Slowly but surely

I'm way, way, behind on all kinds of things. Posting here, for one.

But I'm trying to catch up, and slowly but surely I'm making progress.

For the moment, I want to respond to some comments left here, and decided it would be easiest to do that in one post rather than hope that people see my reply back in the archives of the blog.

So with apologies for the delay, I want to reply

to Mike, who is now already down in San Diego (and I hope you are enjoying that lovely city!), I can only hope you've already gone to Thornton's Irish Pub in nearby El Cajon and discovered that they have lots of parking, great entertainment, and wonderful food.

to Joyce, I can think of few ways to better waste time than 30 minutes of icanhascheezburger.com -- laughter is the best medicine, as they say.

to Louise, yes -- if you had told me a few years ago that I would be a big fan of an alligator, I don't think I'd have believed you. There you have it.

to Sharon, with thanks for asking, yes, Bloodlines is the next Irene Kelly book. Kidnapped after that. You can see the list of books in order on my Web site. The books with numbers as titles (Nine and Eighteen) are the only two not related to the series, although Eighteen (in some booksellers computers as 18) has two Irene short stories in it.

to Bill, thank you! I'm so glad you liked Kidnapped! I appreciate your taking the time to let me know -- hearing kind words from readers helps me through the days when I think my keyboard could be put to better use.

to Elizabeth, thank you. No need to feel guilt over the pleasure, though! ;-)
I can't really help people individually with their manuscripts or research problems -- I'm writing my own books, running the Crime Lab Project and the Crime Lab Project Foundation, and busy in other ways as well. You didn't tell me the nature of your questions, but if they are about writing a mystery, start with the MWA Handbook, Writing Mysteries.
If you can attend Sisters in Crime's Forensic University of St. Louis, go! It's a great opportunity. I'll be there, and that would be a great place to catch me to ask specific questions. I'll also be at the Surrey International Writers Conference. That's another good place to ask questions.
If you can't go to those events, and your questions are about police procedure, get Lee Lofland's new book. Questions about forensic science, read Doug Lyle's Forensics for Dummies and his new book, Forensics and Fiction. He also has a good course available on DVD. Hope this helps -- best of luck!


Photo of tortoise above used courtesy of bigal101 (Allan Lee), through morguefile.com

One great thing about teaching

is that it forces you to look at what the heck you're doing, and to think about the basics. You think about what helped you to understand those basics.

I don't know how long I would have floundered without Lawrence Block's books on writing. For my money, they're still hard to beat. I wrote a letter to him when Goodnight, Irene was sold, thanking him for helping me to understand what went into writing a novel. I'm far from the only writer who read and reread his books before setting out on this adventure, nor am I the only author who goes back to them every now and then.

There are other fine books on writing — Oakley Hall's Art & Craft of Novel Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird come to mind. But Block's straightforward and insightful explanations of the essentials show that this four-time Edgar-winner and MWA Grand Master also has a gift for teaching. His writing books should be in every new writer's library.

The ones that helped me to get started:
Spider, Spin Me A Web
Writing the Novel From Plot to Print
Telling Lies for Fun and Profit

Such a deal

If you're just starting out as a writer of crime fiction, you may want to sign up for the OCC/RWA online course I'm teaching, Crime 101. This will be nuts and bolts basics. You can learn more about it here.

It's only $20 for members of OCC/RWA and $30 for non-members. Hurry -- deadline for enrollment is June 9!

Finding an Agent - Authors Tell You Their Own Stories

At the end of March, I posted some suggestions for those who are trying to find an agent — so if you're looking for representation, you may want to read that before you dive into this post.

You may remember that the March post was inspired by someone who believed that you needed an author recommendation to get anywhere in the agent hunt. I disagreed. Whole books have been written on this topic, and I don't intend to replace them with this blog. I only hope these comments from other writers about their experiences will encourage some of you who are looking for agents. Especially if you've been feeling that your chances of getting published are nil just because you

• never saved an author from drowning,
• don't hang out in bars with leading literary lights, and
• haven't located a copy of the Harry Potter book of spells to help you ensorcel a writer by e-mail into being your champion.

Maybe one day the AAR will publish a scientific study whereby agents list their clients who were "discovered" by them — their first-time authors only — and specify how those clients came to work with them. This might provide something more than guesswork on the number of unknown authors who were referred by other clients, were brought to their attention by writing instructors, made the connection through queries, were met through conferences, etc. (To the best of my knowledge, this isn't available now.)

I will readily admit that what I'm posting here is anecdotal. My intention is to show that writers find agents in lots of different ways, and to dispel the myth that the world of publishing is closed and "members only."

