Advice From Literary Agent Kevan Lyon

Last night, I moderated a live online chat over at AgentQuery Connect with literary agent Kevan Lyon of the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency in California. It was a full house with many new faces and Kevan answered around 30 questions in that short hour. In case you missed the chat, I will share a few tidbits, insights and advice from Kevan Lyon.

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On being located on the West Coast (instead of New York):

*Kevan mentions that West Coast agents often work longer hours as they start early in the day in order to be available to those working on the East coast. She says working in the Pacific timezone also works well for writers who are in other parts of the world. Plus, Eastern editors tend to start later in the day and work later–matching the West Coast workday. In today’s world where the majority of business is done electronically, it matters less and less where agents are physically located. (Especially when they are like Kevan and are willing to hop a plane to New York as needed.)

On e-books, and debuts in trade paperback (instead of hardcover):

*”I see the shift to trade paper as a positive for new authors — with a lower price point there is less reluctance on the part of readers to take a chance on a new reader. The $25+ hardcover price can be a difficult hurdle in this market, partic for a new author. On the e-book side I see those sales as primarily incremental. There is the potential to introduce your work to a whole new market of readers that may not have otherwise been exposed to your book. I encourage my authors to promote their availability on e-books to ensure they are casting a wide net.”

On female/male protagonists:

* “Generally there needs to be a female protagonist somewhere in the story. The majority of readers are women! I prefer a female main character, but will certainly consider a story that has male protagonists — try to include a woman tho!”

On word count:

* Yes, 200,000 words will make an agent skeptical. However, if the writing is uber intriguing, they may consider it. But remember, reading that many pages is a massive time commitment. On the flip side, if you are writing a story you want published in its own volume, try and get over the 60,000 word hump. (We’re talking about novels and adult non-fiction, here.)

On historicals:

* “European history — from King Henry’s time period forward to Victorian times — it is fairly UK centric, but France is also popular. If you are writing straight women’s fiction/historical they generally prefer a well known historical figure to be included in the story.” She also likes books done in the Civil war era, but cautions that other periods can  be tough to sell.

On YA (young adult novels):

* Male protagonists are fine (even though the majority of YA readers are female). Protagonists should be in about the 15-19 age range. A little romance in your YA is welcome, but any genre is okay as long as you have a good hook.

On series:

* Sell the first book, first. Then worry about getting the rest of your series on a bookshelf.

On writing in multiple genres:

* She feels that is a positive thing and would not turn down a writer because of it. (This was where I began professing my love in the middle of the chat!)

On being a young (high school age) writer seeking literary agent representation:

* “If the query is well written and the plot intriguing I will take a look. It is not necessarily something I would suggest you stress [referring to your age], but it is worth mentioning — there are marketing benefits sometimes for the publisher.”

On query writing:

* “Make sure you capture the essence of your plot in a succinct and descriptive way — you need to distinguish your story in the query — we read many queries at one sitting generally.”

* Comparing to other titles and pinpointing your market in your query: “The market is probably most key in my view for non-fiction. In fiction you need to tell a wonderful story. I don’t really need you to tell me the target market in your fiction query. But I do want you to be clear on what your plot and story line is for comparison to other titles it can be helpful for fiction, so that I get an idea of the narrative style or voice, but not absolutely key.”

Additional hints:

* Don’t call her ‘Mr. Lyon.’

* She prefers e-queries.

* Don’t tell her why she would be a perfect match, tell her what your story is about.

* If she asks for a short synopsis, she feels that 3-5 double spaced pages is fine.

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If you would like to meet Kevan or her partner Jill Marsal at a conference or workshop, check out their Facebook fan page. And if you would like to query Kevan, find out more about their submission guidelines here.

