Each workshop is 6 weeks long and is limited to twelve people. (Again, it will take you about four hours per week to do each of these.) These are the starting dates of upcoming workshops.
All have openings at the moment. For sign-up and more information about each workshop, click the Online Workshop tab at the top of the page.
Starting June
Class #17… June 3rd … Cliffhangers
Class #18… June 4th … Pitches and Blurbs
Class #19… June 5th … Genre Structure
Class #20… June 6th … Openings
Class #21… June 7th … Idea to Story
Starting July
Class #22… July 8th … World Building
Class #23… July 9th … Plot Your Novel
Class #24… July 10th … Designing Book Covers
Class #25… July 11th … Designing Book Interiors
Class #26… July 12th … Essentials
Starting August
Class #27… August 5th … Ideas to Story
Class #28… August 6th … Openings
Class #29… August 7th … Genre Structure
Class #30… August 8th … Pitches and Blurbs
Class #31… August 9th …. Cliffhangers
Starting September
Class #32… Sept 2nd … Essentials
Class #33… Sept 3rd … Plot Your Novel
Class #34… Sept 4th … World Building
Class #35… Sept 5th … Designing Book Covers
Class #36… Sept 6th … Designing Book Interiors
Sign-up and more information under Online Workshops tab at the top of the page.
Nice series. Love this quote: “A good editor is nothing more than an attentive reader who is biased in favor of the author. ” Couldn’t ask for any more valuable help than that.
Thanks for the link, Dean. It’s interesting to see the industry from the perspective of an editor – vital, actually, as we writers constantly deal with editors in traditional publishing at all stages of the product. He’s erudite and obviously has stories to tell. I’m looking forward to his next post.
I actually had to laugh at “A good editor is nothing more than an attentive reader who is biased in favor of the author.” I *have* those types of readers already, and I’m a good attentive reader for others.
What the post highlights in action is that a good editor is also a champion. They lead the charge through the slings and arrows of bureaucracy to get from manuscript to finished book. That is very non-trivial, as anyone who’s been a champion in a reasonable sized organization has discovered (or tried to champion something without the support structure that a reasonable sized organization can provide).
Ironically, it made me realize that that’s what an agent is supposed to be–a champion for the author that leads the charge through the submittal and contract bureaucracy/process. But there seems to be a wide gap between “supposed to be” and reality, making the “supposed to be” little more than a myth.
Love the post, but it makes me fear for the publishing industry.
There are two if not three people (agent, editor, and copy editor) who are editing the manuscript.
There are at least two advocates (agent and/or author and editor) for the manuscript.
There are at least three marketers (agent, editor, publisher’s marketer and distributor’s marketer) for the manuscript.
If anyone figures out how to profitably shorten this chain (cough Amazon cough), companies working this way will have trouble staying in business.
Still, hurrah for the editors!
I find it interesting that none of you commented on the following:
Tom said, “If you’re lucky, you have an assistant (I didn’t, for some of my years as an editor; I’ve kicked a copying machine many, many times!) who helps you sort through unsolicited manuscripts and over-the-transom agented submissions.”
“…over-the-transom agented submissions.” On another list someone mentioned this. It’s exactly what Laura and I have said numbers of times here. If the agent isn’t friends with the editor, then the submission from the agent gets EXACTLY the same attention as a manuscript you send in on your own.
There, one more time trying to beat home the fact that just because you have an agent doesn’t mean crap in selling a book. The book still has to stand up, still has to fit the line, still has to do it all. Agents make no difference at all in sales, folks, unless the agent is one of the six or so agent friends of the editor. Then it might get it read quicker, nothing more.
(Sorry, just had to do a little myth bashing this morning. Now I feel better.)
“…over-the-transom agented submissions.”
I saw that and thought, Good, I hope everyone sees that!
Reposting it here was a good idea.
