For Writers

Updated April 2011

Wow, what a difference nine months makes! I wrote my first “For Writers” post in July 2010 and I basically answered the “How do I get published?” question by answering the “How do I find an agent?” question. I barely mentioned self-publishing. Since I wrote that post, I’ve become a successful self-published author and I now have lots of opinions about self-publishing. I also get many emails from other writers considering self-publishing and asking for advice. Rather than continue to respond individually, I’ve decided to share everything I know here.

Where to Start:

Starting out on the self-publishing journey can be overwhelming. You’re a writer. You know how to write. You don’t know anything about being a publisher. What you want to do is gather as much information about the process as you can. This post is a good place to start, but there are many others. One such place is Kindle Boards. This is a forum which, despite the name, is not hosted by Amazon, but where many self-published authors congregate (specifically in the Writer’s Café section). Sign up (it’s free) and join the conversation. You can glean a ton of information just from reading the posts. (Links to this site, and all the others I mention, will be posted below.) It’s also a good place to find listings and recommendations for editors, cover designers, formatters, and other resources you’re going to need if you choose to self-publish. And if you’re not already reading Joe Konrath’s blog, you should be reading that too.

The Four Things You Must Have Before You Even Consider Self-Publishing:

I first read about these four must-haves for self-publishing on Joe Konrath’s blog. Below is my spin on his “rules.”

1. A Good Book. This is the most important of the four. If your book sucks, whatever else you do won’t matter. If your response to that is Well, my mother/father/sister/brother/spouse/friend thinks it’s not only a good book, but possibly the best book they’ve ever read, you’re in trouble. You need feedback from objective readers before you even consider self-publishing. No one can be objective about their own work.

Where do I find these objective readers? Critique groups, writing classes, on the street, it doesn’t really matter where you find them, the point is you must find someone, preferably multiple people, to give you honest feedback.

Isn’t all critiquing subjective? Yes, but not all elements of good writing are subjective. Spelling, for instance, is not subjective. You either spelled the word right, or you didn’t.

What about Canadian, British, or Australian spelling? Yes, other countries spell words differently than we do in the U.S., and some of the grammar rules are different too. While readers in other countries appear to be accepting of these differences, many U.S. readers are not. If you’re going to market your book to U.S. readers (which is currently the biggest e-reading market) while using the spelling and grammar rules of another country, you should definitely highlight that fact in your product description. And even if you do warn readers that your book contains non-American spelling and grammar, you still need to be prepared for the inevitable bad reviews citing your many typos and poor editing. Unfair? Yes, but reality.

So as long as I follow U.S. spelling and grammar rules, I’m set? Not even close. Spelling and grammar fall under the rubric of copy editing. Your book needs to be edited for story structure and flow as well. And yes, this is subjective. Even brilliant books will have negative reviews. But the more honest feedback you get (even if it is subjective), the better off you’ll be. Not everyone will like your book. But if multiple people are pointing out the same flaw, then you’d be wise to take a second look.

Do I need to hire an editor? I think it’s a good idea. Maybe you can get away with beta readers for copyediting (although even that can be dicey), but most casual readers aren’t good editors. They may be able to tell you something isn’t working, but they usually can’t articulate why it isn’t working or tell you how to fix it.

Remember, just because you can publish your first draft, doesn’t mean you should publish your first draft. Under the traditional publishing system, writers spent years honing their craft. Although the rise of e-books has made self-publishing much easier than it used to be, the writing, or at least good writing, isn’t any easier. If you publish crap it won’t sell and you’ll be demoralized. Take the time to hone your craft and write a good book.

2. A Good Cover. We all know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Guess what? We all do. Have you ever searched for a book on Amazon? If so, you know that what you’re searching is thumbnails of book covers. If you have a cover that looks like you slapped it together yourself in five minutes with Photoshop, potential readers won’t click on it and they’ll never discover your compelling product description and your awe-inspiring prose.

