anna genoese

My big advice about trying to get published.

2011-05-27T11:24:26Z

Recently, one of my clients asked me what my recommendations were for someone starting out in the publishing industry. Here's the answer I gave her:

My big recommendations about publishing are:

1. Educate yourself.

2. Stay polite, even when dealing with someone who may not be polite to you.

3. Be open to hearing ideas, but keep hold of your own vision.

4. Be persistent! Don't give up after the first few rejections; it can take years to get published.

...These are the same things I've been saying to people who want to be professionally published for years. Sometimes I rephrase the advice, but it's basically stayed the same. E-book, comic book, print book, whatever -- these four pieces points hold true!

Is there any advice that you wish someone had given you? Or advice that's held true as you navigated the murky waters of publishing?

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Demystifying Publishing. Is it easier to get an editor or an agent?

2010-10-22T20:15:08Z

Every week I check my website stats, and every week I see that people hit my website by searching some variation of "Is it easier to get an editor or an agent?" But I don't have an article specifically about that -- so I decided to write one.

As with everything else in the publishing industry, experiences with getting an agent vary wildly. Some people never get a rejection letter. Some people try forty agents before finding one they fit with. Some people never get an agent. Some people get an agent and stick with that agent for a while, but find that they don't really get along, and so they switch (and, like that old saw goes, it's easier to find one if you already have one). Some people never get an agent, or eventually give up having an agent entirely, finding that their career is stable enough that having an agent isn't worth it. Honestly, I think the number of people doing that last thing is dwindling in this era of fighting tooth and nail for every slot on every list, even in category/series romance.

It's a similar situation with editors -- some people find the right editor right away. Some people get a new editor for every book. Some people never find an editor, and decide to hire a freelance one and self-publish.

It is pretty much equally difficult to get either one to take your book on. You've heard my advice about how to get the attention of editors and agents a million times: Write a good book. (For value of good, you can also insert: timely, marketable, scandalous, rare, edgy, personally appealing to the particular editor/agent.) Write a decent query letter. Be professional.

I know what your next question is. You want to know: Is it better to get an agent first?

No one can answer this for you -- you have to make your own decisions based on what you know, and what you think is best for yourself, your manuscript(s), and your career.

If you submit your book to publishers and one likes you right away and takes the book on, that's pretty awesome, and you're set -- your book now has a 98% (ish) chance of being published. (There are things that can happen between signing a contract with a publisher and getting your book on the shelf. They're rare enough that I wouldn't worry about it happening to you, as long as you're working with a reputable publisher.)

Once you have a publishing contract in hand, you can then make a list of your dream agents, and go down it, contacting each one and saying, "Hi, this is Sydney Bristow, and I've written a book called My Life With Spy Daddy, and I have an offer to publish it from Alliance Publishers as a hardcover in their Livres Disparus list. I'd like to know if you'd represent me for this deal, and possibly future ones." Plenty of people get agents this way. In fact, I can even think of a couple of people who called agents who'd previously turned down their manuscripts, and the agents agreed to take them on once they had the contract in hand. I know that seems shady/annoying, but it's just business.

(I will pause here to say that I really do think the majority of authors need agents, especially once a house has made an offer. Agents provide a number of extremely important services to authors. Agents act as go-betweens, helping to smooth the way for authors and editors, especially when there's conflict about something. Agents are knowledgeable about the way publishing contracts work -- if you're taking the contract to someone not familiar with the industry, there's every chance they'll miss something, even if that person is a lawyer. Agents are skilled at negotiation, and know how to get the most out of the wheeling and dealing. Agents organize the money and keep track of the royalty statements. Agents can put pressure on a publishing company to live up to the spirit of its agreement with an author. Agents have connections -- not just in North America, but also in other hubs of the publishing world, and even smaller markets! Hey, don't knock being translated into Russian, German, Japanese, Spanish... A sale is a sale, and agents are uniquely equipped to make these sales. Agents have their down sides, too, don't get me wrong -- but I am of the firm belief that the up-sides outweigh those down-sides.

If you disagree, that's okay! You can write a blog post at your own blog about it!)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- publishing is subjective. Sometimes an agent falls in love with a book that zie can't get an editor to take on for love, money, or favors. Sometimes an editor loves a book that three hundred agents turned down. Heck, sometimes an editor loves a book that she can't convince her publisher to take on, and she mourns it even ten years later. Uh, not that I have any experience with that last one or anything!

The flip side of this is that if you get an agent first, a lot of doors open to you that may have previously been shut. Some agents have a lot of clout and/or know editors and publishers really well. Those agents can take your manuscript and say to an editor, "Remember when you told me you wanted a science fiction novel set in the near future featuring a female CIA agent who falls in love with a female Russian SVR agent? I've got that for you." Agents spend a lot of time cultivating their relationships with editors and publishers -- partially for this exact reason. For sure, when I was acquiring, there were agents who'd send me manuscripts, and I'd pretty much drop everything to read what they sent, because usually it was exactly my taste and exactly what I was looking for. No one's 100%, but the agents who pay attention can come pretty damn close.

