Beyond the Elements of Style

Selling to the New Age Market

Okay, I’m not really as lazy as the last couple of posts may make you think: but it seems that the past week for some reason has been filled with brilliant advice from colleagues that I just have to share. Here I’m quoting a post verbatim from one of my brothers in the National Writers Union (which, bizarrely enough, is also Local 49 of the UAW, but that’s a story for another time). Randy Peyser, who runs Author One Stop, has some advice for anyone out there who thinks she or he has the perfect manuscript on Wicca, astrology, the Tarot, or dowsing:

I run a national publishing consulting firm and shop manuscripts to all of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Here’s what I can tell you about them:

While it is possible to shop directly to a publisher, you MUST have a very strong book proposal to accompany your manuscript — and, like anything, it helps if you have connections to people within that publishing house, especially to the acquisitions editors.

Here is more information you should know:

You must have a unique twist to your subject matter. No publisher is looking for material that has already been covered, and so much of the New Age thought/philosophy/techniques have been covered. That’s why Harper Collins, who used to be a major publisher of New Age books, rarely publishes them anymore. It wasn’t until The Secret that the MBS publishers started to really “rev” up again. Now there are a flood of Law of Attraction knock-offs on the market, but that phase will probably wear thin soon.

You had better have a very strong promotional plan and be out there promoting PRIOR to sending them your manuscript, because publishers are interested in authors who have eyeballs — in other words, those authors who are out in front of audiences where they are being seen continually. Likewise, the competition section of your proposal had better be strong, because otherwise publishers will know you didn’t do your homework.

I know the majority, if not all, of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Never tell a publisher that you know you have a bestseller or that you know Oprah will want to interview you. They will see both of these statements as signs of an amateur.

While you don’t necessarily need an agent to approach many of the MBS publishers, you will want an agent or someone at the NWU to help you with your contract. I used an NWU contract advisor for my first book, which was published by a New Age publisher. That advisor was superb. She gave me eight hours of her time and went through every single detail, telling me what I should fight for and what rights I should not give away. That being said, if I had to do it over again, I would have hired a literary agent to negotiate the contract at an hourly rate, because I didn’t have the clout to get everything I wanted as a first-time author. If I’d had an agent working with me, I could have at least doubled my advance.

So, who are the few agents out there who accept New Age books? Anyone ever hear of Eckhert Tolle? I consistently shop manuscripts to Eckhert Tolle’s agent. So far, this agent has been willing to consider every client I’ve sent to him. My reputation is always on the line when I send something out, so a book has to be polished and a book proposal has to be exemplary before I will ever send it out to someone who can command the kind of advance that Tolle’s agent can command.

Then there’s Sylvia Brown’s agent, but she only takes manuscripts that she believes will get a high six or seven figure advance and you had better have the promotional plan in place to prove it.

There are a few other agents I work with who shop to MBS publishers and there are still other agents I hire to negotiate contracts when I’ve found a publisher for one of my clients. They will negotiate a contract for $50/hour and
have taken about five hours to do contracts for me in the past.

So, there you have it. I hope this letter does not come across as self-serving. It is truly my intention to provide information that helps those who publish in the Mind/Body/Spirit genre to have the success they desire.

Much of this is good advice that transcends genres. As you know, putting together the best possible book proposal and brilliant query letter, having a platform, and having a terrific manuscript are the keys to getting published anywhere, though perhaps particularly so in this niche area. Follow his advice and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

To Be Edited … or Not To Be Edited?

Okay, so here’s the thing. No one likes being edited. Any author, any writer who tells you that he or she enjoys the process, is lying. That’s all that there is to it.

Second truth: everyone needs to be edited. Everyone. Every writer has idiosyncracies at best and errors at worst, and there is no way that the writer can be aware of them all. The fact is that one editor probably won’t be aware of them all, either, but he or she has a lot better chance of it than does the writer.

So where does that leave you?

You’ve written your book. You’re about to embark on a search for an agent or publisher. You decide that the first thing to do is to get it — your masterpiece, that is — professionally edited. Right?