Please understand that I am not saying that it is easy to get an agent. Many agents get over a thousand queries a week, and of course they don't take all of those folks on. But here are a few stories from some people who didn't have any special insider help:


From Denise Swanson, national bestselling author of Murder of A Botoxed Blonde and eight other novels:

I found my first agent using a query letter, although I did have the permission of [the late, renowned Mysterious Press editor] Sara Ann Freed to use a quote from the critique she did of my manuscript at the Harriette Austin Writers Conference.

The book I used to come up with the list of agents I eventually queried was the Insider's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents by Jeff Herman.



From Meg Chittenden, bestselling author of over 100 short stories and articles, a book on writing, three children's books, and 33 novels that include romance, suspense, mystery, and mainstream — her latest suspense novel is Snap Shot:

Way back in 1971 — would you believe it, I must have been in kindergarten — I received a manila envelope back in the mail — one of my SASE that I was sending out with all the submissions I was making. Disheartened, I let it sit on my desk a while. Luckily I opened it before going to the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference. Inside was a contract from Follett for my first children's book. I took it to the conference, talked to an agent who was there, who agreed to represent me (hey, they'd already mentioned money!) and actually got me more money than they had offered. She then repped me through my GH short story days, another children's book and my first novel, which she suggested I write....

[Unfortunately, her first agent died. Meg tells how she found her next agent:]

I wrote to Emilie Jacobson at Curtis Brown, who took me on right away and is still my agent. I wrote her because she was Willo Davis Roberts agent and Willo was doing pretty good, seemed to me. Note that I did not ask Willo to recommend me. I did not tell Emilie I was a friend of Willo.

Because, and this is what I tell people who want me to recommend them to my agent — I believe a writer needs an agent who is enthusiastic about his or her work. I didn't want an agent to take me on because so-and-so asked her to and she maybe felt she owed so-and-so something.



From Toni L.P. Kelner, award-winning author of nine novels, including the forthcoming Without Mercy, as well as numerous short stories:

When I was going to events, trying to figure out how this business works (thinking that I could figure it out), I used to ask writers, "How do you get an agent?"
The usual answer was, "Consult one of the books that list agents and their needs, and query them."
Then I'd say, "Is that how you got your agent?"
And they would almost always say, "No, I knew somebody."

Well, I did NOT know anybody. I actually got my agent via one of those guide books. She was the sixteenth I queried, as a matter of fact, and we didn't meet in person until a few years after we started working together.

So if anybody asks, those guidebooks work!



From Jerrilyn Farmer, award-winning author of seven novels in the Madeline Bean series and short stories, and member of the faculty of the UCLA Extension Writers Program:

The best advice I read was to research which agents rep which authors (by checking the Acknowledgments pages of their books), and to send query letters to agents whose authors are similar in style/genre to yours. In addition, I found the Writers Market and other guides to Literary Agents helpful for their listings of agents who specialize in particular kinds of books. This is how I found my agent.

Sometimes it feels like you need a special introduction to get noticed, but I agree with Meg who said that an agent shouldn't be doing anyone a favor to take you on, but be completely enthusiastic about your books.



From Robin Burcell, Anthony Award winner and author crime fiction novels, including Cold Case:

I went about the whole agent hunting thing backwards.

I sold my first book on my own (a process I do not recommend) and acquired my first agent after being introduced via phone by another writer represented by the same agency. Right around the time I switched genres, my agent left the agency. I sent my first mystery to the same publisher, who was very interested in it.

In the meantime, I was introduced to a second agent at the same agency, who said she was
interested in seeing the mystery. Sent it off to her, then got a call from the publisher saying they wanted to buy it. Second agent negotiated this book. And then my editor said she wanted to buy the second mystery in the series, which she'd read, but needed to wait until
her return from medical leave. During this medical leave, my second agent left the agency, and I took that as my cue to find a new agency myself.

After several queries, I wasn't able to find an agent before my editor returned, and I finally called her, asking if she was still interested in the book, because I was now agentless. She was, asked me what I was looking for, and I gave her my wish list. She gave me a list of agents to query based on that list. I interviewed several while at Bouchercon, then made a decision.

We've been happy ever since.



Paul Guyot brings a slightly different perspective, from the world of television writing — considered by most to be nearly impossible to break into. Shows he has written for include Felicity and Judging Amy.

