Flash Fiction writing contest!

To celebrate Jeff Somers new book WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE being selected as a PW Pick of the Week, I'm holding a surprise flash fiction writing contest!

Yay!

Here's the scoop:

1. Write a story using 100 words or fewer.

2. Post it in the comments section of this blog post (when the contest opens)

3. Use these five words in the story:

Pants
Magic
Blood
Spirits
Cat

4. Prompt words can be part of a larger word , but must appear in whole in the larger word:
magic/magician is ok, but not pants/phantasmagoria.



5. One entry per person.

6. If you make a mistake or need to edit, delete your entry and re-post.  The LAST entry
is your final one.  (Generally it's better to compose in a doc then copy and paste to the comment window.  Repeated deletions are just annoying)

7. Contest opens at 7am on Saturday 10/4 and closes at 7am on Sunday 10/5/2014.

8. Prize is a spiffy new copy of WE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE!

Questions? Tweet to me @Janet_Reid

Ready?
Set?
NOT YET!

ENTER! 

oops, too late. Contest closed at 7am 10/5/14.

Caption contest results!

Here are the results for the caption contest from Sunday:

These are the entries that made me laugh the most:
 
-->

Sam 8:51am

Is the Shark gone?

Andrea van der Wilt 10:15am

I know what you did to my toys last summer.

Kim English 11:15am

Whatever you found in the Haliburton suitcase, it's not mine.

Chris Owens 1:55pm

On the eighth day, God made Transformers.

LynnRodz 5:13 pm

"Shh! I'm not here and you don't see me.

Craig 5:42pm

I sure hope Santa didn't get hurt in that wreck.

AJ Blythe 9:08pm

It looked bigger on ebay.

Julia Munroe Martin 6:40am

Why is it always the last freakin' place you look.

Special recognition to linked entries that defied the rules but are too awesome not

to note:

jennyferguson 11:53am

Yep, I'm a Jedi.

Jed Cullan 11:56am

Apple are sponsoring the next Star Wars movie, so they are to be known as an iJed

Jed Cullan 11:57am

iJed. uJenny.

FINALISTS

SiSi 5:27pm

Toys are not us. We are not them.

Rena McClure Taylor 11:26pm

The eyes have it.

Eileen 12:00am

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

And the winner is Rena McClure Taylor!

Rena email me with your mailing address and what kinds of books you like to read and we'll send you your prize!

Thanks to all who entered! It was such fun to read all the comments.  I'm continually amazed by how smart and funny my readers are.

Rant: can agents be replaced by a service like Submittable

I've conquered the query hurdle and secured representation only to find that being on submission is ten times worse! After years of hard work, research, diligence, and above all, patience, I have to think there must be a better way for writers to find publishers that would be less frustrating and more transparent. It feels like the open waters out there and lots of talented writers are getting eaten alive! You've been very disparaging of some of the referral services that have popped up, perhaps rightfully so, but it seems to me that a service like Submittable could eventually replace the job of an agent.

So my question to you is, do you think the current agenting model is the pinnacle of publishing or is there a better way? What would that way look like?

You'll pardon me please if I get a little hot under the collar about the idea that you think I can be replaced by an Excel spread sheet.

For starters, even asking the question tells me you don't have a clue what an agent really does. The question implies that all we do is send manuscripts and wait for replies.

Here's a brief list of some of the OTHER things I do:

1. Make sure the author knows where to meet his editor at ComicCon to get his badge.  I do this because my author has never been to ComicCon, and never been to the Javits Center and didn't know that "I'll meet you there" is the same thing as saying "I'll meet you in Seattle."

2. Edit proposals

3. Re-edit proposals

4. Review books in a new category to prepare for submission of a project in 2015.

5. Review royalty statements.

6. Call royalty departments to get information on line items that are unclear.

7. Explain royalty statements to authors.

8. Call editor to nudge about getting publication date in a particular month because of client's career commitments.

9. Call editor to nudge about timely payment

10.  Call editor to follow up on manuscripts.

11. Call client to update on manuscript submission.

12. Reply to a "good news" email from client with suggestions on how to leverage that good news.

13. Consult with colleagues about contract language that isn't in author's best interest and determine strategy for negotiating.

