Publishers and agents are looking for prolific authors. The questions they often ask are "What are you working on now? What's your next book?" They want someone who will write a number of novels. So, if they like your writing and you're working on a novel, it could help in getting an anthology published. For publishers and the agents, the novel is the thing.
Marketing the novel is a different game. The first move you make with a novel is to try to get an agent. An agent knows the marketplace and how the game is played. With an agent, you'll wind up with more money in your pocket than you would if you went to the publisher on your own and didn't pay an agent. A good way to find agents is to go to the standard reference book, Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers and Literary Agents by Jeff Herman, which you can find at any decent library and which is updated regularly like Writer's Market, which also has lists of agents. In them, you'll find a list of literary agents nationwide, along with instructions for submitting your work to agents. Each has about fifty pages worth reading.
My personal preference, or prejudice perhaps, is for New York agents who are members of A.A.R. (Association of Authors' Representatives). Local agents tend not to have the contacts or the clout you want to have going for you. New York is where publishing all happens, just as movies happen in Hollywood. Agents, editors, and publishers are right around the corner from each other. My personal feeling is that if, after a thorough beating of the bushes (fifteen to twenty submissions), you can't get a New York agent, there's a good chance that there are problems with your novel and that you need to work on it. A.A.R. membership is the best assurance you have that an agent is ethical. For a list of agents in the A.A.R., check their Web site at http://www.aar-online.org/.
Besides what I'm going to tell you, you should see what Writer's Market and Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers and Literary
Agents have to say about getting an agent. One other book worth checking out is Literary Agents by Michael Larsen.
The two big issues, as I see it, are the query letter and the synopsis/outline. The query letter is what you write to get the agent interested in reading your novel. Some agents will take a synopsis and fifty to one hundred pages unsolicited. If so, the query letter is not necessary. They may want a cover letter, however. A cover letter tells them about your novel and yourself—the gist of your novel and any credits you have.
The sources that I've given you will tell you how to go about writing cover letters. My advice is to keep them short and to the point. Never tell an agent or editor how good your writing is. That's their business. They don't need or want you giving them an evaluation of your writing. Give them the facts of the story. You can tell them why you think it will sell as long as it's about the marketplace and not about what a great writer you are. As always, show, don't tell. In the end, your story has to sell itself.
The synopsis/outline is another issue. Editors want a quick overview so that they can see what your novel is about and form some idea of how it could be marketed. The big problem, as I see it, is that you may have written a great novel but a lousy synopsis. Boiling your novel down into five to thirty pages is an art in itself. My feeling is that it's better to keep the synopsis as short as possible and hit the high points so that the editors can see the potential and read the novel. The main thing is to do no damage. Create some interest, and shut up. If you go on too long, they may read things into it that aren't there, things that may work against you. You could also write a short synopsis of several pages and a long one and send them both with hopes of hooking them with the short one so that they skip the long one and get into the novel.
For agents I would use the same guidelines I laid out for submitting to magazines: submit to twenty, five or more at a time.
One important thing is that you, the author, should never put up any money to get your work published. You've already put in hundreds of hours of labor writing the book. That's your contribution. Don't get sucked into paying publishing costs. The agent can legitimately ask you to pay some copying, messenger, or express mail fees. Those are the only costs it makes sense to pay. If your writing is good enough, you don't need to pay reading fees (fee to read and evaluate your manuscript) or any of the publishing costs.
There are two kinds of agents you'll be contacting: those who take unsolicited manuscripts (a synopsis and fifty to one hundred pages), and those who want you to query (send a letter telling them about your book and yourself) first.
The rules for the query are the same as for short stories. Check out the reference books I've noted.
If you're submitting a whole novel, you put it in a manuscript box with a cover page and mail it. The cover page will be like the first page of a short story, but with nothing below your name. The novel will start on the next page, with "Chapter One" about one third down the page. Manuscript boxes can be bought at office supply stores. They're a two-piece box that holds five hundred pages. The same kind that paper often comes in, but blank. Don't try to make a statement with your box.
OK, so you've done agents and gotten no bites. What next? You can be your own agent and go directly to the publishers. They're listed in the books whose titles I've given you. Those books will tell you how to submit to them. It's basically the same as submitting to agents.
What do you do if a publisher sends you a letter saying that he wants to publish your book and will pay you x amount of dollars? You can go ahead on your own and accept the deal or try to get more money, but my advice would be to get an agent. You should have no trouble getting an agent for a book that already has a publisher interested. The agent should be able to get you more money than you would get on your own, plus he'll know how to negotiate for paperback and movie rights.
Remember, they're only people at the other end. You're a person too, right? So, learn how the system works, then use your own judgment.
