Ask An Agent. Ask Anything!

No, not that kind of agent

If you had five minutes to sit down with an experienced literary agent and ask anything, what would you ask?  I recently posed this question to my writer friends on Facebook, and the questions came in quickly. Here’s the first batch:

What is your biggest draw when it comes to signing someone?

I think every aspiring author asks this question sooner or later, in one way or another, and they’re hoping to divine the ONE secret thing that will make them rich and famous. And I always disappoint, because I don’t believe that such a singular “secret of the ages” really exists. But when pressed, I generally narrow it down to four things:

1-      Your story (the information on the pages).

2-      Your writing (your skill and style).

3-      Your professionalism (how do you present yourself?)

4-      My gut. I just get a feel for a story and a person.

Guest Post: Ten Risks You Run if You Don’t Proofread Your Manuscript

From my friend Kathy Ide, the Editor of Editors. She has instructed and inspired thousands of aspiring writers over the course of her long career. The following is an excerpt from her recently released Proofreading Secrets of Best-Selling Authors.

Have you seen the plaques and T-shirts that say this?:

Let’s Eat Grandma.

Let’s Eat, Grandma. 
Commas Save Lives.

I love that! It shows how one tiny bit of punctuation can change the entire meaning and tone of a sentence.

IT'S YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION. MAKE IT COUNT.

Alas, I fear that I’m being out-maneuvered by a certain famous literary agent with a blog. He seems to be CHIPping away at my market share. Apparently I should be posting here more often, so…here goes nothing.

As a writer, I know well the struggles of submitting work to agents and editors. Every agency and publisher has a prescribed process for submissions, and sometimes you’ll get ambitious and send off a dozen queries at a time. How do you follow all of the guidelines, without driving yourself crazy?

Early on, I decided that I would make it ridiculously simple to submit a query. I created a form that asks you to fill in the blanks for ten questions: Name, title, genre, synopsis, target audience, moral or spiritual lesson (if any), word count, manuscript status (is it complete?) brief bio, and source (where did you find me?) Keep it to one page, single-spaced. Make it easy for me, and perhaps you’ll be rewarded with an offer of representation. How hard can it be?
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Taxes Won't Solve This Problem

I can remember, as a high school student in the 1970s, observing the advent of personal computers. The Apple, the IBM, the Commodore 64, the Radio Shack TRS-80. The Internet, in its earliest stages, remained the province of government officials and university professors.

Oh, how I longed to possess one of these space-age miracle machines. I begged my parents to help me buy one. (I already had a part-time job, and could contribute to the cause.) But what did I want it for? I didn’t know, exactly. In fact, I didn’t have a clue. I only knew that I wanted to join that exclusive club of the sophisticated and privileged.

Institutionalized Racism in Publishing?

Just this morning, I came across an interesting post from one of my friends on Facebook. My friend, who (like me) happens to be black, posted links to articles from yesterday’s New York Times: here and here.

Long story short: There aren’t enough books out there for black kids. Most children’s books feature white kids from the suburbs, not colored kids from the ’hood. Who will be their heroes? Who will be their role models? Surely Encyclopedia Brown or Charlie Bucket (my favorites, in my wonder years) will never do.

Who is to blame for this institutionalized racism? And what might be a way forward? Curiously these articles are fuzzy on both counts, but one described the situation as “apartheid.” Which (at least for me) implies forced segregation at the hand of the white man.

All Hail the Agents

Much has been written in recent years, about the evolving role of literary agents. Some would say that the brave new world of self-publishing has made them obsolete. Others insist that they’re just a den of dinosaurs, struggling to stay relevant and steal fees from unsuspecting authors, in a world that has passed them by. No doubt the current environment brings new challenges for the business, but I daresay that the reports of our demise are quite premature.

First, as to the rise of self-pub: Surely we’ve all heard the success stories of self-published books that went on to greatness; The Shack and Fifty Shades come immediately to mind. But why do you suppose it is that these stories garner so much ink in the popular media? The answer, of course, is that they’re so rare. For every gonzo hit that you hear about, there are tens of thousands that barely left the gate.

Details Matter. Period.

Last week I wandered into an online discussion group, where I was intrigued by the question,

“I just found out that I’m supposed to use one space after a period instead of two. After typing one way for so many years, it seems silly to change. Do you think it’s important to follow this rule?”

A little background: The double-space convention was a product of the old days of manual typesetting (I will spare you the boring details). And with old-style typewriters that made all characters the same width, a double-space was deemed necessary to distinguish the end of a sentence. But now that almost all of us compose on computers that can make those adjustments automatically, the single-space is sufficient. Confused? Me too.