Quote of the Day

I hear a lot about industry trends on loops and such. As I posted in my last post, folks on the PAN loop started a great discussion about trends in the historical romance marketplace based on what one editor said at a conference about “sex in chapter one” and also “a man in a chain mail is tougher than a man in lace cuffs” (and boy, did the Georgian writers have a hissy over that one!). And I’m on another loop, run by the tireless and amazing Dorothy Thompson (really can’t say enough about what a great gal this chick is, and how many wonderful resources she’s been providing for her fellow writers), where she actually has agents come in to comment on writer questions about market trends and review pitches and such… I digress. Anyway, the point is, I see a lot of people who want to freak out as soon as an editor or agent in one of these venues says such-and-such is dead, or you need to have this in your so-and-so genre book.

And I want to remind everyone that sometimes, it’s just one person’s opinion. To that end, let me present today’s quote of the day, regarding taking agent proclamations with a grain of salt (emphasis mine):

From Jeff Kleinman of Folio Lit:

Use whatever information you find useful from these editors and agents, and throw out the rest. Whatever you do, don’t panic, hearing the kind of stuff we talk about. Sometimes people get all upset, going to a talk about, say, “Trends in Nonfiction” – someone on the panel will say that memoirs are dead, and all the memoirists in the audience will gasp and turn blue; and the reality is that no trend is dead – it just hasn’t had the next breakout book to hit yet. Let’s face it, Marley & Me is just a memoir about a guy and a dog, and there are millions of those stories out there – so who will want to buy another book like that? Millions of people, apparently. So don’t take what we have too say too seriously.

Cool, huh?