I started re-reading Noah Lukeman’s ‘The First Five Pages’ last night – as excellent as I remember. Noah Lukeman is a highly experienced literary agent based in New York, though he’s not taking on any new clients at the moment.
He’s written a number of well-reviewed books on writing, including ‘How to Land (and Keep) a Literary Agent.’
This is available as a free Kindle edition:
Thirty rejections into my latest campaign of querying, I’m not feeling dejected at all, more puzzled by the phraseology that agents use in their form letters. I’m in the process of composing lyrics for a blues song from these phrases…things such as:
* ‘I didn’t feel passionately enough to take the novel further.’
* ‘We have evaluated your query and regrettably, your project is not a right fit for our agency.’
* ‘Please do not be disheartened by this reply and do not assume that we saw no merit in your work.‘
The strangest turn of phrase, which sounds vaguely nautical, was: ‘...your synopsis didn’t seem quite right for us. The comparatives you cited make this sound not in our wheelhouse.‘
This rejection alarmed me a bit, as the agency asked me to say where my style of writing fitted within the crime genre. As I’m writing a series, which features lots of characterisation and internal dialogue, with the landscape appearing as one of the characters, I chose Walter Mosley, James Lee Burke and Dennis Lehane, who all do these things. Seemingly, the literary agent doesn’t think much of these giants of crime writing.
Trying to work out what it is agents are looking for, is an act of divination comparable to examining the entrails of a slaughtered animal to work out the future.
Reading agents’ profiles on their agency employers and stalking them on Twitter and Facebook unearths such highfalutin wishes as:
* ‘I love big high concept stuff, psychological/domestic suspense that truly breaks the mould….’
* ‘She likes high concept hooks, books with an international appeal, quirky first-person narratives, historical novels with women at the forefront, and books which make her cry.’
* ‘Your book will be published for a number of reasons: it is a cracking good read, the writing is excellent, the timing for the subject matter is just right and the market is ready for your book.’
So, how do agents predict what will be commercial? And remember, they’re deciding what will sell in six months, at best…if it’s to be properly edited and formatted, given an effective cover and marketed in places that count.
Obviously, big news stories that are on people’s minds will affect which novels get published. It’s not hard to predict there’ll be stories about a mad president, the war against terrorism, border controls, climate change and the Illuminati.
But, how does an agent decide if your Regency Romance or Sci-Fi/Western mashup will be a big seller? Do they check sales figures for similar recently published books? Or, do they look for plots that mirror contemporary news events?
It would be good to know, for, after all, there’s little point in writing stories that are of limited interest (mainly you!): it’s not selling out to write something that’s popular, that achieves word of mouth chatter and which sells thousands of copies.
(I sound like I’m attempting self-hypnosis!)
What I’m describing is a book that’s achieved discoverability, which is the nut to crack for success. What is it about your story that makes it stand out? Increasingly, publishers are looking towards A.I. to predict which book will excite readers—cutting out the middle man—literary agents. This report contains some startling statistics and its assertions about using metadata to monitor readers’ tastes are believable.
If A.I. does take over, I can see literary agents becoming more like book doulas guiding the birth of a book, advising which is the best option to take for publishing it.
This no-nonsense advice about writing, querying, literary agents and being published, from Delilah S. Dawson on Chuck Wendig’s website Terrible Minds is worth a read.
Do you have any idea how literary agents work?
Have you been well-guided by an agent to improve your manuscript?
Or, did an agency hamper you?
Do you feel like you’re being made to jump through unnecessary hoops, and that it would be simpler to self-publish?
Crowdfunding for all sorts of projects has been around for a long time. Two of the best-known companies are Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
For getting books into print, the main player is Unbound.
One thing I’ve noticed about Unbound, is that the proposals that achieve their target funding are often peculiar and rather esoteric—unlikely to excite thousands of readers.
I’ve considered approaching them a couple of times but figured that my crime genre novels were too conformist and mainstream. Having said that, I’ve been querying recently, using the fifth story in the series, whose plot one agent rejected as being “too outlandish.” Maybe I should put some spin on it, exaggerating the sex scenes, bizarre murders and opium taking to entice sponsors of kinky books.
As with any commercial enterprise, there are some dodgy dealers around, claiming to be what they’re really not. I came across this troubling report about Publishizer, who boast they’re the first Crowdfunding Literary Agency.
As the old adage goes: ‘If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.’
I’ve completed a third campaign of querying agents and I sort of got into it, in a masochistic way.
Initially, I fired off a salvo of 13 submissions, including a couple to newly promoted agents who are looking to add to their roster of clients. To my great surprise, one answered within 48 hours, which is the second fastest response I’ve had from 650 queries made in the last three years! It’s also only the fifth personalised reply I’ve received, the rest being form letters or nothing at all.
Her reply was polite, though contained a strange choice of words:
I’m afraid this isn’t for me. The writing didn’t quite pull me in and the plot seems a little too outlandish, for my tastes.
I’m unsure what she means by “a little too outlandish”—would slightly outlandish work? Or should I go for the opposite of outlandish, which is conventional? And, what’s a conventional crime plot anyway? Do readers want something predictable? Strangely enough, although the book I’m querying The Dead Need Nobody contains some strange incidents, they’re mostly based on real-life crimes that have occurred in Cornwall in the last five years. I worried that I was being too humdrum, not too weird!
