Question Week, Day 6: to market, to market

Short question, long answer today:

Do you have any advice on the best way for an unpubbed to market their work?

Writer’s lore is filled with stories about sneaky tips and tricks that led to huge books deals. The writer who hooked up with her agent when she served him coffee at Starbucks. The writer who landed a book deal as a result of sitting next to an editor on a plane. The one who dressed up like a duck and went to BEA. The one who was a popular fan-fiction writer and landed a three book deal. They’re all incredibly sexy-sounding and they make good stories, much like the “cute meet” makes a good story in a romantic comedy movie.

But most people don’t meet their partners when they trip into them on the streets of Paris or because they heard them lamenting about their lost wives on the radio and tracked them down like appalling blonde stalkers, or even because they bet their co-workers they could make a woman fall in love with them in ten days while the partner’s coworkers bet her that she couldn’t drive a man away in that amount of time… no. Most people meet their partners at school, or at work, or at a church singles mixer, or are introduced by a mutual friend. It’s the same thing for book marketing. The best way is the most common.

You send a query to an agent. You send the book requested from the query. You accept an offer of representation, and then you wait.

Despite all the sexy-sounding extras in my sale story (i.e., Marley pitching it at a conference, the auction, etc.) I actually sold my book in the most conventional way. I sent a query, the agent requested the book. She read it, offered representation, sent it out to publishers, and sold it to one. The rest of that stuff is superfluous.

So, how to market your work:

Step 1: Write a really good book. Revise it until it’s even better. (This is the hardest step.)

Step 2: Research agents. Make a list of books you like like yours that have been published recently and find out who the agents are. It’s important that they’ve been published recently. Otherwise those agents may be dead or have moved on to other fields. There are many ways to find out who the agents are. Sometimes, in the acknowledgements, it says something like, “and to my agent, Soand So, my eternal thanks…” Other times, on the author’s website it says, “for rights information, contact…” Other times, on the publishers website, it says the same thing. If all else fails, google the author’s name and ‘agent’ or ‘represented by’ and you might get lucky.

Step 2b: Get a list of agents. They’ve got books about these, and websites that list good agents, like agentquery.com and Preditors and Editors. Most of these lists say what each agent is looking for, and sometimes they even list who the agent’s clients are. Don’t stop there! Cross reference these lists with more information about agencies that represent work like yours. Most agents have websites (not all though, and that’s cool, too). Go to the website and look at what they’ve been selling recently. You want to see a bunch of recent sales to publishers you’ve heard of. (Keep in mind that some publishers have imprints that you may never have heard of. For instance, Razorbill is a relatively new YA imprint at huge publisher Penguin Putnam. If you haven’t heard of the imprint, google it.)

Step 2c: Another way to see what these agents have been selling recently is to go to a place called Publisher’s Marketplace. A lot of agents list their deals there. It costs 20 bucks a month to be a member at Publisher’s Marketplace, but for free, once a week they’ll send you a sample of the sales listed. Every sale says who the writer was, a short blurb about the genre and topic of the book, what editor/house bought it, what agent sold it, and often, a ballpark estimate of how much they sold it for. Even if you only join for one month, it’s the best 20 bucks you’ll spend. I advocate joining PM before dropping 20 bucks on a print book about agents, even. because if you are a member, you can search the deal database. If you’re writing romance, you can search under “genre: romance” and you’ll see every single deal reported in the market. You can instantly see who is selling and buying what. You can see that an agent like Roberta Brown tends to sell a lot of erotic romance and an agent like Jenny Bent tends to sell a lot of women’s fiction and so on. You can search under agnet’s names and see what they’ve sold. You can search under a publisher’s name and see what they’ve bought. The list goes on and on. I really love Publisher’s Marketplace. (Caveat: Many agents do not post their deals there, and some agents who do don’t post all their deals. So that’s why you should research in several places.)

Step 2d: What you are looking for in an agent at the query level: A person who has recently sold books like yours (i.e., in your general genre), by several authors to a variety of established, royalty-paying publishers. Bonus points for agents who have clients in a variety of levels in their career (debut authors, midlisters, bestsellers). But that’s not necessary. Some agents are big gun agents and work with established stars. Some are just starting out and so are their clients. Both are legitimate. Beware of agents who only have one sold client. Beware of agents who only sell to one publisher. Be especially wary of agents who have no information to be found anywhere (and remember you’re looking very hard in a bunch of places and googling your heart out) about books they’ve sold, or do not mention them on their website. I have yet to hear any legitimate reason for an agent keeping the names of projects she has sold a secret. Legitimate agents have no qualms crowing about their clients’ successes.