Some people have a natural talent for graphic design. If you’re one of those people, by all means design your own covers. Some people are merely friends with those naturally talented people. If you fall into that group and you can talk them into designing your cover for you, consider yourself lucky. But if you don’t fall into either of those categories, you need to hire a cover designer.

Remember, nothing screams “amateur” louder than a bad cover.

3. A Good Description. The first thing potential readers will see when they click on your professional looking book cover is your product description. This isn’t meant to be a synopsis of your novel. It’s meant to entice the reader to want to read more. I suggest reading the product descriptions for successful books by non-establishment authors (Nora Roberts’s, James Patterson’s, and John Grisham’s books sell because their name is on the cover, not because of the product description) to get a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

4. A Relatively Low Price. This is a hot topic among self-published authors. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a hot topic inside traditional publishing houses too. In order to qualify for the 70% royalty at Amazon and the 65% royalty at Barnes & Noble your book must be priced between $2.99 and $9.99. Using Amazon as an example, if your book is priced $2.99, you will earn approximately $2 per book (they deduct a few cents from each sale as a delivery fee). If you price your book at 99-cents, your royalty will be reduced to 35% at Amazon and 40% at Barnes & Noble. For the mathematically challenged, that means you will need to sell six times as many books at the 99-cent price as you would at the $2.99 price to earn the same money. That’s a lot of books.

For some authors, pricing their book at 99-cents, especially if they are a new author and/or it’s the first book in a series, has proven to be a very successful strategy. But other authors have tried it and, although they may have sold more books, they didn’t sell six times more books, which is what you need to sell in order to earn the same royalties as a $2.99 book.

Pricing is one area where most authors experiment to find what works for them and each individual book. Different books sell better at different price points, and it’s not always the lowest price point. Like most things in publishing, it’s a mystery.

Keep Your Expectations in Check.

If you’re at all tuned in to the publishing world, you’ve probably heard of Amanda Hocking. She’s the uber-successful self-published author who parlayed that success into a $2 million book deal with St. Martin’s Press. Because of her and a few others, many would-be-authors see self-publishing as the latest get rich quick scheme. It’s not. The vast majority of traditionally published authors don’t earn enough money from their writing to quit the day job. Although the royalty rates in self-publishing are much higher than the royalty rates in traditional publishing, even most self-published authors don’t earn enough money from their writing to quit the day job.

The unfortunate truth is that very few writers will earn enough money from their writing to support themselves and their families. Self-publishing hasn’t changed that. In other words, don’t quit the day job.

Be Professional.

One of the benefits of going the traditional route is that it affords entre into professional writer organizations where newbies can learn the ins and outs of being a “professional author.” It’s more than how to handle a disagreement with your agent, and what one can legitimately deduct as a business expense. It’s also how to conduct yourself in the public sphere. Some people instinctively know this. Many do not. So here are a few tips:

• Do NOT publicly respond to a bad review. No matter how brilliant your book is, you will eventually get a bad review. It’s inevitable. And unless you’re made of stone, when you read it you will likely be either upset, angry, or both. Your first instinct will be to type up a scathing response. STEP AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD. Immediately. Call your best friend, eat lots of chocolate, open a bottle of wine, go pummel a punching bag. Whatever your vice, indulge. But do not publicly respond to a bad review. No good can come of it. Don’t believe me? Check out this post by a noted book blogger and the comments that followed. Then Google the author’s name. Her writing career, at least under her own name, is over. booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett

• Do not publicly trash other authors. It will not make you look good, even to those who agree with you, and it’s just bad manners.

• Remember that everything you say on the internet is both public and forever. Potential readers will read your posts and judge you by them, so think before you hit the share button.

• Don’t engage in author spam. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, spend a few minutes in any thread in the Amazon community forums and you’ll see it. Multiple people are having an online conversation and out of nowhere an author posts a synopsis about his or her book with a link to the title in the Amazon store, then disappears. This is author spam. Everyone hates it, including other authors. Not only does it not sell books, it makes it more likely that the person reading it will remember you as that annoying author who spams every board and they will never buy your book.