14.  Nudge editor for information missing from royalty statement.

15. Update author on information missing from royalty statement.

16. Facilitate lunch meeting with client and colleague who solicits his work for anthologies.

17. Attend reading with client.

18. Answer email from fan about how to purchase client's books.

19. Follow up with client about expired website domain name.

20. Send submissions to editors.


And gentle readers, that's just what I can remember from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.  And you'll notice that doesn't including writing this, or any other, blog post. Or reading submissions from queriers.


I'm not sure why you find the process of being on submission "frustrating" or why you think  it isn't "transparent."  I've said this before, I'll say it again now: you should be able to get a list of where your project is on submission from your agent in five minutes.  Ten if she's busy. A day if she's in the middle of follow ups.

And what's frustrating? The wait? Trust me, sending your work to someone via Submittable doesn't cut the wait time. I'm very familiar with Submittable because many of the lit mags I send my clients short stories to use it to manage submissions.

Do I think think the agenting model is perfect? No, of course not. Nothing but Our Risen Lord is perfect, and He doesn't work in publishing. Trust me, we've called for him enough.

Do I think it works pretty well? Yes I do. Not every agent is good at his/her job, and not every good agent is a good fit for every writer.

But if you think for one tiny second that what I can do can be replaced by some fucking spread sheet, well,  think again.

Query Question: Revising novel when on submission to agents

I received an encouraging revise and resend with some great feedback from one of my top agents. I realized reading it that she was completely bang on in identifying some of the flaws in my novel, and began revising right away.

A little later, I received a full request from agent #2, whom I had queried some time ago. It's been about a week now and I haven't sent said full to agent #2, and I don't really want to until I've finished addressing agent #1's critique. But I'm worried that if too much time passes, agent #2 will wonder what's up. My manuscript was fully edited and ready to go (or so I thought) when I queried her. Should I let her know that I'm revising my manuscript based on feedback from another agent, or just send the full when it's ready (probably in another week or two) without an explanation? Is knowing that another agent has asked for revisions to a manuscript a positive or a negative in most agents' eyes? 

Here's the absolute ironclad rule: always send your best work. If you're doing revisions to fix some flaws in your novel, it's in BOTH our interests to have you send the better version.

Here's how you do this: You email Agent #2  RIGHT NOW and say "yo, snooks, got your request. Little late to the party, but ok for now.  I'm revising right now (I thought the novel was done!) and I plan to have it finished on X date. I will send it then unless you tell me otherwise.  Thanks again for your interest. I look forward to sending you my novel." Of course you put this in your own deathless prose. Remember to keep it SHORT. No more than 30 words total.

The thing to avoid here is a long period of silence. If I request a full, I pretty much expect to hear back promptly. That's because mostly I DO hear back promptly, not because it's critical to the submission process.

If I don't hear back within a week or so, my assumption is  my email went astray, and I email again.  In fact, this past year, I ended up emailing the writer who had REFERRED the querier because I hadn't heard back after several pings.

My colleagues are generally NOT going to do this. They're going to request and if they don't hear from you they're going to move on.  They'll remember you but they generally aren't going to track you down. I wrote a blog post that showed that a while back.

Query Question: chapters pubbed before querying

I read your blog every day, and I have also gone through posts in the archive. Still, I could not find the answer to a question that has been bugging me for a while.

Suppose I have a novel (draft version) and my chapters are stand alone.

Suppose I submit the first chapter, which is polished, to journals accepting unsolicited submissions for fiction. Of course, I would mention it is a novel excerpt.

Suppose it gets published. My question is: in the future, when I will be querying agents, having one chapter out there, published, will be seen as pro or con?

It's seen as a pro. This is called a "publishing credit."  It's a Good Thing indeed. And you don't need to mention it's part of a novel in your submission to lit journals.

The reason it's a good thing is that someone else has seen your work, and liked it.  That tells me that you can string sentences together nicely, or at least have been able to do so in the past. That's reassuring when you're reading queries.

