Writers in the Storm

By Chuck Sambuchino

Once your book is finished, it’s time to start submitting to agents. For this, a simple first step is to create a new Microsoft Word or Excel document so you can keep detailed track of your submissions, target agents, resource materials, and more. The document will help you personalize query letters, find more agents to contact, and know when to follow up on submissions.

Now it’s time to create your list of potential agents to query.

As you start compiling agent names and contact info, think in terms of casting a wide net. Scour databases and websites to put together the largest possible collection of reps to contact, then start winnowing down your list as you go along. Understand right off the bat that not every agent is for you. You’ll only be targeting a fraction of the active reps out there—seeking those who represent the specific type of book you’re writing.

Before you go looking for agents to contact, you must define what you’ve written. In other words, when push comes to shove, you have to classify it as something. So what type of book is it? (Note that novels are broken down into genres, while nonfiction is broken down into categories.)

Some writers will have no difficulty with this step—immediately telling their friends that they’ve written “a romance” or “a thriller” or “an illustrated picture book.” But other writers will not be so sure when it comes to this step, questioning the exact classification of their work, and therefore not knowing which agents to target.

Your goal is to try and break the story down into what it is fundamentally. From there, you can still look for more specific market offshoots. Let’s run through some examples of category dilemmas:

Example 1: You’ve written a legal thriller and can’t find many agents who represent this vein of books.

Your mistake is that you’re specifically looking for agents seeking “legal thrillers” when you should just be looking for agents seeking “thrillers.” A popular genre of novels—such as a thriller—has many subcategories, including techno-thrillers, medical thrillers, legal thrillers, climate fiction thrillers (“cli-fi”) and more. But most agents won’t get into the nitty-gritty when explaining what categories they want. They’ll just say, “I seek thrillers.” And anyone who says just that is a great target for you.

Some will personally lean toward your subgenre of thriller while others won’t. You won’t know where they stand in terms of favoritism and leanings, so just query all available markets and hope for the best. Also, there will be a few agents out there who explain outright in their personal information that they seek “legal thrillers.”

If you see an agent get specific like this and put out an APB for the exact type of book you’re writing, that’s a great potential match for you, and you can say “Because I’ve read that you are actively seeking [x], I thought you might enjoy my novel, [Title].” 

Example 2: You’ve written a science fiction young adult book and don’t know whether to contact young adult agents or sci-fi agents.

The answer is to query young adult agents. If it’s a book for kids, it’s a book for kids. It’s not like young adult romance should be treated like adult romance. If it’s fundamentally young adult (YA) or middle grade (MG), you should query for those categories. 

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(Hi, everyone. Chuck here chiming in for a second. I wanted to say I am now taking on clients as a freelance editor. So if your query or manuscript needs some love, please check out my editing services. Thanks!)

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Example 3: You’re not sure if your book is suspense or thriller because it blends the two.

You won’t find a whole lot of agents who put out a call for a crossbreed of genres, such as “thriller and suspense” or “Western and horror.” Instead you’ll get a lot of agents simply asking for “thriller” and some asking for “suspense,” for example. Feel free to query all of them. In your contact letter to the agent, you can alternate between the classification terms depending on what the agent’s needs are, or you can just query them all stating upfront that it’s a “suspenseful thriller.” 

Example 4: You’re writing one of the categories of fiction that some agents may rep, but virtually none request specifically in their guidelines.

If you’re dealing with a lonely genre of fiction, such as “humorous fiction” or “medieval fiction,” and can’t find many target reps for the book, you can always seek out generalists. Some agents will be very specific concerning what they want and don’t want. But plenty of reps will instead say something like “I’m open to any area of fiction that’s done well.” If an agent openly says they have no restrictions concerning submissions, feel free to contact them and hope for the best.

This problem of possessing an “under the radar category” is even more common with nonfiction, where it can be difficult to find someone who gets specific enough to ask for “books about Wicca” or “books about exterminating unwanted pests from your home.” If you’re writing nonfiction like this, your strategy, again, should be to seek generalists. Also, another good strategy is to find other books in the marketplace that resemble yours and see who repped those books.

