Pub Rants

Category: queries

The True Recipients Of ‘The Stamp’

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: A night off can do wonders. I’m actually excited to dive into a client manuscript tonight.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? IS THIS LOVE by Whitesnake

Before blog readers get up in arms over how “cruel” agents can be, you have to remember we work in a creative business. This means there are always a certain number of crazies.

In general, we get 100 to 150 email queries a day. (And after the holidays, we were averaging more like 300 queries a day).

A certain percentage we rule out right away as the writers didn’t research us and are sending stuff we don’t rep (like queries for nonfiction or picture books). We wouldn’t bother with ‘The Stamp.’

A certain percentage are queries that are obviously just thrown together, lack professionalism, and sent out to any number of agents. For these, we wouldn’t bother with ‘The Stamp.’

A certain percentage are well researched, diligently written, and are professional but the project simply isn’t right for us. We take those queries seriously and read every single one of them. Those would definitely not get ‘The Stamp.’

A certain percentage are decently written but just kind of verging on the strange or weird. We wouldn’t use ‘The Stamp’ even for these.

And then there are those remaining few–at least a couple a week. The queries that spotlight, in all its glory, a 200,000 word epic novel about a detachable penis.

Those queries, folks, deserve the WTF Stamp!

The Only Drawback to Electronic Queries

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Time to head home for an evening with my honey.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? I WANT TO KISS YOU ALL OVER by No Mercy

A teacher girlfriend sent me this picture and I have to say, the only drawback to digital queries is that we can’t use this stamp.

*grin*

And trust me, there are many times when it pretty much sums it up for us.

When You Are A Beginning Writer, The Keyword is Focus

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Snowy day in Denver so I definitely felt like working.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? OUT OF TOUCH by Hall & Oates

It occasionally happens that when we request sample pages, read it, and then send a rejection letter, the writer will often approach us with another project. Nothing wrong with that!

But here’s what surprises me. Sometimes it’s a story in the same vein (as in the same genre or it’s also a young adult or what have you) but a lot of times it’s not. I’m constantly amazed at how often the next project pitched is wildly different. Not even in the same ball park as the submission we just read.

When you are beginning as a writer, by all means, explore a few genres. Find out what seems the most fun to write, the best fit for your writing skills, what you are passionate about. Then focus.

If you write a young adult contemporary and then the next book you pitch to us is for an adult, dark literary thriller, you are going to get an eyebrow raise.

Now don’t get me wrong. The writer might be fully capable of writing both with impressive skill. But more likely not.

We also often get queries where the writer offers us a whole potpourri of choices of their work to review. Couple thoughts on that. One, it”s overwhelming; two, it comes across as unfocused; three, I’m going doubt the writer’s ability to master all these formats.

Just another tidbit to keep in mind while querying and writing.

And to add one more thing here, a writer might believe her strength is in one genre, might get a lot of rejections, gives up on that genre, and then tries something else and that is what works. That’s smart.

And that’s not what I’m talking about here. *grin*

Not The Right Question

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Do I dare ‘fess up that we listened to the XM Holly holiday station all day? Is it too early? I know I’ve already dived into many an eggnog chai…

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? WINTER WONDERLAND by Jason Mraz

As I sit here contemplating the great mysteries of the universe… Okay, in reality I’m really just sitting here having a relaxing glass of wine. Still, even though it’s not a great universal mystery, I puzzle over why journalists always ask this question during an agent interview:

What is the single most common mistake that turns you off of a query letter?

I puzzle over this Q because it strikes me that writers are looking for a magic silver bullet in the answer–as if it’s only an errant comma or grammar mistake keeping the agent from falling in love with the query and asking for sample pages.

In truth, there isn’t a single most common error that puts me off a query letter. Anything that I can list here (such as addressing the letter to the wrong agent, submitting a project in a genre we don’t rep, writing the email without periods or capitalization) are all issues that immediately weed out the wheat from the chaff.

If you are serious about this biz, those query letters are not the ones you should worry about. It’s the queries that are close but no cigar that are your competition. In other words, decent queries, well-written, and actually make us read the whole letter.

We still might pass on asking for sample pages but we gave the letter serious consideration. The rest are non-contenders.

So the real question is out of those queries, what is the single most common mistake that turns us off a query letter?

The answer is there is none. Because these queries are well written and unique enough, we read them. Why we still pass can’t be summed up into a neat little list that writers can then checkmark off the “turn-offs” to make sure their queries will pass the muster.

