[Daddy Darth]

Shevdon,
Thanks for your response. I know this site is a wealth of information in regards to getting published. I am grateful to be able to have access to folks like you who have been succesful. I was really just very curious about your own experience having lived it and mentioning that you had sumbitted directly to an agent.
Cheers

[Desert Coyote]

Response deleted

[shevdon]

Shevdon,
I was really just very curious about your own experience having lived it and mentioning that you had submitted directly to an agent.
Cheers

No worries, though an individual's experience is just that - you can't necessarily generalise. Anyway, hope this helps.

I cannot stress enough that before I started submitting I went through a lot of work to get my writing up to scratch. I did peer reviews, I had a writing group, I went through critique sites, I had my synopsis and query letter reviewed. I did everything I could do to maximise my chances before I approached the agent.

While I was getting the writing honed, I also went through lists of agents looking for the best ones for my work. Agents have their own tastes and preferences, so it took me a long while to find the ones who would have a positive view of my work. In the end this left me with a very short list.

I submitted two queries simultaneously. Both these agents knew each other, unsurprisingly, so I kept it to two.

I read the submission guidelines. Now that I have an agent I simply cannot believe the number of queries she gets that do not follow her guidelines. Why people would eliminate themselves in this way, I do not know.

I submitted a query, synopsis and five pages in the body of the email, as requested, and a few weeks later I had a request for a partial. I also had a very polite but firm 'not for me' from the other agency. I sent the partial off the next day.

Then I waited. I didn't query anyone else as these agents were the top of my list. I sent a polite reminder after six weeks or so and received a reply saying that things had been busy and I would get a reply soon. When it did come, it was a request for the full manuscript. I sent that off and waited again. Reading a full MS isn't quick, so the agent let me know that it would be a couple of months before I got a reply.

In the meantime, I met a publisher at a convention and pitched the book to him. He was positive and requested the first chapters to read.

Then, when I got a request from the publisher for a full MS I let the agent know this was happening, as a courtesy. I think that helped, but she still read the full thing and thought about it before offering representation.

Finally, I had an offer for representation from the agent at the top of my list, and then an agreement. There's a more complete version of this in an interview I did with Gary Dalkin for Writing Magazine, which should be out in the October issue, if you're interested in reading more.

So that's how I got my agent. I would advise anyone who is looking for an agent to find someone who will have enthusiasm for their work and expertise in their genre. Spend your time honing your work and refining your query and you will improve your chances of success massively.

[shevdon]

Please, don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge Meyer her success, or any vampire fiction. Please stop unloading on me about this. This is my personal opinion. Leave it at that. You can say I'm wrong, just stop piling up on me. I only know what I know.


I apologise, DC, if it seems like I'm unloading on you. It's just that you came on the forum and ranted (in your own words) about Stephanie Meyer and vampire fiction in general. You said you had taken offence at her success and that she had 'buggered the fantasy market'.

If that went unchallenged then it might seem like the other members of the forum agree with you. I, for one, do not. I don't mind you airing your opinion. You are entitled to it. I don't have to agree with you, though.


Tell *that* to the agent who sent me a one-sentence reply without even reading the work, saying she wouldn't bother reading it if it was less than 75k.


I'm sorry you're having problems placing your work. It's an unfortunate fact that full length novels tend to be more than 70K words. You might try small press, chapbook or anthology publishers who are more inclined to work outside the mainstream as you may have more luck there with a shorter work.

I would say, though, that slagging off successful authors on a public forum is not going to win you friends. It comes across as hostile and unprofessional. When an agent is considering working with you it is a trivial matter to google you, Don, and find out what you've been saying.

I would think that Stephanie Meyer's agent, for instance, would be less than sympathetic. You might like to bear that in mind.

[Desert Coyote]

Response deleted

[KatG]

Desert Coyote has learned a valuable lesson -- sometimes some agents are stupid and short-sighted. Some of them are not very familiar with parts of the market or the entire market in general. Which certainly doesn't lessen the frustration of having to query agents. But it's important to remember that agents, and editors for that matter, do not all act with one mind and have the same views about the market, and certainly don't have the same preferences about what they want. It is also a good idea to understand that the category market desperately needs variety in order to maximize sales, and therefore, publishers do a wide range of types of stories in order to reach the widest possible spread of readers, rather than just one narrow group of them.

A short book, which would work well as a chapbook or book-formatted novella, is difficult to price. It is more likely to be of interest to smaller presses, especially if the author has no track record. And some agents are not interested in working with small presses, at least in the beginning, because small presses can often not float very good deals or advances. While I strongly urge authors to try to get agents at least in the North American market, if you've got what is essentially a novella, not a novel, or a short novel under 70,000, going to the publishers directly and doing research and being very targeted in your efforts is likely to be the better strategy.