I found my agent the old fashion way - query letters. I had ZERO connections in Hollywood. None. So I sent a dozen queries out and was rejected or ignored across the board. So then I began to query managers - in Hollywood a manager is someone who acts just like an agent, but isn't accredited. They can get your stuff to maybe 75% of the places an agent can, but 75% of something is better than 100% of nothing. For a complete newbie like myself, managers - especially newer just-starting-out managers - were more willing to read a new writer. Of the approximately four or five queries to managers, only one was interested, so I figured we were a match made in heaven, and I signed with him.

Well, he was able to get my material in front of studio and network executives who put me on their "approved" lists - executives love lists - and from there I was able to very quickly secure an agent, then my first job, and have never been unemployed since. I subsequently fired the manager within my first year of employment. It was perhaps a bit mercenary of me (though there were other issues), but once I had the accredited agent and employment, the manager became superfluous.

I agree with what Stephen King, Elmore Leonard and several other major writers believe - good writing always finds a home. If you write well, you eliminate a huge variable, and thus reduce the importance or need for connections and recommendations. Unfortunately, many aspiring writers (screen and prose) put more effort into getting an agent or getting published than they do the actual writing.



From Sharan Newman, author of the fabulous Catherine LeVendeur historical mystery novels, nonfiction including The Real History Behind the DaVinci Code and (forthcoming in July) The Real History Behind the Templars, as well as short stories and other works:

I published my first three books without an agent, something I don't recommend. I didn't know any other writers. I got mine by going to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, listening to and talking with the agents there. One of them liked me. That was 1984 and we've been together ever since.

I might also add that, although I have suggested other writers to my agency none of them have been a match.

Sorry, I still think the best way to get an agent is to write a good book, then go to a couple of the conferences or start writing query letters. Knowing another author is not really that useful.


So there are just a few examples of published writers who found agents without recommendations from other writers. My thanks to all of them!


I hope you'll take note of something several of those above have said — having an author recommend you isn't as important as finding an agent who is genuinely enthusiastic about your work. And I strongly agree that your focus must be on creating a work of quality. A recommendation from the hottest author on the NYT list will not help you if your manuscript is weak. If you've written an original and engaging story with a fresh voice, your manuscript will provide what you need most in your quest for an agent.

Luck and Timing

Lots of great comments recently. I'm going to take a few days to reply to some of them, but I also want to give my non-writing readers a break here and there from these topics. Which means yes, I've discovered some new weird sites, good ideas, infuriating news, and so on. But I'll quickly tackle a couple of comments.

MF Makichen asked:

...Do you think a lot of the business of writing comes down to luck and timing. Or do you believe that ultimately great writing and perseverance are what will keep a career going long-term.

Just to be clear I admire anyone who can finish a book, find an agent, and get published, whethter the writing is my cup of tea or not. But so much of the "business" of writing seems to come down to luck and in some cases who you know....

MF, thanks for this, because I think a lot of new writers have these questions about luck and timing and connections. So I'm going to respond not just to what you've written here, but on this topic as it concerns new writers.

Luck and timing come into play in all of our lives -- from the moment we are conceived until the day we die. And in some cases, after that. If you are lucky enough to be literate, you are ahead of a great many people on this planet. Trying to understand luck and timing can get us into some questions that are concerned with the workings of the cosmos (and chaos) if not philosophy and theology, which I don't propose to explore here.

So I'll just say that I don't think it makes a lot of sense to magnify whatever amount of luck and timing are involved in a writing career out of proportion. Especially not as an excuse.

I can understand the temptation. If a person is a new writer, and it's a lack of luck or bad timing that causes him not to be published, why then, the universe is against him, and there's not much he can do about that, is there? (This is assuming he wasn't done in by the evil, anti-creative publishing cabal I mentioned a few days ago.) It isn't a matter of anything lacking his imagination or his skill in telling a story, it isn't because he hasn't found his voice, that his style is overly ornate one moment and ridiculously spare the next, that his pacing is all shot to hell, that his grammar is MIA, that every character sounds exactly like every other character, that the opening induces yawns, that the plot is implausible or unoriginal.

Or any of the thousands of other things that can go wrong in a manuscript. No, he just wasn't lucky.

Nonsense.

I've also seen this "luck and timing" stuff used by the envious. I don't know how many times I've heard horror stories from people who were in writing groups and who happened to be the first (if not only) person in the group to be published. Whoooweee. Ever want to see the green-eyed monster of jealousy rear its ugly head, that's where you should set up your cameras. Be sure the sound is on after the newly published person leaves the room: Of course talent had nothing to do with her success. Otherwise, it would have been me and not her! What luck! What timing!

What's the idea here, that publishers are actually using a big lottery system? Superstition is alive and well.