It’s never about one thing in the letter. It’s about every facet of the query letter as a whole. And even then, if you put the same good query letter in front of 10 different agents, all 10 of them might have a different response. And some would ask for sample pages and the others wouldn’t.

It’s this unknown factor that drives writers crazy.

Nelson Literary Agency Has No Prob With LGBTQ

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I’m feeling a tad riled up.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? MY HEART BELONGS TO ME by Barbara Streisand

Holy cow! Can’t believe I missed this article yesterday. I’m so glad an agent friend forwarded to me. Take a moment to read it and tweet it on but in short, it’s an appeal to support literature with gay and lesbian characters and the fact that there are some appalling agents and editors out there who are making requests that the writers make a gay character straight.

Seriously? What year are we in?

I cannot tell you how delighted I was to see a link to a list of YA literature that features gay/lesbian characters and my author Sarah Rees Brennan’s THE DEMON’S LEXICON series was on it.

This author of mine is brilliant. It’s a wonderful series and her new trilogy that I just sold to Random House also has an absolute kick-a** gay/lesbian main character. The first book UNSPOKEN publishes in fall 2012.

Not to mention, I have a Monica Trasandes’ debut adult literary novel coming out in spring 2012 from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. It’s called BROKEN LIKE THIS and features three main protagonists: a bisexual character, a gay/lesbian character and a straight male character (had to throw that last one in there-LOL).

A multicultural author to boot. I’ll tell you right now it was a tough sell but I loved the novel and I sold it.

So add these to your wish lists if you want to show support via your buying dollars. If I had cover art or anything yet for these two titles, I’d post it here but we are in the middle of the cover design and the buy links aren’t available online yet.

And let’s not forget the incredibly brilliant, witty, impeccably dressed and extremely powerful Lord Akeldama from Gail Carriger’s The Parasol Protectorate series.

I must admit it never occurred to me to add to my agency’s submission page that we are open to accepting material with LGBTQ characters because I kind of thought it went without saying but I’m rethinking it now.

Feel free to link to this blog post that it’s a-okay with us and I have NEVER asked an author to change a character’s ethnic background or orientation.

And because we are talking about multicultural too, check out my author Kimberly Reid’s debut YA novel MY OWN WORST FRENEMY. It’s an African-American urban Nancy Drew series. I mean, just how cool is that?


Note: LGBTQ stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning.

Additional Note: As there seems to be some question about the legitimacy of the original article cited and the agent/agency named, in fairness I’m also including a link to the agent/agency rebuttal to the accusation.

An Actual No Means No–For Us Anyway

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Chutney is asleep. I need to follow that example.

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? COULD YOU BE LOVED? by Bob Marley and the Wailers

Today I took fellow literary agent, Kate Testerman, out to lunch. We even had a pint of beer (Kate) and a glass of wine (Kristin) to celebrate.

Why? Because her author Ransom Riggs has a novel that’s been slowly climbing up to the #2 spot on the NYT list for the past 12 weeks. #1 spot is within spitting distance.

I would be talking about Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.


Darn right we need to celebrate that. After all, we agents are notoriously bad at actually doing celebratory moments to acknowledge our achievements but can cite every book we passed on that then became successful. LOL.

So it was an enforced celebration because hitting the NYT list is an achievement. Staying on for 12 straight weeks is an achievement. Have sales increase rather than decrease over that 12 weeks is huge and last but not least, hello! The #1 spot is not out of reach.

If you haven’t, you might want to buy this book this week is all I’m saying.

So Sara and I are out with Kate celebrating this amazing debut when Kate mentions there is a brouhaha going on about an agent’s policy to respond to every query or simply say “no response is a No” and authors should move on.

I gotta get myself on twitter. I’m always missing the hoopla.

Actually it was more of a discussion than a brouhaha but it was causing comments aplenty.

Our stance? We respond but that’s mainly because I have the amazing Anita who screens all queries and pulls out the ones I actually need to look at. Without that, trust me, I’d probably seriously consider the “no response means a No.”

We can get upwards to 200 queries a day.

That’s crazy people!

This day alone we received 4 calls from nonfiction writers with deals on the table looking for an agent.

We don’t even rep nonfiction and none of them were memoir. How on earth do people find us is what I want to know.

