Pub Rants

STATUS: Not so lovely. Email is currently down. How did agents do this job before the internet, email, and FedEx? I’m lost in the dark. Without email, I’m nothing. I’m, I’m, I’m being way melodramatic. Still, frustrating. Blogspot is working though.

What song is playing on the iPod right now? THRILLER by Michael Jackson (appropriate ain’t it?)

The editor name dropping actually doesn’t bother me that much—but it all depends on how the writer handles it in the query letter.

Often writers will include the information that their manuscript has been requested by Ms. Hot Shot Editor at Hot Shot Publishing House. (This tends to happen more in the romance and the SF & F genres because these editors will often still consider unsolicited material and will look at queries. They also attend more conferences etc. because good material is hard to find and not a ton of agents rep it.)

Okay. You’ve name dropped the editor’s name.

My question is this: Why are you telling me this information? There are actually two intentions you could have.

Intention 1: You’re feeling pretty proud of the fact that you got a full manuscript request from an editor and you are hoping it will be impressive if you start your query letter with that information.

First, I’m thrilled for you that this editor requested your full. I’m positive it feels like a big milestone on the road to publishing. You should be proud. It’s a great first step.

But here’s my view. I know Ms. Hot Editor personally. I know she requests a lot of fulls when she attends conferences and such. She’s actively building her list. She may or may not actually be the person to read it. Her assistant or an outside reader might do the first read. She takes over a year to respond to these requests. She… and the list could go on.

If the intention is to impress, I’m not that impressed.

Intention 2: You are simply providing me with all the information about the current status of your manuscript.

I actually like that.

Now, I can always tell the difference between the intention by how this information is presented and where it goes in the query letter.

If Intention 1, it’s always in the beginning and the tone is off.

If Intention 2, the info is always part of the concluding paragraph and stated matter-of-factly (as in “The manuscript is also currently being reviewed by Ms. Hot Shot Editor at Hot Shot Publishing House).

No frills. Just the facts Ma’am.

STATUS: Ah, decided to get grubby on that contract and got some nice results. I think it will wrap up tomorrow. That will make it TGIF!

What song is playing on the iPod right now? THE BOY IN THE BUBBLE by Paul Simon

I am enjoying this name rant spree.

There are so many aspects to name dropping; this could take a couple of days.

This one I call the name dropping faux pas because really, if writers had taken just a minute to access their common sense, they would have realized that this wasn’t a brilliant idea.

I get a mighty chuckle out of writers who, in their query letters, list the names of agents (and in their words, “top-tiered agents”) who have read their partial and then passed with “high” praise.

Excellent. The novel was so good they had to pass. Thank you for sharing that with me.

Uh… I’m not impressed. They passed. They said NO. Obviously, the work wasn’t good enough, or right for the market, or whatever, and now you have just giving me a list of reasons why I shouldn’t even bother asking for the partial.

Why would a writer do that? And yet, I see it all the time.

Yep. Just a little common sense could have detoured that query disaster.

STATUS: Good. I got a lot of small things accomplished. Little detailed stuff that I had stacked into a pile and was making me feel guilty. It makes me feel like I’m clearing stuff out so I can create something new when I tackle and complete the small things.

What song is playing on the iPod right now? CRAZY by Patsy Cline

This little rant has been niggling at me for a while.

Something that just makes me laugh is when a writer name drops in their query, but they use the name of a person I do not know or have no recollection of.

It usually ends up sounding something like this.

“Joe Smith gave me your name and the contact information of your agency and strongly recommended that I contact you. He thought my novel XXXXXX would be perfect for you.”

That’s it. No explanation. No frame of reference such as Joe Smith knows you through XYZ.

Nothing.

As if Joe Smith were one of my clients—whom I would, of course, know. (And just to make note here, I am always delighted to get a recommendation from one of my current clients.)

But I don’t know who Joe is so the fact that he recommends me carries zero weight. Zilch.

In fact, now I think you, as the query letter writer, are a little suspect.

If you’re going to name drop, make sure I know the reference (and it has been made clear in the letter); otherwise, it’s just silly.

STATUS: It’s Tuesday and really hot here in Denver. It hit 99 degrees. This is silly. I live a mile above sea level. A mile. 5280 to be exact. We have mild summers. Mild do you hear me! I feel slightly better now. Had to work on that contract. I reviewed it this morning to decide what was worth getting grubby and fighting for. And there was a little bit of exciting news too but I can’t reveal it quite yet.

