A talentened friend of mine is wrapping up his phd in religious history. His dissertation has promise as a mainstream book, but he knows nothing about the publishing industry. He emailed asking for advice on how to get started (eg, how to approach editors.)
I started by telling him you don't approach editors: you start with an agent. Pretty soon I'd filled a page or two laying out the basics of breaking into this biz, and figured it could help some of you. (I get asked this a lot.)
The email felt like a good draft of a post I've been meaning to put together for a couple years now. But as you might have noticed, I've tried to keep myself from the blog the past year to focus on my next project.
So rather than let this languish in draft form indefinitely, helping no one, I'm just going to post it here as sent, complete with uncaps, fragments and gramatical mistakes. (Minus a few personal details). I think you'll get the gist.
Fiction authors: your process is very similar, except you have to write the whole novel and have that ready to send instead of the book proposal.
I hope this helps some of you writers trying to break in. To find it later, I'll add it to my Advice to Writers page.
The email:
the entry key to this business is a good agent. (not an editor, as most people think. they are the second rung in.) agents are the gate keepers. the big houses won't even consider "unagented" material anymore.
(if you want to go to a regional, academic or specialty press, ignore the preceding, though everything that follows will apply to landing them instead of an agent.)
once you land a good agent, you have passed the biggest hurdle, and your book has a very good shot at selling.
finding an agent for nonfiction is pretty straightforward, though a lot of work:
1. write a kick-ass book proposal, and approx 3 sample chapters. (they don't want to read the actual book, they want to read a proposal.)
2. identify agents that are a good fit (a hard part).
3. Write a great one-page query letter.
4. Keep sending #3 to agents until one agrees to see your book proposal. Send to about a dozen at a time, because it usually takes dozens. Once one says yes, you need to be able to mail/email the proposal that day, while their interest is up.
6. The agent will work with you on rewrites to make the proposal much better.
I started by telling him you don't approach editors: you start with an agent. Pretty soon I'd filled a page or two laying out the basics of breaking into this biz, and figured it could help some of you. (I get asked this a lot.)
The email felt like a good draft of a post I've been meaning to put together for a couple years now. But as you might have noticed, I've tried to keep myself from the blog the past year to focus on my next project.
So rather than let this languish in draft form indefinitely, helping no one, I'm just going to post it here as sent, complete with uncaps, fragments and gramatical mistakes. (Minus a few personal details). I think you'll get the gist.
Fiction authors: your process is very similar, except you have to write the whole novel and have that ready to send instead of the book proposal.
I hope this helps some of you writers trying to break in. To find it later, I'll add it to my Advice to Writers page.
The email:
the entry key to this business is a good agent. (not an editor, as most people think. they are the second rung in.) agents are the gate keepers. the big houses won't even consider "unagented" material anymore.
(if you want to go to a regional, academic or specialty press, ignore the preceding, though everything that follows will apply to landing them instead of an agent.)
once you land a good agent, you have passed the biggest hurdle, and your book has a very good shot at selling.
finding an agent for nonfiction is pretty straightforward, though a lot of work:
1. write a kick-ass book proposal, and approx 3 sample chapters. (they don't want to read the actual book, they want to read a proposal.)
2. identify agents that are a good fit (a hard part).
3. Write a great one-page query letter.
4. Keep sending #3 to agents until one agrees to see your book proposal. Send to about a dozen at a time, because it usually takes dozens. Once one says yes, you need to be able to mail/email the proposal that day, while their interest is up.
(Hence doing #1 before #3. Also, #3 is the hardest part for most people, and doing #1 distills their core ideas down for them and makes #3 infinitely easier.) You might want to start with a draft of #3 to get started with something small, kind of self-validate, and force you to distill your book into a few graphs. Then you widen back out to #1 and come back to #3 with new eyes and really make it rock. (It needs to.)
5. After they reject the proposal, return to #4 until one likes the proposal, and agrees to take you as a client.
6. The agent will work with you on rewrites to make the proposal much better.
7. He/she takes it from there. but all the work you've put into finding an agent is recycled here, because a) she will start with an oral pitch to editors, where she will probably crib heavily from your query letter, as well as your proposal, b) once she gets them interested, she'll submit your book proposal to them. (and it will be photocopied 20 times in-house.
they have a whole internal process where they have to get one other in-house editor to agree to support the book before it can go up to the editor in chief and then the publisher, and if they buy in, to a big committee with people from sales, marketing, publicity, finance, etc., who must agree to it.)
