Pub Rants

Category: Conferences & Book Fairs

Every Topic Under The Sun

by Kristin Nelson

Status: New Macbook at home is messing with the font size on blogger. I’ll keep fiddling.

What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? SECRETS by One Republic

I’ve been blogging for four years going on five. Some days, it just feels like I’ve covered every topic there is to talk about in Publishing. Most questions we receive have already been answered once on the blog and can be found in the archives.

Seriously, some days when I’m walking Chutney to work, I’ve gotta dig deep for a blog topic. *grin* But in all my years of agenting, NLA has never given a first pages workshop. Now I’ve done an occasional one at a conference but never through the blog or the agency directly.

Which is why Sara decided to take it on! Remember when I decided to do a Writers Digest Webinar a couple of months ago? We got great feedback and participants said it was valuable.

So given the positive response, Sara decided to give a webinar she has long wanted to entitled START YOUR STORY RIGHT. And the bonus? After the webinar, you get to submit the first 3 pages of your manuscript for a critique to see if your opening pages make the cut.

When we did the query Webinar, we had over 200 participants and we read every query submitted for critique. That took hours.

I think she might be crazy but hey, if you’ve ever wanted feedback on your opening, here’s your chance!

Click here to register for Sara’s Webinar.

2010 Comic Con Pics–Take 2

by Kristin Nelson

And It’s not Comic Con without great costumes and terrific booth displays. Here are a couple more shots to give you a sense of the convention as a whole.

Some examples of the Booth displays!

Steampunk hat shop.

DC Comics booth

Lord of the Rings dolls. Couldn’t resist taking this shot. Wow. As you can imagine, the dolls were not inexpensive.

2010 Comic Con Pics

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: 589 emails in the inbox. Yep, that sums up my day. Thank goodness it’s a holiday in New York.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? GET TOGETHER by YoungBloods

As promised, pictures from comic con. Friday wasn’t even the “busy” day and it was packed.


Marianne Mancusi at entrance of the convention


Mari holds her Night School poster in the Penguin Booth. Four and half years after initial publication of the first book–Boys That Bite–the series is taking off. Last year, Penguin rebranded the covers and rereleased the first three books and then published book 4 in the series. Night School is book 5 in the series. It will release in January 2011.

Got to have the gratuitous agent/author shot in booth!

Orbit Publicist Jack Womack holding up SOULLESS paraphernalia at Orbit booth.

Nice shot of me with SOULLESS poster in background.

Close-up on the Poster.

Webinar Debrief

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Even though it’s Friday, I’ll be working late. I’m headed to New York on Sunday. Heads up that blogging might be spotty.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? STUTTER by Maroon 5

As you blog readers know, I did my very first webinar on Wednesday for Writers Digest. I thought it might be interesting to debrief it. If you participated in the seminar, I would love feedback so feel free to leave some in the comments section (and also feel free to leave the comments anonymously).

So here’s my debrief of it:

Thumbs up:
1. It’s a great way to reach a variety of writers without having to travel (and vice versa for them).

2. It was fun. I thought the webinar format was professional. There was a tech person to help me for the entire 90 minutes and even before the session began. We even did a trial run on the Tuesday before to make sure I understood how the control panel worked and how to do the Powerpoint presentation so attendees could see it.

3. From having given this seminar live, I had a good idea of what questions get asked and when so I tried to interject them during the presentation so Qs were answered as I went.

4. The question chat box was very cool. I left about 20 minutes at the end of the session to start going through them and answering them. Any I didn’t get to were given to me after the fact. I’ll answer, shoot back to the webinar tech person and she’ll distribute them out to the asking party. Very professionally done.

Thumbs neutral:
1. Nothing compares to audience interaction and there wasn’t really a good way to allow that. Usually I can gauge if the audience is “with me” for what I’m trying to explain but there is no clear way to do that in the webinar.