And I was thinking only yesterday with sympathy about a friend whose agented submissions have been, it seems to me, in submission for quite a while without a response… including with editors who specifically told me, when I put in a good word for the writer, that they’d never heard of this agent and so the submission would be sorted straight into slush, rather than onto their desks.
On the flip side, if the book is good, it’ll get kicked up to the editors for a read. (And my friend is a good writer, so I have high hopes of that happening.)
But, yeah, being agented is not (as we’ve said until we’re blue in the face) a green-light pass to skip the slushpile. It’s ONLY a “get out of jail free” card if the house knows your agent–and with sooooo many agents out there, big houses get submissions daily from (I am quoting an editor directly here) “new and baby agents we’ve never heard of and who don’t know what they’re doing”–and those go straight into slush.
They WOULDN’T if those agents knew what they were doing. In the case of my friends, editor I spoke to personally advised that the way to get that MS out of slush was to put my name in the cover letter. (Not because I’m a bigshot whose name is a magic pass, but because I’m a personal contact in those specific instances, and so seeing my name in the letter would be a kind of introdution.) Almost any writer or aspiring writer I’ve ever met would be smart enough to use that tool (i.e. the name of a friend of the house) when invited to do so. But agents? Not so much.They don’t like the image of themselves name-dropping a non-client friend of the client in order to get their foot in the door. And so their clients’ books sits in a slush as a result of that sort of choice.
(And, btw, don’t EVER use someone’s friend-of-house name without being INVITED to do so. Not only is that bad behavior, but when you get found out–as you will–the excrement will really hit the fan, and you will wish you hadn’t pulled that stunt.)
Another obvious way an agent could connect with a house that doesn’t know him/her, obviously, is to CALL the editor, introduce self, talk about the submission, and then send it as per the editor’s instructions for how to make sure it doesn’t get sorted into slush. But it is truly amazing how many agents won’t do that. (-I- do it, as a self-representing writer. But I’ve worked with agents who wouldn’t do it, and I meet writers all the time dealing with agents who won’t do it.)
So, yeah, definitely one of the reiterations to take away from that article: a literary agent is not an automatic pass out of the slushpile–they have to know the agent, whether from previous dealings or because the agent isn’t too clueless to INTRODUCE self to house before sending submission.
He *did* say though, that “Some houses don’t read anything unsolicited”. I wonder if he meant any *unagented* and unsolicited, or anything truly unsolicited? I know you’ve said *no* publisher refuses to read and accept a good book, unsolicited or not – but this editor seems to disagree? Why?
I don’t know… It just seems to me that if:
- Some percentage of publishers don’t read unagented stuff…
and
- There is no regulation about who does and does not get to be an agent…
…I’m a little shocked that more writers don’t have their spouse, kid, pet dog or goldfish, or even themselves under a “pen name” represent themselves as an agent, and submit the stuff. I mean, sure, you’re not getting the “agent advantage” of being golfing buddies with a few editors, but it seems like that’s rather rare on the ground anyway. So why pay someone else 15% to mail your ms. unsolicited to editors, when you can do it yourself?
Kevin, “unsolicited” is so ten years ago, which is when Tom is writing about. “Unsolicited” was the what I call the “stupid writer” roadblock publishers used to use like they use “unagented” these days. It means if you believe that, you are not far enough into this business for us to want to look at your stuff. Harsh, but alas, true.
But if you get your work to an editor, they will look.
And putting a friend on a manuscript as an agent is just silly and could get you in a ton of problems. Why not just mail it yourself and trust the value of your own work?
In other words, stop looking for tricks and shortcuts. Write good novels, mail them directly to editors. Very basic and simple, honestly.
Seriously, though, thanks much for pointing to his post. It was most informative to read. Including what you just pointed out about “over the transom agented…”
I *do* believe you, Dean. And I was being a little tongue-in-cheek about the spouse/goldfish agent bit.