Example 5: You’ve written a novel that doesn’t fit into any so-called genre.

Some novels will be easy to categorize, such as fantasies, Westerns and horror. But what about novels that do not fit into any of these popular commercial genres? Chances are, you’re going to call it “literary fiction” or “mainstream fiction.”

Literary fiction means the novel 1) does not fall into any popular genre type, and 2) focuses on character more than plot, and values impressive voice, style and technique from the writer.

Mainstream fiction is a similar category, but the term is used to describe non-genre stories that have mass appeal and can transcend literary fiction readers, into such opportunities as book clubs. In other words, the two categories are remarkably close to one another, and the difference in names is more for marketing than anything else.

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About Chuck

Chuck Sambuchino of Writer's Digest Books edits the GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS and the CHILDREN'S WRITER'S & ILLUSTRATOR'S MARKET. His Guide to Literary Agents Blog is one of the largest blogs in publishing.

His 2010 humor book, HOW TO SURVIVE A GARDEN GNOME ATTACK, was optioned by Sony Pictures. Chuck has also written the writing guides FORMATTING & SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT and CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM.

Besides that, he is a freelance book & query editor, husband, sleep-deprived new father, and owner of a flabby-yet-lovable dog named Graham.

Find Chuck on Twitter and on Facebook.

photo credit: susivinh via photopin cc

by Sierra Godfrey

Remember when you started your blog? Maybe you were an unpublished writer and fellow unpublished writers followed your trials with you, cheered you when you got an agent and a book contract, and then became readers. Maybe you’re still unpublished but your focus has changed. Maybe your career was already in full swing, but you started your web presence with a free blog.

However you began your presence on the Web, you might have a bunch of reasons for moving your blog now—you might have a new shiny website with incorporated blog, or maybe your old blog was hacked, or maybe you just want a new way of blogging. Once you have your new home on the web, you’re good to go, right? You can delete your old blog, right?

Wrong!

Let it live. You need that old blog to increase your online profile print, and you need it to stay up because readers who have gone away or have bookmarked your old blog will come back, sometimes months later. And you don’t want to be unfindable! I know a NYT bestselling author who had a fairly informal blog that was well-followed by lots of other writers –and agents, too. Then he built a brand new author website complete with a new blog. Unfortunately, he deleted the old one and I didn’t know it until I check in months later--and couldn’t find him. I didn’t know he’d transitioned, so he was just gone. He’d built a huge following of writers on his old blog, and he effectively lost that following when he moved without a trace.

So, you know to keep that old blog.

There’s a little bit of management that goes with old blogs, though. You can’t just leave an old blog by itself. Here are four things to keep in mind once your old blog goes dead:

1. Put up a notice saying you’ve moved.

If you don’t say you’ve moved then no one will know to go to your new blog! Don’t expect people to figure it out. Spell out the URL. Set your big “I’ve moved!” post so that it’s top-most post. Put your new URL loud and clear – in the sidebar, at the top, anywhere that people will see it. People link to old posts and you might not even know it. Incoming traffic to your old blog might not see your “I’ve moved” post so make sure you put your announcement in other places too—maybe a pop up box or in the sidebar. Update your footer with your new URL.

You might even consider editing your old posts with a note at the bottom that you’ve moved and list your new URL.

2. Turn comments to off.

Don’t leave your comments open because spammers know when blogs aren’t being tended to and they descend like a swarm of Dementors. Spammers know that leaving nonsense posts with their website URL in the comments scores them a trackback URL – which raises their Google ranking. It’s insidious. Lock them out.

3. Strip out time-dependent content

Do you have a graphic saying you’re part of a 2011 debut author’s group? Take off anything that might fool visitors into thinking your blog is dead rather than merely in hypersleep. Even better: strip out your sidebar content (keep your tags and archive posts though).