And for all you crazed rodent-wheel running authors out there: NO you do not NEED publishing credits in a query. It's worse to list idiotic ones (I won honorable mention in the XYZ writing contest!) than to list nothing at all.

Question: Women are my audience, should I query only the lady agents?

Because agents must ‘fall in love’ with a book, in order to represent it to the fullest, this raises a question. How much does personal taste, (influenced by life experience), as opposed to commercial viability, (influenced by market), help an agent make a choice?

Because my memoir appeals more to women I am hesitant to query male agents. Certainly male bias on my part but I just don’t think men will get it. Which leaves me thinking, if men are not my readers, why waste my time querying male agents.

As readers we don’t have to actually experience an author’s travails in order to feel his/her pain and be moved by their strength and ordeal. Just because my mom never ate out of a dumpster does not mean I am not moved by Jeanette Walls. But repping and reading are two different things.

Authors and readers cross gender lines all the time, (your post 9/22), but would/could a male best rep a female nuanced memoir even though his life-experiences negate the emotional and physiological connection?

This does bring to mind male gynecologists and obstetricians. Even though they don’t have the equipment they certainly can do the job.

The only way you can find out if someone responds to your work is to query them.  If you're asking if you should only query women agents, you're asking the wrong question.

The right question is: if you have to choose between agents at an agency should you choose a female agent over a male agent.

Now, if you were in my sophomore year econ class you'd hear the dreaded phrase "all things being equal" which means the two agents in question have no variable OTHER than gender.

And I can assure you that is never ever ever the case. Agents vary by taste, success at picking commercial projects, success at picking award-winning projects, and number of writers consumed for breakfast annually.

So, what to do:
The first thing you do is make a list of ALL the agents who say they're looking for memoir.  You don't leave any of them off the list.

Then you pare down first by "what have they sold" and you remove the agents who are clearly not selling anything, or not selling memoir.

Then you have a list.

IF you have more than one agent at an agency, you check the guidelines to see if you can query all of them (but obviously not at the same time.)  If you can, then you just prioritize the list for who gets first crack at you. You can pick the women over the men here cause there's zero cost. If they say no, you can query down the list.

If it's one and done though (query one agent at the agency and that's it) then you must decide which agent is best suited for your work. The LAST thing you look at here is gender, in my opinion.  I can absolutely garuntee you that in a contest between who would do a better job with memoir the best indicator is what an agent has sold, not their gender.

Lots of gents have sold lots of books that appeal to mostly female readers. Don't limit your chances by assuming men won't get you.  Some of these guys are pretty smart. One of them used to work for me in fact until he wandered off and got Bent.

Sunday caption contest

Here's a photo. Enter your best suggestion for a caption (ie 10 words or fewer) in the comments column below.  Prize to be determined!  Contest closes at 7am on Monday 9/29.

Questions?  Tweet to me @Janet_Reid (but I'm not going be able to answer till later this evening)

Query question: all that publicity and networking, do I really hafta?

I'm 65, have never published fiction, used to publish a fair amount of nonfiction but that was 20 years ago. Here's my question: can I hope to publish a novel I write just out of the blue without jumping through all the hoops of publicity and networking, etc. I know that no one would have heard of me, so why would anybody take a risk? But if it's good enough, is that enough?

Sure you can write a novel, no hoops involved.

And you can query an agent for that novel, and the agent can sell that novel, and you can do all that with no hoops involved either.

However.
And you knew that was coming, right?

What you describe as "hoops of publicity and networking" is what the rest of us call "finding people who will want to read your book."

Is your goal just to write, or is your goal to have your books read by more than your critique group?

If you want to enter the business side of publishing, you will find a set of hoops delivered to your doorstep by your agent, along with a plan for how you will be jumping through them for quite some time.

And you know what? It's not all that miserable.  Talking to readers is really a lot of fun. I do it everyday here on the blog, and it's one of the things I like most about my job.

Query Question: I'm not the norm, is that ok?