But even this editor whose essay you pointed out and seem to have liked, reinforced that myth in his text – “Some houses don’t read anything unsolicited”. It just seems deliberately misleading to falsify one’s actual business practices like that. I mean – you’re entering a business arrangement – and a contract – with someone who habitually and routinely lies through their teeth about their actual business practices…
…In any other industry, that would be seen as insane, and courting disaster. It feels really obnoxious to be told that someone you would like to do business with is deliberately lying to you when they state in print the methods they will do business. I understand the reasoning behind it. I just can’t say I appreciate the ethics of a deliberate spreading of lies as a screening method.
Kevin, the reason you don’t understand is that you’ve never seen an unregulated slush pile. I have, and 99.9% of it is pure crap. And when I say that, or when any editor says that, young sane writers think “Oh, it can’t be that bad.” But it is. Again, anyone who can write a sentence thinks they should be published.
For example, do this: Put a bunch of paper or a manuscript in a normal brown envelope. Now open one end of it and pull the paper out at a normal speed. In Strange New Worlds, I rejected over half the submissions I got by glancing at them as I pulled them out of the envelope. They were that bad. I promised I would give every manuscript a fair shot, and if the writer was so bad they couldn’t get me three or four strikes with stuff wrong by the time I got it out of the envelope, no my issue.
You are asking for “fairness” in business and that’s just silly. Publishers are in the business of publishing books readers want to buy. We are not in the business when editing to coddle or even encourage writers who can’t write and haven’t even bothered to learn basics. So there has always been a line set up to hold back the garbage, and it was figured out early that the writers who don’t take the time to learn basics also don’t take the time to learn anything else.
For example, back in the 1900s to 1950, the common practice was to deliver a manuscript directly to an editor. But those evil editors with no thought to the writers would sometimes close their door or not be in their office. So the smart writers tossed the manuscripts over the transom, while the stupid writers turned around and went home, mad at the editors. Then that developed in the 1960s to no unsolicited manuscripts and the smart writers figured ways around that to get their work to the editors and the stupid writers shrugged and called the editors unfair. Now the door is “unagented manuscripts” and the smart writers figure out a way to get their manuscripts to the editors, the stupid writers send them to baby agents and scammers who can’t get them to editors any better than the writers can.
Nothing has changed, and your whining about it won’t change it either. Accept the facts of the business or find another business. Saying that editors, a writer’s best friend most of the time, are being unfair or untruthful just shows how much you really don’t know.
There is a sign we put up in most of our workshops. “You are responsible for your own career.” Blaming editors for having a very, very sane business practice to keep out the nut cases and the horrid piles of manuscripts is just not going to do you any good.
And one more point. When I started talking about this, I was very afraid to talk about the reality vs the myth. Then I realized that the writers bothering to read me and not be angry at me are the ones that are out learning. The people the “no unagented” closed door are meant to stop would never come by here. Those people think their writing doesn’t suck and don’t need to learn.
I’ve seen slush piles, unlimited slush piles. This solution is a good one, even though it gives agents big heads and creates myths. Sorry to be so blunt.
On the topic of editors not excepting unagented submissions, one of the things that I would encourage writers to do is read actual interviews with the editors. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read interviews where an editor will say something to the effect of: “I have to go through so many unagented submissions now, I can’t imagine what it would be like if we accepted them.” I had to stop and re-read what I had just read the first time I saw that. I’ll admit maybe I’ve been misinterpreting something but I’ve seen it a lot.
Also, there are tons and tons of writers out there that mention the fact that THEY came out of the slush pile.
And one last thing to keep in mind is Jim Hines survey on first novel sales. Even though the current wisdom is that you have to go through an agent to sell to Big Publishing, the number of people who sold their first novel directly to a publisher was still almost thirty percent.
This particular myth has always cracked me up since it’s so easy to disprove.
Oh well, I’m done. Time to put the lamp shade back on my head.