• If you’re going to use social media for promotion then it’s important to join the community and become part of the conversation (and recognize that most of those conversations are not going to be about you and your book).

Useful Links:

Kindle Boards: http://www.kindleboards.com/

Kindle Boards Writer’s Café: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/board,60.0.html

Kindle Boards List of E-Book Resources: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,50419.0.html

Joe Konrath’s Blog: http://www.jakonrath.blogspot.com/

Amazon’s Self-Publishing Program: http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html?topic=200260520

Barnes & Noble’s Self-Publishing Program (Pub It): http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home

Smashwords Self-Publishing Program: http://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#GettingStarted

Good luck!

_____________________________________________________________________

Original Post – July 2010

I’m assuming since you clicked on the “For Writers” link that you already know something about writing and what you really want to know is “How do I find an agent?” and/or “How do I get published?”

How to Find an Agent:

Some people (I call them lucky bastards) have “connections” in the publishing industry. If you’re one of those lucky bastards, I say work ‘em baby! And if you’re one of those lucky bastards who actually feels guilty about your abundance of good fortune, don’t. At the end of the day, it’s all about the writing/book. No matter how good your connections are, if the agent doesn’t love your work AND think they can sell it, they won’t represent you (unless that agent is your mother/father/sister/brother/best friend, in which case you don’t need to be taking advice from me!)

Assuming you’re not one of those lucky bastards (and that would be 98% of us, including me), you have to find an agent the hard way—you have to query. If you’re new to this game, your next question will be “What’s a query?” (If you’re not new to this game, you can skip this section and go directly to the Buy the Book link :) )

Querying is a process. Sometimes a very long process. Occasionally an exhilarating process. In many instances a heartbreaking process. Unfortunately, unless you’re one of those lucky bastards (see above), your stuck with it. Accept it as a fact of life (or at least a fact of life if you want to be published by one of the Big Six NY Publishers[1]) and move on.

You begin the query process by writing a standout query letter. Many agents have sections on their websites and/or blogs describing what they consider to be a standout query letter (see list below). Read them. You can also find lots of books and web articles that explain how to write a query letter. Read those too. Generally speaking your query should contain the following: the title of your book, the word count (e.g., 90,000 words – round off, no one’s counting), the genre (do NOT say fictional novel, by definition a novel is fiction), a short summary of the plot (two to three succinct paragraphs preferably written in the style in which your book is written so the agent gets a sense of your “voice”), and any relevant experience (e.g., other publications).

Do NOT send the first draft of this letter to every agent you find listed on the internet. Instead, send this letter to a bunch of friends (they don’t have to be writers) and ask them to critique it for you, keeping in mind that the purpose of the letter is to pique the agent’s interest so he or she will ask to read your book. If you want to flatter the agent, well, that’s a personal choice. Most agents will tell you that they want you to personalize the letter. By personalize they don’t mean write Dear Ms./Mr. (it’s a given that you will address it to the agent personally and not write Dear Agent). By personalize agents mean state in the first paragraph (preferably the first sentence) why you are querying them as opposed to the thousands of other agents you could’ve queried. It may be because you read on their website (and you should ALWAYS read the website of every agent you query if for no other reason than they often contain their submission guidelines) that they’re looking for a regency-era steampunk romance with vampires, angels, and werewolves and you just happened to have written such a book. Or it might be because the agent represents other (read successful) writers in your genre. Or it could be because you enjoy the work of one of the agent’s clients who writes in a similar style to yours. Whatever the reason, tell them. But don’t lie. They’ll know and then they’ll reject you automatically.

Which brings us to the next question: How do you find agents to query? This is where technology has made life much easier. Back in the day (I’m talking ten years ago here) you actually had to go to the library or bookstore and spend hours and hours and hours reading thick paper books with names like “Literary Marketplace” and “Guide to Literary Agents.” Then, as you read these books with pen and paper or laptop in hand, you would compile a list of top ten, twenty, thirty, etc. agents. Then you’d have to call each of the agencies to confirm that the agent you chose still worked there and that the address you found in the guide, which had been written at least a year earlier, was still correct. Then you had to hope that the agent was still looking for the same type of work the agent said they were looking for when the author of the guide interviewed the agent two years before that. Good news! The internet has changed all that.

