Pub Rants

Category: Publishing Industry General

Do Agents Buy Books For The Holidays?

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: The agency is only open for another week and two days. I’m a little intimidated on what needs to be done between now and then!

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? HOUSE FULL OF LOVE by Michael McDonal

If an agent buys books as gifts for the holidays, do they only buy their client authors?

Good heavens no–although I’ve certainly bought my share of NLA books to give as gifts. But it would look a bit self-serving if that’s all I did!

Not to mention, I often share extra ARCs with family and close friends so a good majority of them have read the NLA book long before it’s available to the public. It’s one of the things my nieces have LOVED about my being their aunt. *grin* LEGEND by Marie Lu was quite popular with them last March. They laughed when I told them it was releasing this week. For them, it’s been out forever.

So this Saturday I popped down to The Tattered Cover to browse and buy a few more items to wrap and put under the tree. I’m also a TC member and I had to buy my books asap to get the “share the love with members” 20% discount.

What caught my attention?

The Sisters by Nancy Jensen

I have not read this one yet but I’m hearing enough great things to take a risk. I’m rather enamored of the cover as well. I wish one of my client books had that cover!



Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend by Susan Orlean

I received a complimentary copy from the editor. At first, I was skeptical. I didn’t know much about Rin Tin Tin and didn’t feel overly like I needed to but I am a dog person. I cracked it open and I got sucked in. It’s a really cool book about more than just the dog actor but about Hollywood history etc. My husband got sucked in to.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

I just read an article about the making of the cover, which is visually interesting and unique. Publishers are floating around ideas about making book covers a work of art in and of themselves as added value for the physical book.



Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from The Animal Kingdom by Jennifer Holland

A girlfriend was with me in the store and pointed this book out to me. I took one look and had to buy it immediately.

And I imagine my TC shopping isn’t quite finished. Very likely I’ll be there again this weekend.

Verdict Out On Whether A Good Idea Or Not

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: For the last three days running, I’ve made it a goal to power through all the emails while I was at Frankfurt. I started out with 170. Made good headway but now for three days running, I’ve started with 130 emails and I still have 130 emails. Can’t shake the feeling of running in place….

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? THIS GUY’S IN LOVE WITH YOU by Herb Alpert

As I was walking the Frankfurt Fair floor, perusing the booths on display, I stumbled upon a booth for a company called Booktrack. In short, they do sound tracks for electronic books.

Not sure what I think about that, so I figured I’d give it a listen.

The sample work on the floor was the short work IN THE SOUTH by Salman Rushdie. I popped on the earphones and gave it a listen as I read. There was ambient noise and sounds that connected with the text on the page.

Kind of reminded me of Spa on XM radio.

Did I think it enhanced the reading experience? The jury is still out on that for me.

BEA Pics And Sara’s Live Webinar

by Kristin Nelson

Status: Dashing out to the subway to be somewhere in 20 minutes


What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? Nothing At The Moment


Here is a BEA Pic to tie you over until I can properly write up some entries. Sarah Rees Brennan and Marie Lu at the Young Adult Buzz Panel.

Link


Sara is also giving an amazing Webinar today called HOW TO HOOK AN AGENT WITH YOUR QUERY LETTER. It’s starts at 1 pm Eastern.


I know, I know. Not much advance notice but you can still sign up and participate even if you can’t be there during the scheduled time frame. Writers Digest records it and participants will have access to it at any time at a later date for up to one year. You can still even ask questions that will be responded. No need to miss out if you have a life or work!


Because It’s May

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: It’s going to be in the 80s for the weekend! I’m so ready for that kind of weather.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? ROCKET MAN by Elton John

And Springtime can bring out the best in all of us.

Every year I participate in Brenda Novak’s On-line Auction for Diabetes Research. This is a cause close to my heart. My best friend, brother-in-law, and my six-year old nephew all have juvenile diabetes. This is personal for me.

So, I’m always delighted to support Brenda in this charity event, which happens every May. And although I can’t really compete with Celine (did you see that auction item!!!!), I am offering something new this year for a very lucky highest bidder.

Not only am I auctioning a 30-page read with a 5-day turnaround, the auction winner also gets a 30-minute follow-up phone convo with moi.

No really, this is exciting….

And if the winner skypes, we can even do the follow up call via video.

I’ll even put on lipstick and sit Chutney on my lap to say hello as well.

Really, does it get any better than that? Don’t answer that.

But I’m not the only one offering cool items. Sara is also doing a read and a follow-up call.