4. Consider repurposing your old posts.

Take some time to go through your old posts. Maybe you want to keep only the best ones, maybe you want to list the most-visited ones. As blogger Sarah Van Barger puts it, “When I started blogging, I’m not sure that SEO was even A Thing and if it was, I surely didn’t know about it. While my content was good, my titles were too quirky and mysterious to inspire much click through and all my photos were saved as “008138ejplorb.jpg.” This was also the age when people used any old photo they found – regardless of copyright and I wasn’t any different.” Sarah recommends finding your best posts and finding a good, legal image for them. She says you should rename the photo as something SEO-friendly – ”woman-using-computer” not “9109282joli.jpg” and that if you named your post something ‘clever’ the first time around (like song lyrics), rename it something obvious and Googleable. Another idea from Sarah is to offer your old blog posts as guest posts.

Hope that helps. These things are all part of managing your online profile and presence—I know, snore-fest stuff, but important when you’re trying to wrap your arms around what it means to be the fabulous author that you are.

Have you transitioned a blog? What worked for you? Any lessons learned you can share?

 About Sierra

Sierra writes fiction that features strong heroines who grow from the challenges they face and always get the guy in the end. A graphic designer by day, she lives in the swampy yet arid wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. She has zero will power when it comes to chocolate. In fact, she is the inventor of mix-less trail mix — just leave the chocolate chips.

You can find more of her sass at www.sierragodfrey.com.

By Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine Into Gold

The lament of the modern author, whose writing must now compete for purchase with every other book, from classics like the Iliad to the newest self-published odyssey, all of which will now be preserved digitally for all time: how do you add to that in any significant way?

The answer is to write the book that only you can write.

To uncover “your” material you must embrace the wonderful, formidable creation that is you. Here are some ways to accomplish that.

1. Journal. On the pages of your journal you are free to write about whatever crosses your mind. Note, over time, what tends to cross your mind. No one told you to write about this, it simply drifted to the surface. It is important to you. Look for common themes among your dreams, memories, and current concerns. You will learn something.

2. Make lists. This activity differs from journaling in that it is more focused. In her wonderful book The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life, choreographer Twyla Tharp says that when she choreographs a new piece she begins by walking into the studio, which is essentially the writer’s “blank page.” But while she is alone in the room, she is alone with her body, ambition, ideas, passions, needs, memories, goals, prejudices, distractions, and fears. Those could be great headings for lists. What does your body tell you? What are some of your favorite memories? We all have prejudices—what are yours?

3. Every now and then, let movies, shows, concerts and books surprise you. Don’t read about the experience at all; go with no expectations. My sons and I used to go to the cheap movie theater in town, no matter what was showing. We were constantly learning about what we liked, what we didn’t like, and why.

4. Put yourself in situations in which you fully expect to be uncomfortable. Much of the best writing is done through the perspective of an outsider—someone trying to figure out the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. Put yourself in that position afresh. Two years after my husband’s suicide, our new next-door neighbor killed himself. I felt compelled to support his young widow, but it was intimidating: in order to get to the funeral I had to cross through a line of bikers protecting the place. My neighbor had been one of their ranks. You could have picked me out in a heartbeat—I was the only woman without tattoos and a doo rag in the place. But it was a powerful, new experience. The bikes proceeded to the interment two-by-two, each biker wearing a black cloth pinned across the club insignia on their jackets—and I was surprised by my tears when my deceased neighbor’s bike took the lead, ridden by his best friend and wife. Witnessing it, I accessed a new little pocket of my humanity.

5. Try to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak your language. It’s interesting what you learn about your own cultural suppositions when trying to span an even trickier gap. I think here of the way my Danish niece and I invented a non-verbal game by taking hands in the stairwell and going up and down the stairs in different rhythms. Or of the way my stepdaughter’s Hungarian husband met me for the first time, sitting in our living room so straight and formal in his wedding suit and little cap—not on the comfy couch, but on the hard piano bench, honoring me as stepmother by struggling to prove, with his broken English, that he was equal to this new role—and the way he had to turn away to hide his tears after I shared my approval of their union.

What other methods have you used to learn more about yourself?

Your best contribution to the world’s growing body of literature is to write a story born of your soul.

Discover it. Own it. Write it.

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, which was released on January 28 and has already gone back for a second printing, and The Twelfth Hour (due Spring 2015). Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she now serves on the board of the Philadelphia Writers Conference and as book club liaison for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing. She lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA. Although a member of The Liars Club, she swears that everything in this bio is true.