If you really want to try to write for trends so much, the smart thing to do in urban fantasy at the moment is not to have vampires, or at least only have them on the side. Trying to break in with a vampire series is by all accounts rather difficult at the moment, especially if you're new. That's not to say that it's not happening at all and that authors aren't still finding interesting things to do with vampires. But many vampire series don't do well, just like any other type of fiction, and it isn't 2003 anymore when urban fantasy was expanding its audience rapidly. Right now, fairie as an approach seems to have attracted many authors, and those books coming out were bought probably around last year. I think we'll probably also be seeing a lot more gods novels in contemporary soon too, like Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout. We'll also be seeing more contemporary fantasy that is not "urban," not city-based or strictly noir. That's a logical progression as contemporary fantasy starts to attract more authors' attention.

You also want to get a handle on the different markets. Adult urban fantasy, horror and contemporary fantasy in general are different markets from YA, which is what Meyers writes in. There are numerous vampire stories that were written before Meyers and will be written after she is gone. The Vampire Diaries, for instance, is a well-selling YA series that was written before Meyers' Twilight, and is now a t.v. series. Whether you like it or not, Meyers' particular series took off into phenom territory because teen readers liked her characters, not just because it had vampires and werewolves, of which they've always been offered a steady diet. In contrast, urban fantasy is primarily about suspense stories -- mysteries and commando stories.

Paranormal romance is another market, and they've certainly upped the vampire quotient, (and if your pals were querying agents who primarily do romance and paranormal romance, that might have been why they got the response they did.) But they are moving on as well, right now very heavily into SF romance.

Note: did my post before seeing your new one, Desert Coyote. But it's possibly relevant for others.

[Laer Carroll]

Meyers' particular series took off into phenom territory because teen readers liked her characters, not just because it had vampires and werewolves, of which they've always been offered a steady diet.

The same is true of the Harry Potter series. In fact, this is a lesson that generalizes into all fiction markets, including those presented in dramatic as well as literary form. Think of all those TV series that became one of your favorites. Rarely are the stories themselves the most important reason why you liked them. Likely the main character became a sort of friend that you wanted to visit each week.

And sometimes you'll watch re-runs even though you know how the story will turn out. Or re-read a book. Those I bother to keep are ones I want to re-read. (It would take a warehouse to keep all that I once read but don't want to read again.) I know their endings, but its the characters that bring me back to the books time and again as the years go by.

Often the TV or literary series that are the best-loved are ensemble pieces. One reason is that an ensemble increases the chances you will like a character. I liked Spock in Star Trek and put up with the perennial adolescent Kirk. Others loved Kirk. And I know of at least on person who was drawn to the doctor, watching every show hoping for another instance of the line "Damn it, I'm a doctor not a ...."

Another reason is that an ensemble cast becomes a family, and we enjoy living in a vicarious family atmosphere even if some of the members are black sheep of some sort. Especially if the black sheep are not that black, or have some redeeming quality.

I've taken the ensemble lesson to heart in my fiction. And, to get back to the subject of length - even in short fiction, where you have room for only a few characters, I try to see if I can give my main character a side-kick. Even if only in her memory, as in a fond remembrance, or in a "What would Sam advise me here?"

Laer Carroll

[Holbrook]

Desert Coyote, while you are not interested, having chosen to go the self-publish route, others here are.

When authors like Shevdon take the time to talk about how the process of getting into print was for them, it is very useful for those treading/or wanting to tread the same path. Thank you Shevdon, and thank you KatG for again sharing your knowledge.

As for rejections from agents, I have dozens, if not near a hundred from the three novels I pimped. From standard form rejections, to helpful comments, right through to one that totally ripped to shreads the very manuscript that caught me an agent.

[zachariah]

Over two thousand hits for this thread? Must be random Googlers wanting to know how long novels should be. Let's fill their heads with misinformation.

The average novel is five hundred thousand words long, or eight thousand pages, depending on your font size. Always remember to include spaces as words.

[tyriseus]

If word count is all publishers go by I'm screwed. I have two MSS that are mocking me from their perch on my bookshelf - they keep quothing something about Lenore but I've never heard of that bird - I'm ignoring them until I finish the entire story. After first draft they measure about 210 and 245K respectively and am well into my third @72K - I'm expecting it to be in the same range. When done, I'm going to try and shorten them by the golden rule of 10% but still they're big books. If I can sell it great if not it's been one hell of a ride considering I started it on Jan 4th. In my opinion that is what writing should be about. That said I'd be disapointed if I put in all that work and didn't get to share it with everybody. (In that case I'm changing my name to John Ryan Roger Tolkien and resubmitting it.)