Pub Rants

All writers wait for the day they get that big fat advance/royalty check so they can take this job and shove it.

It’s the dream after all. But when is that day exactly? How much money is enough to quit the day job?

Most writers, truly, will not have to worry about answering this question. The good majority of authors out there will never earn enough from fiction writing alone to quit the day job. That’s a basic fact.

But what if?

The big “what if” happened last year for one my authors. Beyond her wildest expectations, she got a “significant deal” advance. A week later, her novel was optioned by Disney. Serious money on the table. Her head was spinning because all the writer dreams were coming true.

First thing out of my mouth when I called to announce the news, “don’t quit your day job.”

Why?

Call me fiscally conservative but I think the answer to the above question is only when your back-end royalties make in a year what you need to live on and to live well. Until that day, I wouldn’t be so reckless as to quit the day job and I caution my authors to do the math as well. (Now if her movie option is actually purchased and the work goes into production… well, then we can revisit the whole “quit the job” notion.)

A big fat advance check will only last so long. What does your day job make in a year? 20k, 40k, 100k? More? Less? Even if the advance is large, it will only last a couple of years (minus agent commission and tax payments). What about health insurance and that yearly cost? Retirement plan?

What if the book never earns out the advance and is a big dud? Ugh. What a nightmare but it’s still a reality that should be contemplated. It’s really hard to get another book deal if the first one doesn’t match expectations. Not impossible. But hard and the money certainly won’t be the same second time around.

That day job is looking better and better!

My author was cautious. She hasn’t quit her day job (although she has been asked by a number of people about when she plans to). In fact, she wrote and mailed the estimated Federal tax check to the IRS practically on the same day she received the money (smart girl—the last thing you want to do is get into tax debt with the IRS—although some very successful authors have horror stories of not being as fiscally wise in their heady younger days).

So, unless your royalties are second income, or you are used to living off peanuts, or don’t care about retirement, I wouldn’t quit your day job.

I’ve been reading a lot of sample pages lately—trying to get caught up and also because I’m actively looking for something new.

Lately I’ve had to avoid eating breakfast or lunch while reviewing sample pages.

Please, I beg you. No more people peeing, defecating, or otherwise involved with a bodily function in the opening chapter.

Gross!

Besides, it’s ruining my morning Danish.

What a silly question. Of course it does. The real question is how do you define “size”?

Is size defined simply by how many books an agency or agent sells in year? Is size defined by the number of agents on board and the size of the support staff? Or is size defined by the number of zeros behind the deals an agent makes?

Which is the size that matters?

This is why researching possible agents and learning more about the industry is so important.

For example, it’s not a question of whether an agency is a boutique agency or a big house like ICM; the real question is how powerful are they?

There are small boutique “agencies” that are very ineffective and a quick look at the sales record (foreign rights included) or lack thereof will make it clear. Then there are “small” agencies that carry very big sticks. Most of my agent friends own their own show and all of them easily sell over 50 books a year and get, in Deal Lunch terms, very nice, good, significant, and major deals. They are powerhouses.

Besides, the only real difference between an ICM and a boutique agency is the location of the staff. ICM is all internal while a boutique agency partners with the players externally.

Same support staff on board—contracts manager, accountant, publishing lawyer for the issues, foreign rights manager, assistants, etc.–only the staff location differs.

Or that’s how it should be for effective boutique agencies. Avoid the ones who don’t have a support staff in place. And if a small agency is interested in you and your work and you don’t know whether they have the needed connections, ask.

So, does this size matter? Doesn’t seem like it but I’m biased because I can be considered a boutique agency. What about the number of books sold in a year?

What would you prefer? An agency who sells a 100 books but all in nice deals (under 50k) or an agent who sells 10 or 20 books a year but does very nice, good, significant, and major deals?

I guess if you can find that agent who does a 100 books a year and all for major deals, grab him or her—if they’ll have you. That many books a year means the client list is pretty full. You want to make sure you have an agent who has time for you. Many authors can tell you horror stories of being lost in the crowd. There is such a thing as an agent who has a client list that’s too large in size and the less successful authors on the list slip through the cracks.

So size does matter. Just make sure you know which definition of “size” matters the most to you.