Noah Lukeman is in the Blog House

Noah Lukeman, literary agent and the hero of all newbie writers (Lukeman’s the author of the stellar book The First Five Pages) has started up a blog where he answers all our burning questions about writing, agents, publishing and likely a whole lot more. Space Monkeys? I’m really curious about them. And women in the Klondike in the 1800s. That sounds interesting too. Anyway, check out his Ask a Literary Agent blog and sign up for his free newsletter (left hand side of the page) and while you are at it, add him to your follow list on Twitter and heck, why not read his free ebook on How to Write A Great Query Letter as well as order The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile.

There, you can’t say you never got anything great for free (or almost free).

Enjoy!

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Jeffrey Moores Gives the Scoop on Query Hooks…and More

During last week’s Tuesday night chat, literary consultant and editor (and also former literary agent), Jeffrey Moores dropped the bomb. Agents are sick and tired of the query letter hook–avoid it at all costs. Here’s the 411 straight from the chat:

Yvonnetherese asked: How do you feel about starting the query letter with a hook sentence vs. genre, word count, etc. up front?

Jeffrey Moores replied: AVOID THE HOOK! It’s annoying. An agent instead wants simple reality: I am seeking representation for my YA novel about vampires and teenage werewolves. Put what you want up front. Be very simple.

I asked: Do many agents feel this way, Jeff?

He replied: As far as I know, all of them do. It’s very tiresome to read, over and over again, things like: “Imagine yourself in a world where…” An agent isn’t like a normal reader. They’ve got a lot more analytical wheels turning, and are more interested in your book’s place within the market and your ability to write. The actual details of your plot are only as important as your ability to frame your book within the query letter.

Well, I tell you, after cleaning all the grey matter  that had splattered all over the chat room walls during the chat, I went away and thought about what Jeffrey had said. I decided I needed a bit more info on the topic and so the next night (he did two chats for us over on AQ.) I asked for a bit of clarification. Here’s the scoop:

My question: Jeffrey, in regards to your surprising advice in regards to queries (“AVOID THE HOOK”) I got to wondering, how do YOU define a hook? Could you give us some specifics in terms of what to avoid?

Jeffrey Moores: I think that the typical “hook”, wherein a writer tries to hook an agent with a taste of the plot right away, often comes across as false and forced. Such as: “Imagine a town where nothing quite feels like it should…”

Instead, agents want to hear something like this: “My novel is a comedy-of-manners that skewers the reality of a strange town whose inhabitants seem to have no clue about the rest of the world…” or something similar. This is a more abstracted and contextualized description of your novel, and is more effective than assuming that an agent is sitting at her desk waiting to be entertained the same way she is when she’s picking a novel off of a book shelf at home.

It is still VERY IMPORTANT to “hook” an agent, but it is MORE IMPORTANT to do this through concise and effective presentation of your book’s specific themes and its place in the market, rather than drafting a sort of plot description or synopsis. Often, writers go on and on after their “hook” but fail to mention anywhere in the query WHAT TYPE OF BOOK THEY’VE WRITTEN. novel, YA, fantasy, mainstream, etc.

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He also mentioned to be confident in your proposal when writing nonfiction. The more confident you are, the more likely it will get picked up. As well, fiction writers should step out when writing their queries and “approach the query in a more nonfiction way”. That means, make your fiction query more about where your story fits into the market, who its audience is–that sort of thing. Which makes sense. It is a business letter. He also mentions to compare your letter to other books that are similar. Just make sure it is selling well! He provided pointers on how to pick the selling well books to compare yours to:

Very simply — go to your local bookstore and browse. Notice which books have prominent placement in the stores (front tables, end caps, facing OUT on the shelves, rather than their binding facing out). Publishers have paid for these privileges and it means that they’ve invested extra money in hopes that these books will sell well. Or, it means the book has already begun to sell well so they are pushing it further. Also, check out Amazon’s book rankings, reviews, and blurbs by other authors for that book — if five well-known authors have blurbed a given book, it’s safe to assume is better-known than a book with a blurb by only one lesser-known writer.

Both chats with Jeffrey where informative with lots of great tidbits you won’t find elsewhere. If you missed the chats, you can read the transcripts over on AgentQuery.