Your First Novel

  RECOMMENDED READING

  Roget's International Thesaurus, 6"' edition, edited by Barbara Ann Kipfer. Didn't use a thesaurus when you wrote your novel? If you can't find the words to describe it in your query letter, now's the time to get a copy of a Roget's.

  What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles. Why not use this classic career guide to help you prepare your work to persuade an agent to represent you and your book? The exercises it offers are designed to help you understand what you have to offer and could help you discover what's unique about your book and what might need work.

  In addition to the following books, there are entire books devoted to writing query letters to literary agents, editors, and book publishers, but as I haven't read any of them, I can't recommend them. I suspect you'll find more advice in them about query letters for nonfiction than for fiction, however.

  • 1001 Letters for All Occasions, by Cory Sandler and Janice Keefe

  • Webster's New World Letter Writing Handbook, by Robert W. Bly

  • Unsent Letters: Writing as a Way to Resolve and Renew, by Lauren B. Smith

  RECOMMENDED WEB SITES

  Fiction Writer's Connection (http://www.iictionwriters.com/tips-query-letters. html). This Web site provides advice about query letters.

  Query Letters I Love (http://queryletters.blogspot.com/). On days when you think query letters are at best silly and at worst sheer torture, go to this blog, entirely devoted to query letters a Hollywood producer receives for film projects, to gain some perspective.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN:

  the view from the other side of the desk

  I have always found the question How do I find a literary agent for my work? to be a little unsettling. There's the obvious reason why agents find the question unsettling: Most of us have never had to look for one. Then there's the fact that most of us know we're listed in at least one directory or guide to getting published, if not in the telephone book, so we're not sure why we can't be found. But the question is unsettling because of the anxiety, hope, and despair at its heart—the same qualities found in the question How do I find a needle in a haystack?

  WHY BOTHER WITH THE NEEDLE?

  Now that you're ready to try to find a publisher for your book, you might be wondering, in addition to how to find an agent and what an agent can do for you, whether you really need one or not.

  Do you just want to place your book, doesn't matter where, doesn't matter with whom? Just get it out there so you can, as it were, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes? You might be able to do that on your own,

  without an agent. Consult Richard Curtis's book, How to be Your Own Literary Agent, which I recommended at the end of chapter eleven. Just bear in mind that an unagented author might find it easier to place a book of nonfiction than a novel, and that placing your book is probably going to be a full-time job.

  However, some established writers of genre material—romance, fantasy, science fiction—occasionally recommend to "newbies" that they try to get a book offer first and then get an agent to negotiate it. The pros and cons? One pro is that you might more easily attract an agent with an offer in hand than with nothing. One con is that you might attract an agent who just wants to see some money come in and who may not be attentive after that. Another is that an agent coming on the scene after the offer has been made has less negotiating leverage. He can probably improve whatever offer you get, but not always. You would have to research this agent as carefully as any other (we will discuss research later in this chapter).

  Most of the mainstream publishers who publish fiction prefer to work with authors who have agents. Some regard us as necessary evils and some as go-betweens who reduce the amount of time they have to spend managing a writer's career. An agent can brief an author on all sorts of publishing matters so an editor doesn't have to spend time training new recruits. Because an agent's job is to handle the business end of things, the presence of an agent can help the editor and author keep their relationship focused on the creative end. Additionally, established agents have proved that they can regularly spot new talent, so editors have learned to rely on their prescreening techniques. No one bats .1000, but some have better averages than others.

  Fantasy novelist Victoria Strauss has this to say about agents on the Writer Beware Web site (www.sfwa.org/beware), which she co-founded:

  Agenting is a skilled profession that requires specialized expertise, such as a good understanding of publishing contract terms, as well as personal contacts within the industry (publishing is still very much a back-room business) ... if your goal is to sell to one of the large houses, your efforts are better spent searching for an agent than submitting direct to the few imprints that will consider unagented work. It can take a long time to find an agent, but once you do, she can cut editors' response time to a minimum—and just as important, get your manuscript directly onto the desk of an editor who can give it serious consideration.

  THE BENEFITS OF HAVING AN AGENT

  So what can an agent do for you? First, when your manuscript is ready to go, the agent makes all the submissions to editors and absorbs the blow of the rejections. You can decide you want to hear every response or you can decide you never want to see another rejection letter again. No matter how you approach it, you will be free from the necessity of writing pitch letters, copying manuscripts, and going to the post office to send them off.

