Tag Archives: literary agent

Oct 21 2010

Query Letters & Proposals – Hard Vs. Soft Copies

As I work through the process of submitting my query letters and proposals to literary agencies, I have discovered that most of the agencies will accept unsolicited proposals in either hard or soft copy.  Most (~75%) encourage you to send soft copies, but they still accept the hard copies too. Perhaps as a long-standing tradition dating back to those ancient pre-email days?  However, I have come across a few agencies specific to my genre that will not accept emailed copies of even the query letter.  A hard copy is mandatory, no exceptions.

It may be to my detriment, but I dismiss these as potential agents immediately.  No, not because I am too lazy to print out a hard copy or too cheap to spring for a stamp.  I strongly feel that an agency that steeped in tradition is not the right fit for my work.  My first story (and probably my future ones) features technology as a focal point (big surprise from the computer geek I know).  My work also incorporates unconventional roles and a juxtaposition of the traditional symbols of the positive and negative aspects of faith. I am not suggesting my ideas are revolutionary, but I don’t think they’d be well-received in such a traditional agency.

Personally, I also think it is short-sighted to be so rigid when technology provides us with such improvements in speed and communication.  Of course, speed may not be a determining criteria for the way these agencies operate and that is certainly their prerogative. They’ve been at this game much longer than I have, so I will respect their wishes by not bothering them with my query.

What do you think?  Am I being close-minded?  Short-sighted? Impatient?

Oct 20 2010

Handling Rejection Letters – The Lies I Told Myself

For the past several weeks, I’ve talked big about my approach to finding an agent for my novel. I’d approach it with the calculated precision of a technology project. I know this is not an easy business to break into. I read and read and carefully formulated my query letter and my summary.  I knew I’d be sending out dozens of queries before someone took even an inkling of interest in my work.  But I am persistent, I am resilient and I accepting of the fact that I had a long road ahead.  It’s not like I expected the first response I received would be a contract offer, right?  Wrong!  Of course I did!  How could someone not immediately fall in love with all of my carefully crafted tidbits of prose? I knew that I would be the one to defy the odds and have the agents begging for my attention. Okay, well maybe I didn’t really think that, but if I am being honest with myself (and anybody reading this I suppose), I did hold out hope that somebody might take an interest immediately.  Silly?  Perhaps, but how can you not take pride in something you’ve created and doted on for so many months?  If you don’t have those feelings about your own work, well then, maybe your work needs some more work…

And now, back to me. I got my first flat-out rejection this week. I knew it was coming, but I still wasn’t ready for it.  Like a solid blow to the gut, those small words in the message: “We’ve had the chance to review it and, unfortunately, this project is not right for us…” knocked me down. Pow.  Wham.  Pass the Novocaine, please.  And to make it worse, I got the response less than 12 hours after submitting the query! Yikes. Could it really be that bad? I politely followed up, thanked them for the response and asked if they could offer any details that might help me in my future attempts.  No response nearly 48 hours later, but I am not surprised.  I imagine they get hundreds of solicitations like mine each week.  Once something is tagged as deadweight, I’d probably toss it overboard too.

I don’t hold any animosity towards this agency; everybody’s got a job to do.  What crawls under my skin is the rejection in general. I worked, no scratch that, I slaved for many months on this and it barely got a glance before they determined that it was “not right”.  A friend of mine who is a published author has promised to give me some pointers and some funny stories about the rejection letters she got when she was in my spot.

According to 10 Hidden Gifts of Rejection Letters, I’ve joined an illustrious club of the rejected that includes the likes of Walt Whitman, Dr. Seuss and J.K. Rowling.  So, putting it in those terms, it doesn’t sound so bad.  My wounds will heal and I will crawl back from the brink.  But if you are on the same path as me, this is fair warning  - that first one really stings!

Oct 4 2010

The Query Letter (aka My One Page of Stress)

Wow.  So much for celebrating.  Last week I finished the second draft of my first novel.  Yea for me, right?  Hardly!  If getting a novel published was a sport, it would have to be high hurdles!  Writing the book itself was only step one in a litany of stuff that has to be done before you’ll ever be privy to that goofy smile you’ll get when you see your name on the shelves in Barnes and Noble!

The next thing I had to do was the query letter, an intro letter that you use to attract the interest of an agent or a publisher.  These are extremely specific in form and content and from what I’ve learned, deviation will not be tolerated.  As I wrote, rewrote, swore and re-wrote again, I had flashbacks to my senior year of college, when I was frantically trying to fill a one-page résumé with the eye-candy that would get my foot into an employer’s door.  Everything had a specific place and a specific format – deviation from it would likely cost your résumé a one-way trip to the circular file.

Back then the issue was trying to find enough relevant content to fill the page.  Now I am trying desperately to cut down the content to keep it at the one-page length.  Of course I could spout pages and pages of sheer poetry on how wonderful my story is, but the cold, hard reality is that I have about 20 seconds to sell my book to an agent who has an overflowing inbox of similar material.  So I’ve got to hit them with something that gives them enough interest to pause long enough to read my Plot Summary, aka My Two Pages of Stress (coming soon to a blog near you).

After so many revisions of the query letter, several of the keys on my keyboard have formed a coalition against the Backspace key, which they now feel receives significant favoritism from my fingers. I cannot blame them.  I spent more hours on that single page than I did on several chapters in the book itself. Nowhere is quality over quantity more apparent than in the novel query letter!

But I am happy to report that the letter is completed, at least in draft, and I’ve sent it to some successful (i.e. published) authors for a critique!  I’ll post an update after I receive their feedback.