This is a query? Really?

In the course of the past few weeks, we’ve been getting more than our share of really awful purported “queries”. This was probably the worst, and so I am going to use it as an example of WHAT NOT TO DO. I mean it. Don’t do it.

From: Company Name [mailto:companyname@generaldelivery.net]
Sent: Date is irrelevant
To: submit@canonbridge.com
Subject: submission query

Query Letter

Dear Editor:

My novel, xxxxxxxxxx, is a fantasy/mystery which students ages 8 through 12 will enjoy. [5 sentences then followed about the story, none of which were really “hooks” of any kind.]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is a story I have told to children over my several decades as a storyteller and [profession I chose to eliminate for the sake of anonymity]. For some reason unknown to me, they liked it.

[Unsigned, no address, nothing.]

**I replied as follows:

From: Maggie Stewart-Grant [myaddress@canonbridge.com
Sent: Date is irrelevant
To: Company Name [mailto:companyname@generaldelivery.net]
Subject: RE: submission query

Dear [Company Name],

Thank you for your query. What is the length of the book? Could you give us a little more information about you? If you need some assistance with details that might be missing from this query, here’s a site to help. There are loads of others, too.

http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/844651-How-to-Write-a-Query-Letter

I’m sure the story is interesting. Please resubmit your query with a little more information.

**Within one day, an email came with attachments. We did not ask for attachments, and so the following email was sent in return:

From: Maggie Stewart-Grant [myaddress@canonbridge.com
Sent: Date is irrelevant
To: Company Name [mailto:companyname@generaldelivery.net]
Subject: RE: submission query

Dear [Company Name],

It is our policy, when attachments are not requested from an unknown party, to delete the email. Your mail with attachments was, therefore, deleted. Our reply to your original mail did not request attachments. When we ask for attached materials, we give specific details as to what we want.

When we replied to your original email, we asked for more information. We sent a link that explained how to write a query letter. The response should have come in an appropriate query within an email. This is why we sent the link. If this one was confusing, there are several others, if you do a search on the Internet for “How to write a query letter”.

If this is difficult to manage, we suggest that you seek other avenues.

Best of luck.

A couple of things were wrong with the sender’s original email. One is obvious, in that this was not an appropriate query letter. The other is that whoever this is did not spend time reading the guidelines on our website.

1. The person to whom queries should be sent is named in our guidelines – a human, not “dear editor”.
2. The guidelines specifically state that queries with attachments will be deleted.
3. It says right in the guidelines that we will identify the documents we want in attachments, when we ask for attachments.
4. A separate paragraph tells people to learn how to write an appropriate query letter before they send one.

I am always amazed by how people, especially professionals, have made it this far in life without reading, comprehending and following instructions.

It’s not rocket science. Really.

In the midst of chaos

It has been a crazy few months.  I swore I would write on a regular basis, but – as I mentioned in the last post – you must wear the rubber boots of reality or the industry will fry you.  It’s true with small publishers and editors just as much as it’s true with writers. 

We’ve grown substantially in the past few months, both in the number of authors whose works we have acquired (or “purchased”, depending on your viewpoint), and in the amount of publicity our company has received.  Some of it has been amusing, and I’ll write about that another time, but let’s just say that we’re just too busy to worry about what others think of us at the moment.  A word of caution to those with preconceived notions, however:  Never assume. 

Needless to say, we’re a little fried.  Still, in the midst of chaos, the new routine is taking shape.  It seems hard work and dedication does matter.

As we are going through myriad changes, our web skills have been put to the test!  New ideas seem to appear on the horizon all the time, and some of them are quite good.  Two that we’re in the process of initiating now are to create text hover-overs for our titles and authors, and build a connection with BookBuzzr, a platform for creating samples of books. 

I have heard many times that BookBuzzr is a good tool, and many thanks go to its developer, Vikram Narayan.  The construct of this tool is amazing.  Not only do sample pages of your books appear on their fReado.com site, a widget is available for the publisher and the author to put on their websites.  The user isn’t limited by a certain capacity for pages, such as Amazon’s “Look Inside”, or even Google’s Books samples.  The author and/or the publisher determine the number of pages.  BookBuzzr suggests the first 50 pages.  For some of our books, this would be almost the entire book, so we’re going to make other determinations for some, but the capacity is essentially limitless.  One could put their entire book into it and offer it free of charge without the need for a special reader or a particular Kindle or ePub platform. 

For us, this is brilliant.  We even added a page to our site for samples of our books, and as soon as we are done creating them, we’ll pass the widget information on to our authors who can then use them on their own pages or on their social media sites.

More information on Book Buzzr can be found on one of Tony Eldridge’s blogs from last year.  BookBuzzr:  How to Market Your Book on Facebook, MySpace and Other Social Networks.  Tony is great, by the way.  Writers can learn a great deal from him. 

See you soon.