  NEGOTIATING THE ADVANCE

  Next, the agent fields any offers for your book. When an editor wants to publish your book, she makes an offer of an advance. An advance is a sum of money the publisher pays for the right to publish your book. But the money is not unencumbered. The complete expression is advance against all earnings. That means that the money your book earns will go into your royalty account until it adds up to the amount the publisher has advanced you. If the amount of earnings exceeds the amount of your advance, you will receive royalties. If the amount of earnings never adds up to the amount of your advance, you won't see any more money. But neither will you have to pay back the difference between the money your book earned and the money you were advanced.

  When an editor prepares to make an offer for a book, he will almost certainly offer more to publish a book sent in by an agent than a book submitted by an author—an unagented author. The editor knows that the agent knows what the publishing house is capable of paying. And the editor who wants to buy the book doesn't necessarily want to alienate an established agent by making an insulting offer, because that agent might

  have a big project on the horizon that the editor will want to see. Nevertheless, editors are entirely capable of making disappointing offers for agented hooks every day of the week. They just might not be quite as disappointing as the ones they'd make if there weren't an agent involved, and an agent will almost always obtain some kind of an improvement.

  THE CONTRACT

  After the offer comes the contract. A publishing contract is marginally less boring—and marginally more readable—than, say, a mortgage agreement or a lease. And that's not saying much. One thing I can guarantee: Even if you've studied law, there are parts of a publishing contract that may as well be written in Urdu for all the sense they'll make to you. Agents have read countless publishing contracts, and they are pretty familiar with the kinds of things publishers won't change and the things on which they'll be flexible.

  Every good agency has established "boilerplates" with different publishers. That means that the agents sold books to a specific publisher in the past and, in the course of the negotiation, got the publisher to agree to make certain changes in its standard contract. Those changes are then carried over, for the most part, to the next contract the agent negotiates with the publishing house. You will enjoy the benefits of those altered contracts when you sign with an established literary agent. And you should know that many publishers have two standard contracts: one for authors with agents and one for authors without agents. Which do you think is the more favorable? />
  PROTECTING YOUR RIGHTS

  An agent can also, in the course of a negotiation, hold back certain subsidiary rights on your behalf. An author who signs a publishing contract without an agent will sign over to the publisher all ancillary rights to the book—film and television, dramatic, magazine, electronic, foreign translation, paperback reprint, book club, audio, you name it. An agent

  can help an author retain certain of those rights, typically film, television, dramatic, audio, and foreign translation rights. The agent then attempts to sell those rights on your behalf, and if he is successful, you'll have more contracts to sign and more checks to deposit.

  ROYALTY PAYMENTS

  After your book is published, you'll be sent royalty statements twice a year. These are statements of account that list sales of your book and show how far you are from paying back your advance. Or how close. Or, ideally, how much money you're making. Your agent reads these statements and might enter the data into a computer accounting program so he can keep track of your sales. Your agent will also be able to spot errors in these statements and get the publisher to correct them. These statements aren't particularly easy to read—some people find them more impenetrable than contracts—but the Association of Authors' Representatives (AAR), through its indefatigable Royalty Committee, is steadily getting publishers to make their statements more comprehensive and more standardized, to everyone's benefit.

  MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

  Any agent who is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives (AAR) enjoys the benefits of the work done by the AAR's Contracts Committee. Members of this committee regularly meet with publishers to discuss certain aspects of the publishers' contracts. The committee's work has resulted in several changes to the standard contracts of various well-known publishers, and those changes benefit everyone, members and nonmembers alike. In addition to that work, however, the committee provides AAR members with contract checklists that help agents negotiate better terms in any publishing contract. Aside from the AAR, the Authors Guild offers contract review and advice to its members. There are organizations for writers of mysteries, romance novels, science fiction and fantasy, Westerns, and many more. Some of these organizations will offer advice and support as well.

  HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT AGENT FOR YOUR BOOK_

  If you've decided you do want to get an agent for your work, how do you begin to find that elusive needle in the proverbial haystack?

  The one thing you need to keep uppermost in your thoughts is this: Agents and editors are, above all else, readers. When we sit down with the manuscript of a novel, most of us hope to experience the wonderful sensation of getting lost in the pages of a book and being unable to put it down that made us book lovers in the first place. Finding an agent is like finding someone who will be the person most likely to enjoy your book. When you think about it, you know that your best friend will like a certain type of book, your mother another type, your carpool partner a third. Yet there are times when you like a book so much you tell everyone to read it, no matter what their taste. It's likely that, with a novel you yourself have written, this is going to be one of those times. But you're going to have to curb your enthusiasm and think hard and realistically about whether the agents you're researching are going to be the right readers for your work.