---
now on the agent front, cold-querying is a real bitch, and it helps greatly to know someone who will vouch for you. your work still has to stand up by itself, but they will give a lot more consideration to someone who a trusted person says is bright, capable, not a nutcase.
as for the book proposal and query, there are entire books on each, because they are that important--and i bought, used three of the books to do mine. but lots of good agents have the basics on their websites. Rachelle Gardner has a good starter.
It links to her two posts on how to write a book proposal and a query letter. I think Nathan Bransford has the very best advice on query letters, with critiques of examples. Links to his stuff is on my Advice to Writers page.
(I think Rachelle lays out the basics best, whereas Nathan jumps right in halfway through, expecting you to already know the basic elements of a query letter, and how it fits in to the entire process. So I'd start with Rachelle, then move on to Nathan.)
if you're looking for a sense of size/time, my proposal was nearly 100 pages (which was too long) and took about 4 months. queries MUST be one page, and when i do them for magazine pieces, i usually spend at least a week on them, usually much more. (not full time, but they suck up most of my creative juice for the week). but i'm slow. really slow.
is that overwhelming? it gets much easier as you get familiar.
doing a great query and proposal are are each tricky in their own way, but the format is very well established, so get familiar with that. then it's all about execution. and the key to execution is to make it INTERESTING. get the flavor of your voice/personality in there.
i think a lot of writers get lost in the format of the proposal, thinking that if they just flesh out all the elements in the outline they are done. the key is hitting all the elements, but doing so in a way that someone would actually want to read. i can help you with that.
if you can tell a great story at a party, you can write a good book. you just have to believe in that same voice--your real voice, and get it onto the page.
much harder than it sounds, as you know, but 99% of the problem is your own lack of faith that it will work there. instead, people try to Write--or worse, Write Importantly--in some other ridiculous voice that belongs to know one and sounds like it.
i tell students that if you've got a great anecdote that you're telling a group of friends, and somebody walks in and interrupts, that once the interruption settles down, try NOT picking the story back up. somebody better ask you, "So what happened with xxx?" or whatever. if they don't, it wasn't that great a story, or you didn't figure out how to tell it.
if people do want to hear more of your stories, then you've got the gift. (and lots of writers lack the confidence to pull it off orally, but can nail it on the page. confidence is not the only thing, but it's an essential thing.)
that's the MAIN thing you should keep in the foreground of your mind as you go: that storytelling approach you already have when you're telling stories to your friends.
i hope i didn't make it sound crushing. one bite at a time, it gets done. good luck with it. it will be great.
d
---
now on the agent front, cold-querying is a real bitch, and it helps greatly to know someone who will vouch for you. your work still has to stand up by itself, but they will give a lot more consideration to someone who a trusted person says is bright, capable, not a nutcase.
as for the book proposal and query, there are entire books on each, because they are that important--and i bought, used three of the books to do mine. but lots of good agents have the basics on their websites. Rachelle Gardner has a good starter.
It links to her two posts on how to write a book proposal and a query letter. I think Nathan Bransford has the very best advice on query letters, with critiques of examples. Links to his stuff is on my Advice to Writers page.
(I think Rachelle lays out the basics best, whereas Nathan jumps right in halfway through, expecting you to already know the basic elements of a query letter, and how it fits in to the entire process. So I'd start with Rachelle, then move on to Nathan.)
if you're looking for a sense of size/time, my proposal was nearly 100 pages (which was too long) and took about 4 months. queries MUST be one page, and when i do them for magazine pieces, i usually spend at least a week on them, usually much more. (not full time, but they suck up most of my creative juice for the week). but i'm slow. really slow.
is that overwhelming? it gets much easier as you get familiar.
doing a great query and proposal are are each tricky in their own way, but the format is very well established, so get familiar with that. then it's all about execution. and the key to execution is to make it INTERESTING. get the flavor of your voice/personality in there.