Wrong.

I’m not saying that your book doesn’t need editing; au contraire, I’m quite willing to bet that it needs a lot of editing. But that same amount of editing is also going to be very expensive, and it may not be the best use of your funds at this time.

Instead, consider this: what you really want to do is capture the attention and interest of a literary agent or of a publisher. That’s your real goal here, not having a picture-perfect manuscript.

What will you be sending out in your quest for arousing that interest? Certainly not the entire manuscript! Instead, you’ll be sending out a proposal, which will include — at most — three chapters of the manuscript. It will also include other essentials, such as a synopsis, an analysis of competing books already in the marketplace, a statement of your platform, an outline, and other components.

You’re starting to get the idea: I can tell. Your first order of business is to make this proposal the best proposal it can possibly be. So by all means have it edited — and have those first three chapters edited, also — and hold off on the whole manuscript until someone has asked you to send it to them.

You can have someone write the proposal — it’s one of the things that I do for clients — but that’s relatively expensive. Consider writing your own and then sending it to a top-notch editor. You’ll pay up to a couple thousand dollars, but you won’t be in for too much; and if no one asks for it (perish the thought!), you’ll still be able to pay next month’s rent!

And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Tolkien, Editors, and the Faerie People

All right, it’s not going to sound like this article has very much to do with language, but bear with me. I’ll try to twist it aound there before I’m finished. Maybe.

The truth is, my mind is filled with swirling colors and haunting music. I’m in Philadelphia this weekend at FaerieCon, a gathering for all things and beings magical, mystical, and downright strange. There are Good Fairies and Bad Fairies (you can probably guess which I find more interesting), Green Men and satyrs, even a dragon or two … and it’s all fabulous good fun.

Saturday morning I sat and listened to a lecture by Tolkien illustrator Ted Nasmith, and afterward my stepdaughter Anastasia brought up what she calls Tolkien’s ability to multitask, writing and lecturing and, in the midst of it all, managing to create several complete languages.

And they are extraordinary. A list barely scratches the surface of the riches and complexeties of languages invented for a race that exists only in one’s mind, yet whose history, sociology, and psychology are so clearly understood and articulated that, to many and for all these years after his death, they seem real. It’s not just a gift, though I’ll never argue that Tolkien wasn’t gifted; it’s also an enormous undertaking that could only be done from some sort of passion in the soul.

And for those of you who look to this column for practical advice, I had a nice long talk with Kerry Estevez, the editor over at Medallion Press, who noted that many, many more books would be accepted if writers (and, for that matter, literary agents) would just read the submission guidelines and follow them. Doesn’t sound that difficult, folks. She’s currently looking for historical fiction/fantasy, and if there’s some romance woven in, so much the better!

So pay attention to guidelines for the good of your publications list, and pay attention to the fairies for the good of your heart. And you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Back to publishing …

Okay, you’ve all been kind as I’ve wandered off a bt in the past few weeks, so I thought I’d offer something useful this week by way of expiation. So I thought I’d give you a quick cheat-sheet on what editors are looking for these days in manuscripts. This information is distilled from talking with a number of agents and acquisitions editors over the past year, so hopefully it’s both relevant and recent.

So what do they want?

First off is, alas, nothing to do with the work itself; it’s audience demand. Is there an audience demand for this book? If not, it’s over before it’s even begun.

Second is still not about the book itself, it’s author platform and marketing. Will you be able — and willing — to promote this book? How? Do you have a specific plan? What is it?

Third is — finally — about the book itself. How does it differ from other, possibly similar, works? Can it stand apart … and stand alone?

Fourth is cost. Publishers are far more willing to take a risk on a book that costs less to produce. What this generally translates into is word count: long books had better be extraordinary and a sure thing.

Fifth: timing. This can move up to number one if the issue the book deals with is in the news and likely to stay there for the time it will take to bring the book to market.

Sixth and final is whether or not the manuscript will fit this particular publisher’s list. “Sorry, it doesn’t meet our current needs” can, unfortunately, mean just that.