If your novel is accepted, you will get an advance. The advance is the money that the publisher pays you as their part in this business partnership they're willing to enter with you. They're saying that they can make your book work as a saleable item in bookstores. The publisher is the middleman in all of this. Once they've printed your book, they're the ones who have to convince the bookstores to carry it. They have a whole sales staff to do just that. Keep in mind that the advance is not your paycheck for writing the novel. It's simply the publisher's way of sealing the deal and giving you something for going with them. In a sense, both sides are taking a chance. If your book takes off and brings in a fortune, you will clean up also. If your book goes nowhere, the publisher loses what they put into publishing and selling the book, plus the advance, which you get to keep even if the book fails. The publisher has just as much to gain or lose as you do.
Huge advances come when you have a hot, saleable story and an agent who knows how to get the bid up. That's why it can pay to try to get an agent first. Agents know how to play the game and what to ask for and what not to ask for. An excellent reference book for all this is How to Get Happily Published, by Judith Applebaum.
Contests are another way of getting published. Fiction contests pay as much as $5,000 for a short story and $10,000 for novels. Publication is usually a part of the prize also. The Nelson Algren Awards is a contest run by the Chicago Tribune and requires no entry fee. It pays a $5,000 first prize for a short story. You can reach the contest by contacting the newspaper. Writer's Market also has a listing of short story, novel, screenplay, stage play, and poetry contests. Some charge a fee, $5 to $30, to enter. That's how they get some or all of the prize money. There's nothing wrong with paying to enter. The writing magazines, The Writer and Writer's Digest, also publish the contests several times a year. You can buy them at the newsstand or get them from a library.
Even though the subject of this chapter is marketing, you need to keep writing. So, here's the writing material for this chapter.
EXERCISES
A character who is a psychological vampire.
A character being tem
pted to cheat on his or her lover, coming very close, but not doing it. A close call.
A character looking back on what he or she thought life would be like and how it really turned out. It can be about life in general, marriage, love, children, career, etc.
Conclusion
The single most important thing to keep in mind is that your biggest problem is yourself. Managing yourself so that you keep writing no matter how you feel is the critical issue. Your emotions play a major part in all of this. They are your best guide, your trusted friend. You must depend on them, because without them you're nothing. But no friendship is perfect. The trouble starts when your emotions start suggesting that maybe your ideas aren't so good today, that maybe they're a little silly or foolish or empty or stupid and that perhaps you're wasting your time trying to be a writer, that you really don't have what it takes, that you never did and never will. How do you defend yourself against such a friend?
The one thing you don't do is sit staring at the wall punishing yourself. What you do is catch yourself, remind yourself that you are not in your right mind, that you've been blindsided once again (it happens many times), and that you can never trust your emotions when they're on such a rampage. Then you must act. You must go to your tools immediately. And how do you do that? As soon as you get stuck, ask yourself, "What's the problem exactly? Is it me? Do I feel
that I'm no good, that I don't have it? Am I blocked? Or has something in the story got me stumped—something I might or might not be aware of?"
The first step is to define the problem. Then go to the course. It's all there. But it won't help you if you don't use it. Find the place in the course that addresses the issue that's got you stumped. If you're blocked, go to chapter 15, on blocking and unblocking. If it's story that's got you stumped or blocked, go to chapter 8, on rewriting. Follow it step-by-step and do what it tells you. These are your tools. They will lead you back into the drama and energy of your story and yourself.
For every writing problem there's a simple solution. The problem may not feel simple, but your job is to make it simple. You do that not by getting sucked into some extreme emotional judgment of your story or your ability or your character, but instead by stepping back, defining exactly what's in your way, and then finding the solution in the course. Writing can be a lonely, isolating experience. But you're not in this alone. The course is your partner. Keep in touch with it. It's important to keep in touch with the course in two ways: first, by going to it when you're in trouble, but also by going to it on a regular basis. It's part of your training. All the while you're writing or doing your five minutes a day, you need to be reading the course. Two pages every day if possible, one page or half a page if that's all you can do. Don't pressure yourself. Just go to it daily and let it sink in. Keep doing that until you've gone through it at least four times—particularly chapters 4 through 10 and chapter 14. Different things will impress you at different times as you develop. It won't all register at once. Keeping in touch in this way is your ongoing training, your way of getting the support and coaching you need.
A lot, if not all, of this is new. The ideas are new, and what I'm asking you to do is new. Changing your behavior is never comfortable. It takes time to get used to it and to be able to use the tools effectively. But you can do it, and it will work. You have what it takes already. It's in you. You just have to learn how to use it. That's the craft. If you stick with it, eventually it will become a part of you. You will internalize it, and it will start to happen for you. It will be not so much that you do it, but that it does you. When that happens, you will find it's a different and much more exciting game. Believe me, it's worth working for.
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