I almost didn’t query this particular agent, as of her seven clients, only one has written a crime novel, but she said she was looking for “crime or thrillers driven by a compelling lead“, so I thought I’d offer her my mesmeric Cornish Detective.
This rejection had me wondering if there was some form of coded language used by literary agents, so did an online search, finding this amusing article, which ranks replies from agents on a scale of 0-10.
Digital publishers look to be more open-minded and flexible in their approach than conventional agents and publishers, who come across as hidebound. Ebook publishers are more hit and run in their marketing, whereas approaching a conventional operation somehow makes me feel like I’m a raw recruit trying to join an army who’ll slowly manoeuvre their ranks into a campaign to capture readers. I used to be dubious about digital publishing—why give away 50% of your royalties when you can self-publish and keep most of it? But, I’m coming around to their maverick ways.
Whatever option I choose, including self-publishing, I remain undaunted.
Have you ever received any peculiarly worded rejection letters?
While researching ways of finessing my query letters and synopsis writing, I found several useful videos.
Harry Bingham is an experienced crime novelist who founded a writers’ help group after realising how many authors had problems finding representation for their first novel. Originally called The Writers’ Workshop it was recently renamed Jericho Writers.
The videos are about nine minutes long, and he gives some useful advice.
How to write a query letter
How to write a great novel synopsis
Jericho Writers offer a free query letter & synopsis builder
Some of us are currently in the wearisome process of querying literary agents and publishers with open submission windows.
I recently emailed queries to 88 agencies, and have my eye of a few others who’ve been closed for submissions to clear their slush pile. I only approached British agents in this tranche of submissions, but when I chased after 160 agents in 2015, I included 20 in the U.S.A. They were all agencies who already handled well-established and newly published British authors, and who said they welcomed approaches from foreign writers.
Their response rate was better (more polite!) than British agencies—quicker too, with 18 of them rejecting my query within two months. The most rapid rejection came within 10 minutes, from an agent in New York who must be insomniac as it was 3:00 a.m. there. It made me think that I’d lobbed a dead rat over a neighbour’s hedge, and he’d immediately flung it back my way!
Do any of you submit across The Pond?
One of the good guys of publishing, Noah Lukeman, whose The First Five Pages is indispensable advice for a writer has given away three of his books as a PDF.
They are: How to Land (and Keep) a Literary Agent, How to Write a Great Query Letter and Ask a Literary Agent.
Assuming that you’re chasing a publishing deal, having netted a slippery literary agent, which book company do you favour?
Publishing is dominated by the Big 5: Hachette, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group/Macmillan, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster. These companies publish 60% of English language books. Each is part of a parent company, a conglomerate with other interests. For example, Penguin Random House is 75% owned by Bertelsmann, a German multinational corporation that offers not only books but also television, radio, music, magazines and business services.Such reach looks appealing to an author trying to place their book, for it might lead to a television series or film adaptation.
But what if your title falls through the cracks, not getting the attention and promotion it deserves from one of their many staff? If your book performs poorly, compared to other authors, it’ll be shuffled aside. I’ve looked at Big 5 websites, feeling lost in the maze of books they handle, and the army of authors whose profiles appear with headshots, as I attempt to work out who at the company actually represents their interests.
I’d rather sign with a small publisher, who offered one-on-one support. As a tiny cog in a massive corporation, I’d be dispensable, but as one of a roster of 100 authors at an indie publisher personal relationships would flourish.
It’s worth remembering, that in recent years, independent publishers have done well in gaining their clients publicity by being shortlisted and longlisted for literary prizes. One of the problems for a small publisher is the entry fee charged by the prestigious Booker Prize, the Bailey’s prize for women’s fiction and the Costa books of the year, which edges them out.
This tactic hasn’t stopped small presses winning awards, and there are also awards aimed solely at books published by indies.
It’s noteworthy, that smaller book companies are more prepared to take a risk on unusual projects and ‘difficult’ authors. The same thing can be said of small, recently-founded literary agencies. I’ve made 650 queries since 2104, receiving personalised replies from just four agencies, saying why they were rejecting my submission—all of them were small agencies.
I recently ran a third campaign of return of querying literary agents and have started to self-promote by blogging and posting on social media, but I’ve been keeping an eye on which publishers I like…even allowing myself a few flights of fancy about how they’d produce a printed version of my Cornish Detective series.
On my wish list are these four independent publishers:
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2012 with Alison Moore’s The Lighthouse and long-listed in 2016 for Wyl Menmuir’s The Many.
Beastings by Benjamin Myers won the £10,000 Portico Literature Prize 2015 and was also shortlisted for The Jerwood Fiction Prize 2015. He went on to win the £25k Walter Scott prize 2018 with his novel The Gallows Pole.
Strong in publishing crime novels, from hard-bitten detectives to mild-mannered vicars. Awards won include the (Man) Booker Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Orange (now Bailey’s) Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize and the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger.
Longlisted, shortlisted, and the winners of over twenty of the world’s most prestigious literary awards, including the Women’s Prize for Fiction, The Wellcome Book Prize, The Goldsmiths Prize, The Desmond Elliott Prize, The Jan Michalski Prize, The Folio Prize, The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize.
Do you have any preferences for who publishes your book?