So there you go. Bear these points in mind as you prepare your next book proposal and you’ll be beyond the elements of style!

ARGH!

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time putting together a proposal for a feminist press that had put out an RFP for a project they’re working on called Girls and Science, to try and get girls more interested in the area.

I was excited, because I’ve long noted the absence of women (and of people of color, for that matter) in software engineering. When my stepdaughter Anastasia was around eight, I wrote a book for her about Ada Lovelace, arguably first computer programmer, certainly first technical writer; and later I enlarged it with a glossary and anecdotal sidebars and activities, and tried to sell it, but to no avail. So I made it the cornerstone of my proposal, outlining a series of five such books highlighting women in computing, with the same collateral material. I did research to indicate how and why good role models can help change one’s way of thinking about something. I put together all the studies about women and computing, how from a very young age girls are excluded from the boys’ clubhouse (girls use computers to *do* things — word processing, music, accessing sites like MySpace; but they’re not terribly interested in *how* they work). All that. Sent the proposal in.

Answer came back almost immediately: we’re not interested in proposals for elementary-aged children, we want high school and college level proposals.

Can I COUNT how many things are wrong with that?

First off, nowhere in the RFP was any age group mentioned. Secondly, if you really want to change the world you need to start with younger children. But, um, this is a feminist press, and they refer to high school and college-aged females as *girls*?

You’ve come a long way, baby.

Guess I’ll keep shopping my proposal elsewhere. It’s the perseverance that pays… and keeps me beyond the elements of style!

Jeannette Cézanne
Customline Wordware, Inc.

Finding a Literary Agent

Help! I need a literary agent! What do I do?

Here are a few tips on how not to get a literary agent:

1. Choose an agent based on the famous wealthy authors they already represent: if Agent X can negotiate multi-million deals for John Grisham or Stephen King or Anne Rice (insert your favorite Famous Author here), then I’ll probably get the same deal. Right? Wrong. Said agent is spending a lot of time and energy representing Famous Author, and consequently will have less time and energy for you. Selecting someone fairly early in their career, or in mid-career, is going to be better for you in the long run.
2. Don’t worry about what kinds of books a given agent currently represents, they’ll probably take yours on anyway: here’s a great way to waste your time and energy. If an agent specializes, it’s for a reason: that’s where their passion is, and that’s where their contacts are. Moreover, querying them with something that they clearly will not take on only demonstrates that you don’t know how to read – that information is readily available. Possibly not the best first impression to make.
3. Send an agent a query and follow it up with a phone call:Go to the blackboard and write 100 times: I will not call an agent. I will not call an agent. I will not call an agent. Chances are, it’s going to take any agent a while – and I mean a while – to get to your query, much less to give it any serious thought. There’s an etiquette, archaic but real, that you must follow: first contacts are always in writing. If you haven’t heard back in, say, two or three months (yep: you heard that right), then you may send another letter, politely asking about the status of your query. That’s it. No calls, not until an agent calls you.
4. Query an agent and then wait to hear back before querying another: Do you have a decade or so to waste? If not, then remember that this is your business, just as it is theirs, and do what makes the most sense for you. Send your initial query out to as many agents as you can (after having identified them as being potentially a good match for your manuscript). Send a short letter introducing your manuscript and yourself, and then wait. You’ll receive a lot of rejections, guaranteed. You’ll have some show some interest, ask to see more. Unless the agent is asking for exclusive viewing rights, continue sending out queries to others. (If the agent wants exclusive viewing rights, grant them, but only for a set period of time – a month, for example.) Keep trying; it can take years to find the right fit.

Never give up. Getting published is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do, and finding an agent is a difficult part of that difficult process. According to Wallace Stegner, it takes most people 10 years of serious writing before they get published. If you cannot find an agent, then hone your craft more, send your manuscript to an editor or writer’s group, improve your writing… and try again.

Want to learn more? Visit Customline Wordware’s Web and read more about agents there.

Finding an agent is definitely a task… beyond the elements of style!