Step 3: Now that you have lots of information about agents, make a list of about 10-20 of them that you think you’d like, and query them. Make sure that you are querying them according to their guidelines, even if they each have different guidelines. Their guidelines are usually available on their website, and if they don’t have a website, use the guidelines listed with their address and listing in the book or on a website like agentquery.com. Some agents like e-queries. Others don’t. Some like to see the first three chapters right off the bat. Some want sample pages. Some will let you query other agents at the agency at the same time and some hate that. DO EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. Don’t debate it. Don’t send them something else and tell them they are better off for that. Why would you want to start out your relationship with a fight?

Step 3b: Tips for a good query:
1. Let them know you’ve done your research. Not by saying “I’ve done my research” but by saying something like, “I know you represent Gena Showalter’s paranormal romances and I thought my paranormal romance novel would be a good fit on your list.” There are lots of variations on this. If they have a client whose books you love, say so. they like hearing that. It signals that you two have similar taste. They, too, love their clients’ work.
2. Say the name of your book, its ballpark length (rounded to 5,000 words) and its genre. By genre, I mean is it a romance, or a YA, or a science fiction, or a literary novel, or a satire, or an inspirational historical romance? And yes, I know that not all of these are “genres.” Semantics.
3. Say what your book is about. And by that I mean say who your protagonist is, what kind of situation she’s in, why this is a problem, and what she has to do to get out of it/fix it/save the world/fall in love… whatever. Read a lot of back covers on books. They do this very well.

Step 4: When your query results in a request for the manuscript, SEND IT IN. A lot of people forget this step. When it results in a rejection, don’t argue with them about it. Write something else. If your query only results in rejections (and you’ve asked around, and the query isn’t the problem), skip to Step 7.

Step 5: When you receive an offer of representation, research the agent even more. This is the time to worry about all that little niggly stuff that wasn’t important during the query process. Talk to the agent’s clients. Ask around in your writing groups. Talk to the agent about her process, about her ideas for you and your book. Look at the contract. And what’s more, talk to them about YOUR ideas, your needs, what you’re looking for. Some people look for different things. Some people want agents who work with the clients to get a proposal ready. Others just want the agent to sell the book and leave the editing to the editors. Be open-minded, but don’t be a pushover. You may find that, after talking and researching, that the person isn’t a good fit for you after all. You may learn a lot from their response to your questions. Don’t feel bad about turning down an offer if you’re getting a bad vibe. A bad agent is worse than no agent. I know this is a lot easier to say than to do, but it’s still the truth.

Step 6: Let your agent send the book out. Some agents keep you very updated on the process. Others give you occasional updates if you ask. This is an example of the kind of thing you want to talk about before agreeing to representation. Everyone has different needs and everyone works differently. I have a friend who asks her agent not to tell her about rejections, only about offers. I’m too much of a control freak to do soemthing like that, but you see how everyone works differently?

Step 7: Write another book. Writing another book is a good idea because that way, if you don’t get anywhere with the first book, you can always start sending the new one out. If someone rejects your book, but asks to see something else you’ve written, you’ll have it! If someone does want to buy your book, then you’ll have something else to send them and maybe get a two-book deal! Go, you!

Step 8: (If you have an agent, you may want to discuss this step with them in advance and see what they think about it.) Enter writing contests, go to conferences, and pitch your work to editors whenever you have an opportunity. Conferences are a good chance to meet other writers and editors, hear about opportunities that you or your agent may not be aware of (say, a certain publisher is opening a brand new imprint and is looking for books just like yours!) Contests can also be a great opportunity to get your work in front of editors or even get a book contract (as with the American Title or Malice Domestic contest). A contest like the RWA Golden Heart contest is very prestitigous, and having the words Golden Heart finalist in your pitch material will generate excitement about your book. Most agents are cool with their clients entering the Golden Heart, even if some ask their clients to stay away from other contests because they don’t want to “muddy the waters” at the place they are submitting to. But keep in mind that entering contests is NOT submitting your manuscript. Winning contests is NOT publishing your book (unless, as mentioned above, it’s the American Title or somesuch). Do not let contest entering distract you from writing and submitting your book. Do not worry so much about making your book fit contest guidelines that you only polish the first chapter or three chapters and let the rest of the your book languish. But there are many examples of books sales through contest wins, so it’s not to be dismissed.

Step X: If all else fails, and you can’t get an agent with your books, query editors directly. Going into the “slush pile” is a longshot goal in getting your book published (longer than with contests or conference pitches to the editor) but it does happen. Sometimes agents are stupid and only editors can see the brilliance. I only recommend going this route after you have exhausted your agent search, however, becuase if you do the editors first, and THEN get an agent, then the agent will have no place to send your book, because it will already have been rejected everywhere.

And that’s it.

Of course there are lots of other ways to market your book. The whole contest/meeting them at Starbucks/duck out fit at BEA thing. Of course. But you asked about the best way. And that’s what I think the best way is…