Thanks, Dean. Not angry, and blunt is good. Wasn’t meant to sound like a whine, either… Have you tried to go *outside* this room and tell people they don’t need an agent to sell a book, even if the submission information says you do? I’m sure you have, and I am already familiar with the response. =P
They’ve done such a good job spreading the misinformation that they have effectively made agents an essential part of the process (which in turn lends itself to the growth of the sort of problem you talked about in your last article!). An entire generation of writers is being taught that once they write a book, their goal is not to seek publication – it’s to get an agent! I know fighting that sort of myth is why you have the Sacred Cows articles in the first place – but if publishers were not spreading the lie, you wouldn’t need to debunk the myth.
I am *glad* that I stumbled across your site, because I’ve learned a ton from your writing and the comments here. But I am irked on behalf of those who don’t know about this place, and whose eyes are blinded by putting their trust in lies.
Kevin,
Oh yeah, I would NEVER say things I say here out in a convention, or at least not very often. When Kris and I do what people call the Kris and Dean show, where we talk about publishing, just the two of us up front, for a few hours, or in some cases, a few days, we decide in those to be flat honest. But catch me on a panel at say Worldcon and ask me a question about slush and I’ll turn you over to the closest editor without making much of a comment. Sorry, out where people carry guns, not worth my time to try to educate some writer set on a myth. Not my job either. And Kevin, not your job either. (grin)
I’m so gratified that people are reading and talking about my piece, but I need to emphasize one thing: the point of view. I’m only writing about my personal experience. I have worked at four big houses: Warner, Bantam, Avon and Harper, and edited books at the latter three. All I know is what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I just thought people might find it interesting, since you seldom read about that side of the biz. It’s definitely been the most popular post on my blog. But I’m not trying to tell anybody what to do, only to report what *I* did.
I guess all I really want, besides letting you get a peek at the man behind the curtain, is to indicate that editors are people too, and sometimes their burden can be just as heavy as yours. They are not your enemies. And Dean is right about the slush pile: you have no idea, and most of them are EASY rejects. The only difference between his slush and mine is that mine were BOOK-LENGTH. “Agented transoms” have just been explained to you, and very well.
I have three follow-up pieces in mind, and I hope you enjoy them too. For example, I remember when I sat down to write my first editorial letter to an unnamed author I’ll call “K. K. Rusch,” whose work as a writer *and editor* I just adored, I felt like the host of the Chris Farley Show on SNL: “Remember when you won that Hugo? It was…AWESOME!” But Kris — oops, “K” — was as gracious as s/he could be. That, peeps, is a professional.
Anyhow, keep on plugging. Like Joe Konrath says, what do you call a writer who never gives up? Published. And I love hearing your comments, even brickbats. An old editor can take it…
Thanks, Tom, for stopping by this crazy place. Your articles are wonderful honest and that’s what folks around here need.
I didn’t know your first editorial letter ever was to Kris. How cool! And if you were at Warner before you went to Bantam, you might have been there when I sold my first book to Warner Questar in 1987. Brian Thompson was editing that line.
Thanks again, Tom. Let me know when article #2 in this series is up and I’ll like it here.
Dean wrote that “anyone who can write a sentence thinks they should be published.”
And what doubles or quadruples the size of every slushpile is that tens of thousands of people who CAN’T write a sentence think they should be published. Dean isn’t exaggerating–99.9% of the slushpile is unusable.
Years ago, around 1989 or 1990, when not many people had home computers yet, all submissions were still hard copy, and hardly anyone used email (I wouldn’t have an email account for about 5 more years), I was at a conference talking to an editor there who was head of a large and exapnding genre program at one of the major houses. She told me about two separate experiences about their slushpile that were eye-opening.