Of course, there are also agents out there who don't know the editors, who don't have the same taste as the editors, who don't pay attention to what the editors and publishers are looking for, and who don't have the influence or relationships to make a scenario like that work. I certainly have met more than my fair share of agents who sent me Western historicals with notes about how they were sure I'd want that book for the romance list; once, an agent counseled her client to send me lingerie with the author's version of the manuscript's "cover" screen-printed onto it. Make sure to do your research on the agents before you submit to them, and use your brain and common sense -- that will, hopefully, help you have a much smaller chance of running into those agents.

Something to keep in mind when making your plans is that many agents will be reluctant to take on a project that's already been sent around to the major New York houses. If you've already been rejected by nine out of eleven of the editors an agent immediately thinks of when reading your manuscript, that agent's job has just been made a whole ton harder. Even if that editor never personally looked at your book -- the assistant read it and rejected it, or the editor sent it out to a reader or got a report from an intern and rejected based on that -- the editor will very likely remember at least the title, and be annoyed to see the book again, especially if it's within a year or two of the first submission.

I hope this helps people who are starting to think about where to send their manuscripts! Feel free to ask questions in the comments; as usual, I will not talk about specific agents by name and I ask that you don't name names in your comment -- but I'm happy to give you advice on your specific situation (and I know a lot of readers of this blog would be happy to jump in with advice, too!).

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Reference materials I don't actually reference...

2010-05-04T16:08:57Z

I find reference material, manuals, and guidebooks to be thrilling. Dictionaries of all sorts (I still fondly remember the ridiculous dictionary of rhymes I had throughout high school, which I sometimes used my freshman year for the torture of my teachers by writing rhyming epic poems instead of essays), handbooks, whatever. Recently, since I've been taking on more and more freelance work of various sorts, I decided to set aside some money every month to acquire more and more reference books.

When I worked at Tor, I had a huge number of reference books, taking up two or three shelves. I thought it only fair to leave them for the company's use when I left, since the company had paid for them. A partial list of what had been on the shelves behind my desk:

Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition
The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition
The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition
The Encyclopedia of Torture (According to Google, Amazon, Powell's, and AbeBooks.com, this doesn't exist! But I had a copy, so maybe I am misremembering the title.)
The Star Trek Encyclopedia
The Klingon Dictionary
Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
The Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology
Devils & Demons: A Dictionary of Demonology, A Total Guide to the Satanic Realm
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Voodoo
Europe: A History
The Encyclopedia of Hell
A Dictionary of American Idioms
Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus

(I actually took the Web 10 and Chicago 14 with me when I left, because those were mine, handed down to me from Jenna Felice, and good luck prying them from even my cold, dead hands. They are currently wrapped in bubble wrap in storage, though, until I can clear out more space on the bookshelves here.)

I will be honest: the only materials I ever actually used for anything were the dictionaries and the CMS (usually as backup for when someone was arguing with me about whether or not it was appropriate to use "phase" as a synonym for "faze" and other ridiculous things) -- and Europe: A History. (I also had an amazing copy of the OED that ran in DOS, which was often useful when editing historical novels for the information it provided about when words came into common use and how their meanings changed over time.)

However, I found the shelves full of reference materials to be infinitely comforting.

I have boxes of reference books in storage right now, most of them from my undergraduate religious studies courses. Compilations of origin stories that professors put together from decades-old mimeographs, anthologies of essays about modern-day nuns, feminist critiques of religious institutions, at least two books about the Sumerian language and culture, and a bunch of different versions/translations of the Christian Bible, the Qur'an, and the Torah, amongst other things. I didn't use most of that stuff when Kat and I were writing Salt and Silver -- but I liked having access to it, just in case I needed it!

Most recently I've acquired the following:

And... well, I haven't used any of them, because I've been copyediting and proofreading for 10+ years and I can spell embarrass, mischievous, occasionally, supersede... I know most bad breaks on sight, have a firm grasp of punctuation (both the "proper" use of it, and the "common" use for making text flow easily for the reader), Americanize Australian and British manuscripts with ease, and when querying my private clients, I go out of my way to cite reputable websites instead of or in addition to the usually expensive or hard to find reference books, so it's easy to look at the context of what I'm talking about and acquire more information instead of having to take my word for it.

Nevertheless, I have read them -- for fun, because I am a nerd. And whenever I sit down to edit, copyedit, proofread, or polish, I have these reference materials around me. Just in case.

What do you keep around? What's your favorite text to reference when writing or editing?

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Manuscript formatting: Beyond 101

2010-04-15T15:17:36Z

I know people are always nagging you about formatting your manuscript. This is going to be another post about that. However, this is not a post about Manuscript Formatting 101 (12 point Courier New, double-spaced, with 1" margins all the way around, your name and the title of the book in the upper left hand corner, and the page number in the upper and lower right hand corners). No, this is a post about the other parts of formatting. The parts that no one seems to ever talk about! This is even in easy to follow bullet points. Come on, you know you love bullet points!