I'm writing a memoir, but I'm writing it in the third person using a semi-omniscient narrator. Is that an absolute no-no or might it be acceptable if the writing and story is superior?(1)
Also, it is not chronological, but most of the chapters/segments could stand on their own -- some are like flash fiction (100 to 500 words) and some are like a short story. They are all intrinsically connected (a somewhat difficult task) and I think I've managed to put the thing together in a way that won't confuse anyone.(2) Is it ever possible to have a photo at the beginning of every chapter?(3)

 

Let's take your questions in order.  

(1) Writing a memoir in the third person is fairly unusual. Oddly enough, I have such a memoir on submission right now.  Writing in the third person creates a distance between subject and reader that often defeats the purpose of memoir: sharing the emotional journey of a life.

You might want to do some research here. Find memoirs written in the third person. Salman Rushdie JOE ANTON is one. I'm sure there are others. Read them, and try to assess whether they work. Were you enticed to keep reading? Did you feel connected to the story?

There's no hard and fast rule that memoir MUST be in first person but it's like writing a novel in second person: you've got to be really really deft to overcome that POV hurdle.

And ask yourself bluntly what you want to accomplish by writing in the third person. Unless there's a very specific reason to do so, first person is just going to make your life a whole lot easier.


(2) You're not the right person to assess whether this works. You're entirely too close to the project. This is where you need beta readers, and honest ones.  Have them read this. Ask "where did you lose interest?" to find out where the problems are.  You ask that rather than "did you like it?" cause no one will say no,and/or "what's wrong" because often people don't know what's wrong. They only know when they stopped being interested or started to skim.

Beta readers are NOT editors. Editors help you fix things. Readers tell you if you've got things that need fixing.

(3) Honestly, probably not. Printing photos in books adds ENORMOUSLY to the bottom line. You can put the photos on your website, keyed to the chapter numbers.  

If you publish electronically of course, this problem goes away, but you're limited to those e-readers that do pictures as well as texts.  This isn't an area I know a lot about, sorry.



I want to encourage you to think not about how you want to write your book, but how it will be experienced by your reader. You can do anything you want with your book if you don't care if anyone publishes it, buys it or reads it. Chapters that go vary from 100 words to 20 pages can be perceived as awkward and bumpy. Third person POV can make it hard to connect with the narrator. It's not whether you CAN do these things, sure you can, it's your book. The question is do you want to? Consider your reader as think about this.

Query Question: more on starting over

 I’m hoping you can help me with a dilemma. A little over a year ago, I queried a novel and received several offers of rep and came close with a few other agents. I accepted one of the offers and the agent has shopped my book around. We’ve come heartbreakingly close, but have had no offers on the book.

In the meantime, I wrote a second book, which my agent is not enthusiastic about (and that is a tale of woe best saved for another day). Because of this, we have parted ways amicably. As sad as I am to be agent-less, I feel savvier now and am excited about the possibilities. I know, from reading past posts on your blog, that since I am querying a brand new book, I don’t need to mention my previous representation in queries, but that it may come up should I receive an offer.

My question is a bit different. I would like to requery the 2 agents who did not offer on my first book, but came close. One of them said “if you ever find yourself without representation, I hope that you will think of me.” The other stopped short of saying that, but gave me extensive positive feedback and was extremely encouraging. Is it okay, in either case, for me to reply to their emails from over a year ago, or personalize a new email, letting them know that I have a new novel that I am seeking representation for, and then launch into my query pitch? Or should I start fresh with both? I don’t want to be unprofessional, but I also don’t want to miss out on any opportunities.

There's nothing unprofessional about a polite concise email that says "hey, it's your lucky day Snookums, I got rid of that lesser hack, and now I want you." "your email of Date said to be in touch if I found myself without an agent, and thus hello, here I am."

This happens with enough frequency that no one is surprised to get these kind of emails at all.  You'll mention the book they read is not the book you're querying for now; this new book has not been on submission.  

I hope you're not writing in a new or vastly different category cause that would have an impact on their willingness to read.  Example: if you queried me on a thriller, I'm not going to read a romance on the second time around.