In the first case, her entire staff editorial had committed to spend a whole week or their evenings and their weekend eliminating the slushpile. Reading it ALL, to get back to zero back-up. (The big incentive for this, as it was in a number of slushpile-blitz sessions in the old days, was to get all those stacks and stacks and stacks of MSs out of their building. Editorial offices used to be shockingly choked and with stacks of MSs everywhere back in the days when everything was hard copy. I visited one set of offices where I could barely squeeze through the hallways, the towering piles were so encroaching.) Anyhow, so in this blitz of slush-reading, the staff read EVERY MS in slush. And it took them more than the week of their spare time which they ahd committed (even though “reading slush MSs” means that in many cases, you only read a page or two). But they got through EVERY one during that time. And they didn’t find ONE SINGLE THING they could buy, let alone discover a new gem or career novelist in the pile.
At the time this story was related to me, that episode had occurred several years earlier, and the slushpile was again overwhelmingly massive.
The other story the editor shared was that, around the time I got into the business (the year before or after–I can’t remember now), they’d lauched a “catch a rising star” contest. They ACTIVELY SOLICITED submissions from unpublished writers, which were to be submitted under the auspices of this program, and sorted separately from regular slush. This was over 20 years ago and, then as now, aspiring writers were complaining that publishing was a “closed shop” and “no new writers ever got acquired” and “all the good stuff” didn’t get published because the aspiring writers didn’t “have connections” or “know the right people,” etc. This house said, no, we ARE looking for new talent, we’re ALREADY looking for new talent, and we are SO interested in finding new talent, well created this special submission stream for X amount of time (I can’t remember how long the contest lasted) which will specifically be a search for a new writer whom we can publish and build. We will buy our next rising start from this contest’s submissions.
They got over 3,000 submissions in that program. They didn’t find one single MS they could buy. It was a little embarrassing for them, since they had publicly announced they’d buy a new writer from this contest… but they couldn’t spend company money on an unpublishable MS just to save themselves some embarrassment. So the contest was a big flop, resulting in nothing but a 100% unusable slushpile and a red face for the program.
Does that mean they never bought out of slush? Absolutely not. A lot of the writers they published over the years (including at least six who immediately come to mind who started in that imprint and who have since become New York TImes bestsellers many times over) came out of the slushpile. Rather those two anecdotes from that house illustrate just how much of the stuff in any slushpile isn’t publishable. Dean’s estimate of 99.9% is pretty accurate (though, in those two anecdotes, it’s actually 100%).
So publishers had their reasons for trying to weed out slush and only see material that could at least make it past a first reader, such as an agent. For obvious reasons, I think it’s a bad solution–but they had a huge problem they needed to solve, and “no unagened submissions” was a self-evident way to reduce slush. (So now we hear agents talking about the size of their slushpiles.)
The size of slushpiles are also why the wait is so long when you submit a book. If the sorter has never heard of you, your MS gets filed in a queue that’s got thousands of MSs ahead of you.
I just shudder at the idea of 3,000 novel submissions from all new writers. I came very close to that situation myself, before Strange New Worlds. Thankfully I dodged that.
When I was doing the new writer contest Strange New Worlds, I would take a picture of a huge dining room table covered four feet deep in piles of manuscripts, with buckets and boxes of manuscripts all around. And I couldn’t get all the manuscripts in the picture ever. I would sit behind the piles sort of peaking over the top. Great photos. I’ll try to dig one up.
However, that said, my job was to find 23 professional level stories every year out of that mass. The first year out of almost five thousand I found 17. And every year for ten years I worried I wouldn’t find enough, but turned out every year after the first one I found more than 23. One year up to 40 professional level manuscripts out of thousands, mostly because I was shouting to the world I needed them. And some really, really fine professional writers came out of those years, writers who went on to write their own stuff and make livings writing fiction. And many others out of that contest are getting close. So those few gems out of those thousands and thousands of manuscripts made that contest worthwhile for Pocket Books to do. But it was also short fiction, and Pocket Books lost their shirt on it from moment one. And yet, to Pocket Books credit, they carried the bill for ten years before new management and tight times and me retiring finally shut it down.
Steve wrote: “Also, there are tons and tons of writers out there that mention the fact that THEY came out of the slush pile. ”
Absolutely. Including 2010. And (I predict) including 2011.