Emphasis. Here are the basic rules of emphasizing things in manuscripts:
- Don't put anything in italics; if you have properly formatted your manuscript (in 12 point Courier New), italics are going to be difficult for the reader to easily see.
- Don't emphasize things by using bold. When was the last time you saw something emphasized in bold in a printed book? Pretty much never.
- DO emphasize using underlining. In most word processing programs, you can easily do this using the keyboard command CNTRL+U or CMMD+U. Editors, copyeditors, and typesetters all read underlining as italics. I know it sounds weird to you, but trust me: this is the secret language of manuscripts.
- When something is underlined for another reason -- like, say, you want someone's thoughts to be italicized in the final book -- and you want to emphasize a word within that already-underlined text, just drop the underlining. You've seen that in books, too. Example:
- The punctuation immediately following an underlined sentence, word, or phrase should also be underlined.
Don't start your chapter halfway down the page when you are writing the book. Oh, you can if you want to, but it involves a lot of carriage returns (pressing ENTER/RETURN over and over again), and it means that if at any time you need to reformat your manuscript, it's going to do something funky when the manuscript reflows. (Reflowing on your computer is when the file recalibrates its page count for five minutes while you play Plants Vs. Zombies.)
DO use the "Page Break" function in your word processing program. Wherever a chapter ends, just hit "insert page break" and then start your new chapter right there at the beginning of the next page.
DO use the pound sign (#) to indicate a scene change. There is no need for six carriage returns every time you change a scene. Even worse is when you forget that you'd only been using five, start using six, then switch back to five... The pound sign (#) is a symbol to the publishing professionals that there's a scene change, and there's no need for anything else to indicate it. Additionally, many editors (acquiring editors, content editors, production editors, copyeditors...) can look at a manuscript that is properly formatted and tell how long the finished book is going to be, or how many signatures it will need. Just from looking at the page count or stack of pages of a properly formatted manuscript. Those six carriage returns at every scene change will definitely throw that estimate way off!
Don't bother putting two spaces after every period. That is a holdover from typewriters. If you're using a fancy typeface, it might be useful or necessary, but you are using 12 point Courier New, I am sure, so it's not.
Anything you want to put in quotation marks that is already in quotation marks should be in single quotes instead of double. For example:
Titles of songs, short stories, and episodes of television shows should always go in quotes. Names of albums, complete books, and television shows should always be underlined.
When using the em-dash, do not put spaces around it. DO turn off your auto-complete. In a properly formatted manuscript, the auto-complete em-dash is difficult to see. You want your em-dash to be two hyphens used together, like this: --
Ellipsis rules:
- When using the ellipsis, turn off your auto-complete. In a properly formatted manuscript, the auto-complete ellipsis is difficult to see and hard for the copyeditor to mark properly. You want your ellipsis to be three periods, either one after the other, or with one space in between each. For example: ... OR . . .
- If the ellipsis is within single or double quotes, there should not be a space between the final dot and the quote mark.
- In general, there is no need for extra punctuation after an ellipsis. ...? and ...! should be used extremely sparingly. ..., should never be used at all.
- Sometimes an ellipsis that ends a sentence will have an extra dot at the end to indicate a period. It is up to your aesthetics whether you'd like to embrace that.
The indent of the first sentence of a paragraph should be 1/2" or 0.5". While technically you can do this by hitting the space bar five times, please just use the tab key. Some word processing programs even have a way you can set your body text to automatically indent the first line of every paragraph.

...This entry brought to you by The Committee to Make Everyone's Lives Much Easier. Feel free to ask questions in the comments if you are so inclined.

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How to find an agent

2010-04-01T08:29:27Z

Last week, someone commented to ask me to write a post about how to find an agent. And I have to admit, my first response was a very uncharitable, "SERIOUSLY??!!??!! Let me google that for you!"

After that, though, I thought about how lots of people want someone they trust to explain things to them. They don't just want to click through to some website written by someone who they don't know. They want the answer from someone who is going to be honest about it, with no politics or sneaky tactics.

Well, I will always be honest, no bullshit -- although, obviously, my experiences and perceptions are going to color my advice.

Onward.

How To Find An Agent.

First, I have to say that if you are starting from zero, and you don't know anything about the publishing industry, please educate yourself. I have personally written many articles and blog entries about the publishing industry, many of which you can find by reading through the back entries of my blog, or posted on my website. Back when I first started, not too many people in the industry were writing blog entries where you could ask questions -- but there are tons now. Everyone's got a blog or a Twitter or both.

I am of the opinion that it is very important that you not try to find an agent when you are still at Publishing 101. At the very least, you need to know what to look for to know if someone is taking you for a ride. There are a lot of unscrupulous scam artists out there, and if you get caught up by one of them, that can have a worse effect on your writing career than diving in without an agent.

Rule number one is that money flows toward the author. If an agent tells you that zie will take you on if you pay them $X up front, it's a scam. If the agent tells you that zie will take you on, but your manuscript needs to be professionally edited and only that agent's editing service will do, it's a scam. If the agent works in any capacity for the publisher to whom zie wishes to sell your book, be on high alert -- no one can serve two masters.

The exception to rule number one: An agent, when offering to take you on, may have it written into the contract that if your relationship lasts X number of months, submissions, or rejections without a contract, that agent will begin to charge you what amounts to a handling fee of $X per manuscript. This used to be very common in the days of copious paper submissions; postage and photocopying costs do add up. However, in these days of e-submissions, keep a keen eye on where your agent is submitting. You are well within your rights to ask for an accounting of to whom your agent is submitting, where that editor works, and which format the manuscript was submitted in -- and a copy of the rejection letter.

