Category Archives: advice

April 06, 2010   DG&B   advice, Lauren, subsidiary rights  
7

Get organized

by Lauren

As the rights director, part of my job is trying to synthesize information on an author’s entire career to pitch front and backlist titles—and to know what is available to be sold or resold now. Foreign rights don’t have as short a shelf life as many others, and we still make foreign deals on books years down the line, sometimes after they’re out of print in the U.S.  Recently, I asked one of our clients to send me a copy of an old contract from before we represented him, and he quickly pulled it from his files and got it in my hands. He remarked that he had heard from other authors that they didn’t really keep accurate files, and he couldn’t understand how they functioned. The truth is, sometimes, they don’t do it very well.

So if I can offer you one piece of advice today, it’s this: get organized. Even if organization doesn’t come naturally to you. Even if you find it inherently loathsome. Do not assume that other people will keep records of things you’re getting copies of and don’t assume that you’ll still be in touch with them when you need those things later. Don’t assume that people who you’ve stopped doing business with will prioritize giving you information you want at the speed with which you need it. Keep every single contract, license, and royalty statement you receive. Any time you sign a legal document or are given a financial statement, be sure you can get your hands on it in the future and within a few hours of it being asked of you. Think about saving things digitally to make them easier to find and save space (though you should still keep hard copies with original signatures of any legal agreement as well). 

And start early. Plenty of well meaning authors tell me–as they sigh with dismay that they think they maybe did a deal with some country that begins with T for their 3rd or 4th book–that they’re going to organize their paperwork this time.  But 20 years in, that’s a much more difficult task than if you start organizing yourself from Day 1. And who wouldn’t want a career with that kind of longevity and potential?

March 31, 2010   DG&B   advice, characterization, Stacey  
6

The emotional life of a character

by Stacey

With a strong interest in psychology combined with a more obvious interest in books, I thought there were some interesting pearls of advice in this piece. It suggests using a well-known psychological concept, “The Five Stages of Grief”, to create a character’s response to anything they might be going through in a meaningful, believable way. He coins the stages for the purposes of character development “The Five Stages of Misfortune”, a clever way of spinning this to apply to fiction. I read so many submissions where I find the characters don’t handle their emotional life in a satisfying or realistic way, and it definitely impacts the overall success of a story. Like Jason Black, I’m not convinced that each of these stages of misfortune needs to be followed in every case, since not all misfortunes are created equal and you don’t want an overly dramatic reaction to a relatively minor problem, as his example of stubbing a toe illustrates. But I do think it’s important to keep reminding yourself as you are writing that all your characters need to be fleshed out in big and small ways depending on what they are going through in their emotional life. Using these guidelines as a reference is a good tool for that.

March 30, 2010   DG&B   advice, Authors Guild, Lauren, resources  
6

Using what’s out there

by Lauren

Have you ever discovered that the exact information you were looking for was readily available online, but not found it until months after you first decided it would be of use? It just happened to me this morning, and it’s a reminder that no matter how hard you search, there’s still a lot out there that you might be missing. While Googling can get you far in life (and I firmly believe everyone should cultivate reasonably good search skills for their personal and professional benefit), sometimes the greatest sites are ones you’d never know to look for. It can be really helpful to know what sites others with similar interests and needs find handy.

Certainly, all authors should be sure to check out the website of the Authors Guild. Some of their resources are only for members (authors with publishing contracts should think about joining), but others, like the information on the Google settlement, are freely available. For anyone interested in the possibilities that the world of social media has to offer (and frankly, you should all be, because it’s not only personally fun and useful, it’s critical to a successful career in publishing these days!), Mashable is one of the best sites out there, including how-to guides both basic and advanced to get you started and then help you take it to the next level. If, like me, you’re a grammar nerd (or simply need the help), check out the Chicago Manual of Style’s free monthly Q&A. There’s also the option to subscribe to the manual itself online, though I’m personally partial to the hard copy on my desk with post-its flagging the issues for which I’m most likely to need reminders.

Which sites do all of you find useful? We find the blogs in our blogroll (take a look to the right!) to be pretty informative, but I think the best resources for authors, both published and aspiring, are probably those their fellow authors are already using. So share below your favorite resources for authors and publishing professionals! I’ll definitely be looking to add to my list.

March 29, 2010   DG&B   advice, favorites, fun, Jim, lists, reading, Tournament of Books  
109

Jim will tell you what to read

by Jim

A few days back, John Warner, one of the commentators for The Tournament of Books, offered up a service. If you listed the last five books you had read, he would tell you what you should read next.