Okay. I had to truly laugh out loud at myself about the unsolicited unagented thing. When I was querying my manuscript, I honestly did only submit to those that would accept unagented submissions, grumbling about such a lack of options and how I didn’t feel having an agent would make much difference! Well I definitely fell into the slot of not being in this business to know to ignore this. I’ve always been one of those play by the rules types, and I see that sometimes that gets you nowhere. I think I’ve got some more querying and submissions to do…
Dean, you ol’ editor you, you caught me in a bit of disclarity. My *very* first editlet was to a writer named Terry C. Johnston, which you’ll read about, if you care to, in Part II. I was referring to my first editlet *to Kris* — goldangit, *to “K”* — where my cranial fingers were shakin’: *what could I possibly suggest to HER*? That’s also part of being an editor: objective bravery. Stay tuned. And thank you for what you do for all upcoming writers everywhere.
I can sympathize with the slush… I once got talked into being one of three judges for a short fiction contest. Cash prize for the winner, put up by the website. No problem right?
Hundreds of entries. A solid chunk of which were about as high quality as my own first story. The one I wrote back in first grade. And because there were three judges, I had to actually rate every single story based on a 1-5 score on five scoring elements. I swear it looked like someone had gotten a couple of elementary school classrooms to all submit a story.
Chuckling now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time.
Can’t even contemplate doing that with 3000…
And Tom – I hope I didn’t cause offense with my comments. I did enjoy and appreciate your article, and will look for the others. A little general angst about the situation as a whole, not any person in particular. And I admit, a little frustration resulting from my inability to stay out of writing sites where the people have no interest in hearing anyone pass along information that “kills sacred cows”. I think I have some editing to do of my bookmarks list, to be honest.
Editors’ stories about the funniest (in a BAD way) slush they receive are eye-opening, too.
At one house I wrote wrote for, an aspiring writer was sending them one page per day of his/her novel, “to whet your appetites for the rest!” (Each day, the received page went straight into the trash.)
At that same house, a submission came in that was entirely handwritten on (as near as anyone could tell) brown paper grocery bags that had been taken apart.
Loads of editors have funny stories about their programs receiving submissions so drastically inappropriate, they wonder how the writer even got their name and address. Things like: a cowboy novel without any female characters or any love story being sent to a romance house; a raunchy porn novel being sent to a Christian house; a space opera adventure novel being sent to a non-fiction academic press; etc.
And editors also receive hatemail and threats, on occasion, for rejecting slushpile MSs.
Thanks, Tom, looking forward to the second installment.
Laura, yup, lots of hate mail. When Scott Edleman took over SFAge, he got a really nasty one from a guy in Southern California. All of us had gotten them from this guy and he was firmly planted in our nut case file, but this guy threatened Scott (as he had done to all of us) so Scott reported him to the FBI for threatening someone through the mails. This was pre-911, back in the early 1990s. Ellen, Gardner, Kris, and I all got interviewed by the FBI and then they did a raid on this guy’s house. Guns drawn and all. The guy was a poor nutcase living with his mother in her basement, didn’t own a gun, didn’t even have access to a car. They still arrested him and then stuck him on probation. But from our side, the FBI interviews with us were fun. And the FBI guy was stunned we all kept nut-case files and knew how to find the guy’s letters. And that he wasn’t the only one by a long, long ways.
I had one writer who had just sold his first novel tell me after I rejected his story that I could eat his manuscript because it would be the only words of substance I would ever have in me. (Then he added a few other threats toward me and Kris.) Of course, I laughed about this, with the guy’s name, in public at conventions a number of times, especially in conversations with editors or on panels with editors, and the guy never sold another novel and vanished without a trace. (You can threaten me, just don’t threaten my wife. (grin))
On the flip side, we got a manuscript at Pulphouse that was clearly hand-written and original and more than likely the only copy, with nothing but a name on it, no return address, nothing. I had one of my employees talk with the post office, then call the post office of the zip code the story came from to see if they knew the guy. They did, an older man, and they promised that if we sent them the story care of the post office, they would get it to him. So I wrote the guy a nice letter and sent back the manuscript and got a nice thank-you note by return mail a week later. It was his only copy and he just forgot to put a return address on it. He was very thankful to have it back. So there are both sides.