What song is playing on the iPod right now? YOU DON’T MESS AROUND WITH JIM by Jim Croce

I’ve got a great rant today.

I just have to remember that I am a nice agent and I only rant politely. I leave the snarkiness to Miss Snark. Ah, the temptation though.

I sent out a NO response for a poorly done query that I reviewed and sure enough, not five minutes later, I got a reply email. In it, the writer said that although she wasn’t any good at writing query letters, the novel was indeed masterful and I should rethink my NO and ask for sample pages.

Uh… No thank you.

In the beginning of my agency, I didn’t receive as many queries as I do currently and I would often give the query writer the benefit of the doubt. If the concept was interesting, despite the unpromising query letter, I would ask for sample pages. Maybe, just maybe, the novel was masterful where the query letter was not.

In almost five years (and thousands upon thousands of query letters), this has never happened. Basically, the sample pages lived up to the expectation given by the query letter—which basically means it didn’t measure up.

If you are a terrific writer, you’ll master the query letter. You’ll do everything in your power to get the feedback you need to make it the best it can be. Why? Because you take your career seriously, and you know that the query letter may be the best (and sometimes only) way to open the door to an agent or an editor.

Now, just to clarify (because there is always somebody who reads this blog and jumps to conclusions), I’m not suggesting that if I sent you a NO that your query was poorly written. It may be a great query but it just wasn’t right for me. We unfortunately can’t take the time (given the volume of what we receive) to tell folks, “yep, good query but not for us” or “OMG what a terribly written query, definitely not right for us.”

We just have the standard response letter.

So as a writer, how will you know if your query letter is any good?

Did you run the query letter by folks at the critique mill who know what makes a good one? (I hear Evil Editor is doing some query dissing and critiquing over at that site.)

Are you getting any requests for partials? If not, well, your query letter isn’t masterful. Or even if you are just getting a tiny number of requests like let’s say 1 or 2 out of every 50 queries sent. Not masterful enough.

And I have never read a bad query letter only to read the sample pages and get blown away by incredible writing.

Never.

Now I have read great query letters, asked for sample pages, and not have the partial measure up to the terrific query. And that is always heartbreaking.

STATUS: It’s just another manic Monday. I have a house taking just forever to respond to our letter regarding changes we would like in the contract. Finally, the email comes and they just want to say NO to half our requests. Good thing we waited three weeks for that. I know they’re busy and all…

What song is playing on the iPod right now? ROXANNE by The Police

Guess what? I’m all caught up in reading all the partials I had to review (Sara will send out the letters tomorrow and any request for fulls have already gone out). Sara has a whole stack she needs to bring in tomorrow so I’ll look and see what date we are up to but the last dates I looked at were for mid-to late-May. When I look in the partial inbox, those sample pages are dated June 1.

And, and this is really icing on the cake, I read three full manuscripts this weekend as well. In a week, I’m not going to know what to do with myself.

And yes, I jest. I have plenty to keep me busy.

But because I’ve been reading samples pages Sara has passed on to me for review, I’ve been noticing some Title trends. Time to share.

I have to say that since my Katie rant, the number of projects with a Katherine derivative for the main heroine’s name has decreased dramatically. Maybe the same will happen with titles. I can always hope.

And the winners are…

1. LITTLE WHITE LIES

Lots of lies running around but the little white ones are the most popular.

2. SECOND CHANCES

This shows up most for women’s fiction or romance titles.

3. BLOOD CURSES (or anything with BLOOD in the title frankly)

Yep, fantasy titles are usually the culprit for this one.

4. THE PHOENIX anything (add your own variation here)

This actually crosses all genres but mostly for SF&F.

STATUS: Closed a deal. Now I want to end every Friday like this!

What song is playing on the iPod right now? I CAN’T GO FOR THAT (NO CAN DO) by Hall & Oats

And I have to confess, I’m not feeling all that inspired to rant today (but very inspired by this recent deal).

It’s my first sale for an author I met (and who pitched me) at a conference—the Pikes Peak conference to be exact.

And speaking of sales, Anna Louise has got her second treatise up on P&Ls and how books make (or don’t) money: part the second: the hardcover to mass market profitable/neutral book.

Now that’s worth some Friday afternoon perusing. I’ll be back in ranting form on Monday.

Out.

STATUS: Having great fun. Started a new deal negotiation this morning. How is that anything but fun?