When in doubt, do more research on the agent. There are many places to research the quality and reputation of an agent. The best place to go is Preditors & Editors. Another good place is the advocacy group for whichever genre you write in. Romance Writers of America, Mystery Writers of America, Science Fiction Writers of America, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Western Writers of America... I mean, the list goes on, and as far as I know, they will help you out even if you don't live in the USA.

If you seriously can't find any information about your agent out there already (and that should be a clue to you), then try making a post on the Absolute Write forums. I recommend this only for people who are past Being On The Internet 101. I also recommend you do it under a pseudonym instead of your real name -- there are a lot of agents and editors and authors who read those boards, and you can get a reputation. (Also, people search their own names to see what's being said about them, so if you make it a habit of calling people names, thinking there are no repercussions for what you say on the internet, think again.)

There are many ways to find agents. First, what are you writing? Not all agents handle the same work. There are some agents who are focused on science fiction and fantasy, with very rare exceptions. There are some agents who are very well known for doing mystery, or romance, or nonfiction, or YA.

Once you have a genre, there are several ways you can go.

You can go into a bookstore and look at the dedication and acknowledgements pages of the books that are the most similar to yours. For example, if you are writing a paranormal romance novel that is very similar to Salt and Silver by Anna Katherine (heh), then you would see that the author thanks "her agent, Diana Fox"; a quick Google search would turn up dianafox, and you are on your way to following those submission guidelines (and mentioning, "I am querying you because you represent my favorite paranormal romance, Salt and Silver by Anna Katherine, and my book is very much in that style."). If a particular book does not have the agent's name in the front matter, check the other books by that author, or the author's website.

Another way to do this is to look at the websites of the advocacy group for your genre, and see what information about agents is there. Many groups have a list of agents available. Often these lists are only available to their members; if membership doesn't require publication and you have the cash to write off at tax time, give it a shot. It's good for networking and information, if nothing else.

Of course, there are always books/websites like Writers Market. It's fee-based, though, and it doesn't give you any kind of leg up. Seeing "I found you through Writers Market" in your query doesn't make an agent more likely to want to buy your book, so start with the places that are free.

Again, I am going to recommend Preditors & Editors as a great free resource available to anyone who has the internet.

Go through the list. Get yourself a list of agents who are recommended or whose name(s) you like. Next you have to do research. Find that agent's website or blog. Read about what they represent, what they are looking for, what they like to read, what they hate. Go back through their blog or Twitter -- very likely there will be clues about what they loathe or love in cover letters and submissions.

Yeah, it's work. You thought getting an agent would somehow be easier than writing a book? Wrong! Suck it up. If you aren't willing to do the work to find the right agent, what do you expect is going to happen? That's right -- you're very likely going to get shafted.

There is a similar website -- which is to say, a website with agent lists -- called QueryTracker, and although it is free, it requires you to sign up for the website and log in if you want to use it. I don’t know how helpful it is, but you can look into it if you feel inclined.

Another place to do research on agents is Publishers Marketplace. Do a search for the name of the agent, and see that agent's page. Not all agents have one, but many do. They list projects the agent has recently sold, or ones that are forthcoming from publishers.

(Publishers Marketplace also has a pay feature, which includes options such as “deal search” which will tell you what people are selling and buying -- agents and editors. If you have twenty bucks to spare, you can try the pay features for a month, and see if you think it’s worth it.)

Note: If you can't find any information on an agent that is recent, or if the agent hasn't updated a blog/website/Twitter in several years, that is a clue that perhaps it's not the right agent for you. Go ahead and query, but you might not hear back!

So now you've picked four or five agents to query. This is the time to follow the submission guidelines. If you do not follow the submission guidelines, chances are very good that your submission will just get trashed.

Write a decent query letter. Get someone to proofread it for you, or use your computer's text-to-speech function to read it out loud to make sure the words all make sense together. Spell the agent's name correctly. Spell your name correctly. Spell your book's title correctly. Make sure you include the genre and word count and whether you've finished the project or not. (If your book is not finished, stop trying to find an agent and go finish it. Seriously.)

Do not ever lie in your query letter. It is not worth it. You will eventually be asked to show proof that the things you claim about yourself and your book are true. If they are not true, you will be rejected. If you've already been published, there will be a scandal. Sometimes scandals sell more books -- other times, scandals mean you will never sell a book again. Don't risk it. Just be honest.

Here is what it comes down to, though. The secret handshake that is sure to get you an agent: Write a good book.

Yeah, that's it.

Except sometimes for value of "good" you can insert other words -- which sucks, because genuinely good books should get published and sometimes they don't.

Words that will sometimes substitute for "good": timely, marketable, scandalous, rare, edgy, personally appealing to the particular editor/agent

Sorry. It's true. It's also much easier to get an agent if you know someone (or know someone who knows someone) who can call in a favor, or if you are famous (even if you are mostly or completely untalented as a writer), or if you have some kind of marketing connections (like, your mom is Oprah or your dad is Regis, and you can get yourself on all the talk shows), or if you already have a book deal and are in need of someone to negotiate the contract.

That last one is how quite a few people get agents -- and you can look at it as distressing, or as proof that agents are not the end-all, be-all, blah blah gatekeepers of the publishing industry. Sometimes a book is rejected a million times by agents, but picked up by an editor anyway. (Sometimes a book is fiercely coveted by agents, and nevertheless rejected by every editor.)

