Some wise words from Linda Epstein, a literary agent at the Jennifer de Chiara agency:
Literary Agents: 10 important things to know
Her Blabbermouth blog is informative, and she welcomes questions…..
Here’s an interview with her:
Literary Agent Interview: Linda Epstein of Jennifer DeChiara Literary
I’ve just finished re-reading Noah Lukeman’s ‘The First Five Pages’ – excellent, and I recommend it to you.
The book has an epigraph, a poem by Louis Zukofsky, from his major work called ‘A’. As writers querying literary agents and publishers, we should be so lucky to receive such a letter….
Most honorable Sir,
We perused your MS
with boundless delight. And
we hurry to swear by our ancestors
we have never read any other
that equals its mastery.
Were we to publish your work,
we could never presume again on
our public and name
to print books of a standard
not up to yours.
For we cannot imagine
that the next ten thousand years
will offer its ectype.
We must therefore refuse
your work that shines as it were in the sky
and beg you a thousand times
to pardon our fault
which impairs but our own offices.
– Publishers
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
Over many years of reading advice about editing and making submissions, I’ve come across mysterious references to the Page 117 Rule.
We’re told to have a strong opening to our story, one that hooks the reader making them want to find out what happens next. When querying, we’re often instructed to send the first three chapters or first 10,000 words. Noah Lukeman wrote The First Five Pages explaining how to stay out of the rejection pile.
One of the dangers of writers obsessing about the first few pages is that they polish them too much, neglecting the rest of the manuscript which slumps into tedious dross in Chapter 4.
There were a couple of posts that mentioned Page 117 in my Quora feed this morning.
Personally speaking, I’ve never understood the importance placed on a book’s beginning. I understand that the same part of a manuscript needs to be chosen as an industry standard for assessing writing, but I’ve never chosen to read a book because of a killer opening. Nor have I rejected a novel if it starts slowly, giving it at least until Page 50 to decide if I want to read on. The only time I’ll dip into the middle of a story while standing in the library, is if I’m trying to recall if I’ve read it before, especially when it’s part of a series. It’s Amazon that has driven up the importance of the opening, with their Look Inside feature.
All the same, the Page 117 Rule might have some worth. I tried it on my five Cornish Detective novels—curious to see if the story had picked up the pace by this point—also looking for any similarities in mood. I found that my Page 117s all described how the investigations were progressing, with three of the stories featuring my protagonist detective interviewing the murder suspect.
This was entirely unplanned and I’m not sure what it means about how unknowingly I pace a plot.
What do you think of the Page 117 Rule?
How do you choose a book to read?
I tend to go by reviews in newspapers and online, and if I’ve read the author before. Cover blurb telling me about the story has a minor effect.
How does your Page 117 look?
I completed my fifth Cornish Detective novel at the end of 2018. Overall, I’m happy with the progress of my series, and though I queried 88 agents in February, I think it’s more likely that I’ll return to self-publishing for the launch of the first story this summer.
I had my 32nd rejection email this morning. What rather unsettles me about these, is that they often come with a signature of someone I didn’t submit to. I spend ages researching who is the best agent at an agency to query, as we’re advised to do by publishing industry experts—apparently, 85% of queries are immediately rejected as they are sent to the wrong agent. To do that, and then hear back from someone whose name doesn’t even appear on their website, makes me think that some work-experience flunky has been ordered to chuck out the last 1,000 submissions with a form letter.
It doesn’t put me off—just makes me feel even more jaundiced about the so-called expertise of literary agents. It’s hard not to get cynical when I look at the marketing side of selling books. Thanks to the huge success of three novels with the word ‘girl’ in the title—Gone Girl, Girl On A Train and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo—there’s been a whole slew of crime novels that have ‘girl’ on the cover. Perhaps I should alter one of mine to ‘Girly Girl Has Girl On Girl Action at the Gorilla Grill’, (I’m going for the animal lover and foodie fans too!)
Never mind. I keep reminding myself of novelist and screenwriter William Goldman‘s observation, that:
“Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
I’ll just keep on plugging away while treating rejections from agents like the worms of the nursery rhyme.
Nobody Likes Me (Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms)
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me,
Guess I’ll go eat worms.
Long, thin, slimy ones; Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms.
Down goes the first one, down goes the second one,
Oh, how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one, up comes the second one,
Oh, how they wiggle and squirm.
I’ll cut their heads off
suck their guts out
and throw their skins away
Surprising how us girls can eat
worms three times a day
That’s how we get our wiggles.
Talking of verse, it’s even harder to place poetry with a publisher. It’s worth remembering Don Marquis‘ advice, whatever genre you’re querying:
“If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.”
Marquis made a number of pertinent observations about the process of writing and publishing, including this pithy favourite—which though it’s about poetry applies very well to what happens when you query literary agents with your prose!
How do you cope with rejection?
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?