I don't claim that luck and timing are never part of the equation -- they are. I just believe that they don't play anything close to the largest role. And let's face it -- you can't make a career out of luck and timing. If you're going to write more than one book, you need to be able to deliver to your readers again and again. Publishers are looking for someone who shows that kind of promise.

Getting published isn't one, uniform experience. Some people sell a first book without ever getting a rejection. Some people take fifteen or more years to make a sale. Why? I think the reasons must be as varied as the authors and their works, and the people who buy them. And yes, luck and timing play a role, but I don't believe there are publishers making out contracts on nothing more than the basis of the author's luck.

Do I believe that some writers have bad luck? Yes, but I believe one can often recover from it. Do I believe that all talented writers get published? No, but I believe there may be obstacles other than luck involved, so that luck isn't always much of a factor, and to the extent it is, perseverance may increase their odds in the future. I've seen it work.

As for the "whom you know" -- I have asked a few of my friends how they found their agents and editors, and I'll be posting their answers. I hope it will help at least some of you to believe that not everyone had an inside connection.

****

I want to thank my friend John for catching a one of my typos in an earlier post. He's an editor. We all need them. We need friends like John, too.


And finally -- Kathy, so glad to hear from another fan of Thornton's!

The Economics

New writers usually want to become published authors in part because they feel compelled to write, and if you're going to have a compulsion that strong, why not earn a living at it?

Usually, they also love books and reading, and spend a lot of time in bookstores.

For all that, they seldom know how the book business works. This isn't so odd. I don't really have more than a vague idea of how electricity works, but I use it every day. Still, if I decided I wanted to earn my living as an electrician, I'd study more, and try to apprentice myself to someone who knew what he or she was doing. If I decided I wanted to generate electricity and supply it to others, I'd study a lot, and talk to experienced experts.

So if you're a writer, and you're thinking about being your own publisher, you need to know how your new business works -- not the writing business, but the book business.

Here's a starter lesson on the economics.

The availability of a thing -- including a thing such as book -- does not mean it will be sold.
Simply making a book available (such as by self-publishing) doesn't put it into a store.
Likewise, simply listing it among hundreds of thousands of other books offered at an online store does not sell it and place it in a reader's hands.

But wait! Don't independent stores and even some big stores hand-sell books to their customers?
Yes, but...believe it or not, there is no law requiring booksellers to carry a book just because you think it's pretty darned good! Or even because you're insistent. A shame, isn't it?

Bookselling is not likely to make an independent bookseller rich. Large or small, bookstores are not intended to become literary charities, kissing money goodbye in noble sacrifice just because so many books -- yours, for example! -- are so darned good. They prefer to make at least some profit. The independent's resources are not those of a giant, so they must be careful with those resources.

The space in a bookseller's store is like retail space anywhere — valuable to the merchant. Choosing what goes into that space may (or may not) have more to do with love than it does at a big box store, but at the end of the day, both types of stores must make wise business decisions and believe they can sell what they stock.

And there are other considerations.

For traditionally published books, about 40% of the sales price goes to the bookseller.

The bookseller is also able to return unsold books to the publisher. (A few conditions apply.)

Additionally, the bookseller knows that the traditional publisher is making other efforts to try to help the book to be sold. Sending out copies to reviewers, seeking endorsements, paying for cover art, perhaps creating special displays, advertising, press releases, author tours, and other marketing efforts. In some cases, the publisher may be offering special incentives if the store will host an author appearance.

The bookseller also knows that the publisher is risking money on the book, has invested in this author, and to an extent is staking the publishing house's reputation on the quality of the book. The book was chosen through an editorial process -- an agent brought a likely manuscript to the house, an editor considered it carefully, a committee looked hard at the editor's choice, and decided if the house's resources should be spent -- and in most houses, the manuscript received several kinds of editorial attention before publication.

Now let's look at self-published works. Guess who decided the book should be published? Who did that person have to convince that it was worthy of resources? Guess who will be paying the discount to the bookseller, one way or another? The fact is, as JB Dickey pointed out in the post I mentioned last week, from the Seattle Mystery Bookstore's blog:

In general, POD books are more expensive than regular trade paperbacks from the major publisher. That’s not odd as they’re a different system, scales of economy, etc. But they’re larger, thinner and end up not feeling as if they’re a good value. They also have been available at a lower discount, meaning that the bookseller has to pay more for the book and makes less profit on the sale of the book. (The industry standard is 40%, so out of the 40¢ out of every $1 we make on the sale, we pay the rent, the employees, the various costs of being in business.) It is impossible to stay in business when the discount for a POD is 15% or so. Can’t work. Ties up too much cash flow in stock and doesn’t bring in enough money to pay for the effort. The last thing about PODs is that, since they’re printed to fill the demand/order, they are non-returnable. Normally, unsold books can be returned to the publisher or wholesaler for credit. POD cannot.

