by Theresa Garee | Mar 3, 2018 | Blog
“The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.” – John Steinbeck
Over the past year, I’ve slowly worked through my list of small or independent traditional publishers who do not require agents. I created this list using Querytracker.net and NewPages.com. I began with publishers who only require queries, then moved to those who wanted proposals and the full manuscript.
With each round of submissions, I received feedback. I revised then sent out more. Some publishers who suggested revisions asked to see the book after I made changes. I have sent those out as well.
This month I sent out the remaining submissions including the last set by snail mail. I had saved those for last because, quite frankly, they are painful. Now, I wait.
And, I nudge.
There are two schools of thought on nudging. Some folks think it’s a waste of time and annoys the publisher (or agent). I disagree. To my thinking, and based on the advice of my friends in publishing, emails get lost and editors (or agents) appreciate a nudge to remind them of a project they might have forgotten. I’ve had one editor say she never received my original submission. She still rejected it, but at least she saw it.
For those of you thinking of nudging, here are the guidelines I use:
1. First, recheck the publisher’s submission guidelines to make sure they don’t hate nudges!
2. If you’ve sent a query and have heard nothing in three or four months (again, check the submission guidelines for this), nudge. Things really do fall through the cracks or wind up in the spam filter.
3. If one editor offers to publish your book (or an agent offers to represent you), but there are other editors (or agents) you prefer more who still haven’t responded, definitely nudge the one you prefer! This hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’m crossing my fingers!
4. If the publisher (or agent) requested the partial or full manuscript, use the same guidelines as above.
5. If you have substantially revised the manuscript, nudge nudge nudge! This is my current position. I’m sending follow-up emails with the revised material.
6. And finally, if you receive a rejection, do not follow up unless the rejection comes after you have made revisions based on the editor’s feedback. And even then, I would hesitate to ask for additional feedback. Editors (and agents) are insanely busy. You will write more books. Do not risk alienating an editor or agent you might want to query with a future project.
So, how do you nudge?
I usually forward the original email I sent, but I change the subject line to read, “Follow-up on (query/submission/proposal)” with the book’s title in the subject line. Mine reads, “Follow-Up on Query: Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two.” Then, above the forwarded material, I write, “I’m following up to see if you’ve had an opportunity to look over the materials I sent on X date. I know how easy it is for emails to get lost. Thank you for your time.” If the material has been revised, I will mention that and attach it. Brief. To the point. Boom.
And then, I go do something else, you know, like write another book!
by Theresa Garee | Sep 3, 2016 | Blog
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.” – Thomas Carlyle
I’ve queried one hundred and five agents. From the results (forty-one rejections and sixty-three no responses with one request for pages still out), I’ve learned my book as currently written might be too narrowly focused to interest a mainstream publisher.
I knew from the outset this might be a possibility. Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two: The Memoirs of an Emotionally Unstable, Middle-Aged Marathoner is primarily about running. It’s also about mental illness, Natalie Goldberg, moving to Taos, meditation, writing, and let’s not forget the supporting characters, Morgan the yellow Labrador and Ed, my husband. But mostly, it’s about running. That topic might not interest enough readers for an agent to take a chance. But I had to try.
And now that I’ve gone this far, I’m going to revise and query more. Might it have been wiser to have made those changes before I began querying in the first place? Of course. But I didn’t know. I wrote the best book I could at the time. Now I will try to improve it and send it out again. Depending on the results of that second round, I will find the next step. I will also continue submitting to contests (the book was semi-finalist in one) and research small presses to see if that might be a better fit.
Sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by the amount of work. But all I need to do is the one thing in front of me. I do the next thing and then the thing after that. And when I’m done with those, I will have more information about what to do after that. More will be revealed, but only by working.
by Theresa Garee | Aug 3, 2016 | Blog
“Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.” – Paulo Coelho
That’s exactly how I feel sending queries to agents. Naked. Even if I weren’t an off-the-scale introvert, submitting my memoir, Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two, to agents would be terrifying.
But guess what? I’m doing it. I met my goal of querying one hundred, carefully selected agents before the end of July. And guess what else? While thirty-three percent of the agents I queried have said “No,” some of those rejections were accompanied by compliments.
One agent said, “You write well.” Another referred to my book as “original and engaging.” And my favorite rejecting agent wrote, “[W]e found much to admire here in this inspiring story, not least of which is your spunky and very relatable voice.” Although they weren’t taking on my work, their comments affirmed I had written something worthwhile.
Most of the responses have been one line answers. “It’s not right for our list.” Or, “I’m not the right agent to represent this material.” Those are easy to take. They remind me this is a business. A very subjective business. An agent may like my writing and even my voice, but if she doesn’t believe she can make a profit by spending the many hours it takes to sell and herd my book through the publishing process, she simply can’t take it on.
I’ve only had one difficult rejection. In it the agent was more specific about what she didn’t like. At first I felt defensive, but I consulted the developmental editor who helped me with the current draft of the book. She reminded me that the book this agent wanted simply wasn’t the book I had written. That was all. It didn’t mean I had written a bad book. It didn’t mean another agent might not want it. But for now, my job was just to stand behind the book I had written.
