Researching Agents

Posted on July 29, 2010 by Malena Lott

Agent Secrets: Want to Land an Agent? Follow These Guidelines
By Evan Marshall and Martha Jewett,
Creators of The Marshall Plan ® Novel Writing Software

“If you want to get a novel published, you need an agent.” True enough, but it’s better to get the right agent. Here’s how.

Use the Internet to find agents who are right for you. Six helpful sites are:

1. Agent Query bills itself as “the internet’s largest and most current database of literary agents.” Click on Full Search, then specify details such as genre and whether the agent is seeking new clients. Search results include not only basic contact information but also specifics on what the agent is looking for and, often, examples of recent deals. The site also offers articles on working with agents and resources such as writing websites and conferences.

2. QueryTracker.net boasts a database of more than 1,300 agents and offers a detailed advanced search feature including specific genres.

3. The Association of Authors’ Representatives requires members to adhere to a strict Canon of Ethics, so you know any member is legitimate (some perfectly legitimate agents do not belong). Click on Find an Agent to see which agents accept email submissions and which accept submissions via regular mail. Keyword Search and Advanced Search features are also available.

4. A $20 month-to-month subscription to Publishers Marketplace gives you access to an extensive searchable database of agents and their deals. A feature called Top Dealmakers tells you which agents make the most sales in a given genre. Another feature, Who Represents, allows you to find out who represents writers of books like yours.

5. Check an agent’s reputation at Preditors & Editors, a website that keeps an updated list of agents according to whether they’re reputable or not. Click on Agents & Attorneys, then look up the name alphabetically.

6. Finally, stop off at the Agents page of Writer Beware, which has helpful articles on how to spot and avoid dishonest agents.

Google agents you’re interested in to see if they have their own websites. You’ll usually find submission guidelines.

Now it’s time to approach agents. Have these items ready before you begin:

Complete manuscript. If you haven’t published a novel, submit a complete manuscript rather than a “proposal” (synopsis and sample chapters). If you have had a novel published by a commercial publisher, it’s OK to send a proposal.

Synopsis. The synopsis is a condensed overview of your novel which helps agents, editors and other publishing personnel evaluate it. Use the present tense and write one page for every 25 pages of manuscript. Tell the entire story, including the ending.

Query letter. A query letter is a one-page business letter. It briefly describes your novel (one paragraph) and specifies genre, title and word length. Provide relevant information about yourself: publishing credits, writers’ organizations you belong to, writing awards or citations, and any pertinent background (for example, you’re a surgeon and your novel is a medical thriller). Be professional, never cutesy. Ask if the agent would like to read your manuscript.

Follow all the agent’s specifications and instructions exactly (query, self-addressed stamped envelope, etc.).

If an agent bites, include your original query letter with your manuscript, along with a self-addressed stamped envelope for a reply.

If the agent takes you on, yipee!

And if the agent rejects you?

Don’t take it personally. It may have nothing to do with your material. The agent may not be accepting unpublished writers or new clients unless they are exceptional, but may not have said so because if he did, submissions would drop off. Another possibility is that she may already represent a novel too similar to yours but does not want to divulge that.

The “no,” however, may have everything to do with your material. Here are five of the most common situations you must avoid:

1. Derivative story idea. You must come up with something fresh within the expectations of your chosen genre.

2. No recognizable genre. Your book must have a genre, an obvious place on a shelf in the bookstores, and a clear comparison to books in the genre.

3. Wrong word length. Picking the wrong word length is a novice’s mistake. A 50,000-word mainstream novel is an immediate reject. So is a 175,000-word romantic comedy. Do your homework. Find the appropriate word length for your novel.

4. Grammatical and other problems. These are sudden-death errors: spelling, grammar, punctuation, improper manuscript formatting.

5. Writing that tells rather than shows. Novels today are mostly “show.” If you’re not sure what “show” and “tell” mean, consult any novel-writing guide or take a fiction course.

Follow these guidelines and eventually you will find an agent who understands and appreciates your work — and who will be able to sell it.

All you need is one.

Author Bio
Evan Marshall and Martha Jewett are the creators of The Marshall Plan® Novel Writing Software, an adaptation of the bestselling Marshall Plan® series of writing guides. Evan is an internationally recognized expert on fiction writing and author of the Hidden Manhattan and Jane Stuart and Winky mystery series. A former book editor, for 27 years he has been a leading literary agent specializing in fiction. He is the president of The Evan Marshall Agency, a leading literary management firm that represents a number of New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors. Martha is a former award-winning business book editor at McGraw-Hill, John Wiley & Sons, and HarperBusiness. She is currently a literary agent and editorial consultant specializing in business books. An avid memoirist, she blogs at www.writeyourmemoir.com.

http://www.writeanovelfast.com and follow the authors on Facebook and Twitter.

Research overload.

