. And outside of a father whose death revealed a brother he didn't know he had, Hamilton Brownstone is about as dull as they come. He's not particularly educated. His mother and roommate annoy him. He works at a disco-themed lunch counter selling hot dogs. I know; hot stuff.

But he's out to change all of that.

Inspired by his intensive readings of about the author blurbs, Hamilton has decided to make himself interesting by becoming a writer. And to do so, he's modeling the process of method acting, trying to live the life of other writers whose blurbs he admires each day to channel their creativity, since he's fairly bereft of it on his own. And after several intense months of method writing, he is nearly finished with the glorious first paragraph of his revisionist historical epic, Avenging Zombie Jesus.

But even that kind of runaway success isn't enough to break him out of his funk fast enough. His mother is pressuring him to give up hot dogs as a career. His boss is pressuring him to start taking them seriously and trying to force an unwanted promotion. The pressure is on, and Hamilton's "work" is being neglected.

So, Hamilton comes to the only possible conclusion in his position: he must get himself arrested and finish his novel from the comfort of prison, since it worked so well for O'Henry. And of course, Hitler.

To aid him, Hamilton enlists the help of the only two people he trusts: the inspiration for his method writing, his actor girlfriend Tabitha, who is on a quest of personal growth and is trying to remain in character all hours of all days, and his half-brother Gardner, who won $30 million in the lottery on his 18th birthday, and has spent the subsequent time applying for minimum wage jobs to amuse himself and annoy his stepfather.

For most people, it shouldn't be that hard to get arrested. But between Hamilton's insistence that his arrest be an orderly affair with literary merit, Gardner's reckless attempts to hit rock bottom, Tabitha's attempts to keep anyone from being hurt, and a majority opinion that Jesus is far more likely to be a vampire than a zombie, things don't go smoothly. And when Hamilton is finally arrested for unpaid parking tickets, he finds jail somewhat different than he imagined.

At its core, The Madness of Method is about the collision of artistic ambition and delusion, religious nincompoopery, and the politics of fractured families. And I like to think it makes with the ha-ha something fierce.

My writing credentials include: 5 years of professional feature journalism, fiction publications in The Portland Review, Ooligan Press's Irreverant Fish, 34th Parallel, Caveat Lector, Alchemy Lit Mag, Mercury Quarterly, and Pathos Lit Mag, as well as a sold-out run of my self-published collection of short stories Secrets and Lies, and dramatic productions of three of my plays through Portland Oregon based community theatre troupes.

The full 48,131-word manuscript is available any time you like.

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to your reply.


(redacted)

--
In parting, I offer you this...

Carry a lazer down the roads that you must travel;
Carry a lazer through the darkness of the night.

RESPONSE

Dear Writer (redacted)

Insincere form rejection carefully constructed to not convey "what the fuck" segueing into a comment about your new novel, The Madness of Method, a 48,131-word manuscript.

This is writer porn. I see it a lot. Books about writers, writer rejection, disgusting and evil literary agents (although you avoided that one, I'm not sure why) even when done with an elegant literay tone, is still writer porn. Books about writers aren't my cup of tea. Other agents may have different drinking choices.

Also, 48,131 is a tad short. Like 20,000 words. I've sold books with fewer words (one of them is in the sig line below) but I've also dropped anvils from Acme on my head and I'm not doing that again either.

Your companion in jest,

J


HIS REPLY

No Agent Reid, my letter was jest, commenting on the barrage of insincere letters you agents sift through every day, and writers hate to write. Having spent most of the last year doing little but writing cover letters, and the last three years reading my share of them, it's a subject I'm somewhat familiar with. And so far agents and publishers have referred to my letters as refreshingly honest. One lit-mag even published my letter alongside a short story. You may be an important person, and I may just be a c-grade Larry Flynt, but don't try to fool yourself into thinking there was anything resembling jest in your response. It was just plain mean. Small-town cop mean. But I suppose that's agent porn. We all need a little bit of it here and there.

Well, ok, back to "not right for me"

If you want something else, you've got this guy to thank for the next couple weeks at least.

Feeling discouraged?

This is good advice from Rachelle Gardner.