The rubber boots of reality

The road to perdition is paved with good intentions.  I sort of feel that way today after going an entire month without posting a blog here.  The only legitimate reason I have is that preparations for the new year buried me.  I’m finally out from under, so we’ll be back on schedule this week.  I’ll try to make up for the four weeks off with an extra post here and there.  I’m sure that doesn’t matter much to you, but it’s a way of making psychological amends to myself.

I can’t begin to tell you how satisfying my work is to me.  I’m thrilled to finally do what I love full time.  It took a number of years to get to this point, and I wore every “hat” in the industry, including that of Writer/Author.  I spent alot of time talking to other authors about their experiences making a living as a writer.  While some things change as the years roll on, others stay the same.  One of the things that stays the same is the admonition once given me by James Michener:  Keep one foot on the ground at all times.  Don’t dream of a house in the Hamptons and expect someone to hand it to you.  Make it your goal.  Work for it. 

I am always amazed at the number of potential authors who think that it’s all about the massive advance they just know their Wonderful Work will garner.  In fact, I had a rather lengthy conversation with a writer who is in the midst of changing agents because his former agent wasn’t bringing him big enough offers of advance.  He doesn’t see the work in front of him as a viable manuscript, marketable on its own merit, but as a document he spent hours researching and writing, and time is money.  He wanted to be paid for the time he put into it before he got to the finished product.  He tallied up the figures and decided he would take no less than a certain amount in order to make publishing the book worth HIS time.  He then proceeded to tell me that he would either get the proposed amount as an advance, or he wouldn’t publish the book.  It seemed a little unrealistic to me. 

I wondered if he understood the basis of the advance, that it’s speculative funds based on sales.  I asked him if he was prepared to pay the remainder back if the book doesn’t meet the goals of the advance.  He said he’s never heard of any publisher making an author pay back the remainder on the advance.  I laughed.  I sure have.  I remember distinctly one case several years ago when the risk taken by the publisher to give the writer a decent advance backfired on them.  The sales for the book were minimal, and in a year, sales had tanked so badly that the publisher was not recouping its losses on marketing or production, let alone the advance they’d paid.  The publisher and author ended up in court over this, with the author saying that verysame thing, “Publishers don’t make authors pay back advances.”  Sure they do.  It’s in the contract.  If it’s a serious enough overage, you bet your sweet backside they will make the author honour the contract, just as the author would expect the publisher to honour it.

I cannot stress this enough:  If you are not wearing the rubber boots of reality, the electrifying world of the industry will fry you.

If your sole purpose in writing is to receive a large advance, I suggest you find another route.  The desire to write is overshadowed by the desire to be in the business of writing.  Become a copywriter, work for a newspaper/magazine/website as a journalist or get a position in public relations.  You’ll get paid by the hour, pay taxes as an employee, be eligible for workman’s comp and the company’s group insurance, and it’s an avenue for your desire to be in the business of making money as a writer.

If, on the other hand, you have to write because you’ll die if you don’t, then rethink the concept of the advance in your life.  Think, instead, about the story you’re telling.  Think about making that story available to others.  Think about how to accomplish that, rather than the money it will make. 

Do what you love, and the money will follow. 

Really, it will.

Going with a small publisher…an advantage?

Last week, I wrote about the possible disadvantages of a small publisher.  I hope, from my own point of view, that I may have dispelled some myths, as well as give you a couple of suggestions to guide you as you investigate the possibility of working with a small publisher.

So let’s chat about advantages:

They are usually open to new authors, thus easier to break into the market.  This is very true.  Big publishers work with authors who have been previously published or have acquired a literary agent.  Actually, they’re prone to deal strictly with agents.  I was standing in a friend’s office years ago and overheard another editor as they said, “It’s great that you have published x book through y publisher, but get an agent.  Even previously published, I know we won’t deal with anyone who doesn’t have an agent.  Here are a couple of numbers to call…” 

Who hasn’t heard of the dreaded “slush pile”?  I have a number of friends working with agents who have told me how fortunate they were to have their agents “choose” them out of their own slush piles.  It’s true.  Agents find themselves bogged down with the number of queries and manuscripts they receive, just like publishers.  I know I am not the only small publisher who doesn’t have a slush pile, so at least you know that someone (a human, not an auto-responder) is going to let you know they received your query/manuscript and that they will contact you again soon. 

Personalized attention.  Small publishers tend to be more involved with directly promoting each title.  On top of that, small publishers know everything that’s happening with your book, right down to usually having a good one-on-one relationship with people at the printing company.  They’ve likely had a direct hand in making sure the formatting is correct and the cover aligns as it should. 

You know with whom you’re dealing. Small publishers will have just a few editors, if they even have more than one.  Usually the acquisitions editor is the content editor and line editor, so you don’t have to sort out who is doing what with your manuscript. There are no specialised meetings surrounding a stack of manuscripts, artwork, cover design and so forth.  These things all happen with big publishers, and often you’ll find that it’s far too easy – even if your book is accepted for publication – for your work to be lost in the crowd of all the others.  Some will get preferential treatment for special marketing especially, and you may find yourself wondering if you’ll ever get published at all.

