FORGING YOUR PATH
I’m not an expert in this department. In fact, I’m not even an “insider” yet, but if you’re a newbie, think of it as my personal helping hand to you: all the things I wish someone would have put in condensed format for me to read 2 years ago. Most of the industry information you need can be found through your own digging and a perfect place to start is at just about any blog listed under editors/agents or writing industry on my LINKS page. If you really want to monitor the pulse of the publishing world, I suggest subscribing to Publisher’s Marketplace ($20/mo). Also, if you’re targeting e-Pubs, a lot of this doesn’t apply, because you don’t need an agent. However, it’s all still good advice, and I firmly believe following these steps will help you sell anywhere. (No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds on the information shared here.)
Though everyone goes about it in a different way and some folks get really, really lucky, the road to publishing generally goes a little something like this:
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Write the book.
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Re-Write the book (at least once).
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Figure out how to sell the book.
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Find an agent that loves (and can sell) the book.
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Sell the book.
Sounds easy, right? Just five simple steps. Conceptually easy, but not necessarily easy to execute. Some folks get stuck on step one for years. Others skip from one to five seemingly overnight. You may be thinking to yourself that one or more of these steps is redundant or unnecessary, so let me explain where I’m coming from in more detail.
Write the Book
So, you can write. Congratulations! Better yet, you love writing and you have a knack for it. You are on your way. But first things first – you must finish a book. Getting published is about selling books, therefore you must have a product to sell. You’d be amazed how many people skip this step. They are so enchanted with the idea of being published they try to do everything at once, just to find once they’ve pitched an “idea” to an editor or agent who requests it that they now must toil for months and months as that opportunity slowly loses value. Preparedness goes a long way in any business, in this one even more so. FINISH your book. Don’t worry about anything else until this step is complete. Without it, the rest is pointless. If you’re not sure how to go about completing Step 1 or this is the one hanging you up and you know it, consult my page on CRAFT for some nudges in the right direction.
Re-Write the Book
Another often-skipped step. I’m guilty of this hiccup too. Finishing a novel gives you such a high — the world is your oyster and nothing can bring you down. Your book is going to break down literary barriers and single-handedly bring about peace on earth (!!!).
Oi.
It took me a while, but eventually I came to terms with the fact that no one (NO. ONE.) can write a book perfectly the first time through. The sooner you realize this and implement the solution, the sooner you will be lined up squarely for steps 3-5. The simple truth is this: you will write your book and it will make absolute perfect sense. For an audience of 1. In the real world, writers write books, then pass them to a critique partner or group and make revisions (maybe several rounds of revisions), then give them to an agent and make more revisions, then give them to an editor and make more revisions, then give them to a copy editor and make more revisions. And still, there’s a typo on page 34 and a plot string that never quite got tied up on page 256. So . . . the sooner you set yourself up to get valuable feedback on your finished work, the better off you will be.
This is where networking with other writers comes in handy. Find a critique partner or group to give you constructive feedback before you approach industry professionals. Writing organizations like the RWA, SFWA, and ITW are great for this, and you’ll probably meet some friends you’ll keep for life too.
A word on revisions: How many times you have to do these is inversely proportionalto the amount of knowledge on craft you amass x your innate talent x the amount of writing experience you have. You can’t do anything about the talent part, but the knowledge and experience are firmly within your control. Write, write, write! Practice makes as close to perfect as you can get. And the better your grammar, structure, and storytelling technique, the fewer glaring problems your critiquers will encounter, so they will be able to provide you with deeper feedback.
Figure Out How to Sell the Book
You thought you were off the hook with all the work you put into learning your craft, drafting, and revising? Think again. In today’s tight economy, more and more pressure falls on you as the author to have a clear idea of how to sell your product. Good news: figuring this out early puts you ahead of the game. Yes, write the book of your heart, but if you want anyone besides your immediate family to read it, you better make sure the book of your heart will speak to a demographic or at least a niche of people. How do you find these people? Easy. They are people like you. Find people who share your interests and you’ll find your market.
Once you’ve identified your market, research the other books and authors selling into this market. They are your new best friends. Watch them. Study them. Stalk them. What are they doing that works? Who are they represented by? Published by? Before you approach an agent, it pays to know exactly where your book goes in the bookstore and which publisher(s) will put it there.
The key to this is reading. Read A LOT. Read everything in your target market, everything released by your target peers (authors) and put out by your target lines. Remember there is a 1-2 year lag from what is hitting shelves and what is being written, so if your idea is really really close to something you’re reading, you’re 3-4 years behind the curve. Think forward and to be on the cutting edge of your market, you need to know your market. Read, read, read! Make sure to read outside of your genre, too. Something that has been done over and over in a historical might be really fresh in an urban fantasy, so make sure you’re filling your creative well with a variety of inspiration.