Rant is late today. Too much wheelin’ and dealin’ going on at the agency to have time to Blog. Now New York is closed for the day so here I am.

And just so folks know, I don’t do weekends.

Back to Hollywood and that fifty-page contract from a major studio. Writers would definitely be in less of a hurry to sign on that dotted line if they’d actually seen some of the clauses that are contained in these contracts. It ain’t pretty. So let me do a little education.

The ugly reality of a movie deal is this. Unless you have an extreme amount of clout (and I mean JK Rowling level—okay that’s extreme but think high level of clout), an author will have very little say in the script or how a movie will be made. The studio can simply take the idea from the book, say it’s “based on the book” and pretty much tell whatever story the studio wants to.

This applies to sequels as well because guess what, if you want a movie deal with a major studio, they will insist on owning your characters in film. Forever. You get to own the characters in print.

The author gets to grin and bear it. Unless you don’t sell the film rights.

Feel like running right out there and signing on the dotted line now? Wait. There’s more.

Most authors will not see a dime beyond the option and the purchase price because most movies, depending on how much they cost to produce, the A-List salaries involved, and all other production expenses, would have to earn out a 100 million or more for an author to see any “contingent net proceeds” as contained in the contract.

Good heavens, you’re thinking. Why would anyone do a movie deal? This is awful.

In a lot of ways you’re right. But you’re also forgetting that having a book made into a film is a minor miracle. Very few movies are made in a year (and fewer book-to-film) and if yours is one of them…

And it’s magical to see your novel on the big screen—especially if it’s done right. And even it if it’s not, a movie will drive print sales like nobody’s business.

So many writers dream of writing full time and with a movie behind a book, that dream is likely to be a reality. If you didn’t hit the New York Times list before, you might now. Let’s say you pass on the movie deal. Your book may not become a hit and if it doesn’t, it’s unlikely a movie will ever be made of it period and that opportunity is lost.

Risks. This is why authors without clout often take the chance.

Now, as an agent, I do everything in my power to give my authors the opportunity to turn down a movie deal by getting one for them in the first place.

But the decision to sign on the dotted line ultimately has to be their own. I never push because it’s a lot to ask.

Robert Crais has not sold the film rights to his Elvis Cole series. I imagine he’s waiting to build enough clout needed to control the destiny of his character on the big screen. Or maybe he’ll never sell them. Maybe he’s smart. But his career is building to a level where those film rights are getting more and more attractive (and hence he has more and more clout in the negotiation).

But what if it didn’t? The truth is that most authors will never achieve that level of clout or that level of a writing career. For some folks, it doesn’t matter and they would never give up ownership of their characters or control of the material for film. They’ll turn down the movie offer no matter where they are in their career. I respect that.

So don’t be in a rush to sell your soul to Hollywood. It’s a high price and you need to know whether you’re willing to pay it.

I often pop my head in over at http://writers.net or http://www.bksp.org and answer questions.

Last week a writer posted that he was just about to send out his query and wanted to know the “good” agents who were aggressive in film rights because his novel “would make an excellent movie.”

I just shook my head.

He’s only in the query stage. Who knows if he’ll get requests for sample pages or requests for his full manuscript—I hope he does but who knows. Then he would need to be offered representation and finally, once represented his book needs to actually sell to a publisher.

And he’s worried about film rights for a book that, for all practical purposes, isn’t even in existence in published form yet.

Obviously he’s never seen one of the fifty page movie option/purchase contracts from any of the big studios. Otherwise he might be not so fired up to sell his soul to the devil—oops, I mean Hollywood (more on that later).

Not to mention, it’s hard enough to cut a book-to-film deal for a published work. An unpublished work is almost an impossibility—almost because anything can happen.

But the truth is this: his concern for film rights is more than just premature; it’s the wrong goal or focus for any writer.

Why? Because Hollywood wants to look at everything but the reality is that they option very little and even fewer titles actually go into production to be seen in a movie theater near you.

As a writer, your focus should be on your writing and the selling of the print rights (including translation rights). All else is such a long shot, it’s a moot point.

So (and can you tell I’ve been leading up to this) starting your query letter with “and this would make an excellent movie,” just doesn’t impress me much.

Every writer believes his/her book would make a wildly successful movie. Hollywood rarely agrees.

