Georgia Writers Association - Serving a diverse writing community

Rejection!

I know a “writer” who spent two years working on his manuscript (and it was good), sent it to an agent who gave him a terse “does not meet our standards,” and never submitted it to anyone again.  His magnum opus had been REJECTED!  He didn’t realize that in the world of publishing, rejection is not the same as the refusal of a marriage proposal.  Rejection of one’s manuscript often has less to say about its merit than what the agent or publisher is looking for at the time he receives the work, or sometimes even the mood he is in when he reads it, IF he reads it at all.
{joomsay}Julia Child’s famed Mastering the Art of French Cooking was repeatedly rejected until an editor at Knopf (who loved to cook) published it and made a fortune.{/joomsay}

New Column! Building Your Craft

Finding a Literary Agent: An Uncertain Adventure

Imagine that during your search for a good agent, you get a phone call from “John Doe,” who has just received your query and is excited about your project. He wants to read the entire manuscript—“for a small reading fee,” of course. You have already looked up “John Doe” in one of the hefty guides for locating the perfect literary agent and noted that he has impressive credentials. You send him the manuscript and the money. He writes you a personal letter saying that he loves your work, but that it needs some significant editing. He recommends a “great” editor whom he has used before, who can improve your work – for a fee, of course. “But she is the best,” he writes. You submit your work to the editor, who makes a few changes and charges you the equivalent of a week’s vacation in Hawaii. “John Doe” then offers to represent you, charging an “upfront” fee of a mere $250 to cover normal costs. You then hear from “John Doe” four times a year, asking each time for an additional $100 per quarter to copy, fax, telephone, and send your work “in a special box” to famous publishers. He adds that Knopf rejected the story; St. Martin’s is still considering it; Simon & Schuster did not feel the market was right for it; and HarperCollins is having management problems at the moment and has not responded. Your agent is a happy guy, getting rich from his fifty to one hundred writers, while you and his other clients are getting nothing and paying to support this know-nothing, do-nothing scam artist. A fairytale? If you don’t believe such a turn of events is possible, read Ten Percent of Nothing: The Case of the Literary Agent from Hell, by Jim Fisher. Or if you have lots of time, try Googling on the subject of “agent fraud” or “dishonest agents.” You might discover that the literary agent you have worked so hard to impress is an eighth-grade dropout who has never read a book in his life and has no literary experience. Yet legally he can be a bona fide literary agent with his own company, representing you.

That Pesky Query Letter

The chances are that the first time you seek an agent or publisher (if you are not using an agent) will be via your query letter. Your first consideration, even before you begin that letter, is to develop one sentence that will go into the first paragraph, designed to grab your publishing contact’s attention. This first introduction to your book is often called your “pitch,” and if it’s a great one, you can use it not only in your queries, but later in your media kits, press releases, and your phone, radio, or television interviews. Underestimating the value of a great pitch will often guarantee you fewer agent or publisher responses, less interviews, and ultimately lower sales. A few authors find the pitch quickly, one sentence describing their work in a fascinating way. However, most of us may take hours, days, and even weeks to create our pitch. A superb pitch may even find its way to the back cover or flaps of your published book. If you can weave the rest of the most significant parts of your book into this first paragraph, you should be able to attract the attention of the reader.

Research Ideas for Fiction and Nonfiction Writers

Remember when your high school teachers urged you to write only about what you knew?  Fortunately, that old adage is generally not found in advanced writing classes and workshops.  With the exception of memoirs and autobiographies, the key is not to write about what you know, but to know about what you write.  Great research is essential to that knowledge.