What song is playing on the iPod right now? STILL CAN’T by The Cranberries

I think I’m in love with Library Diva. She is having an all Ally Carter weekend on her blog. Big smooches LD!

To wrap up yesterday, you folks did a great job analyzing the Cheryl’s covers. No one caught one of the changes but to be honest, I think the cover pictures were too small to see it. In the first cover version of THE WINTER PRINCE, he is holding a cane. In the second, the cane has morphed into a sword.

Yeah, little hard to see.

Today I’m going to rant on behalf of my assistant Sara—and maybe for all assistants at agencies everywhere. I think writers are sometimes dismissive (“oh, it’s just the assistant reading my query” or “oh, it’s just the assistant who screens my sample pages”).

My suggestion? Don’t be. You know why? Because if an assistant is good (and Sara is terrific), you might just be getting read by a future agent.

I figured that maybe, just maybe, writers don’t really know how it works with an assistant, so I’ll share.

First, I hired Sara because I was tired of being way behind. It wasn’t fair to the writers, and I was missing out on good projects because response time was too slow.

Given that, I made a new commitment to respond to queries within one week and respond to sample pages in two weeks (and by the way, we aren’t quite there but really close. I’m actually the wink link in the chain at the moment).

Physically, this would not be possible without help—without training someone to screen incoming queries and sample pages.

It’s that simple.

So, I hired Sara and my first order of business was to teach her to think like me. For her first week, we sat down together, side-by-side and read queries—for two or three hours. Without saying anything, I would let her decide whether she would pop it into the folder for me to review or if she would send our auto NO response.

We did this for two days. On the third morning, I sat with her for maybe 30 minutes but it was obvious to me that she was having zero problems knowing which query I would want to see and which ones could have the NO response.

I mean it folks. Zero mistakes.

Then we tackled the partials inbox. She would take a big stack home to read (20 or 30 partials) and make a comment on whether she would forward it to me to read or whether she felt confident saying NO.

I would then read behind her. If I thought there was a partial I would have liked to have seen but she wouldn’t have forwarded it, we chatted about why etc.

By the fourth big stack of her reading (and my reading behind her), she wasn’t missing.

Zero mistakes.

Because she’s that good.

And wouldn’t you rather have a quick response? Well, without assistants, that simply wouldn’t be possible.

I feel blessed that Sara loves her job. I feel doubly blessed that I don’t have to slog through bad partials or queries. Because of Sara, I get to devote real attention to reading the good stuff.

And more of it!

STATUS: Three issues resolved–finally! This makes it a great day.

What song is playing on the iPod right now? MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA by Indigo Girls

This is actually a fun rant today because this cover issue was literally happening this week as I was writing these past three blog entries.

It doesn’t get any more immediate then that. Not to mention, you get a sneak peek at a gorgeous, gorgeous cover and I’m in the mood to share it.

As most of you may know (or you might not), cover design happens way in advance of when a book will be published. Mainly because the cover image and back cover copy need to make it into the sales catalog so the sales team can share with booksellers so orders can be placed, etc.

So this work, THE WINTER PRINCE, won’t actually be pubbed until spring of 2007 and yet, this week, we were dealing with the cover.

First, I must share all of Cheryl’s covers because huge kudos to New American Library. I have been blown away by every cover they have done for her. Seriously. I don’t think they can get any more gorgeous and then voila, THE WINTER PRINCE cover hits my inbox.

Now, I’m sharing all of Cheryl’s prior covers because I want you to pick up on something that should be quite clear. There is a certain look NAL is striving for in terms of branding Cheryl.

Her first two books were mass market originals and then with THE CODE OF LOVE, Cheryl made the leap to original trade paperback.

Here are the covers. What kind of adjectives leap to mind when looking at them? What do you see in common in terms of a look or feel? Share with me.

Now, here’s a first peek at the cover for her next novel.

Gorgeous. Without a doubt. So what’s up? Why were we having an issue this week with the cover? Well, there was one main reason. Cheryl writes epic historical fiction with a meaty romance embedded in the story.

Given the amount of time spent on research and the attention to historical detail in her stories, it’s important for the work to be pictorially accurate. This image struck us as regency in feel.

THE WINTER PRINCE is set in 1642-1644, right as the civil war is beginning in England (pitting parliament against the crown) and King Charles I will be beheaded to make room for the non-royal usurper Oliver Cromwell.

A regency look is pretty misleading and since we are talking serious epic historical here, we really needed the cover image to match the time period. Luckily, her publisher agreed. Even though the image is taken from a painting, it was adjusted to fit the needed time period (oh the amazing possibilities of digital editing).

