Of Authors and Agents
Being a first-time author, I think it’d be great to have an agent who loves my book as much as I do and works day and night to find just the right publisher for me and my story. She’d never give up and, just 
as important, never let me become discouraged. At the first inkling of doubt, my agent would be there to reassure me, reminding me publishing a book is a slow process at best and this hard waiting part is a normal part of the process. She’d text or email on a regular schedule (daily would be good) to keep me up to date on which publishers we’ve submitted to, what feedback she’s gotten, or when we might expect to hear something back. She’d be there to hold my hand, encourage me, and fill up this big, deep, black hole called waiting.
When I began shopping my book a couple of months ago, my plan was to query only agents. That seemed to be the best route to take since most publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts from “agentless” authors. Even if a publisher accepts unsolicited manuscripts, there’s that old rule about forever closing the door to a publisher if queried and rejected on your own. Well, I stuck to the agent-only plan for about a day. I’ve queried both agents and publishers over the last couple of months, but I’ve slowly changed my thinking to publishers-only queries. Stephen King changed my mind. Yes, that Stephen King.
Okay, so I didn’t have a personal, sit-down, face-to-face coaching session with Stephen King, but I did read an article, entitled Everything You Need to Know About Writing—in Ten Minutes, that he wrote some thirty-odd years ago. The article focuses on writing fiction, so some of it wasn’t relevant to me right now (who knows, maybe someday I’ll be writing fiction). I did find a “golden nugget” relevant to any genre author though. Do I, as a first-time author, need an agent? Here’s what Mr. King had to say on the subject:
An agent? Forget it. For now.
Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. [He wrote this article thirty years ago. Today, the standard is 15%.] 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life.
Flog your stories around yourself. If you’ve done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete.
And remember Stephen King’s First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don’t need one until you’re making enough for someone to steal—and if you’re making that much, you’ll be able to take your pick of good agents.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
While we’re on the subject of agents, yesterday, I opened my Excel spreadsheet where I’m keeping track of all my querying activities. I hadn’t looked at it in a while, but I sent a new query over the weekend so needed to update. Here’s my system. The possibilities to query are all listed without color
on a white background, using several columns for name, contact info, etc. (Contact me if you’d like more details on my spreadsheet system.) When I send a query or submission, I change the background color to green. With a rejection, the background changes to red. It’s an easy way to see what’s happening with just a glance at the colors.
I have fourteen agencies listed as possibilities (white). I’ve submitted to five of them (green). One has sent me a rejection (changed from green to red). There’s been no response from the other four. I queried those four agents early in the process. Looking at them yesterday, I realized I likely was not going to get a response at all since it’s been well past their estimates of response time. I marked the column labeled “No Response” and changed them all from green to red since no response is the same as a rejection. As rude as I think not responding at all is (I mean, how long does it take to say “No thank you”?), I felt a sense of relief in marking the column and changing the color. It set me free from the wait on those agents. I don’t have to think about them anymore.
No doubt, this waiting stage has been kind of brutal for me. It’s been a patience tester and faith builder for sure. If you’re a writer/author, I would love to hear your comments on how you’ve managed the waiting part of the publishing process. Even if you’re not a writer, we all go through waiting seasons. Tell me, what helps you through yours?
A couple of thoughts. First, I’d be careful about taking advice from a 30-year-old article, even if it was written by Stephen King. The publishing industry has changed a lot in 30 years.
Second, I know it can seem rude when people don’t reply to your submission, but most writers starting out have no idea how busy agents and publishers are, how many submissions they receive in a day, how many they have to sift through before they get to anything worth considering, what kind of process they have to go through after that to check out if the manuscript is, in fact, worth their time and effort and, then, if they decide it is, what kind of process they have to go through to pitch — no, not pitch, champion — that manuscript to their team, often to no avail. And sometimes not because it doesn’t show potential, but because it’s the wrong fit for that company, or because even when the whole company is behind it philosophically, the number crunchers say the company can’t afford to take this particular manuscript on because it’s unlikely to make enough money to compensate for a fabulous book they worked with a while back that didn’t bring them any returns. In many cases, it’s not even the agent or publisher who’s doing the first sift, but an overworked and unpaid intern. The lack of reply is not about rudeness. It’s about people being incredibly overworked in an industry that’s gone through and continues to go through an unbelievable amount of turmoil and change.
In terms of dealing with surviving the wait, don’t take it personally. It has nothing to do with you personally, especially when you’ve poured such intimate pieces of your heart and soul into your book. But it’s really not personal. You just have to bounce back and move on to the next one on your list.
Hang in there.
So true all that goes on behind the scenes, but somewhere in that complex process, someone makes a decision. My guess would be that at some point, someone hits the delete key on my email. What would it take for that person to send a standard, “Not a good fit for us, but good luck,” reply before deleting the original email? 15 additional seconds? That’s all I’m saying. I don’t take it personally; I know it’s the norm. Thanks for your insight!