These days everything is online. Besides digital subscriber versions of those guides, there are many free online agent guides too. Personally, I’ve always liked Agent Query (http://www.agentquery.com/) but there are plenty of others as well. Also, many writers thank their agents in the acknowledgment section of their books and/or list their agents on their website, so you can find agents that way too (and you can use the information to personalize your query letter!)

So now you’ve made your list of top ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred agents who you think might like your book. Do you send every one of them your critiqued and revised query letter? No, you do not. You go to the Preditors & Editors website (http://pred-ed.com) and make sure every single agent on your list is legitimate. Sadly, there are a lot of scammers out there. But if you do your homework you can likely avoid them.

Okay, you’ve made your list, you’ve checked Preditors & Editors, you know all your targeted agents are legit, now can you start querying? No. Now you have to go to each agent’s website (most have them) and read in an ideal world all of their content, but at a minimum their submission guidelines. Then you have to tweak your query to conform to their guidelines. For example, some agents want sample pages with the query, some do not. Some agents only accept queries by e-mail, others want queries snail mailed. The list is endless. I’m not kidding. You need to read and follow their posted guidelines.

I’ve read all of the agents’ individual guidelines, now can I query? You can, but if you’re really neurotic (and most writers are, myself included) you should google the agent first and read everything you can find about them. Many agents blog and twitter, and often they’ve given on-line interviews. All of these sources can give you insights into both their personality and what they’re looking for (information you can then use to personalize that query letter!)

Dammit, Orsoff, I’m not getting any younger. Am I ever going to be able to send out these stupid query letters? Yes, now you can query. But don’t send them all out at once! Send them out in waves of three or five, definitely not more than ten. Why? Because even though you’ve written and rewritten and personalized and tweaked your query letter, if no agents ask to see your book, then your query letter isn’t working and you need to rewrite. Remember, the goal of the query letter is to pique an agent’s interest so the agent asks you to send them a “partial” or a “full” (more on that below). If agents aren’t asking to read your book, then you need to rewrite your query letter until they do. By not sending the query letter to all of the agents on your list at once, you give yourself an opportunity to revise if necessary.

Finally (it could take minutes or months) an agent asks to read your work. The agent will either request a “partial” (e.g., the first fifty pages or the first three chapters) or a “full” (i.e., the entire manuscript). Whatever the agent requests, send it to them. But don’t take this too literally. If an agent asks for the first three chapters and you happen to write very short chapters, send them the first thirty pages. Or if an agent asks for the first fifty pages and your chapter ends on Page 52, send them fifty-two pages. The only hard and fast rule is that you send them whatever they ask for starting with Page 1. If the agent asks for three chapters and your book doesn’t really get interesting until Chapter 6, do NOT send Chapters 6 – 8. If your book doesn’t get interesting until Chapter 6, then you need to rewrite your book. Hooking the reader from the beginning is essential. But you’re a writer, you know that.

Then one day you get The Call. This is when an agent calls and offers you representation. In my experience, this usually comes as an e-mail from the agent telling you that they love your book and want to set up a call to talk about representation. You will then speak to the agent on the phone, ask lots of questions, and hopefully like what you hear. Unless you are absolutely, positively, 100% sure this is the agent for you, you do NOT say yes on that phone call. You thank them for the offer and tell them you’ll get back to them shortly. The odds are that if you’ve written an outstanding query letter and have been sending the letter out in waves, other agents will be considering your book too. Now comes the fun part. You get to call or e-mail all those other agents (and I mean agents who requested partials or fulls, not agents you sent queries to who never responded) and tell them you have an offer of representation from another agent and ask them if they can get back to you within a week. I’ve never had an agent say no to this request[2], and I’ve never heard of any other writer receiving a no to this request either. I know what you devious types are thinking: This is great. I’ll just tell all the agents I have an offer and then they’ll have to get back to me quickly and I won’t have to wait another two months, or four months, or six months for them to respond. DON’T DO THIS!