Now, some small presses use POD technology and go out of their way to remedy some of these problems and do allow returns, but that's not likely to be the case for a self-published work. This means that it is seldom as profitable to the bookseller to stock self-published works as it is those of legitimate small presses and major publishing houses. I haven't even started talking about what happens when we bring a distributor into the picture.

I'm not saying you'll never see a self-published book in a brick-and-mortar store. But you don't have to be an economics professor to understand the obstacles the author of a self-published book faces in placing a book in stores. A bookseller can't afford to give up much space to books that bring in less than half the profit.

If your dream of being an author included dealing with this kind stuff as the publisher, then it was different than mine.

What you put on the page is — first, last, and always — what will have the strongest influence over your career as a writer. Not many people have so much control over what they do during their working hours. That's where your focus must remain: on the page.

Focus on your craft. Use the power you have over the page wisely. It will take you farther than you may expect.

Is there a time for everything, including self-publishing?

Are there times when it makes sense to self-publish?

If what you have in hand is a work of fiction, I'd say the answer is no 99% of the time. You should read yesterday's post for my complete answer about self-publishing a work of fiction.

Still, there are a few cases when I think it might make sense to self-publish non-fiction, with a whole bunch of caveats attached, the first and foremost being that you must understand that this will probably cost you money, should be researched thoroughly (ie, do more than Google "self- publishing"), and is highly unlikely to lead to either fame or fortune. Add to that list: you are sure you haven't written something that could result in a lawsuit.

Self-publishing is a maybe when:

1) You teach seminars and want attendees to purchase your workbooks or self-created texts.
You have an audience, a means of distribution, and probably know what you are getting into.
Keep in mind that in most states, you will need to have a business license, resale permit, etc. and deal with sales taxes and so on. Make sure your self-published materials are completely your own -- you don't want to get hit with violation of copyright, etc. And be sure that you aren't missing out on an opportunity for wider distribution and sales by selling your book to a publishing house.

2) You have made a study of local history that will have limited interest anywhere outside of your community, and there is no small press willing to take it on. Again, be sure interest would be so limited.

3) You are an expert in an obscure field who knows that your subject matter will not be of interest to a university press or textbook publisher, but you believe there is a need and at least a tiny market for your work.

4) You want to reprint, perhaps with a scholarly foreword of your own, a work that is in the public domain and out of print. You are sure there is no other reasonable means to preserve a print edition of this work.

5) You are a war veteran, and want to write about your military experiences. You are creating a memoir that will likely be special to your friends, family, and possibly to other people in your unit, and perhaps even a few military history buffs. You are not working on something that is literature -- not Master and Commander, Catch-22 or All's Quiet on the Western Front. You don't aspire to be W.E.B. Griffin. You just want to tell your own story.

6) You have written a history of your family. You are not a descendant of Thomas Jefferson or anyone else you heard about in grade school.

I think by now, most of you get the picture. You'll notice that this is not on the list: "You are the author of a series that has gone out of print, and you want to make it available to new readers."

That's because I have strong misgivings about whether or not POD self-publishing is a good idea for writers in this situation. I've heard from some writers who were very glad to have the ability to do this, and others who deeply regretted signing on to reprint programs. The downside? Rights can be tied up forever. You may make the book less attractive to potential new publishers. You may not be pleased by the end product, which may not look or feel like a trade paperback from a major house. You have to ask if, aside from any expense to you, this will be worth your time and effort. Will your readers want to fork over $25 for a trade paperback that may appear to be cheaply printed and bound?

You may want to read what Lee Goldberg has to say about the "big bucks" you can make by going this route. Lee and Keith Snyder have a long history of posting warnings about scammers in the self-publishing industry, and about some of the companies that will swear they aren't vanity presses, but do not at all behave like legitimate publishers. Worthwhile reading before you decide to abandon hope of finding an agent.

After reviewing some of Lee's posts on self-publishing, I find I have an additional item to add to the list above:

7) You are incredibly famous -- and this requires more than a lot of "friends" on myspace. According to Lee Goldberg's blog, in 2005 Jack Klugman self-published a memoir of his years working with Tony Randall, and spent half a million dollars to publish it well. If you haven't had a highly successful acting career that spans several decades, you may not be famous enough to try this.

