Are You Ready to Contact an Agent? Take This Short Quiz and Find Out

This article first appeared on Writer Unboxed

By Erica Verrillo

You’ve finally completed your book. You’ve had it critiqued – brutally – and done more revisions than you care to count. Your proofreader has made sure there’s not a single error in the entire manuscript, and now you are confident that your work is ready to be published. What next? Obviously, you need an agent. So, after searching AgentQuery for agents representing your genre, and consulting Jeff Herman’s Guide and the most recent Writer’s Digest, you are sitting down to compose the perfect query letter.

Stop. You’ve skipped some steps.

Before you can even think about contacting an agent, there are several important questions you must be able to answer. Why? Because, if an agent calls you, she or he will ask them. (I know this from painful personal experience.) You must be prepared to reply with compelling answers.

This short quiz will tell you if you are ready to take on the publishing industry.

1) Have you written a one-page summary of your novel? Do you have a “hook,” an intriguing sentence that will draw your audience into your story, for example: “A man wakes up one morning to discover that every single person he knows is trying to kill him – even his wife and kids – and he has no idea why.” Can you keep your agent’s full attention for three minutes while you describe (verbally, or in writing) the rest of the story? In short, if your agent asks, “What’s your book about?” can you sell it? 20 points

2) Have you researched your market? Who will buy your book? Agents rely on numbers because publishers do, so you have to be able to say, with accuracy, how many people are in your demographic. (Hint, “adults” is not a demographic. College-educated, married women with small children is a demographic.) 20 points

3) What is your competition? Your agent will want to know the titles, authors, publishers, and year of publication of other popular books in your genre (or field). There are two reasons for identifying your competition: 1) You have to prove that there is already a market for your kind of book, and 2) You have to prove that your book is better or different. (Give specifics.) 20 points

4) How will you reach your market? Do you have a platform? You may think that marketing is the job of your publisher, and it is. But agents must convince editors that not only is there a market for your book, but that you have the credentials, and visibility, to promote your work. In the old days, BI (before internet), this was done through book tours, signings, and talks. You can still do those things, but what agents really want to know is how many people are reading your blog/website. (Publishers are fond of the number 10,000, so it helps to be able to say, “My blog/website has had 10,000+ page views.”) If you have published other books, how many were sold? Do people in your field or niche know who you are? Do you have any famous contacts who can give you endorsements? 20 points

5) Do you, in Michael Larsen’s immortal words, “harbor a consuming lust for success,” and are you “irresistibly driven to do whatever it takes to make your books sell?” Your agent will expect you go the whole nine yards, and to comply – eagerly – with whatever sports metaphors your publisher will hurl at you. This is no time to be a shrinking violet. You are going to have to step up to the mat and bat a thousand. 20 points

If you scored a hundred, congratulations! You are ready to contact an agent. If you answered, “I don't need to do that,” “I can't do that,” or “Huh?,” to any of the above questions, then get to work!

How to score 100 on the test

1) Fortunately, there are a many good books about pitches and proposals. I recommend Michael Larsen's How to Write a Book Proposal. (This book is also useful for fiction.) Larsen really understands the publishing industry, so you can rely on his advice. To get the hang of preparing pitches, start with a pitch for a book you haven't written. If your one-sentence hook can make your friends want to read the book, then move on to pitching your own work.

2) To determine your demographic, check the Alexa ranking for every well-trafficked website related to your genre or field. Alexa includes a demographic profile for high-ranking sites. Identify all the organizations or groups that might have an interest in your topic. What is their membership?

3) Amazon is one of the greatest research tools of all time. To identify your competition, look up the bestsellers in your genre. What books are on the top 100 lists? Who publishes them? Use the “look inside” feature to compare those books with your own. (Google Books also allows generous previews.)

4) Building a platform takes time. But you can accumulate 10,000 page views in a few months if you blog about interesting topics – and if you do some social networking. Advertise your blog posts on Facebook, Goodreads, and LinkedIn groups. You can precycle your posts on blogs that get more traffic than yours. You can recycle your blogs, as well, on sites that accept reprints. Look up the "Top 50 blogs" in your genre on Blogrank and read them! High-ranking blogs invariably contain lots of insider tips, trends, news, and industry gossip.