Since August is typically a slow time in publishing, I don’t anticipate hearing from too many more agents until September. In the meantime I’m researching contests and small publishers, and taking slow walks with our aging dog. If I hear anything else, I’ll keep you informed. I’ve been posting more often on my Facebook author page. Please feel free to follow along there. I’d love to hear your thoughts there and in the comments.
by Theresa Garee | Jul 4, 2016 | Blog
“Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics.” ~Dean Schlicter
I was surprised recently during a conversation with my left-brained friend, Maureen. I was complaining about the daunting task of sending query letters.
“It’s overwhelming,” I said. “I get freaked out. And the rejections are so depressing.”
“Do you have a goal?” she asked.
Although the word “goal” set my teeth on edge, I admitted that I wanted to send one hundred query letters by the end of July.
“How’s it coming?” she asked.
I explained that I’d sent out twenty. “Some days I can’t send any,” I said. “Other days I send three or four.”
In response, she asked something that seemed so contradictory, so absurd, I laughed.
“Have you done the math?”
“The math?” I asked, certain she didn’t understand me, or the creative process. Right-brained people like me don’t do math. Besides, what did math have to do with asking agents if they would represent my book?
Exasperated I said, “What’s math got to do with it?” Then, only joking a little, I added, “I’m a lawyer. We pay accountants to do math for us.”
She chuckled, “Well, if you figured out how many query letters per day you needed to send in order to meet your goal, it might take some of the drama out of the process.”
Drama? Yes. Drama.
She added, “It would quantify things. Make them more mechanical. Less emotional.”
“Quantify,” I repeated. Then it dawned one me that quantifying a project was exactly what I did each November during National Novel Writing Month. We each have the goal of writing 50,000 words in thirty days, but none of us can think about that. Instead we each focus on the daily goal of 1,667 words. Every day we meet that goal and by the end of the month we’ve each written 50,000 words.
This is why it’s helpful to have left-brained friends. Maureen’s solution had never occurred to me. She is creative as well, but her first instinct was to apply structure to what seemed to me to be a very messy problem. Structure made it manageable.
Our conversation happened in the middle of June. I had 80 more letters to send and there were 32 week days left until the end of July. (80 ÷ 32 = 2.5 per day) Therefore, if I sent three query letters each week day, I’d finish before the end of July.
I’ve followed Maureen’s advice and I’m well on my way to my goal. As an added bonus, focusing on the mechanics of sending letters and on the number of letters sent instead of the emotional prospect of receiving a rejection, has toned down the drama.
Keep those left-brained people around. We need them!
by Theresa Garee | May 3, 2016 | Blog
“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” – Harper Lee
It’s been twenty hours and nineteen days since I sent out my first query for Twenty-Six Point Freaking Two: The Memoirs of an Emotionally Unstable, Middle-Aged Marathoner. Considering I’ve been working on this book since 2012, that doesn’t seem very long. But it’s killing me. I’m not sure I have what it takes to do the dance of finding an agent and publisher. While friends urge me to self-publish, I really want to give this agent thing a try. This is by far the best book of the many I’ve written.
While I wait, I’m researching other agents using my favorite tool querytracker.net. I sort agents by genre then genre within genre and even genre within genre within genre. I narrowed the 1,400 agents in the data base down to those accepting queries, limited that to those interested in memoir, then narrowed that list by those who are interested in pets. (Morgan, our yellow Labrador, is featured prominently in the book.) And finally, just for fun I limited it again to agents who are interested in sports. That only left me with twelve agents, two of whom work for the same agency, so I decided to just use the 300 some folks interested in memoirs as my working base.
Querytracker also lets me see, according to the data its users provide, which agents are more likely to request pages. This is a limited sampling of course since not all writers use this data base, but it’s a way to sift through the agent pool in a manner other than just throwing darts at their names pasted on a wall.
Another useful bit of information it provides is all known clients of an agent. With the links to amazon.com, I can skim the books each agent has represented and see if any are like mine. I’m not always certain what to do with this information. If a book is similar, does that mean the agent is more likely to take on my book or does it mean her stable is full of memoirs by middle-aged, bipolar, marathoners who love dogs. The process is complicated.
An additional quandary is what to do when several agents who seem to be good matches all work for the same agency. It’s bad form to query more than one agent at the same place. The other day I found five agents who all like pets and sports and who represent memoirs and are open to queries. Five! Do I pick the most senior agent on the theory that he or she is more experienced and therefore “better?” Or do I go with the newbie who has no clients listed and who might be more eager to take a chance on a new author? I’ll probably take the goldilocks method: not too hot, not too cold. I’ll take the middle way and query one of the mid-range agents.
Thankfully this process gives me something to do while I await a response from agent number one. In the future, I’ll submit to more than one agent at a time. But I wanted to give this one agent who seemed like an excellent fit a chance before sending simultaneous submissions. I’ve been told by people who know that I should wait three weeks before sending a “nudge” email to the agent. I’m not a patient person so it’s been interminable.
When I’m not researching agents, surfing Facebook, or playing computer solitaire, I’ve filled the remaining hours researching contests. I submitted to one contest after being terribly confused by seemingly inconsistent deadlines and instructions. But I received a kind email saying they had received my submission and would let me know in August (August!) if I’d won anything.
Time. This process takes time. If you can think of anything else for me to do while I wait, let me know. I already run nearly twenty miles a week. Maybe I should take up crochet or needlepoint. Maybe not.
