STATUS: Plowing through stuff.
What’s playing on the iPod right now? O HOLY NIGHT by Paul Potts
Hey readers, sorry for the blog silence yesterday. I was literally at the office from 9 in the morning until 10:30 at night. I just couldn’t muster the extra energy to squeeze in a blog entry. I, as well as many other agents, are working crazy hours to wrap things up by year’s end. Our agency always closes around the 18th, 19th, or 20th (depending on which date is that Friday) and we are closed until the new year.
No queries, no reading, no religiously checking emails, no nothing.
I do plan to blog all next week. Monday through Thursday, I’ll continue Q&A. I still have a ton of Qs from the last comment round but if I see some good ones in the comments over the next couple of days, I may add some. Friday will be our year-end stats and let me tell you, they are pretty sweet.
But today I’m doing Friday Fun with a shameless plug that has nothing to do with publishing but is just too cool not to share. Besides, it is peripherally connected to the agency because it’s about Sara Megibow, her husband Mark, and his band FACE.
FACE is premiering on TV this Monday, December 14 (8 pm EST) on NBC’s new show The Sing-Off. They will also be on Tuesday, December 15 and Wednesday, December 16.
Squee! They did a lot of filming in Colorado for the back story (you won’t see yours truly but Sara is definitely featured).
The show is set up kind of like American Idol. Monday and Tuesday night will be pre-judged elimination rounds but on Wednesday, it’s up to the viewing public to decide the winner.
FACE really rocks so I hope you agree and will tune in and vote for them.
My question is, since you and Sara both have the same email address to send queries to, should I address my query to both of you? Or just pick one? (both of you rep what I write, YA)
Hopefully this question makes it in, because I’ve been wondering this a long time!
Oh, as soon as I saw the commercial for the show I set up the PVR so I wouldn’t miss it. I think it’s going to be a mega-hit show.
Good luck to FACE!
That’s so exciting! We’ll have to watch and vote :D.
With a nice long Christmas break, what are you and Sara going to do with yourselves?
Shameless plug indeed. Ok, fine we’ll forgive you. Q: Is Face in any way shape or form related to Facebook? j/k
GL with the wrapping things up before closing for holiday hours. I have no such days off, so I’ll be plugging away at my doctor’s office through the coming weeks (‘cept for Christmas of course)
So exciting! What a year Sara has had. And I can’t wait to see what kind of year you have had as well. Looking forward to Friday’s stats…
And a question:
What to do about those dreaded “Didn’t love it enough” rejections? Should the writer response be persistance, querying with the belief that someone will love it enough. Or after 3 or 4 such responses, should the writer be looking at revising, albeit in the absence of any guidance from said rejections? I would be so grateful for any words of wisdom from you!
Paul Potts is fabulous.
Have a great weekend.
My question is: can we send our queries to you before the 18th or should we wait until the New Year? Since you guys are in a crunch, I don’t know if that’ll affect how you read the queries…like if you’re rushing to get everything done, would you be a bit more impatient while reading a query sent to you in the next few days? Just wanna know…
Very cool, congrats to them! Just found your blog and wanted to stop by and give big internet wave! Hi!
I am very much looking forward to THE SING-OFF, and now I have another band to cheer for! One of the other groups, Noteworthy, is affiliated with my alma mater, so that’s exciting. Good luck to both of them.
That sounds fun!
Hi! My question is this: Do you see spies being a popular trend in YA? Also, should we quit on the vampire stuff for awhile and write more classic fantasy? Which do you think would sell better at the moment?
Thanks!!
-Kathleen
It’s so cool when you know someone on TV or in the movies. I’ve had a couple friends play extras in movies…very cool to see them “acting.”
Can you really go all of the Christmas holiday without doing email? My husband runs a seed company. He has about 60 employees and/or dealers. He never takes a day off completely. Good luck to you!
I have a question– I don’t know if it would be worthy of an answer because it’s been answered before in other places but I’m sort of confused.
As a newbie, I queried without really knowing what I was doing. After painful rejections I put the work away and tried to figure out what was wrong with the ms. All of the rejections were form letters without any feedback. I can understand why now.
I have since done MAJOR revisons and cut out anything that doesn’t move the story along. I got the word count down to the appropriate level and tightened up the holes. Can I re-query the agents with the new ms. or does no still mean no. No one said they didn’t like the story, they just rejected me. Or do I just need to find new agents to query with the new revised ms. The work is historical romance coming in at just over 90K.
Thanks Kristin, and by the way I think you totally rock. And no, you were not one of the agents I queried.
If ebooks are the next big IT item, should first time authors target only epublishers or should they also focus on traditional publishers? Or should they say forget it and keep working towards securing an agent 😉 ?
What do you think of sites like Authonomy.com from Harper Collins (where authors can upload chapters of their books in hopes of getting discovered)? Do would-be authors take any risks uploading to a site like this? Do you think their books are any more/less likely to get a traditional publishing contract if sections of their works have been posted on a site like this? I know how you feel about vanity publishers, but I’d like to get an agent’s take on forums/sharing spaces like Authonomy or even Deviant Art and other such websites.
I was wondering if you have ever fallen in love with a manuscript and then never found a home for it?
Completely off-topic:
Happy Agent Appreciation Day, even if you’re not my agent (yet) and representing my stuff (yet).
I still appreciate you as an agent, even if only for the wisdom (no, really) you post on your blog and the way you are a good agent for all your clients. Maybe I’ll be one of them some day.
Yay.
Here’s a virtual fruit basket, because it won’t go rotten over the holidays.
Piedmont Writer, if I were in your situation, I’d change the title of the manuscript, rewrite your query (which you should do anyway if you only got form rejections on the query), and send it out again. It sounds like a great deal of time has elapsed and the work is totally different. However, I’d send first to agents you haven’t queried before, just to be safe.
Kristin,
You spoke of “agent timing” in one rant concerning sometimes, like maybe when Sara had the baby, an editor would be overwhelmed. You spoke of timing with multiple projects. Hypothetically, posting a query might have not been the best time for the author.
How is your “Pretty Sweet” year and this timing going to effect queries coming in to you in the next month or so?
Love the honesty–Love the music…Love the site.
Doc
piedmont–you should not re-query the same project, even after revisions, unless the agent invited you to.