Next time I'll talk about some of the problems with self-publishing, ones that most new writers do not expect — the difficulties that lead to the low sales numbers — and other pitfalls.

A Few Things to Think About If You Are Thinking About Self-Publishing

Just keep this in mind, and you don't need to read the rest of the post:

Never pay anyone to publish your work of fiction.

Not all that long ago, a person could be self-published in hardcover by what was commonly known as a vanity press, and pay thousands of dollars to insulate a garage with unsold copies of their books. Then in the 1990s, a new technology known as "print on demand" started coming into its own, and suddenly you didn't need thousands of dollars (although some have lost that much to POD self-publishing outfits) and you didn't have to own a garage. Books could be printed and bound one at a time. The technology is used widely and not just for self-publishing, but it has had a greater influence on self-publishing than just about anything since the invention of movable type.

POD technology has also proven to be a fabulous windfall to a set of people who have been in a lucrative industry for decades — not the publishing industry, but the industry of making money off of those who dream of being published. This is a set of people who understand how widespread and tenacious the dream of being able to say "I am an author" is in our society. They know that the impulse to tell stories is strong within many of us. They don't care much about writing or writers. They care about parting dreamers from their money.

I am not completely opposed to self-publishing, but I think there are only a few — a very few — circumstances when an author should go this route. I'll go into some of those at some point, but right now I'm going to focus on the publication of one's first work of fiction. Usually, a new writer of fiction should choose self-publishing only when he or she really doesn't care at all about book sales. I mean that — you don't want to make money and you don't care if you are the only person who owns a copy of your book.

Self-published new authors often dream that their books will light fires of enthusiasm in readers, build huge sales by word of mouth, and start to sell like discounted tickets to the Superbowl. The statistics say otherwise, and I'll get to the reasons they do at some point in this series of posts.

Maybe you really don't care if your book only sells 12 copies. That number isn't one I pulled out of the air. I did a study for a major writers' organization a couple of years ago, and the vast majority of participants in its self-publishing program — a relatively deluxe program that also included experienced, known authors reselling out-of-print titles from their series — sold 12 or fewer copies. (For a number of reasons, the organization dropped the program.)

Publishers Weekly, the major trade magazine for the publishing industry, ran an article in 2005 on iUniverse and included some numbers from 2004 — after the company was well-established — that should give any fiction writer considering self-publishing pause. Of the 18,104 titles — fiction, non-fiction, you name it — published by the company, only 83 sold more than 500 copies. Let me tell you right now that in the world of publishing, setting the bar at 500 copies is setting it low, and only 83 titles jumped over it. Do the math and you can figure out the odds of making that little leap.

I know a handful of people will read these cold hard facts and ignore them. They will want to tell me about someone who got famous by self-publishing. See the sentence about the two-headed calf in yesterday's post. (And for God's sakes, do not give me that old crap about Poe being self-published. He apparently self-medicated, too. Let's not even talk about his marriage to his 13-year-old first cousin. All of that aside, like other industries, publishing has changed since the 1830s, and so has the world of selling books. Even back then, by no means were all of his works self-published.)

So when should you self-publish a first novel?

If you are terminally ill — I am not saying this facetiously — and you all you want is for your family to have copies of your story in trade paperback book form (and simply making a photocopy of a clean manuscript to pass down to your grandchildren won't satisfy you), and you have the money needed to self-publish, by all means do so. The commercial publishing process usually requires at least eighteen months between the signing of a contract and the release a first book. The process before that point, of getting an agent and the agent making a sale, may take even longer. If you don't have that kind of time left, then don't wait for an agent to take you on.

If you aren't dying, you probably don't have a worthwhile excuse for your impatience.

Unless, of course, you have written something that you are certain will never appeal to more than 80 or so readers and has no commercial value, and you have no fear of embarrassing yourself, and you really don't care if you have to hand sell every single copy of your book yourself. If that's the case, go ahead and self-publish.

Here's one of the basic problems. If you self-publish, you aren't just the author. And you aren't just the person who pays to have your manuscript physically made into books. You take the place of everyone in the process of publishing, except those who physically produce the book.

You must either find and pay an experienced editor (assuming you would even know how to recognize someone who could do this extremely important job in publishing — a job that is almost never understood or appreciated by new writers) or become your own editor. The latter case is very unlikely to produce a well-edited book.

You must find or pay a copy-editor. Being your own copy-editor will likely doom your book to being a storehouse of unprofessional if not laughable errors.

You must also be your own advertising, legal, art, sales, publicity, and distribution management departments. To name a few.

All of that takes a tremendous amount of time and energy. Energy that most writers need for a different challenge — to grow as writers.