5) Getting writers to harbor a consuming lust for anything other than writing is a tall order. Writers are an idealistic lot, deeply committed to exploring the human soul while crouched in front of a keyboard in a dim, unheated garret. Before you contact an agent, you need to go through a metamorphosis – from idealistic writer, to practical businessman. When your agent asks if you will do anything to sell your book (mine did), there can only be one answer.

My name is Erica ... and I'm a blogaholic

It's too late for me. Save yourself!

Hello everyone, my name is Erica, and I'm a blogaholic.

This is my story. You've heard it all before. But I'm hoping that when you're having your coffee and cookies you'll reflect upon my experience – and keep an open mind.

It all started when print publishers got sideswiped by Amazon. I was finishing a book, and, having had several ruinous relationships with publishers (I'm working on those issues), I decided to break the pattern. Why repeat the bitterness, the frustration, when I could simply jump ship and take the easy way out? It all seemed so simple at the time. No more deadlines, no more subtexts in what I'd hoped would be casual encounters, no more editorial blows to my self-esteem. All I had to do was “upload.”

This is a mistake we all make when confronted by our personal demons. We take shortcuts.

Before I knew it, I had gotten my book epublished. Suddenly, reality hit. I had forgotten all about the perks of a long-term relationship – the in-house marketing department, the chain of distribution, legitimate reviews, free ISBN numbers. Worst of all, I had forgotten about book promotion. I'd have to do it all myself.

My first step was to launch a website, which I did after considerable, and unnecessary, expenditure. I was in the hole now, but it wasn't enough – it's never enough. I needed more. I needed a platform, exposure, a strong author presence. So ... I began to blog.

(Excuse me. Does anyone have a tissue?)

It was just one blog, at first. I thought it would be a simple reiteration of work I'd already done - an easy cut-and-paste, with no commitment to originality. I figured two, three blog posts a week, and I'd develop my Internet presence. Before I knew it, I was blogging almost daily. My self-concept had expanded, and my author image was changing.

I needed another blog, and then another. Soon I was blogging about everything: my books, my recipes, my parakeet, Thomas Jefferson. I created alter egos, misleading avatars. I could no longer put my real name on anything I blogged for fear that stopping would affect my author brand. Just trying to remember all my sign-in names was exhausting.

All at once, it dawned on me. What if nobody was reading my blogs? I installed Google Analytics, and, sure enough, I was a solitary blogger. Nobody even knew that I existed.

That was the beginning of the end. I joined several writers' groups whose sole purpose was to promote one another through their blogs. We fed, constantly, on each other's habits, meeting on dim, smoke-filled forums, boards, chats. I began to guest post.

(I heard that giggle. Don't judge me until you've blogged.)

It still wasn't enough. According to the visitor flow chart on Google Analytics, very few people were being driven to my blog. I had to drive them. I knew it was base, reprehensible, unforgivable - and I make no excuses for my behavior - but I began to adjust my taglines to suit my hypothetical audience. I even watched Supernatural, so I could blog about horrid, vapid television shows written by dyslexic ten-year-olds, but which were popular among the bloghopping set.

Finally, in a desperate attempt at blog exposure, I started to add my blogs to blog directories. It was getting expensive, but what was $39.95 here, $49.95 there, for a first-page listing? I pinged.

By this time, I had forgotten all about my eBook, which technically had now cost me several thousand dollars if you included the fees for Google Adwords, priority listings on blog directories, and upgrades. At this point, I was in deep denial. The book no longer mattered. My bills went unpaid. My house was a mess. My Amazon reviewer rank slid five hundred points. Nothing mattered.

I blogged about that.

To make this long story even longer, I wound up passed out in a gutter in South Philly, lying in a pool of my own vomit, pieces of my laptop scattered across the wet pavement. Miraculously, I still had my cellphone. I autodialed my son's number, and when his sweet, innocent voice came on the line I began to sob, “I don't understand how to post on Tumblr...”

I had hit bottom. I was a blogaholic.

Bad Press is Better Than No Press

P.T. Barnum is reputed to have said, "There's no such thing as bad publicity." 

As far as circuses are concerned, he was right. But the same holds true for any aspect of the entertainment industry, including publishing. The trick is to generate enough publicity - bad or good.

William McKeen, chair of the Department of Journalism at Boston University and author of the biography of Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Journalist, obviously understands this principle. He also has a great sense of humor.