Posted on January 27, 2009 by malenalott

God bless Google. Seriously, if it weren’t for the Internet it would take me forev-ah to write a book instead of just short of forev-ah. Research is a critical component in writing a book, whether fiction or non-fiction. That’s the case even if you are writing about something you already know a lot about it. When I wrote The Stork Reality, about a career woman’s journey to motherhood, I was in the process of having babies numbers one, two and three (that book did take forev-ah and a day). YET, I still needed to get all my facts straight in the book so as not to mislead the reader about pregnancy facts and whatnot.

For Dating da Vinci, my Nov. ’08 release about a young widow’s journey to joy, I did even more research, because though I had studied Leonardo da Vinci for five years, I didn’t have all the facts memorized and wasn’t sure what bits would end up in the novel. And that’s the key word – BITS. You don’t want the research to smack the reader over the head. You weave it in as necessary to make the story believable.

The big tip? Don’t waste too much time with research. If you spend say six hours of research when you got all the facts you needed in two, you could’ve spent that extra four hours writing. I know, cause I’ve done it. It’s tempting to get swept away with it all, but soooo not necessary. For my current project, my characters travel to different countries – countries I’ve never been to. I’m so fascinated by it that I tend to want to keep reading and following link after link after link, even though I don’t “need” it. I literally have to have the good writing angel jump off my shoulder and slap the laptop shut on my fingers.

Good luck, and get back to writing!

Malena Lott has written two novels,The Stork Reality and Dating da Vinci, and is the editor of Athena’s Bookshelf.

The Red Leather Diary

Posted on January 12, 2009 by malenalott

The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel

First line: “Once upon a time the diary had a tiny key.”

Have you ever kept a diary? What would you do if you stumbled upon someone else’s diary, someone else’s life? Would you read it? (Who wouldn’t?) Would you be the least bit curious to find out what happened to that person? If they fulfilled the dreams they had spilled with ink on those pages? You would if you were a journalist and most certainly if you were Lily Koppel, a journalist at the New York Times, who came upon the diary in the trunks of the apartment where she lives. The landlords were trashing them, and besides some other great vintage finds from the early 20th century, the red leather diary sat within the keepsake ruins. A doorman had found it and kept it in his locker, and asked Koppel if she wanted it. And so the story of the past comes smack into the present.

I kept a diary just like the one young Florence kept. Five years on each page, with nary an inch to its daily purpose, to keep your “milestones” of that particular day. Only mine, in sixth grade in a very small town in Oklahoma, captured things like, “went to Pizza Hut with the family. Ate four slices of pepperoni pizza. Yum!” (I know, not exactly the hint of a future author there.) But for Florence Wolfson, her milestones were anything but boring. A part of the charm of the diary itself is the time, place and class of its young writer. Florence got the diary for her 14th birthday. She was the daughter of a doctor and a couture dress designer in New York. The diary’s entries span 1929 to 1934.

Even more miraculously, with the help of a detective, Lily found Florence, still alive, still spunky, and ninety years old! If Florence weren’t still alive, The Red Leather Diary would be no more than an interesting article in the Times. What makes it a great memoir is because Lily was able to mine the magnificent mind of Florence Wolfson to expound those short entries into the makings of a wonderful picture in time. Florence was unique, yes. She was an artist, through and through. Passionate, curious and determined, Florence’s coming of age story in New York before, during, and after the Stock Market crash, is full of wild emotion and dreams for a richer life, though not in her mother’s sense of the word richer.

True, Koppel’s exposition and beautiful prose bring Florence’s past to life, but the diary entries themselves are intriguing in their own right. And how some of them ring true eighty years later speaks to the universal string that binds us all together.

“Tonight Bernard told me he loved me better than any other girl and I said the same. It sounded like what we read in books.”

And this:

“A date & bored & almost revolted: Something about silly, stuffy unimaginative men makes me sick and angry.”

A great deal of Florence’s entries have to do with the arts – writing, painting and plays; her own and the smorgasbord offered on the New York scene. With Koppel’s keen skill at adding flesh to the story, we get Florence’s struggles with her parents, her own sexuality, her education and frustrations about life and a future different than the one her parents envision for her. (To marry rich, what else is there?)

Highly recommended for transporting back to a time and a place that was harder in some ways and simpler in others to our hectic lives today. Young Florence became real to me, just as all great characters in a novel should, and since this is a memoir (and not made up!), I feel honored that Florence and Koppel gave us a glimpse of a time gone by and a girl on the brink of greatness.

For: Anyone who loves historical novels, the 1920s, memoirs, writing and the arts, and coming of age stories. – Malena Lott

Order it at Amazon.

What makes a writer "gifted?"

Posted on June 26, 2008 by malenalott

Readers and writers: log on every Thursday to weigh in on a “deep thought” question about the the world of writing and publishing. We look forward to your comments. Let the discussion begin!

Certainly writing and readers’ tastes are subjective. The powers that be at any given publishing house green-lit the novel that ended up on the bookshelf so somebody thought the story or the writer was “good enough”. Yet what makes a writer in any genre “gifted”? Who do you believe is a gifted author?