About a week or so ago, I was on the phone with an editor. We got talking about the market as we are wont to do.

She said, “The chick lit market is in the toilet.”

Perhaps melodramatic but in a lot of ways I have to agree.

Red Dress Ink is significantly cutting back on the number of titles they plan to publish in a year. Dorchester’s chick lit line (Making It) is only going to publish one book this spring and it happens to be from one of my authors (COUPON GIRL by Becky Motew). I chatted with another editor at Simon & Schuster and she said it pretty much had to be extraordinary for them to take on something new.

I’ve been shopping a chick lit work now for several months—something that two years ago probably would have sold in a couple of weeks.

So I have to agree. Maybe the market is in the toilet. A year ago, I was scheduled to do a Chick Lit workshop at an upcoming conference (they always schedule a year in advance and boy what can change in that time frame). It’s entitled The Hottest New Genre etc. I’m thinking of renaming that poor seminar. How about The Hottest New Genre that’s in the Toilet?

If you are new and want to break in, you pretty much have to reinvent the genre to impress the editors. I’ve been reading some chick lit sample chapters recently. The ones I’ve seen are well done and cute but that’s not going to cut it anymore.

So what happened?

Basically, the market got overcrowded and a lot of chick lit was published that was only average rather than outstanding. Readers got jaded, bored, I don’t know. You tell me. You folks out there, if you enjoyed the genre, ought to know. Why aren’t you buying new releases?

Is the chick lit trend now dead?

I’m not rushing out to perform CPR because it’s not really dying. Chick lit, as a genre, is probably here to stay, but it’s suffering much needed growing pains.

It’s easy to be seduced by the quick and dirty movie-reference pitch to summarize your novel.

It’s a way of capturing the entire plot and feel in one quick sentence. When it works, I think it’s an impressive tool and well worth using. When it doesn’t, boy, does it flop like a dying fish.

One of my current authors pitched me this way in her original query. She wrote, “my most recently completed manuscript is a 100,000 word contemporary fantasy with a chick-lit style — think Bridget Jones meets Harry Potter” in the first line of her second query paragraph.

I was intrigued. I had to see sample pages. And when I read them, she was exactly right. It was Bridget Jones in a Harry Potter-type world. It totally worked and we sold that novel to Ballantine (the book—Enchanted, Inc.)

The trick is that it has to be an accurate description so when the agent actually reads the novel, she sees it and it makes sense. If I read the sample pages and I’m thinking, this doesn’t feel like Ordinary People (or whatever comparison was used), the tool backfires and you’ll get a quick NO. The work is misrepresented.

The other trick is that the comparison has to make sense—literally. Some of my favs that didn’t:

This story is Anne of Green Gables meets The Hunt For Red October.

Huh?

I can’t even wrap my mind around this. Anne is on a submarine and is going to face off with the Russians? The comparison shouldn’t make me giggle with incomprehension.

Or

This is a modern-day version of Les Miserables and The Exorcist combined in one compelling novel.

Wow. I’m really thinking these two masterpieces should not be mentioned in the same sentence.

So, use the tool. Use it wisely.

Last June, I was out at Book Expo in New York City. Many publishing houses host cocktail parties at their booths on Friday and Saturday night. I was standing outside one of those booths, cocktail in hand, chatting with a fellow agent that I had met before but didn’t know well.

She was reading a full manuscript that she really liked on exclusive.

I mentioned that I never ask for exclusives. She laughed and said she never reads a full manuscript without it and obviously I had never gotten burned otherwise I would do the same.

I smiled. Didn’t argue the point. It was Friday night after all. But there she was wrong.

I certainly have vied for projects in competition with four or five other agents. Sometimes I’ve landed the client (and was thrilled) and even just recently, I didn’t win the client. I was the first runner up and it made me quite sad (especially when I read the news that the project sold a week later in a pre-empt! Then I was doubly sad.)

It doesn’t change my mind though. I still don’t ask for an exclusive read. Why? Because it’s not in a writer’s best interest.

You should have agents fighting over you and your project. That way you can interview all the agents and find the best fit. You can’t do that if you allow one agent an exclusive look.

Now, if you are 100% positive that one certain agent would be the best person for you, then fine, do it. Otherwise, I don’t see how granting one is beneficial to your career.