Out of the woodwork

I don't mind when commenters disagree with me. Well, I mind, but I can live with it. I don't mind if commenters think I'm full of it (again, yes, but ok).

The rule here though is if you think I'm the horse's patootie, and want to say so, you have to write cogently. And you have to make some sort of reasonable argument. And I'd prefer if you didn't use invective to try to make a point. Unless you can do it stylishly.

For the time being though, I'm going to leave the political stuff to someone else. I'm a bit dismayed at the idea that people with such poor command of the ethics and rubrics of rhetoric even read this blog. And if I've offended you, well, I'm ok with that too.

Resist the urge to say 'neener neener'

Today I received an email that, on the face of it, was a polite statement the author had secured representation and a publisher. I get those fairly regularly. No problem, right? Just being polite, right?

Well, no.

This author in question wasn't in my fulls t0 be read file, or my partials to be read pile, or my queries pending pile, or even in my "sent back for revisions, changes, suggestions, polishing; watch for next email" file.

No. This author was in the form rejection file. From July. And not just once, twice.

I looked him up, just to make sure I wasn't reading a full or a partial or expecting anything. Nope, form rejection. Twice.

Most likely this author thinks he's just being prudent to email all the agents he queried just in case any of them are still holding on to his query. That's what it looks like from his side of the conversation.

From my side it looks a bit different. It looks like "neener neener, you rejected me and I found an agent and a publisher."

Well, I'm pretty tough, I can live with it but it's not my favorite kind of email to get on a Monday morning. And frankly I'm touchy about this stuff. Maybe overly touchy. But I figure I upheld my side of the bargain. I responded to the email query. I responded to the same one twice, even though it was clear this guy hadn't figured out that all those Janet@'s were the same person. I didn't breath fire and fury and I didn't just ignore him.

As far as I'm concerned that's pretty much the end of any emails about this particular project. I don't want to know if you got an agent or a deal. I don't want to know anything more about your book at all. If I did, I'd have said something in one of the emails I sent back.

And here's the other part of the equation. The not-nice part. I remember these emails. And now every time I see the author's name, and the title of the book this is what I remember. Not that I sent a form rejection. Not even that I sent it twice. Nope, I remember "neener neener." And that's NOT how you want to be remembered, is it?


But let's hear from you on this:

That breeze you feel is your offer waving bye-bye!

I laughed out loud when I read this post over at Editorial Ass about an author who didn't understand what in-house advocate means.

This joker knew his project needed the attention of the bigwig rather than the "lowly editor." What a crock.

The one person you never treat poorly is the first person who said "yes." Everyone after that will love the project (we hope) but that first yes often ends up being the most passionate and will help you out when the fecal matter hits the atmospheric rotation device.

If you are in a competitive bid situation it's certainly fair to ask what the people up the food chain think. Absolutely. This post wasn't about that. It was about a project at the acquisition stage, and the author didn't ask what other people thought (and basically that's the agent's job anyway).

The blunt truth is there are more good projects than editors or agents have time or inclination to take on. I won't work with people who demonstrate by what they say or do that they don't value what I bring to the table. The shorthand for this is "life's too short". I hear that from my colleagues as well. Publishing isn't one of the high paying industries. One of the trade offs is we don't have to put up with jerks as often as people in other industries.

Of course, the truly ironic thing is that everyone who reads this blog already has figured that out. The people who need to hear it, won't.

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?

How to be Stupid

I have a very cordial relationship with several smaller publishers. We wrangle about how much money they can't advance me, and we duke it out over contracts, but we are generally pals.

I was talking with one of my publisher pals this week, and she was fresh off a phone call that, when she relayed the gist to me, took my breath away.

An author, published and in print with several hundred books in the warehouse, has found himself out of print, all rights reverted, we're done, thank you very much.

How? One too many "fuck you"*** emails. I didn't get the specifics, I was reeling from the sheer stupidity of someone saying that. Then the publisher reminded me, no he didn't say it. He emailed it.

The very definition of stupidity.

Here's the thing. Publishers aren't obliged to keep your book in print at all. They can revert all rights to you this minute, and take the book out of Books In Print, out of the Ingram data base, and not fill orders, and baby that's all she wrote.

It's not a violation of your publishing contract. It's not even a violation of the law. Publishers are not obliged to sell books if they don't want to.