Where do you want to put your time and energy?

The Business Side of Writing: the Agent Hunt

I've been talking to Heidi Mack, my Website Manager Extraordinaire, about putting some pdfs full of my take-it-or-leave-it advice for new writers on the sidebar of this blog. If I can get the technical side worked out, I'll create a little library for those of you who come here looking for information about the business side of writing.

I am going to pursue, as mentioned, the topics that the story in yesterday's post bring to mind, and that will be included in the library. However, I got an e-mail today that made me decide to postpone those posts a day or so in order to write about the agent hunt.

I won't repeat the whole e-mail message here or identify the sender, because even though I frankly found a lot of it ludicrous, I believe it was sent with the best of intentions and I don't want to expose the sender to ridicule.

The e-mailer wanted help for a friend who writes. He wants me to introduce the friend to my agent. (Both the e-mailer and his friend are complete strangers to me, by the way.) He is by no means the only person who has written such an e-mail to me. If this is something you've been thinking of doing, please don't.

Within this message, he made a statement that I suspect is believed by a great many people who don't know much about publishing:

As you know, you can only meet with a literary agent if you have a recommendation from another author.

This simply isn't true.

In fact, when I found my first agent, I didn't know any published writers.

There's a trap in the kind of thinking that's often behind statements like those of the e-mailer, a trap that I believe leads more new writers astray than almost any other. It's a trap that passes itself off as a balm for the hurt feelings of the rejected. It says publishing is an insider's game, a cabal of evil greedy bastards who delight in crushing the dreams of the artist before its golden altars of crass commercialism. The aspiring writer is told that only someone anointed by an insider will be allowed to be published.

What utter crap.

If you hear this kind of talk, walk away. Walk away from the embittered and impatient folks who offer supposedly easier paths, who love to strike poses as leaders of the rebellion for the downtrodden and rejected. What's often oppressing these folks isn't the publishing industry -- it's their own sense of entitlement and self-importance.

It's easy to be angry if someone turns you down, and to be lured by this kind of talk into making huge career mistakes.

So what's the deal with finding agents? Do you need a published writer to open the door for you?

Few of the writers I know got the help of published authors when looking for agents. Most writers I've talked to did a lot of homework, queried agents, and persisted like hell. They found someone who took an interest in their work and went on from there.

For the ones who had an author introduction to an agent, I know of no one who e-mailed a request to an author they barely knew (or never met) and got help that way. I'm sure someone out there will now post a comment about someone they heard about who did just that. I could probably find a stuffed two-headed calf in a taxidermy collection somewhere, but that doesn't mean I believe there are barns full of living ones all over the U.S..

So how did the new writers who got help from published authors manage to do that without begging for help from strangers by e-mail?

A few got involved in writers' organizations, got to know published writers well, and got advice from them on agents who might represent that type of manuscript -- although not necessarily a hand-carried introduction to an agent. Others took courses from authors at places like the UCLA Extension's Writers Program, and if they met an instructor who was willing to pass their work on to an agent, found one that way. A few were in writers' groups that included published authors, and got help that way. (I have mixed -- okay, mostly negative -- feelings about writers' groups, but that's for another post.)

So what else can you do if you have a polished manuscript ready to go? (Oh, you're worrying about this without having finished a manuscript? Stop reading now and get back to writing.)

You can also meet agents at the San Diego Writers Conference, the Book Passage Mystery Conference and other major, legitimate writing conferences.

These are important features that lead me to recommend these conferences, and you should look for similar features in other conferences you consider:

• Well-established (the SDSU was founded in 1984, the Book Passage Conference is in its 14th year)
• Connected with a reputable institution or organization
• Offers an opportunity to meet with editors who are from major publishing houses and agents with established client lists
• Offers an opportunity to have pages of your work read
• Emphasizes teaching and has nuts-and-bolts workshops

What else should you do to find an agent?

Before you begin the hunt for an agent, you should carefully read the advice here:
Writer Beware
Writer Beware is must reading for all new writers -- and I wish more established writers, especially those who teach writing, would take a look at. If you're a new writer, you should read the pages of this site again and again, until you are sure you have grasped the warnings and advice there. Especially important -- read the Writer Beware List of the 20 Worst Agents.

Look for agents to send queries to here:
Association of Authors Representatives

Remember that there is no licensing requirement or other standard that must be met before a person can refer to himself or herself as an agent, so at the very least, protect yourself to some degree by going with agents who are in this professional organization. It’s important to read the Frequently Asked Questions section of the AAR site.

