Comments on: Stacey Glick interview at Writer’s Digest

By: Kevin A. Lewis

Kevin A. Lewis — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:46:46 +0000

Brief afterthought, Kim-please don’t think I bagged my project on the basis of that one flaky turndown, priceless though it was-I just took a hard look at the scene and realized that teenage girls who are funny, hip, resourceful & ironic are greatly in demand by agents as lead characters while teen boys with the same resume…Not so much. So I traded up to expectations and sent Prince Charming back to the darkness and obscurity of the 12th Century. It’s not about the reading audience in this instance, but the people who control access to them-courage in a lost cause being a doubtful virtue and all. I’ve really got to stop hitting Starbucks before I log onto this site…!

By: Kevin A. Lewis

Kevin A. Lewis — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:56:18 +0000

Kim, the fact of the matter is that a lot of agents selection process is entirely whim-driven with no regard at all to market currents-and while I don’t try to be James Patterson about it, any agent I run across who’s like this I drop contact with at once. I once had a contact at Writers House who couldn’t get behind a Middle Grade fairytale spoof I was plugging “because it didn’t have enough literary value”! I dropped both him and the project posthaste, and have Something Bigger on the stove now…(insert ominous rising organ music here) Just keep plugging-it’s all a numbers game……..

By: Stacey

Stacey — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 19:24:47 +0000

It’s a good question, Kim, and as always there’s no one right answer. I’d generally say that editors and agents feel like they’ve been pitched classic retellings often so unless there’s some really special unique hook and/or (hopefully and) the writing is blow you away good, it might be difficult. The key is to make your work as good as it can be and then keep trying. In the end, it’s subjective and it’s about finding someone who has your vision for the book. Good luck!

By: Kim

Kim — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:17:03 +0000

How do agent tastes line up with reader demand? I have a contemporary re-telling of a classic, which I understood from one agent are very popular, but the responses I’m getting on my middle grade are, “it’s been overdone,” even though there’s only been one blockbuster re-imagining the story and no contemporary re-telling. I recently heard a young agent say that she can’t wait for YA dystopians to go away because she likes cozy contemporary YA. Yet it seems that the public still wants to buy/read YA dystopians and not books reflecting her taste as much.

Every writer, stranger, and friend perk up when I give the pitch to them and I have writers from that age group excited to read it. Is it just a lost cause?