Now, mostly publishers don't do this. There's an immediate and a long term financial hit. It's not a profit-based decision at all.

I've never seen a large publisher do this. Large publishers have reservoirs of staff to draw on. Make one editor crazy, might be you'll get another. Make your publicist crazy, you just don't get your calls returned.

But a small publisher is frequently the editor, the publicist and the marketing manager rolled into one. Too many pissy emails and you're reaching your quota not just for the day, but for the entire life of the book.

Small publishers don't make a lot of money. They do value their independence, and their ability to make their own decisions. They don't need permission to pull the plug. They can just do it.

So, one value of an agent? If you're the kind of person who flies off the handle or needs "translation services" an agent is a good medium between you and the publisher.

Another is we can save deals like that by smoothing things over sometimes.

And bottom line? I've been so angry I've said some things I shouldn't have. Hot angry words have fallen out of my mouth like lava from a volcano. Three minutes later though I recovered myself enough to say "wait, I said some stuff I shouldn't have. Let me cool down. Let's regroup."
You can recover from stupidity but you have to do it promptly and it has to have been SAID in the heat of the moment.

There's NO excuse for emailing that kind of intemperate language however. I'm sure none of you reading this blog would ever do such a thing...would you?

But just a word to the wise. Publishers can pull the plug on a published book, and leave you with nothing. I've only seen it happen twice but it does happen.


***a little youtube presentation on The F Word courtesy of my pal Lesia!

Speaking of going post-al

Tim Page, the music critic at the Post, vented some wrath recently.

Page received an email press release from DC council member Marion Berry's press aide about a community hospital (Let's all remember Tim Page is the music critic).

Page went post-al, much like Chris Anderson did recently.
He fired off a response that was rude as hell...and also true.

"Must we hear about it every time this crack addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new -- and typically half-witted -- political grandstanding? I'd be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose."

The WaPo story is here.

Now Tim Page is in trouble with the management at work. Why? Cause the guy who sent the spam publicized the intemperate response.

Friday night at the Question Emporium 2.5--cause it's Wednesday

Question:

I received an automated rejection on a full that has been out five weeks. While very grateful for the quick turn-around, I am feeling lost (and, okay, mad) that there wasn't a personalized note. She's at a big agency, but I don't think that should matter. I think if it gets to the stage where a full is requested, something more than an auto "not right for us" would be nice.

I should let you know that queries that never get answered or get automated rejects have absolutely no impact on me. Even partials that get auto rejects don't bother me. I brush off a lot that bothers other writers. But this is hard for me.

Am I more likely to get a personal touch from a smaller agency?

Sorry for the long email, and I hope you have time to address this question.

Answer:

I've been a sole prop, and now I'm at a big shop with a bunch of agents so I can tell you that big or small probably doesn't matter. It's agent by agent and I'm guilty as charged. I've sent back requested fulls with "not right for me" form letters.

Couple things to remember here:

1. Rejection is entirely subjective and doesn't mean your writing is odiferous....even if your writing is odiferous. Bad writing sells ALL the time.

2. Because rejection is subjective, it's hard (and time consuming!) to write why this ms didn't work. "I didn't like it" "I think the ending stinks" "I just don't love it" "what the hell was I thinking when I asked for this" ...those aren't the kind of notes agents like to send.

Why not? Well for starters, those letters end up on your blog, or you read them in your acceptance speech at the National Book Awards, or if you're Hallie Ephron whom I adore madly, you read them at the Surrey Writing Conference, say they were right and STILL I'm in full cringe mode.

I know this seems unfair and rather surly from your position on the dodge ball court of querying. If you can look at it from my point of view for a second, realize that once I've decided something isn't for me, and I"m not going to ask for other material, every second I spend composing a nice letter with three nice things to couch the bad news is a half hour I could have spent reading the next thing in line.

Agenting and publishing is competitive enough now that I don't spend much time doing anything OTHER than form rejections because I have to move so fast on the material I do think I want. I have two complete novels I know I'm pretty likely to want right now, and I should get back to those guys by Friday. I spend half hour here, half hour there telling you "not quite right for me" and pretty soon, I'm out the time it would have taken to read a novel.