HST is Hunter S. Thompson, the notoriously foul-mouthed journalist who wrote – and apparently lived – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. ("I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone," he once quipped, "but they've always worked for me.")

McKeen's biography of Thompson has been  described as “painfully honest.”  In keeping with that sentiment,  this review can only be considered "heartfelt." McKeen liked this “review” of his book so much he had it framed. 

How I Got Published: The Ecstasy

Random House Building

It was September 2005. I was out in my garden murdering plants and Communing with Nature when I heard the phone ring. I didn't go into the house to answer it. I never answer the phone, not even when I am two inches away from it. An hour later, when I'd finished Communing and wiped plant detritus* off my hands, I listened to the message. It was someone I didn't know telling me that RH wanted to publish my books. All of them.

I listened to the message a second time and recognized the name of my agent – a person with whom I had spoken several years earlier and who had never given me cause for hope. After years of waiting anxiously by the phone, I had finally given up on any chance of publishing and reverted to the comforts of vegetal genocide.

I called my daughter and told her about RH.

“Hey,” she said. “I've heard of them.”

“Why are you making that sound?” I replied.

“Well (harharhar), I never thought (harharhar) you'd actually get published (harharharharhar)...”

My daughter is the only person on earth who can evoke completely incompatible emotions in me.

And thus begins the first emotional stage of Publication: Ecstasy. The other five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I'll get to those later when I talk about contracts.

Before you could say New York Times Bestseller, I found myself scurrying to comply with my agent's agenda. I was instructed to go to The City to lunch with The Editor and to tour RH. I was also instructed to cut my hair and make myself presentable. (This last task proved beyond me.) I got into a car, then on a train, and then not into a taxi (why aren't there ANY available taxis in The City?), and then ran, in the rain, fifteen blocks to RH. By the time I arrived, I was wet, flushed, and my stockings had fallen down to my ankles.

“You look just like a children's book author should look,” said the agent's assistant. Her lack of irony was unsettling.

Random House Lobby

Silently, my agent bade me sit. 

There was only one place to sit – a bench made out of something very hard and very unforgiving.

“Just take it in,” said my agent in soft, reverent tones.

I took it in. We were clearly in the belly of the beast. BERTELSMANN was displayed in large brushed-steel letters on the wall opposite the entrance. There were matching elevators. A bored young person sat behind an enormous bulwark. Behind me was a huge, brutally lit wall encasing the hundreds, nay thousands, of famous books RH had published. 

I knew I was in for it.

After receiving permission to ascend, we took the elevator to the 10th floor where I was introduced to my editor, and to 200 other children's book editors. Some of them shook my hand. Others turned their backs (these were the writers of the Golden Books - a disgruntled lot). I met the person who would be in charge of marketing my book. She gave me the look my attire deserved. 

Then we went to lunch. My agent had given me instructions to keep my mouth shut. So, I sat there and ate sanitized quasi-Greek food while my editor and agent spoke in hushed voices.

Why hushed?

Because all the other agents and editors in the publishing industry were at adjacent tables trying to eavesdrop on one another's conversations and potentially steal … something. The conversation at my table revolved around “buzz” and other marketing terms. As it turned out, there was no need for me to speak, because there was nothing to say. RH was a machine, a behemoth, a juggernaut. Nobody could stop it. Nobody could influence it. We were all just tiny teeth in its gargantuan devouring maw.

“The publishing industry isn't just about bestsellers,” I muttered. “Books are ideas. Sometimes you have to take a chance on a new idea.”

My editor leveled her gaze at me and said, without a hint of remorse, that she had turned down J. K. Rowling because her books were “too long, and nobody would read them.” 

It was at that point that I began to enter into the next stage of Publication: Denial.

*Detritus: One of the many "5-dollar words" that RH made me take out of my book.

The Harshest Rejection of Them All

"We were not amused."

Gertrude Stein's rejection letter merits a special place among rejections, if only because the publisher put so much effort into it. 

This parody demonstrates the defining character flaw of publishers: they believe they are the final arbiters of literary taste. Notwithstanding the possibility that, in this case, Fifield may have been right, one hardly needs to point out that being a music critic does not make you Rachmaninov. Or even a Rach knock-off.

The letter reads:

Dear Madam,

I am only one, only one, only one. Only one being, one at the same time. Not two, not three, only one. Only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour. Only one pair of eyes. Only one brain. Only one being. Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your M.S. three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.

