I try to stay up on the literary blogosphere. I read Twitter (never thought I would, but I do find a lot of links there). I check out posts on writing and querying and publishing. And I notice a remarkable thing—not a recent thing—but a stunning thing, when you think about the logic.
Far more people are interested in selling novels than in writing them.
This is like far more people being interested in opening restaurants than in learning how to cook. What do you suppose they’d see in this opportunity? The chance to manage staff? To brush lint off a maitre’d’s coat? To supervise kitchen cleaning? To eat?
That last one can’t be it. It takes a miniscule fraction of the effort to go to a restaurant and buy a really good meal that it does to open one and find a way to sell that meal without having to cook it.
It’s like being far more interested in becoming professional contractors than in learning how to build. Professional contractors get paid lots of money. I personally have paid a surprise $20,000 bill my contractor just found lying around. (And before you ask, yes, it was for my house!) They get paid LOTS of money, even out here in the sticks. Of course, they also spend a fortune on Worker’s Comp and liability insurance, not to mention actual salaries for their carpenters. But it looks heck of good on the books. And they get to be known as as: Jefe.
It’s like being far more interested in becoming a politician than in learning how to write laws, how to negotiate reasonably for what you want, how to work cooperatively with others, how to present a united front, how to act like an professional in your professional capacity. . .Okay, well, that analogy’s going nowhere fast.
Anyway.
Give it some thought, people. I know you’re inundated on all sides with tweets and blog posts and marketing advice about how you need to be out there hustling your platform like a fiend because You. Are. The. Next. Blockbuster. And wouldn’t it suck if your chance was just lying around being stepped over in the driveway and you never knew? (You picture J.K.Rowling in that Edinburgh coffee shop saying, “Aw, to hell with this bug-eyed twerp. I’m going to a movie.”)
So I’m going to do the best I can to steer you in the right direction, which is toward the advice agents keep giving that, it seems, somebody keeps not taking. I know you guys all take it. I know that about you. But I also know you like reading this stuff and fantasizing about how it’s going to be when taking it someday pays off:
Toughen your hide with Miss Snark, still relevant two and a half years after she closed shop and headed for Tahiti with George.
Check out the section on A Query Letter at Bookends, LLC. They also have a post on wordcount, which frankly seems to shoot a bit high to me (80,000 words at 250 words/page is 320 pages, and I don’t see a lot of 320-page first novels—my first agent told me years ago publishers like something in the 200-250-page range, which is 50,000-62,500). But it’s worth reading to get a general idea of comparing different genres.
Go to Kristin Nelson’s Pub Rants blog, scroll down, and read the Agenting 101 series. Then read the Queries: An Inside Scoop section below that.
If that’s not enough, read Scott Eagan’s You’ve Got 30 Seconds—Convince Me post.
And don’t forget Jonathon Lyons’ No Duh post!
Janet Reid and Rachelle Gardner blog regularly on their lives as literary agents and how not to get on their bad sides, repeating the same old stuff patiently over and over so we can all get on the bus. I like Rachelle because she’s fairly new to the game and hustling her weight in gold. I like Janet because she’s mouthy.
Folks like Noah Lukeman for his free ebook How to Write a Great Query Letter, although I have to say his photo kind of creeps me out. He looks like my dad saying dourly, “I AM smiling.”
You all already know Nathan and his This Week in Publishing series, not to mention that classic post, which I’m certain he got more hits on than any other: Everything You Need to Know About Writing a Novel, in 1000 Words.
And, finally, join Agent Query. It’ll give you something to read while you’re waiting to hear back from all those agents and stonewalling on your writing.
As usual, YES. YES. YES.
“Far more people are interested in selling novels than in writing them.”
YES.
And you know what else?
Far more people are interested in selling novels than in READING them.
Also a problem.
Weirdly enough, Marie, it’s true. I keep hearing professional authors chiding aspiring writers, “Don’t say you don’t read. Why are you trying to be a writer if you’re not interested in the written word?”
Again—I don’t remember this being an issue even thirty years ago. People wrote then because writing was one of the arts, and they wanted to be artists. Now people write because. . .well, gosh, they don’t even have to write, now, do they? so long as they put their all into their platform.
I don’t know when “being a writer” became “Mommy makes them all fawn on me and say only flattering things.” But clearly at some point it did.
Victoria
Ah, once again, it all goes back to money and fame – two very addicting things. I wish more people were addicted to writing instead of talking about selling the few things they’ve written. I’ll try and sell stuff I’ve written, but not at a dead-run pace that sacrifices other things I could be writing. I write because I love to write, because I discover things in it. Like I said in my last post about perspective, all the sudden publishing doesn’t seem like that huge of a deal to me anymore. There’s so many other important things in this life that I need to pour myself into. If publishing happens, it happens. 🙂
I read almost all these blogs you’ve mentioned. It’s overwhelming. Almost impossible to keep up (and I’m not even working right now!). You also have to be careful about reading too much because they start to conflict. Most agree, but some don’t. And the more you (I) read, the more you (I) get despaired. As stated, no one’s reading, everyone’s selling. But also, the industry is in turmoil/flux, and shelling out millions to the same old thing – i.e. vampires – while the rest of us toil anonymously. It’s depressing. It’s almost easier to just tune out until completely, but then you miss so much and fall way behind.
Yes. The reason I put so many links up (and there are more) is so you can all get your fill. Only a few years ago, querying was still very much a shot in the dark. You learned it from books that may or may not have been up-to-date, and you took your chances that some new fad hadn’t swept the agent community in the meantime, turning your careful attention to published advice to the one glaring mistake guaranteed to make an agent scream (opening with a rhetorical question springs to mind).
The truth is the business of selling fiction is nothing like the craft of creating it, and if you’ve put all your energy into learning the craft, you can easily be mowed down by the maddened hordes stampeded toward the business. Agents were invented to alleviate this problem. However, the sheer numbers have exploded again to such an extent that now they need agents of their own.
Building relationships with reliable editors would be a good way for them to do that. Those of us working with aspiring writers know who’s got fresh ideas and who’s just trying to jump on the bandwagon. We also know how to turn a bandwagon jump into a fresh take on a proven idea. And we know who’s in it for the long haul and who’s only an amateur looking to take advantage of what seems, to them, to be a glorified lottery.
Agents would do well to start turning their sights our way. I think in the next few years, as the lack of in-house editing becomes obvious and entrenched, they will.
It will help. Enormously.
Victoria