Here’s the final cover.

Also, there’s another change in the cover. Did you catch it?

STATUS: Feeling giddy! I’m just realizing that my assistant Sara is so efficient, I’m having trouble keeping up with her! But, because of her wonderfulness, I’m almost caught up. I have some queries to review from last week, a small stack of screened partials that are unfortunately from late April or early May (sorry!) and of course, three or four full manuscripts that I’ve been woefully behind on reading. For those of you waiting, I apologize. A response is just around the corner.

What song is playing on the iPod right now? US AND THEM by Pink Floyd

Let me repeat for good measure that the good majority of authors only have cover consultation and not cover approval. So what’s an author to do?

Well, I push them to be pro-active about the cover in a meaningful way—as soon as right after the sale. If they have ideas, let’s list them. Let’s highlight scenes that might make a good cover image. I even tell my authors to make a visual chart (with jpgs included) of covers they love and list the reasons why. (This works better if you choose covers the publisher has actually published recently.)

For SF & Fantasy, a lot of writers know the artists and their work (Linnea LOVES Dave Seeley’s stuff and was over the moon when she found out he was going to be her cover artist.) If an artist might be a good fit, why not mention it and send the editor the weblink to the artist’s website.

My historical author sent a whole gallery of pictures from the era of her story. The photo album included pictures of all the principal characters in the story, tidbits on what living person today descended from these historical figures, pictures of the main settings etc. All rich detail to inspire the cover artist to really imagine a romantic image of the time. We’ve gotten some gorgeous covers.

And I’ve never had editors say NO to this kind of input. (Remember, they want their authors to be happy with the cover.)

Will it ensure a good cover? No. The publisher can disregard all input.

However, it allows the author to participate in the discussion.

And Publishers do listen. Just this week, an author and I asked for some cover tweaks and the publisher obliged.

STATUS: Today was a day for resolving those outstanding issues of Friday. The FedEx that was supposed to be delivered to me overnight has disappeared into the ether of lost packages. No worries. I hopped on the phone and devised a new solution with the sender. Fingers crossed that this issue will be resolved by Friday.

What song is playing on the iPod right now? GREASED LIGHTNING by John Travolta

To continue what we started last week…

As agents, we might fight for a cover change on behalf of the author and not win. It happens. And, sometimes the publisher is right.

Since Linnea brought it up, I’m going to talk about AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS.

Here’s the cover and back cover copy.

Author Linnea Sinclair returns with another sexy, out-of-this-world adventure, in which the forces of attraction collide—and combust…

Raheiran Special Forces Captain Gillaine Davré has just woken up in some unknown space way station, wondering where the last three hundred years have gone. The last thing she remembers is her ship being attacked. Now it seems that while she was time-traveling, she was ordained a Goddess…

Gillaine’s only hope of survival rests with dangerously seductive Admiral “Mack” Makarian, who suspects her of being a smuggler—or worse. But he can’t begin to imagine the full extent of it. For Gillaine is now Lady Kiasidira, holy icon to countless believers, including Mack—a man who inspires feelings in her that are far from saintly…feelings she knows are mutual. But when their flirtation is interrupted by a treacherous enemy from the past, Gillaine’s secret—and secret desires—could destroy them both….

I have to say that both of us were a little flummoxed by the ABBA Dancing Queen on the cover. The main heroine from the novel, Gilly, never wears red spandex in the story (in fact, it’s an outfit better suited for a mini-villain in the story).

But remember my rant of last week. Cover image does not necessarily accurately reflect an actual scene from the book. Not a valid argument (despite how real it feels for the author).

Bantam, Linnea’s publisher, had decided they wanted to reach out more toward the paranormal/futuristic romance market and go sexier with the cover. Linnea’s first two covers for FINDERS KEEPERS and GABRIAL’S GHOST were decidedly science fiction. Not unsexy just not sexy either. And certainly not remotely geared to romance readers—who we know make up a good portion of her fan base.

We expressed our concerns and to give Bantam their due, they did work with us on Gilly’s outfut but the change ended up being worse than the original so we scrapped it and let the cover go as is (since Bantam was adamant that the sexy outfit had to stay).

And here’s what you need to remember, I might hum ABBA every time I see the cover but Bantam was right. AN ACCIDENTAL GODDESS has outsold Linnea’s two previous books.

Something to be said about sexy red spandex.