It's also pretty easy to get an agent if you are already a super famous bestselling author, but you're looking to switch to a different agent for whatever reason.

For more advice: I know it's been a few years, but I still recommend Miss Snark's archives; if you are of a certain sensibility, you will probably enjoy her writing style, and as she was (and is) an agent, her advice is certainly mostly spot on.

Many agents keep blogs non-pseudonymously, and they are pretty easy to find if you know how to navigate the internet. If you are new to the internet, I suggest Googling literary agent blog, and reading through what pops up. Do not just read one or two. Every single agent is different. If you want a real overview, read a bunch of them!

Things I will not do so do not ask: recommend an agent, recommend any of my agent friends go find you, talk about my experiences as an editor with any specific agent, write a blog post on how to write a query letter

Additionally, the comments section of this post is not the place to exchange gossip or information about any agents by name unless that particular agent is in the comments section talking about hirself. Any comment naming an agent will be deleted.

However, if you have questions about anything in this post, or something I did not cover, please do ask.

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Writing as an Editor

2010-03-27T19:22:54Z

Note: This entry is cross-posted from Kat and Anna: Writing as an Editor at the annakatherine.com blog.

This morning Kat and I did a lecture thing at the New England RWA conference in Framingham, MA. It was called “Writing as an Editor” but we ended up not actually talking about the writing and instead discussing stuff like what a production editor does and how to prepare yourself for your inevitable awful copyedit. We also were distracted by our own pain about how Salt and Silver ended up being treated by our publisher.

One of the things we wanted to discuss and did not get around to is the difficulty of writing with a loud internal editor. It is really difficult to turn that editor off and just put the freaking words down on paper (or, in our case, type the freaking words into the shared Google document). Everyone who has a loud internal editor learns a different way to turn it off. I wish I had any super-effective tips or secrets to share—but I don’t. You just have to get past it, one way or another.

The way I personally silenced my inner editor most of the time was by making a deal: I would write for X words or hours, and then edit to fix.

(Anna: “Kat, how did you silence your inner editor while writing?”
Kat: “Panic.”)

Kat says that having a deadline was very reassuring—and that while writing, she felt confident in our backups. Me, our editor, our copyeditor, the proofreader, the production editor, our agent…

I too found it extremely reassuring that if I missed something in my own edit, Kat would be there to catch it. One does not necessarily need a co-writer for this—just a trusted critique or proofreading partner. It is much easier to fall backward blindly when you know someone is there who will definitely catch you—or at least cushion your fall.

Something to remember is that all authors feel the same. Seriously, you are not the only one who has ever had these problems, even if it feels like it sometimes. It’s very comforting to know that author and editor problems are actually universal—and if you as the author are annoyed with something to do with the book, probably the editor feels similarly, or can actually reassure you that your insecurities are not based in our reality.

We also talked at the presentation about a list we made up of things that authors can do that will make easier the lives of everyone involved in making the book—but we didn’t really go into each of these things in detail, so here’s the annotated list.

THINGS AUTHORS SHOULD DO

1.) Proper manuscript format. People blow this off all the time, but it is extremely important. It is important not just to the editor/agent to whom you submit, but to the people who are going to work on your manuscript once it’s purchased and in production. Editors who want a format that is not the traditional proper ms. format will specify what format they want; with no specification, use this: 1” margins all around, double spaced, 12 point Courier New typeface.

2.) Do not put images in your manuscript. You might think it’s cute to put a heart at the beginning of each chapter, or insert an image of a star everywhere you have a scene change, but it is not. It’s just annoying for everyone who looks at your manuscript and has to do anything technical with it. (If you have a specific request for the type design—for example, if you want the published book to have a heart at the beginning of each chapter—that is something to let your editor know once the book is finished and going into production.)

3.) In the header, put your full name, the title of your manuscript, and the page number. In your footer, put the page number. Page numbers should be on the right hand side of the page always; that is where publishing people automatically look for them.

4.) Make a reference guide. This will be handy for yourself, your editor, and everyone involved in the production process. Kat and I, despite knowing we should do this, did not. This resulted in our bad copyedit being even worse, and made us feel totally stupid. So after we spent many hours wrestling our copyedit into submission (and scrawling STET—meaning “keep as originally written”—on everything), we wrote a letter to the proofreader, which you can read here.

Your reference guide should include:

A list of the names of main characters and any nicknames used in the story (with their correct spellings!)
Brief character descriptions and notes on any special characteristics (ex.: Anna Louise, 29, black hair, blue eyes; also referred to as: Lou, Annalou, Pineapple, Banana)
A list of places that appear or are referred to in the story; this is particularly important if your characters go to foreign or alien places with names that are not commonly used in English or are in languages you’ve made up
A list of difficult words—any non-English word or phrase, or uncommon usage of a word or phrase. For example, in Salt and Silver, our narrator says a couple of times, “I cannot even.” This is a complete sentence, generally conveying frustration beyond words, but it really confused our copyeditor. Another problem is sometimes colloquial phrases, which can trip up non-native English speakers/readers. So, for example, if your character calls sidewalks “pavement” or something, note it.
Any uncommon non-English words or phrases; whether it is French, Welsh, or an alien language you made up, it is important to provide a list of what’s in the book and its translation. This is both so these things can be double-checked easily and because this way if the people working on your book are not familiar with the words, phrases, language, or font, they will know exactly what’s going on anyway.
Any particular style items. For example, Kat and I wanted “gray” to always be spelled “grey”; we wanted “sulfur” to always be spelled “sulphur”; we wanted the serial comma used. Often there is a “house style” that will be imposed upon your manuscript, but if you have a particularly strong opinion about something (or it is important somehow to your narrative), that must be said to the editor early on so everyone knows.
A timeline. If your characters attend school, what is the school schedule? If the character works, what is the work day like? What is the order in which things happen in the book? Lists of this type can not only help your editor, copyeditor, and proofreader do a better job on your book, but it can also help you organize the events of the book.