As long as your emails are polite and concise you're fine.  Unprofessional is calling my office, or sending the manuscript without a request. You've proposed neither of those things, so I'm confident you're going to do just fine.

(It's the people who worry about being unprofessional who never are.  The other ones...well, they make good stories.)



 

Question: spending money on a publicist

A friend of mine is about to sign their first ever book deal with a small press.  I am overjoyed for them and they are, quite obviously, over the moon.  Question/Problem I have is this: Their agent just suggested that they spend over $10K on a publicist to promote the book.  I suspect the advance on this deal will be well south of that amount and that expected sales will probably not generate enough sales to cover that cost.  I could be wrong and the publicist could be what pushes them up the bestseller lists.  I just worry.

So, thoughts? 

First you (and the author) need to understand that what pushes a book onto the bestseller list is not publicity, it's sales. Number of copies ordered, number of copies shipped, number of copies across the cash register in a given day/week/month. (Each list has a different measuring standard.)

You can have GREAT publicity but if people can't buy the book, it's all for naught.

So, the first question your pal needs to ask the publisher: who's going to sell my book? And by this I don't mean bookstores.  I mean who is going to introduce the book to the people who order stock for bookstores.  Is there a sales team at the publisher? Is there a sales staff at all?  Is it one of the (many) hats the publisher wears?

My guess is the latter since small publishers tend not to have sales departments.  

The next question to ask is how many books the publisher intends to print in the initial print run.  If the book is going to be print on demand, that means they're going to print the books to satisfy orders. No running inventory.  This is a perfectly acceptable business practice but it means that publicity is almost useless. 

If the publisher is going to print for inventory, ask how many.  Any number UNDER five thousand means the best seller lists are largely out of reach. The ones that are in reach are local stores best seller lists. If you do a signing, and sell 700 copies, you're going to be on that week's store best seller list.  But you're not going to be on PW's. Or the NYT's.

Publishers Weekly actually prints the number of copies sold in a given week of the 20 top selling books on each of their lists (hardcover, ppbk in both fiction and non-fiction)  If you don't subscribe to PW, your library sure does, and they'll let you read back issues. Take a look to see some real numbers.

Here's an example:

Instead of spending money on publicity, your friend should spend money on marketing advice. There are lots of good ways to market a book from a small press, and many of them can be done by the author.

If your friend is determined to hire a publicist, they should spend their money on consulting with one, not hiring a publicist to address envelopes and mail books to radio stations.  A good publicist can help you spit polish your web presences, shore up your social media, and give you ten ideas about effective ways to promote yourself to readers. 


Here at The Reef, we have a publicist on retainer who does that for all my clients. It's damn useful let me tell you. She doesn't do the work, she more of a stern taskmaster who reminds you that tweeting cute baby shark pictures is all well and good, but it's not actually accomplishing what we want our twitter feed to do.



 

Question: digital backlist

As a reader, is there anything I can do to advocate an author's backlist being made available digitally? There are several authors I love (such as Brian Jacques and Robin McKinley) who had some well-known books a decade or two before ebooks were a thing--and these books aren't available digitally. Who's best to talk to--authors, agents, editors, or publishers? Will my begging do any good?

The best person to talk to is the author. Generally the author controls any unexploited rights (which is what you're talking about.)  If you and many others clamor for an ebook, the author is the one who can show the demand to a publisher, or see there's a enough market to publish themselves.

Even if the author is sadly dead (as in the case of Brian Jacques) there's generally a way to get in touch via the webpage.

Fire off an email!

Query Question: crossing gender lines

I have written a YA fiction with a male protagonist/narrator. I don't intend to only write for boys forever but I have two teenage sons who I have homeschooled and it's been 18 years of working hard at taking a walk in young men's shoes, so it felt easy for me. When I research authors of teen boy fiction or when authors recommend teen boy fiction, it's primarily male writers. I do know my sons sort of side with the boy world quite unconsciously, but do agents/publishers also go along those lines. I want to use a pen name, anyhow. Should I consider an androgynous name since my first book is boy oriented? Or do you think I should begin querying without a pseudonym and bring it up if/when it goes that far? I've even wondered if I should specifically target male agents. I feel like getting boys to read, sometimes is harder than girls who read male writers pretty much as effortlessly as women's writers. I guess this is a strange question about gender.  