Many thanks. I am returning the M.S. by registered post. Only one M.S. by one post.

Sincerely Yours,

A.C. Fifield

Letter image from http://www.flavorwire.com/232203/famous-authors-harshest-rejection-letters

Building Character (for Writers)

Productive young writer with human companion

Years ago, when I was teaching English to Japanese English teachers (you had to be there), one of my teacher/students informed me that, in her school, the students did all the clean-up. “All?” I asked. "Oh, yes," she informed me. They wiped the blackboards, swept and mopped the floors, washed the windows. “It builds character,” she said.

Basically, things that build character are comprised of anything that is disagreeable. For some strange Calvinistic and/or Japanese reason, character cannot be built by winning a prize, taking a swim, or eating my delicious apple streusel cake.

One must suffer to have character.

I doubt that this is true in general, but in specific, as it applies to writers, it is definitely a fact. It is not necessary for you to fulfill the Romantic ideal: a sensitive, unshaven (women too), starving creature agonizing in a garret. Yes, you will eventually get to do all that. But the real suffering, the real character building comes not in the process of writing - which is sheer fun and therefore useless for building character - but in the process of sharing what you've written.

These are the writer's steps to building character:

Step 1: Don't publish too early. You have written a book. Don't get it out there. Instead, get it critiqued, as harshly as possible. You must bleed.

Step 2: When you have bled enough, still don't try to publish. Write another book. Yes, that's what I said. Write ANOTHER BOOK. What kind of writer do you expect to be if you can only write one book? Then go back to your first book and revise it.

Step 3: Write short stories and articles. Get them critiqued. Bleed some more.

Step 4: Submit your short stories and articles to top-ranking magazines and ezines. You will be rejected. Bleed and revise. Submit again. Each time you get a rejection, re-read your work and revise.

Step 5: AGH! Somebody published your story! Your character is destroyed! Sadly, no. Read the published version. It's amazing how many mistakes you can catch after your story has been published. Ouch.

Step 6: At this point you have so much character you need a transfusion. Start submitting your book to agents. They will reject you. Each time you get a rejection, look at your query letter and revise it. Submit again.

Step 7: AGGHHH! An agent wants to represent you! Now, you're cooked. Don't get too comfy. She or he will want to confiscate your manuscript and change everything in it. You have to decide what to change and what not to change. You are faced with killing your darlings.Your character is firming up nicely.

Step 8: You have followed your agent's suggestions - or not, as the case may be. And NOTHING happens! Not one single publisher is interested in your book. They say awful things about it. You have to decide if some of these awful things are true. They might be. Great character-building technique.

Step 9: AAAGGGGHHH!!! Someone wants to publish your book!! You are fried!! You thought the agent was harsh. Wait until you see what an EDITOR does to your manuscript!! It will be drawn and quartered before your very eyes. They will change your title. They will slap on a dreadful cover. You will want to die.

Step 10: You now have character. Write another book. This time it had better be good.

(Repeat steps 1 through 10 as often as necessary.)

23 Idiotic Rejections of Famous Authors

Rejections are hard on budding young authors - even on old, famous ones.

The following is a list of authors who have received what should have been soul-crushing rejections. Thankfully, their souls were not crushed, and their books went on to become icons in the literary world.

Nowadays, publishers don't put their thoughts into writing (although, believe me, they still say them in private). In some ways, it's a pity. Authors who have achieved success should have the pleasure of gloating over the idiocies of publishers who have dismissed them.

From the American literary publisher Knopf's Archives at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin ...

__________________________

Jorge Luis Borges

'utterly untranslatable'

Isaac Bashevis Singer

'It's Poland and the rich Jews again.'

Anais Nin

'There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic.'

Jack Kerouac

'His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don't think so.'

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence

'for your own sake do not publish this book.'

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

'an irresponsible holiday story'

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

'an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.'

Watership Down by Richard Adams

'older children wouldn't like it because its language was too difficult.'

On Sylvia Plath

'There certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice.'

Crash by J. G Ballard

‘The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help.'

The Deer Park by Norman Mailer

'This will set publishing back 25 years.'

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos

'Do you realize, young woman, that you're the first American writer ever to poke fun at sex.'

The Diary of Anne Frank

‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level.’