5.) After phone conversations with your editor (or anyone at your publishing company), send a follow-up email to confirm the information you exchanged—and, if you have an agent, CC your agent. This will not only help prevent miscommunication, but it will also protect you in the event that your editor (or whomever) is a jerk. Written records are the best for keeping track of things, and email is awesome because it never has to go away. (Kat and I suggest Gmail.com for a free email account with nigh unlimited space for email storage.)

6.) Do not be an idiot on the internet. Editors (and agents and other people) not only search their own names, but have friends. Your editor (or agent) may not say anything to you, but rest assured: when you say mean things about your editor/agent/publisher/whoever on the internet, we know. And we don’t forget. Ever.

(Separately from being that type of idiot, check out RaceFail for many examples of authors losing current/future readers by being careless and/or malicious, and not apologizing for their mistakes, and defending their bad decisions. Please try not to do this, and if you make a mistake, don’t defend it—just apologize. Sincerely. If you’re not sorry, think about why.)

7.) Let your agent do hir job. If you have an agent, let the agent do what an agent does. Let the agent handle the business stuff with your editor and publisher. Let the agent negotiate the contract. When there is a problem and you’re upset, go to your agent first. Your agent can explain to you whether you’re overreacting to a normal publishing process or if you have a really valid point that the agent will follow up on. The agent is your buffer and part of the job is protecting your working relationship with the editor and other people at the publishing house. Use that.

8.) Relatedly, ask questions. If you do not understand something, ask that it be explained. The more you understand about what’s going on, the easier it is to participate in the process.

9.) Be proactive with your questions, but don’t be annoying. Let your agent be annoying. If you don’t have an agent, say to your editor, “I have all these questions. Here is my list of questions. I don’t want to be annoying, so please get to this when you have a chance, and if I don’t hear from you in a week or two, I will bug you about this again.” Be reasonable. Be practical.

10.) Have blog posts prepped in advance. Seriously. Even if you just have a document full of rough sketches or two line ideas of what you want to write about, it will help you in the long run when you realize that authors who blog successfully write entries more than once every eight weeks.

11.) NEVER TWITTER OR BLOG IN ANGER. Take a deep breath, take a step back, walk away from the computer. If you must blog about something that pisses you off, get a trusted friend who is clever to read it over for you to make sure that it doesn’t read like this: STUPID MEAN HORRIBLE AWFUL HATE HATE HATE BITTER ANGRY ANNOYED!!!!! No one wants to read that except people who want to cause or observe your drama, and that’s not why you want attention.

12.) Related: People on the internet are often wrong (whether with reviews, comments, history, whatever). You will see these people, and wish to inform them of their wrongness. Perhaps even loudly. DO NOT DO IT. Don’t engage, don’t talk about how you’re not engaging but you really want to, don’t send other people to engage for you—just don’t do it. You won’t be hailed as a modern-day folk hero, or the unlikely victim of a vast conspiracy—you’ll just come off as an ass. DO NOT BE AN ASS.

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Unsolicited submissions =/= junk mail

2010-03-20T05:30:06Z

I was so appalled the other morning when I read a blog post that had been linked on Twitter in which unsolicited submissions were described as "junk mail." I was pretty on board with the rest of this particular post. But it lost me with this statement. (I'm not linking, because I'm not calling this person out. This person is just the latest in a long line of people who talk about slush like this; the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back.)

The phrase was used in an analogy -- like, imagine if, on top of dealing with your, you know, "real job," you also had to deal with 30,000 pieces of junk mail every year.

Unsolicited submissions are not junk mail, and if an agent -- or editor -- allows unsolicited submissions, then, in fact, unsolicited submissions are part of the job.

We use "unsolicited" to mean that an author can send anything to an editor or agent at any time. It does not have to be specifically requested. Lots of editors and agents do not accept unsolicited submissions; those editors and agents do not have slush piles (physical or virtual). They have things they have requested from authors they've met or spoken to some way or another.

However, if you want to split hairs -- and I almost always do -- any "unsolicited submission" is actually, technically, solicited. Agents and editors who accept unsolicited submissions want those submissions.

I have personally never pulled anything out of my slush pile that made it to publication. I've certainly pulled things out of the slush that warranted a second (or third) look, and I've sent revisions letters, and I've requested other manuscripts by authors who I found in the slush. I know a lot of editors have found really great stuff in the slush. Many authors, particularly in the romance genre, started out in the slush. You know whose first published book was an unsolicited submission? Nora Roberts.

It's important, albeit sometimes tedious or irritating for the people who have to go through it. Yeah, sometimes it's really bad. Sometimes it's literally written in crayon. Sometimes it's clear that the author didn't do any research about the editor or agent to whom they are submitting ("Dear AGENT" is a clue; I used to sometimes get cover letters addressed to editors at other companies, amongst other telling details.)