It's a confusing question about gender because it's all over the place.  First you're asking if readers think books with male protagonists/narrators have to be written by men. If you're seriously asking that question, you haven't read enough to query. Read enough in your category and read enough over all.  In other words I'm telling you that your reading alone should tell you that it doesn't matter if you're a man, a woman, a shark or a nincompoop: the story is what counts. Get your story right and we're off to the races.

And if you're asking if male agents have a preference for male writers, or writers they think are male, well, no, they don't. They have a preference for (all together now) Good Stories!

And if you're asking if it's a truism that getting boys to read is harder than getting girls to read, well, that's not something you as a writer have any control over whatsoever and thus you should not worry about.

What do you have control over? Your story.
Make it fabulous and everyone will want to read it.  Make the characters people we want to be, or hang out with, and you've got yourself a book.

I'm chastising you here because you've fallen into a trap that snares many writers at the start of their careers: you're worrying about things you can't control.  All that fear keeps you from thinking about writing.  Stop it.  When your mind starts whirring with these thoughts, say to yourself "Stop worrying about this."  You might need to say it out loud. (That will amuse your sons endlessly of course.)  And you might need something to think about INSTEAD of these worrisome thoughts.  Turn your mind to sitting down and writing.  Or scotch. I've found one or the other always works.

Now, quit worrying about this. Back to work.

I hope this makes you as happy as it does me

Query: whackadoodle submission guidelines anyone?

I am about to (re)start my query process and when checking agencies, came across this submission guideline:


Highlight your vision for marketing your book, your writing experience, the name of the person (if any) who referred you to (redact), and whether you’re currently submitting your query to other agents.

I find these requests curious for several reasons. One, I think it's premature at the query stage to ask my opinions on how I would market my would-be book. (I wonder, is the agency trying to gauge my expectations as to what I think an agent/publisher will do for me, or do they want a five page business plan, addressing the 4P's of fiction marketing?) Secondly, regarding querying other agents, isn't that a given?

Part of me is inclined to ignore this portion of the submission guideline and submit my query letter as is, and part of me is inclined to ignore this agency altogether. While some of their agents do appeal to me, I almost feel as though this guideline is some sort of stealth Meyers-Briggs test, given to would-be clients. Plus, I honestly fear what could come next: Before we can sign you potential author, we need you to answer the following: You are locked in a room with an angry agent, an emaciated alligator, and an African ape. Which creature scares you most?

It's all I can do to drag a coherent query letter out of y'all. I'm astonished that any agency wants you to try for more.

I'm with you on this. I think this is not just getting the cart in front of the horse, it's so far ahead the horse is still in the pasture with his breakfast oats and apple, contentedly reading the Equine Morning Post-Rider.


The idea of a "vision" for marketing annoys me as well. For starters the idea of "a vision" for marketing is just sloppy. You have a plan for marketing. Visions are what you get when you're doing peyote during research, not when you're actually back at the office writing the marketing plan.

And holy hell, marketing? That's the PUBLISHER'S call. I often ask writers of non-fiction proposals how readers will know about them (platform) but I don't ever ask them how to market their books. I much prefer the sales and marketing department tell me their plans for the book, and then if there's other things to be done to fill in, well, there's the list again (no peyote required here either.)

As for writing experience, Double Holy Hell. I've been trying for years to get writers to quit telling me they've been writing since their mom swallowed a pen and paper so they could write in the womb. I don't care about your writing experience. I care about this book you want me to represent. I always thought most agents were of like mind--maybe not.

As for "the name of the person who referred you" well, that's clearly designed to make writers crazy. I can hear your little mental rodent wheels spinning on this one: do I need a referral? What if no one told me to query? Does this mean they won't even consider me?

Much as I love tormenting writers (and I do, yes indeed I do) it's really only fun to torment them when they're wilfully ignorant. That means you don't actively try to confuse them. That's just mean.