You can also get agents' names and information from a book available at most public libraries:
Literary Marketplace.

I recommend looking at these blogs:
The Writer Beware Blog

Miss Snark

Jennifer Jackson, especially this recent post.

Why do I recommend them? Writer Beware will help you to see why you don't need an agent, you need the right agent. I think the other two will help you to get a sense of the reality of the worklife of agents, and why some things new writers do to try to become their clients work well and others backfire big time. You'll get information from people in the business about the business. You may find agents who operate quite differently from these two, who disagree with them. But I think you'll learn something from reading their blogs. For example, Jennifer Jackson's statement that she gets 100 queries a week might help you to see why it might take a little time to get a response to your query. Miss Snark explains how it is that even those who meet her at conferences must query. (By the way, she's about to run the crapometer again, so you might take time to figure out what that is and how it may help you.)


I'll talk more about this at some point in the future, but I hope this has given some of you something to think about. I sincerely wish you all the best -- all writers benefit when talented new writers join our ranks. I also wish you the courage you'll need to remain persistent.

Photo above courtesy Mike Conners, from morguefile.com.

Creeps

A friend brought a Publishers Weekly article to my attention, about a scam used to get bookstores to order a title by a POD press.

You should also read this lively entry on the Seattle Mystery Bookstore's blog by JB Dickey.

And don't miss the Writer Beware blog information about the "publisher" in the post, Author Identity Publishing Redux.

I'll soon write more about some of the issues this story raises for new writers.

Getting lost for the sheer pleasure of it

You may have noticed that there isn't a hell of a lot of writing advice on this blog.

That's not because I lack ideas about How It Should Be Done. However, I want to be careful about what I say to new writers, each of whom needs to discover his or her own way to tell a story. I see so many bad examples of advice for new writers.

The best kind of writing teachers seem to me to be the ones who foster the journey of other writers without placing them in harness. They suggest a variety of approaches, they work to motivate and inspire while still providing practical tools and exercises that help with skill-building. I don't mind when someone gives nuts and bolts advice on ways to find agents or shows others how to put a manuscript into a standard format.

But sometimes I read another writer's proclamations about what one must do within the text of a story, or how one must construct its framework, or how one must go about the process -- and frankly, I find myself wanting to laugh.

I'm talking about the folks who seem to believe they picked up their stone tablets at a nearby burning bush. This is how I do it, so you must do it this way. By the way, all three of my best friends in my mutual admiration society write this way, too. Hello, hubris!

As if the universe of creating literature could be distilled into a set of Rules that Work For Everyone. What boring places libraries would be if that was true. Thank God the proclaimers get ignored.

Would we ever think of trying to convince painters or musicians that they must do x, y, or z to create true art? I don't doubt that those artists also have the "EZ Way to Paint a Portrait" or the "EZ Way to Play the Piano" folks in their lives, but it seems to me that uninitiated writers are inundated with advice that consists of oversimplified rules that simply do not hold true for everyone.

Here's my own simple advice to you new writers, so laugh if you will: one of the hardest parts of this endeavor of writing a book is finding your own path and having the courage to stay on it, while still staying open to the possibility that there may be another, better way to get where you're going. How will you know which way is best for you? Keep writing.

Explore. You may end up lost, or you may make fascinating, unexpected discoveries. Personally, I will take being lost (revision allows this to be a relative term, after all) over treading only on the well-worn, previously mapped grid, but you may find the grid is the best way to get where you want to go. Whatever works -- just start stepping.

'S all good....

Photo above, " Stream on the trail of Swift Camp Creek area" by Don Corbin, used with his kind permission, from morguefile.com.

Julie Smith is teaching writing

I've just learned that while I was touring, my friend Julie Smith started a new kind of distance-learning writing course. It's called Writers Track, and it combines an online course with a set of conference calls that allow students to have personal contact with the instructor.

Julie has been writing for 25 years and is an Edgar-winning author. In fact, when she won the award for best novel in 1991, she broke a long dry spell for American women writers -- no American woman had won the Edgar for Best Novel since 1956. She's a novelist, short story writer, and former reporter -- her journalism career includes long stints on the New Orleans Times-Picayune and San Francisco Chronicle. At the Chronicle, she was the first woman to work in the newsroom since World War II.

So groundbreaking is a kind of habit with Julie, and I'm betting that her courses will be a refreshing change from the run-of-the-mill writing class. She's also someone who works conscientiously and has genuine concern for others, so that will be to your benefit.

No one course will work for everyone, but if you're an aspiring novelist, you may want to take a look to see if this sounds like one that would work for you.