Lust for Life by Irving Stone 

(which was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies)

‘ A long, dull novel about an artist.’

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

'The grand defect of the work, I think, as a work of art is the low-mindedness and vulgarity of the chief actors. There is hardly a "lady" or "gentleman" amongst them.'

Carrie by Stephen King

'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.'

Catch – 22 by Joseph Heller

‘I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.’

The Spy who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré 

‘You’re welcome to le Carré – he hasn’t got any future.’

Animal Farm by George Orwell

‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’

Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde

‘My dear sir,

I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.’

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 

‘... overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’

18 Incredibly Stupid Publishing Mistakes

The wacky world of publishing continues with this second installment of Publishers Say the Darndest Things.

There is a lesson to be learned from these rejections.

And for yet more stupidity read:

10 Things Publishers Wish They Had Never Said  

___________________


Dr. Seuss
(Theodor Seuss Geisel's first book was rejected by 27 publishers - this is why)

'too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.'


The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
(LeGuin's book went on to win both a Nebula and a Hugo award and to reshape a genre)

'The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable.'


The Female Man by Joanna Russ
(winner of the Nebula award)

"We've already published our feminist novel this year, so we don't want another" … "I'm sick and tired of these kinds of women's novels that are just one long whiny complaint."


Mary Higgins Clark
(rejected 40 times)

'Your story is light, slight, and trite.'


Colette
(Colette went on to publish 50 books)

"You won't be able to sell 10 copies."


Bridge Over River Kwai by Pierre Boulle

'A very bad book.'


The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel

"We are very impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of your prose. Nevertheless ... we don't think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves."


Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
(sold more than 7.25 million copies)

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback."


The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

'An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would "take"...I think the verdict would be 'Oh don't read that horrid book'.'


Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

' ...she is a painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene cries for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes ...hauls out every terrible show biz cliché in all the books, lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly ...'


The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

'I wish there were an audience for a book of this kind. But there isn't. It won't sell.'


Emily Dickinson

'(Your poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.'


Edgar Allen Poe

'Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.'


Moby Dick by Herman Melville

'We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in (England). It is very long, rather old-fashioned...'


Jack London

'(Your book is) forbidding and depressing.'


The Torrents of Spring by Ernest Hemingway

'It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.'

Rudyard Kipling

'I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language.'

Sanctuary by William Faulkner

'Good God, I can't publish this!'

10 Things Publishers Wish They Had Never Said

Given their abysmal track record when it comes to predicting what readers will enjoy, we have to wonder why publishers are so short-sighted. After all, gauging the interests of readers is their business.

The answer is quite simple.

Publishers don’t like to take a chance on anything too different from what they have already published. ( See below: ‘Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.’)

As one publisher famously said, “We want the same thing … only different.”

Acceptance criteria for large publishing houses are based almost exclusively on what they have sold before. All the necessary components of calculating potential profits — cost/benefit analyses, market projections, etc. — rest entirely on previous sales, not on the inherent value of the manuscript.

Sometimes we forget that publishing is a business like any other. Businesses don’t like to take chances, and the bigger the business, the more cautious it will be. (Random House turned down the Harry Potter books because they were “too long, and nobody would read them.”)

These pointed— and completely misguided — rejections should not only encourage you on your path to publication (you are in good company!), they should steel you against the frustration of the inevitable “Thanks, but no thanks.” Imagine where we would be if L. Frank Baum (or Oscar Wilde!) had quit after being given the brush-off. They didn’t quit and neither should you.

(Just as a case in point, my trilogy was rejected repeatedly for five years before being picked up by Random House.)

But don't take my word for it; here’s what publishers had to say about the following books.

Note: And for more entertainment at publishers' expense be sure to read: 

18 Incredibly Stupid Publishing Mistakes 

____________

The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

'Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.'

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

'It contains unpleasant elements.'

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

'Terrible.'

The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman

'get rid of the Indian stuff.'

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

'Stick to teaching.'

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

'The American public is not interested in China.'

Lady Chatterly's Lover  by D. H. Lawrence 

'for your own sake do not publish this book.

Garfield by Jim Davis

'Too many animals, and cats don’t sell.'

Zane Grey (93 books, 21 films)

'You have no business being a writer and should give up.'

Remembrance of Things Past Marcel Proust

'My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.'