i think a lot of writers get lost in the format of the proposal, thinking that if they just flesh out all the elements in the outline they are done. the key is hitting all the elements, but doing so in a way that someone would actually want to read. i can help you with that.
if you can tell a great story at a party, you can write a good book. you just have to believe in that same voice--your real voice, and get it onto the page.
much harder than it sounds, as you know, but 99% of the problem is your own lack of faith that it will work there. instead, people try to Write--or worse, Write Importantly--in some other ridiculous voice that belongs to know one and sounds like it.
i tell students that if you've got a great anecdote that you're telling a group of friends, and somebody walks in and interrupts, that once the interruption settles down, try NOT picking the story back up. somebody better ask you, "So what happened with xxx?" or whatever. if they don't, it wasn't that great a story, or you didn't figure out how to tell it.
if people do want to hear more of your stories, then you've got the gift. (and lots of writers lack the confidence to pull it off orally, but can nail it on the page. confidence is not the only thing, but it's an essential thing.)
that's the MAIN thing you should keep in the foreground of your mind as you go: that storytelling approach you already have when you're telling stories to your friends.
i hope i didn't make it sound crushing. one bite at a time, it gets done. good luck with it. it will be great.
d
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Comments
Thanks for the heads-up on the link, Wren. I'll check into it.
I suspect approaching traditional industry gatekeepers is a better bet for writers of non-fiction, as standard voices and credentials are the norm, lowering the risk of an agent wasting his or her time reading several pages about something he or she knows and/or cares little.
Thanks for sharing your experience with us.
i don't think the gatekeepers are tossing stuff out because of dangling participles, but because they don't get engaged or interested. they are looking for great writing that excites them, and will presumably excite others too (and therefore sell).
So thanks for the great advice.
More please.
And by the way--unfortunately I got a little too into snooping and popped over to your writers advice page... watched videos, then realized I was still logged into my channel--if you suddenly have "Cryin Like a Bitch" and "Play the f*ckin' bass, John" as related videos just know it was my fault, not YouTube issuing a personal indictment.
Thanks again,
~T
ben, i've spent twelve hours wondering whether to be blunt, but since this post is all about helping guide people who don't know the business, and are looking for insight into how it's navigated, i think i have to be. so . . .
how is that working for you? have you sold any books to major publishers with that approach? do you know many unknown writers who have?
there are all sorts of flukes in this business, and lots of people break in through novel, lucky, peculiar, oddball routes. but they are exceptions. the overwhelming majority get published by the big houses via agents. there is a standard process for entry into this industry, and if you want to try a different route, good luck with that, but please understand that by doing so, you're taking very long odds and making them infinitely longer.
ben, i've seen your agents-are-all-phonies-and-powerless shtick many times, and my question is always, Why aren't you hanging around with a better class of agents?
my agent, betsy lerner, has been an incredible adviser, encourager, sounding board, and first editor of my work, in addition to selling it. most successful authors i know feel the same about their agents. (most of us took a couple tries to find the right one. my first agent was a bad fit, though he still would not come close to your rather preposterous caricature.)
there are lousy agents out there. lots of them. if you have only been dealing with those, i'd reconsider your approach to approaching them. i'm not sure how you keep running into douchebags--or how big your data sample actually is--but there are a world of brilliant, book-loving agents out there looking for great new talent.
Maybe I'll try Ms. Lerner. You certainly give her a sterling review. I'm not entirely nasty.
Let's see if she writes back. A chapter from the novel is on my blog. It's literature, but I wrote it with select audiences in mind.