  MAKING A TARGETED LIST

  This is a research project—not a needle-in-a-haystack project at all. In the previous chapter, you tried to develop a profile of your ideal reader. Now take that ideal reader and try to come up with a list of some actual books that person might have enjoyed reading. Try for a list of ten titles published in the last five to ten years. Got it? Okay, now you need to figure out who the agent was for each of the books on your list. Here's how:

  1. Get a copy of each of the books on your list and look at the acknowledgments page. You can do this at the library or in a bookstore without checking out or buying the actual book. See if the author thanks or acknowledges his literary agent in some way. Put that agent's name on your list.

  2. If the book doesn't have any acknowledgments, call the publisher of the book and ask for the subsidiary rights department. Tell them you'd like to know the name of the agent for that book. If, for some reason, they don't want to give it to you, tell a white lie and say that you're interested in the film rights. If they give you the name, put it on your list.

  3. If you strike out with the publishing house, go to the Internet and see if the authors of the books have Web sites. You might find the agent's name there with a direct e-mail or Web page link. Don't fire off an e-mail to the agent, however. Just put his name and contact information on your list.

  4. If you didn't find the agent's name on the author's Web site, there are many other places you can look on the Internet. You can go to

  search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Answers.com and type in something like "Philip Roth literary agent." There are also a few sites where you can put in a writer's name to find his literary agent. They're not comprehensive, but you might find what you're looking for at one of the following sites:

  •Agent Query (http://www.agentquery.com/). A handsome, well-laid-out site you can search in many ways, this site is one of the best of its kind.

  • Publishers Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarket/ place.com). You can search for an agent by putting in the name of a writer even if you are not a member.

  • Bill's List of Literary Agents and Their Authors' Books (http://www.wrhammons.com/). Bill Hammons tries to keep up-to-date with literary agents and the writers they represent. While his list isn't comprehensive, it's a heroic effort and a real service to other writers.

  • WritersNet (http://www.writers.net/). Writing resources, news, and discussion for writers, editors, publishers, and agents.

  5. Lastly, especially in the case of less well-known writers, you can e-mail them directly and ask for the names of their agents. They might have an e-mail link on their site, or you might find their e-mail address in another listing. Sometimes you won't hear back, but you never know when someone will be happy to hear from a fellow writer and want to offer a helping hand.

  MAKING A BLIND LIST

  If you haven't been able to come up with the names of any contemporary authors whose readers might like your work, don't despair. You just need to start looking for agents in a different way. You're going to try to find an agent by searching for the kinds of books they represent and narrow-ing the list down to the ones who might be likely to represent the kind of book you've written.

  There are at least two annual guides that provide a wealth of information to help you make a good list. They are:

  • Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, & Literary Agents. I don't know anyone who doesn't like Jeff Herman's book. Much more than a listing of names and addresses, it offers advice on everything from writing a book proposal to negotiating a contract, and its listings of editors and agents are full-blooded profiles that tell you everything from the person's telephone number to his pet peeves and the names of the authors he's worked with. Even if you have already developed a list of agents, you'll need to consult this book.

  • Guide to Literary Agents, edited by Joanna Masterson. This annually updated directory lists more than six hundred literary agents with their areas of interest and has articles on writers conferences and other topics of interest as well as interviews with a handful of literary agents. Another invaluable guide.

  In addition to using these guides, you can search for agents at the following Web sites:

  • Association of Authors' Representatives (http://www.aar-online.org/). Searchable database of AAR members by name or keyword. For instance, you can type in the word romance and get the agents who have that word in their member profile. Unfortunately, however, you will get agents who include that word in the categories they do not represent as well as agents who do represent that category. But it's a start.

  • Publishers Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/). I incl
ude this again because you can not only search by author name, but by keyword, genre, or subject.

  There are many more Web sites that list literary agents, but I've looked at a host of them and have found that the above-listed sites and directories are the most reliable, comprehensive, and up-to-date. They contain more information than a name and address and can better help you to establish a list of agents who might respond to your work.

  HONING YOUR LIST

  You've discovered something else while you've done all this research, something you may have known all along but may not have acknowledged: Your novel is not all things for all people—no novel is. Many writers fantasize that their first novel will be universally adored, bought, read, and reread. It's an important fantasy—it may keep you going when all logical indications beg you to stop—but it's a fantasy that, once it's served its purpose, should be put to rest. Doing the research suggested in this chapter will help you to focus on the people who should be exactly right for your book. Paradoxically, narrowing your list and finding the just-right person, whether agent or editor, can do more to ensure that your book will be widely read than flinging hundreds of mail-merged letters into the vasty publishing deep.

  DUE DILIGENCE

  If you've really thought about your potential readers and tried to match your book to an agent who sounds as if he might really respond to it, you should have a list of no more than ten agents at this point. Don't run to the post office yet! It's time for the next stage of your research: finding out as much as you can about each of the agents on your list.