Jamie Ford is going to buy you lunch and personally show you around Seattle’s China Town where his novel Hotel On The Corner Of Bitter And Sweet is set.

NLA author and former ICM agent Maggie Marr (who writes for TV by the way) is offering a screen play evaluation. She knows her stuff and here’s your chance if you are a screenwriter.

Anita, my assistant, will critique your query letter. Sherry Thomas is also jumping in on the query game. She helped Courtney Milan and look where that got Courtney.

Miranda Kenneally and Simone Elkeles are critiquing YA manuscripts. Laurence who is currently on submission and runs a terrific writer critique group here in Denver is also jumping in on the critique action as is Janice Hardy of the wonderful Healing Wars Trilogy. These folks are top-notch on giving feedback. You don’t want to miss out.

And there are lots of autographed author copies to boot.

And if you aren’t interested in me, lots of agents have donated good stuff. Jessica Faust will be your Agent for a Day (go Jessica!) and Jim McCarthy will evaluate a proposal (and I can vouch that he’s a smart dude). Fellow Denverite Kate Testerman is in the game as well as my nemesis (which I say laughingly as we have similar tastes and are always vying for the same projects) Ginger Clark. And you don’t want to pass on getting a read from Barbara Poelle!

In Romance, I adore Kevan Lyon, Natasha Kern, Deidre Knight, Elaine Spencer, and Elaine English so a couple of other good agents to keep in mind.

What are you waiting for?

Ack! I did not mean to leave out Tiffany Riesz who is offering a personalized love scene. Rock on!

Friday Funnies

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Time to dive into the day.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? WHATAYA WANT FROM ME by Adam Lambert

I’m so unhip, I’m just now discovering the totally hip video book reviewer Ron Charles for the Washington Post. Absolutely hilarious!

Enjoy! And be sure to check out his other video reviews.

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5000+ Queries In One Day

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Things are getting back to normal.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? WHAT A LITTLE MOONLIGHT CAN DO by Billie Holiday

A week and one day. Felt like an eternity! In this short span of time, we completely upgraded our entire office computer system with a brand spankin’ new server.

With any major overhaul, there are always a few kinks.

For example: with the migration, something went wonky with our query email. For some reason, the server wasn’t recognizing when emails had been downloaded into the program. One morning, Anita opened the query program to find 5000+ queries in the inbox. That was a shock. The server had downloaded each query 5 to 10 times and then kept repeating it.

I’m happy to report that the problem is finally solved. I don’t think we lost any queries in the process but if you don’t hear from us in the next 2 to 3 weeks, you might want to resend. But you only need to send it once… I don’t think Anita ever wants to open that program and find an eye-popping 5000 queries in the inbox again.

Every day we keep finding a few more things that need to be tweaked. Like this morning. I found one whole folder to be missing. Poof. Just gone. Have no idea where or how. Luckily, we back everything up to the cloud so it was a matter of 15 minutes for me to locate it and repopulate it on the server. But it makes me wonder what other little discoveries are going to occur.

Our tech person was even here this afternoon for a few hours. And I do think we’ll see him a few more times before the week is out.

And if this stress of a computer conversion wasn’t enough, our new employee started last week.

Call me a glutton for punishment.

The Usual Suspects

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I’m having weather shock. It snowed lightly this morning in Denver. Such fond memories of the beach…

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? LEAVING LAS VEGAS by Sheryl Crow

On Friday, I was reading through the daily emails from Deal Lunch to see what sold this past week. And sure enough, I saw the deal for a YA project that I just loved, offered rep, but the author went with another agent. Project went at auction too! I could have called that. *grin*

Obviously with the posting of the deal, I got to find out who the author had chosen. And drat if it wasn’t a usual suspect. There are certain names that just keep reoccurring if the author doesn’t choose me. If I love a project and offer rep, I can almost always name the other 6 possible YA agents I’m probably up against. We just have the same tastes. And they are all great agents so talk about stiff competition. But since they are all so terrific, I don’t lose sleep over it. If you are going to lose out, lose out to the best. At least I saw the project.

I bet this happens to editors too. They don’t win an auction and they find out who else participated and I bet they run into the same reoccurring names all the time as well.

But darn those usual suspects…

Friday Funnies

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Sun popped out. Yay. I was worried it was going to rain.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? QUANDO, QUANDO, QUANDO by Michael Buble

This article totally cracked me up. Stop the New York Times Presses. Huge news flash.

New York City agent moves from Manhattan to….

Brooklyn..

And can still do his job as a literary agent!

I’m still chortling.

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.