Trust me, I understand the temptation. I really do. I’m on my third agent. I know this part is excruciating, and it never gets any easier. But you can’t lie about this. You have to wait it out. And not just because it’s the right thing to do, which it is. Agents are friends with other agents. They all know each other and they all talk. IF YOU LIE YOU WILL GET CAUGHT. Then your odds of finding a good agent will be nil.

You’ve played by the rules, you’ve waited it out, the week is up, you’ve heard back from all the agents who were considering your work, and you have more than one offer. At this point you need to decide which agent to sign with. Depending on who you have offers from there are all sorts of things to consider e.g., big agency vs. small agency, NY agent vs. non-NY agent, senior agent vs. junior agent, etc. No one can tell you who to choose or how to choose. You have to go with your gut then hope you made the right decision.

How to get Published by a Big Six NY Publisher:

If you’ve signed with a good agent, then the agent will send your book to editors at the major publishing houses hoping those editors will fall in love with your book too. Then you both get to start the waiting process all over again. Yup, more waiting. All I can tell you is I feel your pain.

At this point I know I’m going to get an e-mail from someone, perhaps more than one someone, who is going to tell me that I obviously know nothing about publishing since they have a friend who has a friend who didn’t have an agent and got a six-figure publishing deal. Does it happen? Yes, on very rare occasions. Sometimes writers go to writing conferences where they have an opportunity to pitch their book to editors. Sometimes these editors are so intrigued by the writer’s pitch that they ask the writer to send them the full manuscript. Occasionally such an editor actually reads and falls in love with one of those manuscripts. If that happens, the editor will call the author and offer to buy the book. What do most authors do when that happens? They call the agents they queried or were thinking about querying, tell them they have an offer on the table, and ask them if they’re interested in representing them. Seriously people, you will be signing a contract, a legally binding document. Unless you’re very familiar with publishing deal terms (and if you are you probably wouldn’t be reading this) you need someone who is to negotiate for you. If you don’t want to sign with an agent, then hire a good publishing attorney (no, not me). But you need to have someone who is knowledgeable about the industry advocating on your behalf. The editor who makes you an offer may love your book, but the editor works for the publisher, not for you.

How to get Published Outside of the Big Six Publishers:

There are lots of small niche publishers out there (both print and digital) who accept submissions from writers directly, no agent necessary. This is not a path I’ve ever followed so I cannot offer any advice.

I know these days a lot of writers (myself included) are considering skipping the Big Six and going the self-publishing route. There are many options out there, including Amazon’s DTP and B&N’s Pub It for digital-only, and Smashwords and Lulu for digital and print. So far I’ve only tried Amazon’s DTP and I’ve been happy with the results.

There are pros and cons to going the self-publishing route and a lot depends on your goals. J.A. Konrath has strong opinions and many blog posts on this subject. If you’re interested in self-publishing and haven’t read Konrath, check him out (http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/).

One word of caution—there is a big difference between self-publishing and vanity publishing. When you self-publish your book, you might pay someone to design a cover and format it for you, but you do NOT pay someone to publish it. Legitimate publishers pay the author for the right to publish the author’s book. If a publisher is asking you for money, then they are a vanity publisher. Don’t just walk away, run away!

Agents Who Blog:

Many agents have blogs. Below is merely a list of three I routinely read. There are many, many more.

Best of luck in your publishing endeavors.

Beth Orsoff
July 2010

[1] The Big Six aka the six major NY publishers are: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Group, Random House, and Simon & Schuster

[2] I did have one agent, a very well known agent, not respond to this request after having asked for my full manuscript. To this day I don’t know if he didn’t like the manuscript and was too rude to send me an e-mail telling me that, or if he couldn’t or wouldn’t read the manuscript within a week.