Regardless: It is not junk.

Of course, I wrote a bunch of blog posts years ago about how editors and agents technically don't get paid to read submissions. Unsolicited submissions are almost never a priority, because there are money-making things to be done first. Clients, authors, meetings, manuscripts that need to be edited, conferences that need to be attended, etc. Yes, it sucks for authors who send in unsolicited submissions that they are on the bottom of the to do list. That's how it is, though. Life is hard.

Just because unsolicited submissions are not urgent or directly connected to money-making doesn't make them junk mail.

A separate issue is the behavior of the people submitting their work. Do I even need to write a blog post about this? Don't be a rude jerk. Everyone's got a life, and being an asshole isn't going to further your career aspirations in any way.

And, hey! The same goes for editors and agents. Being jerks to aspiring authors isn't nice -- or, if you're the kind of person who doesn't care about being nice: being a jerk to an aspiring writer isn't good business practice and will get your name up on the Absolute Write boards (amongst other places) as a jerk faster than you can say, "Oops, I have acquired a reputation for being an unethical, mean, rude, underpants-showing ass!"

I agree that it sucks for authors, because writing is such a personal thing. (And, hey! Business is also a personal thing. What did Michael Scott say? "Business is always personal; it's the most personal thing in the world.") So when an agent or editor says they'll get back to you in six months, and then you never hear a thing, it hurts. It's rough. It's not just being outright rejected -- you're being ignored like you don't even matter.

You do matter.

I'd really like it, though, if aspiring authors could remember that agents and editors work really hard, and aren't perfect. Sometimes they lose their patience. Sometimes things fall by the wayside. Sometimes they say that they're going to get back to you on your submission in two months and it takes eighteen. Seriously. It really does suck for everyone involved.

Anyway, I'm off point. The point is: unsolicited submissions aren't junk mail, and seeing them referred to that way (by someone who ostensibly should know better) really upset me.

What do you think?

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Michael Bolton's Karmic Revenge -- or, How and Why It Costs More Than You Think to Make an E-Book

2010-03-17T00:44:27Z

I am not particularly interested in hosting any kind of discussion about the Macmillan/Amazon e-book fiasco from January. I'm biased, anyway, because I used to work for Macmillan, Salt and Silver was published by Macmillan, and I have a particular dislike for Amazon in general (specifically because of AmazonFAIL, although of course there are also other things). On the other hand... $15 for an e-book? Seriously? LOL NO.

However, I noticed while reading through some old links that there is a fundamental lack of understanding on the part of some of the people who participated in the discussion(s) about publishers and money. I was pretty flattered that in many of the discussions I read, people brought up my article "Profit & Loss/Profitability & Liability : How Books Make (or Don't Make) Money"^*...

If you haven't bought/read it, I suggest you do, even though the numbers are somewhat out of date at this point.

I'm not going to go through a P&L again, especially because when it comes to something like this, an operating contribution P&L (the kind most publishers use) is only useful to a point -- but I think perhaps a refresher course in the cost of making books is in order, yes?

This is pretty basic, and it's been about three years since I've seen production charts for book costs, but the practicalities stand.

For any book, all of the costs per book fluctuate depending on how many copies of the book are going to be printed/shipped; some of the total costs flux, too, but others are quite set.

Flux costs: paper, printing, binding, shipping, warehousing, copyediting, proofreading, cover decoration (foil, emboss, etc.), coop/in-store marketing, author's advance

Set costs: art, in house acquisitions/line editor, other in house people costs, copy writing, publicity, ad/promo, ARCs, typesetting, design

E-books, it is argued, should be cheaper to produce than paper books, because they do not require paper, printing, and binding (this is only partially true), and they also don't require fancy cover decoration (yup, but they still require cover art!), and they don't require warehousing except for the 2 MB the file takes up on a hard drive (okay).

However, they still need to be licensed from the author (that's the advance), which means an editor needs to spend time finding the book, reading the book, determining whether or not the book will sell, involving other people in that determination (the production staff has to give cost estimates; marketing, sales, ad/promo, and publicity will sometimes get involved if the book is going to be A Big Deal; other editors will be asked their opinions and possibly even read the book before it's acquired; depending on the company, there might even be an editorial meeting in which the book is discussed), negotiating the contract with the agent, talking to the contracts department about the terms of the contract, writing an editorial letter, going over the edited version of the book, filling out all production and art paperwork, meeting with marketing and sales and ad/promo and publicity and art to determine various things to do with the book, walking the author through whatever freakout or weird author things are going on, getting reads on the book for quotes from other authors, writing copy of various kinds, making sure the ARCs of the book are going to the correct reviewers, double checking everything to do with the book from the proof pages to the cover text... and anything else that might come up regarding the book before it's published and after.

E-books also still need covers and cover art. They still need to be typeset (albeit it's easier, what with everything being electronic now). They need to be copyedited, proofread, designed, sent out for reviews and quotes...