So, in my, mind. Here are the rules:

1. If you grant an exclusive, you need to honor it. Be sure to include a time limit. I think three weeks is sufficient. This is your career and it’s hard to get an agent. They shouldn’t trifle with you.

2. If your manuscript is already out with an agent and a request comes in from another agent but that agent wants in exclusive, don’t sweat it. Send the manuscript anyway with a note that explains why it can’t be for an exclusive look. If the agent returns it unread, his or her loss—not yours.

3. Never allow an exclusive on a query or a partial. That’s just silly. Exclusives, if ever, should only be reserved for a full manuscript.

4. And finally, if several agents have your full and they’ve been nice enough to not request the evil exclusive, do keep them in the loop about the manuscript’s status. If another agent has offered representation, let the other agents know so they can throw their hats into the arena as well. It never hurts you to have a choice. It rewards the non-exclusive-asking agents as well. At least we still have a fair shot at winning it.

I never want a client of mine to feel like they have settled for me and my agency. I’m a competitive person, albeit a very nice one. I love the challenge of “let the best agent win” and feel pretty darn triumphant when it’s me.

Every once in a while, the world of publishing gets it just right and a gem of book renews my faith in the whole industry.

In fact, I think we should all quit talking about the schmuck Frey and start talking about an author who deserves all kinds of great conversations—Marilynne Robinson.

Now this is a writer worth talking about and her novel GILEAD is, in a word, exquisite.

Too bad Ms O didn’t choose her book to re-launch her book club because it truly deserves a million little copies sold.

It’s easy to lament about the state of publishing—I’ve been guilty of it myself. That it’s really hard for a new literary voice to break out, that editors are gut-less and only want the next what I call “pop literary” or in more specific publishing terms “upmarket commercial literary” like Sue Monk Kidd or Khalid Hosseini.

In fact, I have two gorgeous and well-shopped literary novels sitting on my shelves right now. Lots of compliments but no offers to buy.

It’s easy to get jaded.

And then I read a book like GILEAD and I’m instantly re-affirmed that yes, we are getting it right.

Such a treasure of buried truths regarding our internal lives. When something strikes me while reading, I tend to earmark the page. I had so many post-it notes throughout this book; I finally had to give it up.

Economical too. It is 246 pages and feels far weightier than that number would imply.

This is a work I predict that people will be reading 50 or 100 years from now as they do Hurston or Hemingway now.

Whereas Mr. Frey and so many others will be long forgotten.

Since I’m on the topic of queries…

I’ve noticed an interesting trend lately of writers utilizing spam prevention tools.

Now that in itself isn’t bad. Goodness knows, I have two spam filters in place that save me from headache. Even with them, I still get ten or so emails a day asking me to be a partner in moving obscene amounts of money.

Really, it makes you wonder whether using the word Nigeria will automatically get your query spam-zapped.

Having a spam filter certainly isn’t my issue. I strongly recommend them.

No, what I’m having an issue with is the new spam prevention programs where the onus is on the responder to act in order for the email to be delivered.

For example, if I send the email (let’s say in response to a query), an auto reply will be emailed back to me in return. This email will state that if I want my email to be delivered (which more than likely contains my standard NO response), I must click on a link that will take me to a website where I have to decode a wonky font word into intelligible typewritten text and then hit a submit button.

Then my email response will be delivered and supposedly, I won’t have to participate in this exercise again with this particular email address.

So let me ask you this. How likely do you think it’s going to be that I, or any agent for that matter, will take the time to go through this process so my standard NO letter will reach you?

If you are thinking “unlikely,” you’d be right.

Which means a lot of folks aren’t going to be receiving a response from me. Maybe I should simply apologize up front right here on my blog.

Or I can offer a suggestion. Avoid this type of spam prevention if you are email querying. Better yet, perhaps you need an email address and inbox reserved exclusively for your querying—something that isn’t used for other business and therefore won’t get grabbed by the spam loops.

Most Internet providers allow you more than one address as part of the package and there are always the freebies such as yahoo and hotmail in a pinch.

Or you can go along your merry way assuming all agents are heartless non-responders when in reality we are simply caught in the world of Spamalot.