Finishing with the Editing Layers

I am learning that the only rule is “there are no rules”, at least where editing is concerned.

Or maybe it’s “whose rules” the editor chooses to follow. When I got back the final edit of my book from Patty Zion I was startled to see that she had changed some of the punctuation that Jo Scheier had corrected on my “final” manuscript, most notably the use of quotation marks. There were even some of the individual pieces in the book that had initially been edited by Jessica Weible a few years ago. All three of these women are knowledgeable, excellent, experienced writers. Yet each of them had differing informed opinions.

What I came to realize was that not only are there different defined styles of usage, but that like language itself, usage preferences are always in flux. In the end, feeling confused and fatigued, and just wanting to move forward, I chose to go with Patty’s edit, which was in accordance with The Chicago Manual of Style.

Getting the Book Out There

Determining Marketability

So, where do you go to find an agent who might be able to get your book published? I hadn’t the faintest idea. What should you tell a prospective agent about your book to get them interested in it? Ditto-no clue.

Once again, as she has for so many of us in the Writers Block Party, Jo came to the rescue. She provided me with invaluable information about how to write a query letter, and what a professional book proposal contains. While we all want to crow about our book—how informative or funny or shocking it is, Jo helped me to realize that we need to make an agent see why people will want to buy our book. The agent has to be able to say to herself, “hmmn, enough people will want to buy this book and at 15% I’d make some pretty good money from it.”

I was careful in every aspect of what I wrote in my query letter and proposal to emphasize, even define, the market for my book.

Agent Wanted

There are a number of online resources that lists agents including the genres they’re looking for and how they want to receive manuscripts. The two that I’m using are Manuscript Wish List and AgentQuery.com.

In step with the times, very few agents accept snail mail anymore. Copy and Paste is universally required. Thank God for Jess Weible; she showed me how to C&P last winter.

While most agents simply request a query letter, others can want any combination of elements: maybe a query letter and proposal; a query letter and the first ten (maybe fifteen) pages; or a proposal and ten or fifteen or twenty pages. Some may request the query copied and posted with the proposal or sample pages as attachments. As with style of editing, there’s no hard fast rule.

My first couple of days of submitting to agents were exhausting and extremely frustrating. I would identify a target agent then send her (90% are women) whatever she requested. About a quarter of them came back immediately as undeliverable. Thinking, I guess, that “this agent was my only hope” I’d keep trying to find a better email address or resending it. Finally, I realized she may be out of business or posted a bad address and moved on.

A few agents had submission portals in which to insert the query letter and the other proposal elements. I succeeded with some, others didn’t take my inserts. Again, initially, I tried repeatedly and in vain to submit. Then I began to realize the number of agents that are out there, who are looking for pop culture, memoir, history books is huge, I just said, “the hell with it” and moved on to the next target.

Settling into a System

Whenever I’ve had to face a daunting complex task I’ve always found that I could tackle it by developing a system.

So, instead of just picking off and immediately sending to likely agents I worked my way through multiple pages of Manuscript Wish List and AgentQuery listing each target’s name, email, and what they wanted-query, proposal, pages, etc. Then I lumped all who just wanted a query (that was the vast majority) and repeatedly emailed a copy and pasted query letter, changing the addressee’s email and name. I grouped others by their request type and finished with the odd requests.

On my first day of sending to agents I only got 6 successfully emailed in about 4 hours. This morning I did 20 in about 3 hours.

Waiting on Responses

Those of us who use Submittable for individual stories, poems, and pieces are used to getting back an immediate auto-response. I’ve found this to be very rare so far with agent submissions, maybe about 1%.

It’s also acceptable for authors of individual pieces to query about their submission if they haven’t heard anything in months-I think 6 months is common. Book agents make it point to tell authors, “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” In other words, “no news is bad news.” I did have two agents who within hours emailed me to say that my book was not a match for them. Note that this isn’t saying that my book-or yours-is no good, but simply they don’t see it as a fit with the publishers they deal with.

A Wide Net

Having been in sales I understand that finding an agent who feels she can get it published is all about numbers. As in sales the more “asks” you go for the more likely you will get a “buy”.

Because I know my book about radio is not something that will appeal to every reader, thus not a book that a publisher will see as a million seller, I’m going to have to “ask” (submit) to as many agents as possible hoping to find those few-even that one, who will believe there is a large enough readership for it so that they can convince a publisher to accept it. As of now I have sent out 42 queries. I intend on exhausting likely agents on my resources’ lists and then see what happens over the next three months.

I have a Plan B.

Previous post // Next post