Some excellent resources for this step are things like Goodreads – where you can meet other readers who share your taste and see what else they are reading, and figure out who is publishing those other books. You should also follow book review blogs that cover books in the vein of what you write to see what’s hot, what has readers excited, and what they like and don’t like about those other titles.
Finding An Agent
Obviously, before you go shopping for an agent, you should have not only a polished novel, but a synopsis, query, and pitch (what I call a “query package”) ready too. See the CRAFT section for more info on the elements of your query package. Once you have it, you have several options for how to proceed. The most straight-forward is to start querying agents directly.
I wish someone had told me this when I was first diving into the agent hunt. This priceless single word would have saved me HOURS of time tracking agents down: querytracker.net This is an excellent free resource that provides a hub for locating agents and for tracking your outgoing queries. It has cool report features and ways to look at your query list at a glance that really cut down on time. Before QT, I was doing all the grunt work on finding the agents myself as well as tracking my query stats in an excel database. This website could have saved me TONS of time. Go check it out as soon as you are ready to begin the query process. When you are ready to get really serious, I recommend going for the full-blown membership, which gives you the ability to track queries on multiple projects and provides many other cool features.
Make sure you thoroughly research every agent on your list. You should have a good reason for querying them – something you would be comfortable saying to their face. Not, “You have 4 bestselling authors on your list, would you look at my book?” but, “You represent four of my favorite authors and since I write XYZ, I think you would be the perfect agent to sell my work.” (Okay, don’t say that, but you get the idea…) The smart way to go about this is to work backwards. First, find the authors publishing books like yours, then find out who represents them.
Note: While querytracker.net has a feature where you can track an agent by author, it’s not very robust because the database is being built by users. For the real nitty-gritty, I recommend signing up for a membership to Publisher’s Marketplace. You can find ‘Who Represents’ and search by author or agent. You can also do deeper research on the agents you are looking at, including seeing every deal they’ve ever made/announced. If you can’t afford to maintain your membership, I still recommend signing up for a month to do your research and build up your agent list. You can cancel at the end of the first month and you’ve just garnered priceless intel (legally!) for $20 bucks.
Other than querying directly, you might have a referral from someone you met through the RWA or similar organiztion. Or you might have pitched to someone in person. Either way, you still need your query package. Another thing that CAN happen, though I don’t know how frequently, is that you might sell on your own, if you pitch to an editor or enter a contest and receive a request. This should make your agent hunt a snap, but I still think it’s important to have the leg work all done so that you can snatch those opportunities when they come and you’ll already know which agents you want to call first.
Sell the Book
This one is still a bit of a mystery to me, because I’m not there yet. But what I gather is this: your agent will work with you on creating a marketing plan or at least constructing a query packet to go out and repeat the process you’ve just gone through to snag said agent. Only harder. And, they only have “6 shots” (this is in reference to the 6 major companies that dominate the NY publishing scene). Do your research to find out who is publishing your favorite books - you’ll more than likely find that more than one imprint you like actually belongs to the same publisher.
So, your agent puts together a query packet and queries the publishers for you. There isn’t much you can do at this point, except to ensure you’ve done steps 1-4 as well as you can, which will provided your agent with the tools to do their job effectively. This means you’ve done your research, know how your story could fit into any given line, and have constructed a strong query and synopsis that can be tweaked to cater to each house.
The Big 6
What follows is a quick sketch/example of how Publishing houses are divided up into imprints. Examples from the NY Six plus Harlequin are listed below. (A full listing of large print houses and their imprints can be found on Publisher’s Marketplace):
- Hachette > Grand Central Publishing > Forever
- HarperCollins > Harper Morrow > Avon > Avon Red
- Macmillan > Tor/Forge > Tor
- Penguin > Berkley > Jove
- Random House > Ballantine > Ivy
- Simon & Schuster > Gallery > Pocket > Juno
- Harlequin Enterprises > Harlequin > Silhouette > Silhouette Nocturne
A Note on Other Publishing Methods
There are plenty of ways to get your stories in the hands of readers. If you choose not to go the NY print route, you could self-publish or e-publish without the assistance of an agent. Especially if you are writing to a small niche market or write shorter pieces, an e-pub might be an attractive option. In general, the e-pub industry also moves a lot faster than traditional print, so you can get your books published quicker and start to see returns sooner too.
Beware the “Vanity Publisher” – a house that intends to make their money off of YOU, the author, not readers. Most self-publishing ventures are like this. Your book will be produced in small quantities and at very high cost, which will put you at a disadvantage for marketing it competitively and usually means high up-front costs for you. Traditionally, money should flow TOWARDS the author, not away from them. Be very careful when evaluating places to put your work and if you do pursue self-publishing, do your research. If you just want to hold a solidly-bound book with your name on it in your hands, go for it. If you just want readership, try self-publishing through your blog or website – you’ll have a wider audience and it costs you nothing.