It sprang from a discussion about how we decide to choose what we read when we each know darn well that we’ll never get through every book out there. So a lot of folks stick with what they expect to like and might miss out on some great reads.

Unable to turn down something like this, I listed the last five books I had read (that weren’t work related). Warner suggested I read Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon. I groaned a bit since I had read a collection of Chaon’s short stories a few years back and was underwhelmed. I wouldn’t have picked his new novel up on my own without the recommendation, but I grabbed it that night and finished it this weekend. It’s a literary whodunit that is enervating and upsetting, beautiful and bleak. I loved it.

All of this said, the Tournament of Books commentators and readers seem to have a distinct literary fiction bias. The proportion of readers who included Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask in their past five was very telling (which is not an insult—it was in mine!). Knowing that we have readers who write across genres and for very different target audiences, I’d love to try to recreate Warner’s experiment here and see what the results are. What I’ll try to do (and I have no idea how this will work in practice) is recommend a little outside the box. Maybe an adult novel to someone whose last five reads were YA. Or a thriller to someone who skews more romantic. Or maybe there’s another book just like the ones you list that I’ll think you absolutely have to read. I will try to recommend only books that I have read but may have to turn it over to colleagues or our readers if I feel stumped. So let’s see if this works: just promise that you’ll let me know if and when you actually read the book—y’all can find my email address!

Update: A little confusion–sorry for my lack of clarity! Post the titles in the comments, and I’ll give the recommendation there. You should email me if you read the book and/or want to chat about my choice!

March 29, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, contracts, Jane, why we are agents  
15

Why do you need an agent?

by Jane

So back to that age-old question again, and an experience I had last week that provides the response.

I received a call from a man who had already sold his book to a publisher (he had not submitted it to multiple publishers, and so really had no idea what it was worth) for a modest sum and had located and “hired” a movie agent through the internet. He had found an attorney (I am not sure how) who had “reviewed” his contract for him.

When he called me, he wasn’t sure why–he had just been told by his editor and publisher that he should have an agent.

I agreed that I would be interested in helping him, and he instructed his attorney to send me a copy of the contract and to talk with the movie agent to tell him that I would be on board.

But then I looked at the contract and I was stunned. There was a huge problem on the very first page; knowing that we didn’t have a signed agency agreement, I didn’t read further but I am absolutely certain that there are other major problems in that contract that will lead to problems down the road.

Ultimately, this writer told me that he had decided not to use an agent, after all. He thought there was no need as the publishing contract was already signed. I wished him well, but thought to myself that he had made a very big mistake at the beginning and hoped that he doesn’t rue the day he made this decision and that the movie agent is successful in helping the book become a film.

Vetting contracts, of course, is not all we agents do. And, as you’ve gathered from our posts on this blog, the sale of a book is just the beginning of our work with our clients. But, this is a good example of why it’s important to have an agent in your corner.

I am curious what you think about this experience and look forward to hearing.

March 26, 2010   DG&B   advice, Lauren  
2

Entering the publishing world

by Lauren

Are you new to the whole publishing thing? Maybe you’ve just finished your first ever masterpiece (and by finished, I mean edited, polished, had readers give you feedback, etc.) and are ready to look for an agent. Maybe this is even the first place you wound up after googling—in which case, welcome to publishing, my friend! You’re going to love it here (also sometimes hate it, but mostly, we hope, love it). There’s a lot of great advice here, if we do say so ourselves. But much of it is detailed and narrowly focused, and maybe you need a quick overview. If so, Eric over at Pimp My Novel has a very brief tutorial that’ll help you figure out where to begin—and give you a sense of what questions you need to be asking. My only caveat is that the year he mentions between acquisition and publication is more likely to be two years for non-fiction—or fiction that is sold on a partial or needs a lot of editorial work before acceptance.

March 25, 2010   DG&B   advice, distribution, Jessica, publishers, queries  
4

Misconceptions

by Jessica

I was chatting with some colleagues about assorted misconceptions about publishing, and I thought I’d pass along three.

1) In the name of writing an arresting, throw-down-the-gauntlet type of query, insult the agent to whom you are writing. Every so often I get a query that dares me to look past my own evident myopia/mediocrity/corporate co-option and read a project so mind-blowing that it will challenge everything I presume to know. Although it’s true I am near sighted (and entirely open to earth-shattering literary experience), I’m always a little astonished that anyone imagines contempt might be an effective conversation starter. I do wonder whether the writer in question started out composing less strident letters, and has simply grown bitter over time. If so, I get it. Rejection is excruciating, and who wouldn’t love to craft some cutting cri de couer? Satisfying? Certainly. Self-sabotaging? Probably. Calling an agent a tool seems a poor way of hiring one, but perhaps even Pyrrhic victory can be sweet.