As for who else is reading, that's clearly how they're prioritizing their reading and that's just stupid. Exclusives are bad for business. Any agent or agency who asks for one at this stage clearly thinks their time is more important than yours, and that tells you a lot.

I have no idea why an agency would ask for all this material. Since I know an agent who works there, I don't believe they're actively trying to make you crazy or cranky. They just haven't fully realized how this can make writers fret.



The trouble with guidelines is the clearer we try to make them, the more y'all parse them out and become fretful.


If I could I'd just say "send me your best work. Make it so I can read it. Try not to be fancy" and leave it at that.  Of course, we'd then find ourselves in a long drawn out discussion about whether times new roman is fancy.


I've said this before, I'll say it again: if the submission guidelines for an agency make you think they're hard to work with, don't query. There are a lot of us out here.  You don't have to query someone you don't want to.

Query question: submission guidelines that are off-putting

During the query process I stumbled across that clause I thought was really off putting and it is as follows:

"I understand that Z has access to materials and ideas that may be similar to my Material in theme, idea, plot or format. I understand that I will not be entitled to compensation because of the use of any such similar or identical material if such material is created independently by Z or its clients."

Is this a typical clause for agencies? I don't recall seeing it on any other agency site and it definitely stopped my submission in its track.


"X may already have (or may in the future) independently develop a project based upon an idea or theme that is identical or similar to your material, and you acknowledge that you will have no interest or claim therein."

I can understand why you'd look at this and think "Whoa! They're saying it's ok to steal my stuff."

That is not the case.

What this clause recognizes is that ideas are more common than you think, and it's the execution of the ideas that differentiates projects.

It's not unheard of for less-than-savvy writers to think their ideas are one of a kind. We can identify these writers pretty easily: they'll often actually say they have an idea no one has heard of;  they'll express concern about who sees their manuscript pages; or (my favorite so far) how we dispose of manuscript pages.

These big companies are protecting themselves from lawsuits and my guess is that they're doing this because someone sued saying "hey I sent you a query about a menage a huit and you just produced the EXACT same thing only you called it Snow White and the Seven Samurai."

There are a lot of people stealing work out there these days but it's generally not an agent or agency.  We're pretty busy trying to find writers who have ideas AND execution. The folks stealing work are the ones downloading pirated ebooks or the ones taking your work, slapping on a new cover and selling it on Amazon.  Or just outright plagiarizing.  It's a big problem, but it's not a problem on this side of the query line.

If it really bothers you though, don't submit your work there. Peace of mind is not always rational. If it's going to make you fretful, query elsewhere.  You should trust your agent to do right by you from the very start of the relationship.

Query Question: setting

Does it matter if my roots are showing in my query? Will American agents and/or publishers see my Canadian setting as a drawback? So many agents claim they want fresh settings, but I've been told this might be a bad idea. I can't write a mystery that takes place in America unless it's at Disney World. What say you?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Here's my four-thousand word essay:

If you haven't read the lovely, luminous novels of Louise Penny, stop reading this drivel, and get to the library RIGHT NOW. And my real point here is that it doesn't matter if your books are set in Canada, Canadia, or Freedonia if you write a novel that grabs me by the throat and doesn't let me draw a full breath until I've read through to The End.


It's your voice and your story that will draw me in. Your setting will be important if it's material to the story, not if it isn't.  But no agent rejects a manuscript because it's set in Canadia.  That would be rejecting something because it's set in Alaska. I mean, they're practically the same place, right?***





**stop spluttering with outraged geographical hand flailing. I know where Canada is. Up.

Question: so, how do you do it?

My question is, hopefully, simple. How do you do it? The daily posts on your blog, Facebook, and other outlets? How do you manage the torrential downpour of queries *(let alone dealing with the ones who don't read the QueryShark forums and responding to the ones who do)? How do you manage to do all that and maintain connections with your clientele while shopping their books around to publishing houses/editors who also require a certain depth of connection with you? Even on vacation, you put SOMETHING on for us to look at, completely flying in my smug little face when I thought for sure you'd not put up anything while on vacation or at ThrillerFest. All the while, I cringe at having a definite daily word count!