Publications move onto a schedule easier and faster.  Small houses usually mean fewer listings to manage each year.  Coupled with the other advantages listed, you get on a better publication schedule.  Quite a number of small publishers can usually work with you and have your book published in a year or less.  They also tend to market for sustainability, because the longer your title is on the market and making sales, the better it is for everyone concerned.  Big publishers often work several years out when making acquisitions.  So much can happen in that period.  Your acquisitions editor may leave.  If that happens, what happens to your work?  It often ends up on another editor’s desk, but down the pile farther than the manuscripts they’re already managing.  Maybe your book works within a particular imprint.  Another publisher may acquire that imprint, and your work isn’t what the new publisher had in mind.  Your contract could be cancelled, or you could be lost somewhere with a rather cursory publication date, a short-run printing, and in just a few months, your book is out of print. 

I’m not saying that it is fruitless to go with a big publisher.  That’s not the case.  Ask Dan Brown, or better yet, ask Dan’s agent.  Ask Rebecca James, whose new books are going to be the hottest thing since Harry Potter; they’re in the midst of a bidding war, in fact, for U.S. rights to publish.

But remember this, too: 

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), just about 172,000 new titles come out each year in the U.S. alone.  Approximately 206,000 are published in the U.K.  Will 2010 be the year for yours?  It depends entirely on your philosophy and your willingness to think outside the box.

Next time:  Guerilla marketing and you.

Going with a small publisher…..a disadvantage?

I wrote a guest blog last week for Cathy Holst at Fiction by CM Holst.  In it, I addressed a number of questions.  One on which I wanted to spend more time referred to the advantages and disadvantages of small publishers.

I want to point out that when I refer to small publishers, I am not referring to self-publishing entities.  I’ll save that for later in the month.  My concern here is with small publishers whose goals are to publish books and market them to the reading public.  I will say that I haven’t finished research on how many of us there are out there that don’t push a personal agenda, but I would venture to say that we are a rather small “club”. 

Let’s deal first with perceived disadvantages in this blog.  Perhaps we can dispel some myths and offer some solutions.

Lack of financial force.  The focus of most writers when they hear this is “advances”.  Small publishers are less likely to have the capacity to offer advances.  In all honesty, if a writer bases their desire for publication on the size of the advance, it becomes clear to people like me that their interest is less in publishing work they believe in and more in upfront financial compensation.  It is a good reminder for people to understand that while an advance is nice, it does come out of your royalties, so even if you get one, you end up paying it back, no matter how long it takes to do so.

Additionally, there is question as to whether book tours and marketing are covered.  This depends entirely on how you view both.  Writers who really believe in their work are also writers who are willing to promote their work, and it doesn’t come with a price tag.  Remember that it doesn’t cost anything at all to talk to people, to call your local paper, to promote your work in your own blogs, to go onto Facebook and start sharing notes and links to your book.  As far as book tours go, I happen to think that regional book signings are fabulous, especially at your local independent booksellers.  The publisher should cover the mechanics of the rest of the marketing.  If they don’t have the capacity to do this and complement the market with your book, they don’t know how to market and sell efficiently and effectively – and it really has very little to do with money.

Lack of distribution.  Until recently, I’d have to agree.  However, thanks to new avenues that have opened because of the digital age, this is just not the case anymore.  If a small publisher doesn’t use every avenue available to them, it’s because they’re not paying attention.  My own distribution lines are such that our books reach worldwide.  All small publishers have access to these opportunities, and the cost is minimal. 

Lack of professionalism.  This professionalism is far-reaching in many respects and, unfortunately, I have seen it in others.  It ranges from the handling of raw manuscripts through the verbiage in contracts to marketing strategies to essential reports to the authors.  There is casual, and then there’s appalling.  Contracts in particular can often be questionable, but in an age where we have the likes of Jonathan Kirsch to advise both publishers and authors on the legal aspects of contracts, there are no excuses.

In a “caveat emptor” sort of way, let me make a few suggestions if you think you might place your manuscript with a small publisher:

1.  Find out as much as you possibly can about any publisher that piques your interest.  Do a little research.  Check their company website.  Note how the website is set up, check for glaring typos and grammatical errors, see if you have matching philosophies and look for comprehensive details regarding submission requirements.

2.  When you send an email query, see how they treat you.  If they thank you for sending it, that’s polite and good business.  It also gives you another opportunity to assess their professionalism.

3.  If at any time they tell you that there will be a cost on your part to publish your book, walk away.  This is not a standard small publisher.  This is a self-publishing company.  (Note:  Sometimes companies don’t tell you this upfront.  It’s as a “by the way”.)

 Next time:  Advantages of small publishers.