2. Since we were working on the pitch paragraphs for SF&F novels, it would have been fun to get one or two volunteers to submit their revised pitch so I could talk about them right then and there. If I do something like this again, I think I’ll ask how we might be able to do that.

3. And I can’t believe I’m saying this but 90 minutes felt too short. I wish I had given myself more time to answer questions. But there was a lot of info to cram into 1 hour.

Thumbs down:
I’m not sure I have any but maybe some of the attendees do. If so, feel free to share.

For my part, I do want to ask this question. This is the first time I’ve given a workshop where participants paid to attend. Now of course I’ve given workshops at conferences where attendees paid to attend the conference but they didn’t pay a separate amount to attend my particular workshop.

What do you folks think about that? Should agents give workshops like that?

TGIF!

More Maroon 5 music on iLike

Kristin Goes Webinar

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: It’s really time to go home now…

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM? by Joe Jackson

Should be interesting.

Sometimes I wonder how I get roped into these things! Chuck Sambuchino from Writers Digest has been bugging me for a while to come and teach a webinar for them.

I haven’t really been tempted until now. What changes is that I feel an overwhelming need to help out writers in the SF&F field. I know I’ve mentioned this before on my blog but the SF&F community has wonderful Cons that cater to fans more than to the business side of publishing. In consequence, often the writers in the SF&F realm are a little at loose ends on how to do things like write good query letter pitch blurbs for their SF&F novels. Seriously, the queries we get for this genre tend to be the weakest we see.

This is a problem we NEVER have in the romance field as RWA probably goes the other extreme in terms of educating writers!

Next month is MileCon here in Denver and sure enough, we proposed some business-y stuff and not much came of it.

So then Chuck touched base and I thought, here’s an opportunity…. Taught by yours truly.

And folks, unlike my blog, this webinar is not free—as it’s through Writers Digest but if you are interested, here are the deets. Click here for more info and to sign up.

How to Write and Sell Fantasy and Science Fiction Novels

This is an intensive workshop on the “how-to” business side of getting your science fiction and fantasy (SF&F) writing published, whether for teens or adults.

Description
We here at Nelson Literary Agency are actively looking to expand our roster of science fiction & fantasy (young adult and adult fiction) authors but frankly, the queries we receive in this genre could use some help. Our agency sees a ton of SF&F queries, for both YA and adult novels, and 90% of them sound completely generic. We can teach you how to make your novel stand out.

Each registration comes with access to the archived version of the program and the materials for 1 year.

About the Critique & How it works
After the session, all registrants can submit their revised pitch paragraph (no more than 12 sentences) for a quick critique by Kristin Nelson. Who knows, you might even get a request for sample pages out of it.

What you’ll learn:

• How to compose your query: The top 10 reasons why most SF&F query letters fail
• How NOT to start your story: The top 10 things that shouldn’t open an SF&F novel
• What agents and editors want: What agents and editors look for in terms of pitch, writing, and book premise
• How to pitch: How to nail the story’s hook, and nail the elements of your world-building in the short pitch paragraph

Who should attend?

• SF&F fans who are interested in writing a novel.
• SF&F Writers who want to improve their pitches and hooks
• SF&F Writers who are actively querying agents and publishers with their science fiction or fantasy novel.

White Noise

by Kristin Nelson

(Just a note, this post is from our archives. Some references and links may be from past years.)

STATUS: Last week was just tough. Battling being sick so just didn’t know when I’d be in the office or not. So not pleasant….

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE by Mat Kearney

When I was at the Rocky Mountain Writers Conference, I gave a couple of workshops. In my classes, I always give the daunting statistics on how many queries we get, how many sample pages we read, and how many authors we actually take on from what we read.

Yep, the icky stuff.

Then I tell them to cover their ears and say, “la, la, la I’m not listening” because what it boils down to is that these stats should be white noise to you aspiring writers. You can hear it, but it’s in the background. Know the stats so you have a keen understanding of the reality behind the business of publishing but then don’t let it stop you. .