2) I often hear it bandied about that it is harder to get an agent than a publisher. Comforting as this may seem, I feel fairly certain it’s not true. To find representation, you must convince only one person that your story is well-crafted, saleable, and worthwhile. To get a book into print, you generally need to convince a battery of people with disparate tastes and interests, a long, highly particular history of success and failure selling books, and improbably high sales targets that your work is worthy and commercially viable. Most slots on a given list are carefully guarded, and awarded to people who can play some active role in rounding up readers. In the case of business books, an “active role” might take the form of a “buy-back” in which a company or foundation commits in advance of publication to buy ten or fifteen thousand copies. Quite a deal sweetener, also something like the publishing equivalent of Stone Soup. The house brings the stone, but the author brings all the other ingredients, including a baseline of sales. Getting an agent means recruiting a single (albeit tenacious) ally; getting a contract means winning over a whole team.

3) Once you have a publisher, your book will be available in bookstores throughout the country. Not always the case. Publishing houses, even those with great distribution, are not solely responsible for the number of copies shipped. They may announce an ambitious first printing, but the bookseller accounts have a say in how many copies they will take, how many stores will stock it, and for how long.

Any misconceptions that you have encountered/discovered? I’m happy to add to the list.

March 24, 2010   DG&B   advice, queries, Stacey  
5

Creative ways to get published

by Stacey

I saw this piece about a writer who found a fairly unconventional way to get published after trying the traditional way unsuccessfully (rejections from several dozen agents!). To me this is an example of how many resources there are to get your work noticed, and to connect with others in your community. It’s inspiring to see that there are success stories like this out there, and that they are happening to writers who are motivated, focused, and creative in finding the right outlet for them. I hope some of you will have or have already had similar success stories, and will share them with us and our faithful readers.

March 23, 2010   DG&B   advice, Chasya, revision, writing  
5

Spring cleaning

by Chasya

It’s time to take out the trash–literally. As the birds come out to sing and the bitter cold edge of winter fades into a distantly unpleasant memory, I’ve been spending the weekends wrapped up in a yearly ritual that’s both exhausting and fulfilling–the purging and cleansing of my apartment.

That’s not the only thing I suspect being cleaned up, and on this helpful page run by a group of romance writers, Sylvia Rochester offers some good starter tips on polishing up your manuscript. Anyone else have some great tips to share?

Let the spring cleaning begin!

March 22, 2010   DG&B   about us, advice, Jane, publishers, submissions  
14

The submission process

by Jane

In the comments last week, Joan Swan asked us to review how submissions are done. I raised my hand to offer this explanation:

I submit proposals and manuscripts on a multiple basis nearly all the time. While the proposal or the manuscript is being completed, I am talking about the project with various editors who I think might be interested. If they are, I add their names to a submission list, and when we deem the proposal or manuscript ready to submit, I set a date and tell the author when I am planning to send it out.

All of our proposals and manuscripts are now being submitted electronically as opposed to only a short while ago when they were sent in the mail. We find this is far more efficient and it has helped us streamline the process. With nonfiction proposals, we generally go to at least 20 publishers at a time. With fiction, we submit to 5 or 10. On the day of the submission, I sometimes call editors to say the material is coming to give them a heads up–editors receive so much material from agents and authors, I don’t want our submissions to get “lost” in a crowded inbox.

With nonfiction I usually begin following up, if I haven’t heard back from editors, about a week to 10 days later. With fiction I will wait for two weeks as reading an entire manuscript is bound to take longer than just a proposal. I ascertain the editor’s level of interest (and, yes, I collect their rejections) and then I gently try to press for when we will have an offer. If more than one publisher makes an offer, I usually try to have an auction.

Sometimes this process takes only a couple of days; sometimes it can take months depending upon how many interested parties I have and how many rounds of publishers I have to go to.

If I feel after the first round that more work needs to be done to improve the proposal or manuscript, based on feedback from the editors, I will suggest that to my client and share the comments that I have received from publishers. It is up to the author to decide whether he or she wants to make any changes.

Depending on the project and the comments I receive back from publishers, I decide just how far I will go in terms of submitting to more and smaller publishers. Sometimes we go to a number of rounds and sometimes we don’t. I do find though that I am persistent enough to sell a very high percentage of the projects I take on.

I am happy to answer any specific questions on this process if you have them.

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