Agents want you to be published in journals, it’s the only way they can prove to a publisher that you’re marketable. For the love of God, don’t self-publish. Every agent I ever worked for loathed that. It’s too hard for them to validly show your sales were good. For the most part, all they have is your word that the book sold well and had a wide audience. That’s just not good enough for a publishing house. Furthermore, and most agents won’t admit this to you, self-publishing looks unruly to the publishers. If they do put your novel out and it goes out of print one day, they don’t want you rereleasing it via some print on demand (POD) system like Lulu.com. If they put out your novel, but they refuse to take your next one, they don’t want you self-publishing that either. It’s unruly because they spend a lot of time and money promoting you, shining you up and making your mass appeal. You sully that by self-publishing. It’s like saying you know better than your publisher and you don’t need their help anymore. Well, you won’t get it because after than you’ll need a new pseudonym before they even think about putting out your work again. Publishers want a guarantee that you won’t throw away all their hard work in the end. If you have self-published, do everything you can to distance yourself from that and don’t mention the piece on your queries.
Yes, that’s right, I’ve worked for literary agents and no they won’t represent me. In fact they’re sissies that only represent nonfiction and the odd YA novel. See my other posts on Agents. Self-publication is an easy excuse for your ms to end up in the recycling bin and a form letter rejection stuffed in your SASE. Some agents will say they like self-publishing. This is because they liked one author that queried them and also was self-published. One. And they probably didn’t even sign that author. My thesis advisor for my MFA in creative writing insisted that her literary agent liked self-published authors. First of all, this professor hasn’t published in over 10 years. I can’t speak for how close she is with her agent at this point. Furthermore, her agent has never represented any self-published authors. This may simply be a case of gum-flapping. It’s the same way agents say they like commercial or literary fiction, but they’ve only ever sold nonfiction. They’re just deluding themselves.
Go online right now and Google your name. That’s what the agent or the agent’s interns are going to do. What comes up? See something you don’t like? Make that Amazon Wishlist private. Limit what non-friends can see of your Facebook profile. Some bad publishing credits, only time will expunge those. Best thing you can do, get your own website or blog and show your legitimate authorial colors. I have my own website to focus on my work and this blog to vent! Posted by Sarah Rae at 1:14 PM 0 comments Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook Share to Google Buzz Labels: agents, Amazon wishlist, Facebook, Google, POD, publishers, publishing house, self-publishing

Saturday, February 13, 2010

How to solicit short stories

If you want to be taken seriously while soliciting a story to a literary journal, there’s a few things you need to add to your repertoire. Get yourself a Writer’s Market  from a bookstore, whichever one suits your writing, there’s a Novel & Short Story and Children’s & Illustrator’s. Some people think that books on agents and journals get obsolete too quickly and they prefer to use the web instead. The good thing about the Writer’s Market is that agents have these book on their shelf. They use this book to separate the men from the boys, so to speak. Legitimate, important journals are listed here. If you give them a list of writing credits and NONE of them are this book, you’re going in the garbage. See, they don’t care if you were published in 6 journals, all of them created in the last year, half of them created by your friend and circulated to all of 20 people, and the rest online-only journals of no repute. My experience in working with literary agents: Err on the side of the books.

Stop into an office supply store. You’ll want large envelopes (self-sealing) 9 by 12 (or larger if you have a hefty size manuscript). Keep in mind that if you use those envelopes with metal brads, you have to put a piece of scotch tape over them when you mail them (some issue with postal machinery and those brackets causing jams).You also need regular, self-sealing envelopes for SASE. For your cover letter you want thick, fancy, woven resume paper like this. It may sound stupid, but this kind of paper makes your query fit into the category of “serious writer.” Make sure you have plenty of printer ink, running out to make photocopies can be a pain. Have plenty of 44 cent stamps around for the SASE.
Get out that Writer’s Market. There’s useful info in there if you’ve never submitted before, but there’s no way to ensure success. Find journals that your story would appeal to. Read the entries carefully, know what you’re getting yourself into, what they expect you to send them.
Look for things like:No simultaneous submissionsDoes not read between the months of…No email queriesQuery before sending manuscript (ms)Submit through online managerHow long until they respondHow long until you’d be published if accepted
After you have a number of journals, you need to hammer out that query letter. Date, Name & Address of the journal, Introduce yourself, tell them what you’re soliciting without summarizing the story (it’s different with short stories than it is with novels). Tell them whether it’s fiction/nonfiction/creative nonfiction/of whatever genre it may fit into. Give them the word count. In the next paragraph tell them your qualifications. Do you have a BA in English, an MFA in writing, tell them all your previous publishing credits (you need to make sure these are reputable publishers, not a free journal published online by your friend at college that has had only one volume, not anything self-published, make sure it’s something they could Google or find in one of the Writer’s Markets [yes they look at those, too!]). Thank them politely and sign your name.
If you haven’t been published before then the small circulation journals may be your best bet, but certainly not always. Sometimes you can really feel you’re a perfect fit for a journal and yet they’ll reject your work. Maybe they’ll even reject multiple stories you send. No one is a perfect fit for a journal. In the writer’s market there may be a cutesy paragraph that tells you what that journal’s quintessential authors are like, don’t put too much stock in this. An editor likes what he or she likes because it struck their fancy on that particular day, that particular moment in time. There’s no way to hit the nail on the head every time. By this same token, you can’t be too hard on yourself about rejections.
Always write down the places you submit to. I keep a whole notebook just for this kind of thing. It’s also smart to write down when you sent the query of manuscript and when you can expect to hear back. As you hear back from journals, get out your list and mark it down. Sometimes a journal says they “want to see more of your work” or that they were impressed with your story but had to pass. Mark that down, submit something else to them later. Of course, if you think a journal is unprofessional, make a note of that, too. If the journal has dissolved, definitely mark it down. If it took you a year to hear back from an editor, mark it down. Sometimes not hearing back for a while from a journal means you were in the top 5 for publication. If that’s true, usually your rejection letter will say something to this affect: “Regretfully we do not have a place for your story at this time, but we’d love to see more.” Other times, the journal is just incredibly backed up, and they’ll usually tell you this too, something about high submission volumes or we’re just plain behind. Remember: There is no excuse to sit on a writer’s story for more than 8 months, especially when they won’t take simultaneous submissions. If a journal holds you back like this, make a note and don’t solicit to them again.
As you begin to hear back from journals, don’t be discouraged. In fact it seems like rejection letters collect together in the post and you get 3 at once. It’s disheartening, but take solace. Sit down next Saturday and do it again. I only feel comfortable when I have a number of stories out there in the world. As the rejects pile up, the only thing that makes it better is turning around and soliciting some more.