Unfortunate first impressions

Referrals can be a good way to warm up the otherwise-arctic query process. Good referrals are a recommendation to an agent from someone the agent knows. Really good referrals are when that someone has read your book, likes it and says so.

I pay very close attention to these kinds of referrals; when they come from my clients, I act on them immediately.

By act immediately I mean I google the author being referred.

Recently, one of my clients gave me the name of an author who was looking for an agent. The author was talking to friends, getting names. My client sent me a heads up that she's read the author's book, liked it, and had passed my name along to the author.

When I got my client's email, I immediately googled the author. Her website was the first item on the google results list so I clicked on it. (The other options were Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, her publisher's site, Twitter, and then some book reviews.)

The website was a disaster of epic proportion.

Not least among the problems was that her website allows comments on her pages, and her comment column was filled with spam. (Remember discussing using blogs as websites?)

This is a TERRIBLE first impression.

If you're querying, you want to make sure your website or blog is spiffy.

Now, I can hear some of you plaintively asking why? why? It has nothing to do with the writing!
That's very true. It has nothing to do with the writing.
It has an ENORMOUS amount to do with the my impression of how much coaching you'll need on what are now the fundamentals of Being a Published Writer.

When you're a published writer, your competition is no longer the slapdash, the ignoramus, or the wretchedly bad writer. It's GOOD writers. It's PUBLISHED (or about to be published) writers. You're no longer competing for agents. You're competing for readers.

And if you think agents are tough to please, wait till you meet real readers in the trenches of the Amazon reviews. Or on your blog.

Or worse: not at all.

You want a website that gives readers value for their eyeball time. They're looking for info on your books, probably some info about you, and often a way to contact you. What they're not looking for (at least on your site) are cheap term papers or scented dog poop bags or ways to attract a man.

And yes, I help my clients with that stuff. So yes, I'm much MUCH more interested in someone who's at least on the ball enough to watch their blog for spam.

If you're at this stage of querying, google yourself to find out what I'll see first. Then make sure what I can see looks polished. At the very least clean up the spam! And have you checked your Goodreads page lately? What impression will I get there?

You'll notice all this happened BEFORE I knew anything about her writing or had even gotten a query from the author. In other words, this is something to take care of EARLY rather than waiting till you think you need it.

This kind of googling tells me how to prioritize this referral and subsequent query. If I'd seen something less daunting, I might have reached out to the author. As it is I'll wait for the query, and it's not going to be one of those I drop everything to read.

Any questions?

Query question: art on the blog

I'm an (aspiring) professional writer but an amateur illustrator. I draw characters and scenes from my book strictly for my own amusement and to help me develop my ideas. They are not intended to be part of the published book. Obviously, I don't mention my art in queries or anything like that, but I'm wondering what is and isn't wise to do with this art. For instance, can I post it on my blog and social media, where it isn't directed at agents, but they're likely to see it if they research me? Or should I keep it under wraps to avoid looking amateurish? (For the sake of argument, let's assume that I'm a fairly good artist.)

You haven't mentioned what kind of books you're writing. If you plan to write novels for adults, art work won't help much at all, since most of those book don't contain any illustrations.

If you're planning on writing for kids, illustrations are used in varying amounts depending on the kind of book: picture, early reader, middle grade etc.

Art is a very tricky topic. Some really awkward looking things can end up as phenomenal successes:

And some images are so wonderful they just grab your heart the second you see them and never let go:

And some aren't cute or funny, but they really make you want to read the book:

But in the end, this is your art, and your blog, and if you want to share your work, you should. You can't predict what anyone's response will be. I can't imagine an agent looking at your blog and saying no to a project that was otherwise a yes simply because s/he didn't like your art. (although, I do have very strong feelings about certain fonts....but that's another blog post.)

Something VERY smart writers do

One of my favorite editors dropped me a quick email today to ask for more info about the author of a book of mine he's considering

I had a couple lines on file from the query letter, but nothing really zippy and exciting.

What to do?

Well, I knew the author had a bio listed at her work website. I clicked over. It was fun, vivacious, not silly. I copied and pasted, and sent.

Start to finish: about 120 seconds.

This client was proactive in the best possible way. I didn't have to email her to say "quick, I need a bio!"

She doesn't have a website cause she's not yet published, but that's one of the best things to have on your website, published or not. A short bio, a longer bio, and links to things that are helpful for finding out more about you.

I've realized that most conferences now don't even ask me for a bio, they just cut and paste the one on my website.

That means you keep your bio updated too (I learned that one the hard way!)

A website is a wardrobe of information about you and your book! Keep it brushed up!