Thank you Dave. I liked the entries I saw on her blog and the fact she is a writer makes her interesting to me.
one of the hardest parts of breaking through is the dreaded query process. kathryn sockett's The Help was the biggest fiction book of the past couple years, but it came out at the same time as mine, and we were both on the book fest circuit together and i met her in nashville about 6 weeks into our runs and we compared notes. (at that point, we were at similar runs on the NYT bestseller lists, though i would drop off soon and she would stay over a year and continue up to #1. neither of us saw THAT coming.) but she was really nice and forthcoming, and described the agony of querying SIXTY agents before she got a yes. (but then once she got that yes, the next phase zipped by, with lots of editors interested and selling to Einhorn/Putnam really fast. and then readers went crazy with it.)
getting an agent can be killer. it's THE big hurdle for most.
btw ben, i'd be careful with over-contacting. if you browse around agents' blogs, that double-email query is one of the biggest pet peeves among agents. (their biggest problem is the volume of mail coming in, finding the time to go through it all. if everyone sends a "did u receive?" msg and expects an answer, that's twice as many emails in and twice as many replies required.) i would now definitely wait at least 6 weeks (or whatever she has posted in her guidelines) before checking in again. good luck.
I figure at this point, to tell you the truth, all I need to is refer them to my blog. It's the new media and I have taken pains to see to it my ability is well represented.
I ask nothing more than any writer i.e. that my work be taken on its own merits. I will accept any judgement based upon that, but if I am not taken seriously and accorded common courtesy such as a simple reply so I will know they have seen what I have to offer--I get nasty.
(I've been a successful sales agent of intangibles for almost 30ty years and know what it means to make a living based on serving my clients.)
Again, thank you for your efforts.
The single best way to find an agent (and one who fits your style as a writer and person) is through a personal reference, as I have been able to do a few times, from another writer -- one working at the same level. It is a big deal to ask someone to share their agent's contact info with you (and use you as their reference), as they may NOT be a good fit for you. This is where I think some would-be authors really fall down; by not attending conferences, and any other form of serious networking...and by paying dues along the way to truly strengthen and polish their writing and reporting skills (whether an MFA or classes or staff work in the field.)
also good point on the chief peril there. if you scrounge your entire network, you might come up with only one or two people who can recommend you to their agent; and what's the chance that agent will be the right fit for you? it's great if they are a good fit, but if not, kind of pointless.
which is why, as you say, you probably need to broaden that net by going to conferences, networking in various ways, etc.
agents tell me that they also respond well to very personalized queries, such as, "I'm querying you because xxx is one of my favorite authors and we share a similar sensibility." (or any way you phrase it, but that you connect with other authors she reps.)
that indicate that 1) you have done some homework on the agent and this really is a targeted query, 2) you both like the same work, so there is a much greater than random chance you too will be a match.
i think betsy has told me she gets something like 100 query letters a day (i could be off on that, but it's very high). many agents have an assistant screen them, but she's of the camp that she looks at every one personally--because it's such a personal thing, and she doesn't want to miss the gem in there because it didn't click for an assistant.
but just logistically, there's no way she can read all the way through all of those, much less respond more than one line to them all. she reads the opening lines, maybe skims a bit more, and if it's clicking, she gives it a serious read and asks for more. if it starts really dull or otherwise awful, it's in the trash before she gets to the bottom.
that's reality, as any agent will tell you (once they get to the point where many people are querying).
that's why you have to open the query strong, and keep it strong.
so hopefully you mean you have your blog out there as a second or third step for them to peruse once they are really interested. because the idea that they could spend say 15-20 minutes browsing the blog of each person who writes in . . . that's just logistically impossible, and reading unsolicited queries needs to be a relatively small part of their week.
you have to get a sense of their time, realize that it's incredibly limited until they are partially sold on you, and you have to use that time effectively, and in a targeted way: with material tailored to what you are proposing (usually the book in question). blogs tend to be about all sorts of things. why could/should they want to look through all sorts of unrelated posts trying to get a grasp of you as a writer?
i also don't quite get the need for two responses: #1 that they saw your email and #2 how they felt about it. chances are, they are going to send #2 immediately after reading it, so those are just going to come at the same time. (an agent may be buried in books that are due or being published for a week or month, while queries pile up. then she may wade through hundreds or a few thousand at a time. and you want two emails then, 1 that she just saw it, and 2 that she did or didn't want to see more?) why do you want to double her work, and what does this do for you?
i think that if people want to be successful at this, it helps immensely to see things from the agent's point of view.
spending 3-4 hours one time reading through various agents' blogs will do wonders for that. rachelle has some great posts about this stuff. (including why most agents don't and shouldn't offer advice on queries they reject.)