At Bantam, we used to get “submissions” from an unhinged religious zealot in the Midwest: pages crammed with bold-faced capitals and scary clip art, end of the world stuff, just raving on and on. At first it was perversely amusing — each time, we’d send him a polite form letter declining — but one day his submission announced he was coming to New York to save us personally. We didn’t have to call the cops because we had a security checkpoint downstairs in our Times Square building. We just handed them copies of some of his stuff. He never showed up, thanks be to God.
Re “solicited manuscripts”: Laura and Dean have it exactly right. If an agent I know — or even one I don’t know — simply phones to say, “I’ve got something that might be up your alley. It’s blah blah blah. Whaddya think?” and I say, “Send it over,” it’s now solicited. When I was trolling for blurbs from people I didn’t know — one MORE job of an editor; an author can help but it’s the editor’s responsibility — I’d send out one-page letters describing the book along with a return post card: “Send me the galleys: YES___ NO___.” As you [and I] would expect, most came back NO, but I did hook a few that way.
Even back then, I thought — and told writers — that was a fair way to approach an editor too: send a little taste that s/he can read in 15 minutes, then a way to respond, “send me more.” In the world of e-submissions, it should be even easier — and cheaper — to do that. That e-world, I remember vividly, got a huge push forward during the anthrax scare right after 9/11, when publishers were briefly nervous about the mail.
Has anybody revealed that certain houses invented editor names to sign off on form rejection letters, and for all I know may still use them? Purpose: to dissuade crazies like Kris & Dean and Scott faced, and also to foil “smart” authors who claimed that their script had been “requested” by “Jane Doe” or whomever. Trust me: the editorial staff has heard ‘em all.
What Tom said. What Laura said.
Writers, if you keep one thing in mind, one simple phrase, it helps on all this. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN CAREER. No one knows your book better than you do, no one cares more about your book than you do, so why not after writing it spend the little bit of time to be creative in ways of getting it to editors? You have to believe in your own art, your own skill, not to a nutcase level as we have talked about (grin), but to a sane business level. There are a thousand and one ways to get editors who can buy your book for a publisher to read your work. Or a sample of your work.
That’s all you can ask for as well. A fair read of a sample. Beyond that, there are thousands of factors in play, such as a book fitting a line, another book just like it just bought, and so on.
There are a thousand and one ways to get a book a fair shot with an editor. Having an agent is only one way. And not the best in many instances.
And further to what Steve Lewis said about Jim Hines survey, Megan Crewe also did a first-novels survey (in her case, looking at the myth that you “need to know someone” to break into publishing). In her survey, more than half of first-time book sales were made without an agent:
http://megancrewe.livejournal.com/251212.html
Tom wrote: “Has anybody revealed that certain houses invented editor names to sign off on form rejection letters, and for all I know may still use them?”
I never knew that! Interesting! And I can understand why.
Dean wrote: “There are a thousand and one ways to get a book a fair shot with an editor. Having an agent is only one way. And not the best in many instances.”
And that’s the turning-point we really need to see in this industry–writers seeing the agent-author business model as ONE way to manage a career, not THE way.
Thank you everyone for the wise words. Specifically, thank you Tom for the suggestion of sending a sample to an editor that doesn’t take unsolicited material and asking for a yes/no if they would like to see more. I’ve been mulling this issue over for a few days now (been sick so had time) When it comes to approaching people, I have trouble because I play by the rules in effort to do things the “right way” and not offend or inconvenience anyone. (naive, I know)