If you love writing, if you are passionate about it as your dream, then you are going to write no matter what. Publication is one possible end result but whether that happens are not should not be the only determiner of why you write. You write because you have to. It’s like breathing. Absolutely necessary.

Besides, you never know when toughness and persistence will finally pay off so don’t lose sight of that!

Photo by KoolShooters from Pexels

Public Knowledge Now

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Mondays. I wish we could have Tuesdays without the Mondays.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? PLEASE COME TO BOSTON BY Dave Loggins

For those of you who might not have seen the news, Romance Writers Of America (RWA) has declared that Dorchester cannot attend the 2010 RWA conference in Orlando next week because of past due contractual and financial obligations.

I won’t comment further except to say that I’m glad this is now “public” knowledge and that RWA has taken a stand on it.

Book Expo 2010

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Ready to shut it down for the night.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? YOU AIN’T THINKING (ABOUT ME) by Sonia Dada

You guys can’t possibly have missed that Book Expo is next week in New York. Yes, I’ll be heading there on Sunday. Y’all know what this means. Spotty blogging unless they’ve got good free wireless from the fair floor.

I’ll have my netbook handy just in case so I can blog at a moment’s notice.

So you tell me, what do you want your intrepid literary agent blogger to report from the floor?

I’ll try and accommodate.

Update Potpourri

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Today I worked on finishing a contract (pre-new boilerplates) which did conclude. I really tackled emails in my inbox as well. Now I just have to tackle the slew of royalty statements we get in April.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? GREETINGS TO THE NEW BRUNETTE by Billy Brag

Today is a little potpourri of things.

1. Penguin Australia issued a more formal apology for Cookbook misprint. Sounds like a PR person got a hold of the situation. Grin.

2. Foreign rights co-agent did not make it to London (as you probably have already guessed). On the upside, perhaps more folks will come to BEA at the end of May. As you can imagine, reports from the LBF floor have been quiet. Great for the folks who did make it there though. Will the lack of a robust LBF deter foreign sales? Well, nothing beats conveying enthusiasm for a title in person so that’s the downside for sure. On the whole, I don’t think so. It will be hard to have the “big book of the fair” but I imagine most sales will get done via email and phone.

I don’t envy their journey home…

3. Business has resumed in Poland. We’ve been careful about waiting but today we got emails from folks in that territory so we felt comfortable resuming communication, negotiations, etc.

4. In watching Deal Lunch for the last couple of months, I’m starting to see quite a few more sales listed than I have in the past months. This is a good sign as I take it to mean that editors are starting to get back to buying.

International Events Impact Foreign Rights Sales

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: TGIF although I’m working this weekend at the Missouri Writers Guild Conference in St. Louis. If you live in town, maybe I’ll see you there.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? CHERRY BOMB by John Mellencamp

Here in the United States, we are often insulated from world news but events of the past two weeks have had a huge impact on publishing in the international arena. Even as US agents, we have to be aware and sensitive to all that is going on abroad.

Case in point, Post-Bologna, we were negotiating some new foreign rights deals when the huge tragedy in Poland hit the newswires. Immediately, we put everything on hold in that territory (and there was a lot going on!). The whole country is in mourning. Now is not the time.

And then this past Wednesday, a Volcano erupts in Iceland. Probably just a blip on your radar until one realizes that most transatlantic flights crossover Iceland to get to Europe and the London Book Fair is supposed to start next week. LBF is not as big as Frankfurt for translation deals but it’s big enough. According to the Fair officials, they plan to stay on schedule despite the near impossibility it will be for people to actually reach London in time for the fair.

Of all the things that could disrupt travel to an international event, I can’t imagine any agent had “volcanic ash” on the list for travel interruptions. All I can say is that as much as I love being in London, I’m glad I had no plans to be at the fair this year as I was just in Bologna. This is not true of our foreign rights co-agent who I know was en route. I’m trying to find out if she made it there or not.

I really want next week to be a quiet one in terms of news items…