Now if Sara and I read a partial or a full manuscript, we do offer a line or two on why we are passing but trust me, when I’ve read 12 submissions and I know it’s going to take me at least 40 minutes to type in my one or two lines of feedback, I seriously consider whether it’s worth the time.

I could just hit the NO button and be done. Trust me, it’s tempting. Very very tempting.

But for now, we still add the line. If I were a writer, which I’m not, I’d so appreciate that personal note. So we keep that in mind but we aren’t inured to the day when that might not be a possibility.

Riding the Cultural Zeitgeist?

by Kristin Nelson

Status: I only own an umbrella for when I’m in New York. So ready for the perpetually sunny skies of Denver.

What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? MYSTERY by Anita Baker

Even though we agents and editors have seen this phenomenon repeat itself for years, it still strangely takes us by surprise.

Sometimes a theme or a type of story will hit the cultural zeitgeist and suddenly we will see a slew of submissions that have very similar story ideas.

And I’m not talking about obvious trends. For example, in Young Adult, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that paranormal romance has been “hot” for a while (thank you Twilight). Then the Hunger Games took off and dystopia became the new trend. As titles released in that, the latest is now SF or speculative fiction.

These are popular trends.

This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about storylines that suddenly start popping up that are potentially outside of these trends but for some reason, the stories all hit our submission inboxes around the same time.

For example, over the last 6 months, there have been a lot of queries and sample pages for fairy tale retellings (and this started happening before Little Red Riding Hood and Beastly hit the screen).

I was out to lunch with a children’s editor yesterday and for him, he had suddenly started seeing a ton of submissions that were what he called “man vs machine a la Terminator-style.”

The submissions came from different agents/agencies and yet all had very similar settings and main storylines. And this isn’t actually a rare occurrence. As an agent, I’ve seen this happen any number of times in my career.

So, there is something percolating in the cultural zeitgeist where any number of totally different authors who don’t know each other will have eerily similar story ideas for their novels.

Riding the Cultural Zeitgeist?

by Kristin Nelson

Status: I only own an umbrella for when I’m in New York. So ready for the perpetually sunny skies of Denver.


What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? MYSTERY by Anita Baker


Even though we agents and editors have seen this phenomenon repeat itself for years, it still strangely takes us by surprise.


Sometimes a theme or a type of story will hit the cultural zeitgeist and suddenly we will see a slew of submissions that have very similar story ideas.


And I’m not talking about obvious trends. For example, in Young Adult, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that paranormal romance has been “hot” for a while (thank you Twilight). Then the Hunger Games took off and dystopia became the new trend. As titles released in that, the latest is now SF or speculative fiction.


These are popular trends.


This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about storylines that suddenly start popping up that are potentially outside of these trends but for some reason, the stories all hit our submission inboxes around the same time.


For example, over the last 6 months, there have been a lot of queries and sample pages for fairy tale retellings (and this started happening before Little Red Riding Hood and Beastly hit the screen).

I was out to lunch with a children’s editor yesterday and for him, he had suddenly started seeing a ton of submissions that were what he called “man vs machine a la Terminator-style.”


The submissions came from different agents/agencies and yet all had very similar settings and main storylines. And this isn’t actually a rare occurrence. As an agent, I’ve seen this happen any number of times in my career.


So, there is something percolating in the cultural zeitgeist where any number of totally different authors who don’t know each other will have eerily similar story ideas for their novels.

Query While The Querying Is Hot!

by Kristin Nelson

Status: Chutney is enjoying our new couch—as am I. What a nice chaise section on the left side of the couch! Perfect for reading.

What’s Playing on the XM or iPod right now? SUPERSTITION by Stevie Wonder

And this is definitely good for authors. Last year I have to admit, Sara and I didn’t take on that many new clients.

This week, Sara signed 3 new authors with terrific projects.

On top of that, the queries are just rocking right now. In the last 2 weeks, we’ve requested 9 full manuscripts. Yep, you read that right. 9!

I guess query while the querying is hot!

Kristin As A Talking Head

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: I work way too late.

What’s playing on the iPod or the XM radio right now? PYRO by Kings of Leon

When I was at the San Miguel de Allende conference in Mexico, Publishing strategist Janet Goldstein grabbed me and ask if I would do a 2 minute video for her flipcam on 2 quick tips for writing query letters.
It was such a lovely day, I couldn’t resist. If you can keep up with the fact that I seem to be talking a mile a minute (hey, TV personality I am not), there might be a nugget of good info embedded in this talking head video. Enjoy!