On an average midlist book, here is the bare minimum of people who will work on it:

- Acquisitions editor/line editor (often the same person)
- The editor's assistant
- Contracts assistant
- Production editor
- Whoever signs off on the deal -- usually an editor in chief or publisher
- Art director
- Artist
- Cover designer
- Typesetter
- Book interior designer
- Copyeditor
- Proofreader
- Publicist
- Ad/promo assistant
- Art assistant who designs advertisements
- Marketing assistant
- Copy writer
- Sales assistant
- Salesperson who literally goes around the country having meetings with booksellers (including e-book sellers)
- Accountant
- Royalties assistant (the person who actually writes the check the agent/author receives)
- CFO (the person who actually signs the check the agent/author receives)
- CFO's assistant (someone has to write out the address on an envelope, and there is no way the CFO will do it!)

...It's pretty likely that more people than this will work on a book, especially if anything at all goes wrong at any time during the process. All of these people need to get paid -- some of them are salaried (which means that in addition to their salaries, the company is also on the hook for things like insurance and payroll tax), and some of them are hourly or have set per book prices.

Plus the company has to front the money for the advance, lay out whatever the in-store marketing and publicity advertisement costs are, and, with an e-book, there are people who are trained in making e-books. You think Macmillan just installs Adobe Acrobat and hits "Print to PDF" in Quark or InDesign once the book is "finished"? HAH. No.

The complexity of getting these people paid is one of the reasons why operating contribution P&Ls are so popular -- they don't take into account the myriad people costs (with the exception of copyediting and proofreading).

Even without the people and paper costs, the amount of money spent to make a book is pretty staggering. I think it's staggering, anyway, and I spent seven years dealing with it, doing P&Ls and negotiating contracts and working this stuff out. I am still breathless every time I look at the real costs. (Every time an author writes a blog post asking, "How come I can't have a full page, full color ad in the Romantic Times?" I always wonder if that author has gone to the RT website and read their ad rates. A one time ad, in full color, on a full page, is (as of today) $3,475. That is more than many authors get paid as an advance!)

On a $6.99 paperback, in general, the publishing company can expect to make about $2.80 (give or take, depending on their deals with distributors) for every copy sold. Out of that $2.80 comes the author's royalties (usually about $.56). Out of the remaining $2.24, the publisher has to pay for all that stuff listed above. And then, one hopes, the company turns a decent profit so that The Man (damn the man!) can live a glorious jet-set life of glamour, have a beautiful brownstone on Central Park, and eat at Le Bernardin every night.

Here, have some average costs for a 400 page mass market paperback:
Art: $3,000
Typesetting & Design: $1500
Proofreading: $400
Copyediting: $700
Advertising & promotions: $2000

Just this stuff adds up to $7,600. The publisher has to sell at least 3,393 copies to break even. And that is not counting people costs.

Assistants make anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 per year. (When I was hired as an editorial assistant in 2001, I got paid $25,000/year.) Full editors make slightly more than that. People in other departments usually make more than editors. (I was embarrassed when I found out that one of the assistants in another department made more than one of the editors in editorial.)

I saw someone on LiveJournal suggest that perhaps people in publishing are paid too much money for the work they do. Really? Think of it like this: the year I made $32,000 was also the year I worked 80 hour weeks every single week and didn't take a vacation. (This is about average for someone trying to hustle in the editorial department of a major publishing company.) That's about 4500 work hours in a year, which means I made $7/hour. Before taxes. After taxes, that comes out to more like $6/hour.

So I'd've made more money working the cash register at a Taco Bell -- in fact, the year after that, I averaged more money per hour working the cash register at a vegan fast food restaurant, and at the restaurant, I got a shift meal.

Personally, I would not pay $15 for an e-book. I also wouldn't pay $9.99 for an e-book -- especially when I could get the paperback for $6.99. I think the whole idea is ridiculous. However, I also think that $7.99 for a paperback is ridiculous.

Truly, I sometimes think paying for anything is pretty awful, and would prefer to live in a world where everyone gets what they need for a happy life -- art included.

However, since we do not live in Zoobilee Zoo, let's at the very least try to be sensical. It is true that not having to pay for paper, printing, and binding can knock anywhere from $2 to $.50 off the cost of making a book -- but:
(1.) paper books still get made and must be paid for; and
(2.) if more people buy e-books, while fewer buy paper books, the cost of making the paper books goes up; and
(3.) even though paper, printing, and binding are a large part of the cost of making books, they are not the only costs, and getting rid of some of those costs doesn't mean that the books don't have to be paid for somehow.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: Is it worth it to you? You are the consumer. Do you think $15 for any particular e-book is worth the money? If not, hie thee to piratebay.org or wherever you pirate your books from. Or, oh, I know! GO TO A STORE OR A LIBRARY. Yeah, that's not practical for some people -- but it is for others. Heck, if you live in a place where you feel e-books are your only option because there are no stores, e-mail your best friend who lives in a metropolitan area, and have that person buy a paper copy and ship it to you. It takes longer than buying an e-book, though, so download a few awesome books from Project Gutenberg to read while you are waiting. Those are DRM free, you know, and available in more formats than just Kindle.

* I was less thrilled that it was copied and pasted in its entirety in several places, but that's only fair, I guess, since sometimes when I want to listen to "How Can We Be Lovers" by Michael Bolton, I will load it on YouTube instead of just buying the MP3 from iTunes. This is just Michael Bolton's karmic revenge -- which, by the way, is probably what I will call my Jem & the Holograms cover band.

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