All Your Burning Writerly Questions Answered

Every month agent Jennifer Laughran (Andrea Brown Literary) over on her blog Jennifer Represents creates an open thread where aspiring writers can drop their questions and she will reply to them. It’s great! In fact, in reading the first ten or so comments/questions and her replies, I ended up with answers to many of the questions people have been asking over in the discussion boards on AgentQueryConnect.com. Nice.

So, if you have a few moments on your hands and are lookin’ to git yurself edu-ma-cated, pop over to Jennifer’s open thread. (And if you have a burning question for Ms. Laughran, scadoodle over to her blog at the beginning of February–she might just do another open thread.)

P.S. Scary fun fact: Ms. Laughran interned for THREE years in the business before becoming an agent. Wow! Talk about dedication to the field.

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.

Back to Balance… and Marketing

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of my current goals is to balance things in my life in order to rejuvenate and celebrate the joy in what I do every day. (That’s not to say I’ve been miserable, simply that it’s incredibly easy to get swept up in the myriad of ‘shoulds’ and forget to have a complete and utter blast.)

As if hearing the cries of aspiring (and published) writers, literary agent Nathan Bransford posted his ideas on marketing and balance. The long and the short of it is that writers should have some sort of Googleable web presence, but that trying to do ‘everything’ in terms of promotion–and there are a zillion ways to do this these days–you are going to dilute yourself and not do anything well.

Here, here.

It all comes back to balance. (I love it when things come full circle.)

Jean Oram

Create Your Badge

Lately, I’ve been reading here and there little somethings that reflect my own thoughts on Twitter and Facebook and all those ‘follow/friend’ social networking opportunities. That is: Don’t follow everyone just to count coup. (There is an actual term for those who do this, but my brain is letting me down.) Their advice (and mine too): Follow those you are genuinely interested in.

In other words: So what if you have 1200 followers? If you are following 1200 people we know exactly how you obtained those 1200 followers. You can’t possibly read all those tweets and create a true relationships with those followers. My warning is: Don’t kid yourself into believing all those followers are a true platform and that they are all going to run out and buy your book if you ask them to (if you are an unknown).

Interesting fact that I can’t back up (it’s in a book around here somewhere–Later note: Here’s an article on Dunbar’s Number): People bottom out around 150 relationships. After they reach that threshold, they are unable to maintain and sustain more relationships. True relationships take time, energy and memory making them genuine and rewarding for all involved.

Now, a little clarification on my rant–there is nothing wrong with using social networks and gaining a following. You don’t have to know someone’s favourite colour or know their lineage to have a relationship that will result in them supporting your endeavours. In fact, I recommend building online platforms and using social networking sites. I guess what I am trying to say is: keep it genuine. As Nathan says, if you don’t ‘feel’ it (blogging, tweeting, etc), your audience is going to know. So, do what you are good at. Do what feels genuine and it will get you a whole heck of a lot farther in your promotion or platform building.

Nobody can do everything. And nobody can do everything well.

Jean’s book montage

Jean Oram’s favorite books »

So, another tough question for you blog readers–where is the balance between writing and promotion? How do you keep it fresh when you are blogging and tweeting and facebooking? Or do you?

Advice From Literary Agent Sara Megibow

For those of you who missed the chat with Sara Megibow of the Nelson Literary Agency last Thursday, I’ve got some of the highlights here. However, if you want it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, you can check out the transcripts here. (You must be an Agent Query member to view them. The good news is, it is free.)

A few highlights:

#1: Having troubles figuring out the genre of your story? Check out the bookstore. Figure out where it would be placed in the store and voila! As well, if your story’s most important aspect and focus is on the romance/relationship between the hero and heroine, it is likely a romance. If you aren’t sure between two genres, say urban fantasy and romance or romance and mystery…read a few books in each genre and see which yours leans towards.

#2: Did you know that some agents, when they get sample pages that they like, they go to Google to check you out? They look for a positive web presence. So don’t go bashing agents, the publishing word or discusses how hard writing is, etc. Make it professional, folks!

#3: Here are a few genres/ideas that are flying over Sara’s desk like mosquitoes in a swamp and may or may not be overdone: vampires, divorced women opening B & Bs, war survivor stories, YA where the hero speaks to the dead or has secret world-saving powers they didn’t know they had and of course, have to save the world. Now, just because these story ideas are common at the moment, it doesn’t mean she’s going to shred your query if your story is based on the above. See #4.

#4: The art of writing is very important. It is more important than the POV (character point of view the story is written from), topic, or even how fresh the story idea happens to be. Fresh, good, strong writing wins. I.e. copycat story ideas can work if the writing is fresh. Although a fresh story idea is always compelling, but it needs good writing to back it up.

#5: Don’t start your novel with one big flashback. Start where the story starts.

#6: If you have quotes in your story, you don’t need the rights to use that quote in a published work at the time of querying–the publishing house will acquire them when the time comes.

#7: Some argue that saying ‘completed’ and giving a word count is redundant when querying. However, if you are querying Sara, do say, “My completed novel X, Y and Z is 100,000 words.” She likes that. Her perfect query would start something like so: “I have a completed 100,000 word romance novel set in regency England.” And then add the pitch paragraph…etc.

For more information on Sara and the agency she works for, be sure to check out the agency website–especially if you are querying.

Online Chat With Literary Agent Michelle Brower

That was a fantastic chat over on Agent Query with literary agent Michelle Brower. It was nice, homey and cozy. As chat moderator there wasn’t any juggling cats, turtles or even anything flaming last night. Just straight forward good ol’ information about queries, genres, young writers, older writers, killer titles and so much more. Yeah, you missed it. But yes, you can check out the transcripts right here.

Half the scoop: Yes, you need to polish your writing before getting it out there. Generally the setting can distinguish the genre, but many some twists on a story such as a story set in elfland, NOT being about elves would be good. (The ideas are endless when you think like that! Wahoo!) Some titles rock more than others and yes, a killer title can help set your query apart. Yes, Michelle likes the one sentence hook, but definitely the story hook to be obvious in your query. There was so much great info, you need to read the transcripts yourself. It won’t take long and I promise you will learn a lot.

And did you know that landing an agent and getting the book sold and printed can be compared to having a baby? I kid you not. (Another reason to check out the transcript–I wouldn’t want to spoil the reason for the comparison for you. It surprised me. It might surprise you too.)

Michelle Brower, literary agent with Wendy Sherman Associates.

(A big thanks to Michelle for spending time with us over on AQ.)

Michelle is also blogging over at her agency website. Go check it out.