We aren't even talking about reading or how you manage home life *(which I have a growing suspicion that you must live in a hovel under your desk at the office).

Lastly, as a fun little tid-bit, what kind of shark are you anyways? Keep ripping up the seas!

How do I do it?
Time goblins. I buy the minutes you squander from a team of traveling goblins who steal those extra minutes and resell them. I don't have 24 hours in a day; I have 36.  Every time you come to your senses after drifting off into some sort of vacant stare, well, thank you. Those are now my minutes, and I intend to use them to torment you.

Question: staying in touch with an agent from a conference who liked your work

In March 2014 I attended a pitch session organized with SCBWI and met Agent X. Already in the introduction when she listened to everyone’s ideas, she expressed that she was interested in my project.  Then after my 5 minute pitch and her reading a sample query that I addressed to her as if it were by mail, she was explicit in her interest.  

During the ninety minutes she told me three times that she was interested in my manuscript, to  send it when it when ready.  She gave me her business card and told me she was very pleased to meet me. I told her I would send her something by Christmas.

I will not have a polished manuscript by Christmas but revising first draft.

My question to you is: Should I contact her (end of November)and say that I am still working on the manuscript and need a few more months to send her my query and that she will be the first.  Or should I just wait until I am ready.  This may be June 2015.

It's never wrong to stay in touch (gently) with someone who has expressed interest in your work.  By gently I mean, you recognize that while your manuscript and her interest in it are of Burning Hot Importance to you, they fall somewhat to the cooler side of the lava flow for the agent.  Yes, she's interested but she's not planning her vacation schedule around your promised delivery date.

Here's how you do this:  About 30 days before the date you'd thought the manuscript would be ready (in your case December, so November) you drop her a SHORT email reminding her that you met at the conference, she expressed interest in your work, and while you thought you'd be sending in December, you are still in a preliminary draft.

This email is NO LONGER than five sentences of no more than 15 words each.  In other words: short! In other words: you're going to have several drafts of this, and it's going to take longer than five minutes to write. It's hard to write succinctly, but it is imperative you do so. (Your question to me above is 178 words in four paragraphs. Your email to her will be one paragraph of no more than 75 words.)

Why is it imperative to be short?  Because you want to convey the impression that you write well (long emails conveying ONE piece of information do NOT do that) and you only want her to use three seconds to get the info.

If you aren't ready six months later, repeat the above.

Don't fret if you don't hear back on something like this. Don't fret that she's dead, fled, or no longer interested.  Time to worry about those things when the manuscript is ready.

Query Pitfall: failure to include pages

This morning I emerged from the incoming mail deluge, clutching my queries, ready to read.

The first query I opened had a problem: no pages.

My submissions guidelines (designed to make sure you know what I want) always say "include the first 3-5 pages."  Most people do this.

This fellow did not.  But, he had a concept that wasn't an instant rejection. The writing wasn't great, but then I never want to decide yes/no based on queries alone because I think queries can be harder to write than novels.  (One of the MANY reasons I ask for pages.)

Instead of saying no to the query at this point (my normal reply) I noticed the author had written an earlier book. I looked it up on Amazon, and availing myself of the "look inside" feature, read the first pages.

And then I wrote the rejection.

What's your takeaway from this? Three things:

1. Notice I didn't ruthlessly discard the query for "not following the submission guidelines."  Honestly I don't care overmuch if you follow them or not. The reason submission guidelines exist is to give you information about what I need to evaluate your work. If you don't send what I need, well, ok, sayonara sasquatch.

2. Notice I looked at the previous book.  I decided his new project wasn't getting a request based on the writing in the previous novel.  If you're ok with that, well, so am I.

3. Notice I didn't email the writer back asking for pages.  That's because the query came by mail.  I'm never going to tell you not to query by email, but querying on paper means you're the least likely querier to hear back from me with ANYTHING but a form rejection.  If you query by email, and you're writing something I don't take on, chances are I'll email back to say "sorry, I don't take on adult westerns."  When you query by mail, the only thing I'm going to say is "sorry not for me."


Any questions?