Crapometer question

In this post, she mentions the "Hook Me Up Starting Point" linked here.

Perhaps that's what she meant?

Oh, and "mis en place" means "everything to hand" or something similar. In cooking, it's basically when you get out all your ingredients before starting to cook.

Jack_Roberts said:

I could easily ditch the stuff in red, but then there would be no word count, no title, how would potential agents know that info? I heard you have to include it in the query.
Also, I heard that you should let the agent know up front that it’s a series. Should I keep mum about that until later? I could. That’s no big deal.

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I was under the impression that crapometer hooks were supposed to be hooks, not queries. So all the word count, title, and series stuff really wasn't relevant for this purpose. Pretty certain you'd want to include that information in a query, though -- well, maybe not the "thirteen books" part. I can see that frightening some agents off... although others might find it appealing. Who knows?

Jack_Roberts said:

I could easily ditch the stuff in red, but then there would be no word count, no title, how would potential agents know that info? I heard you have to include it in the query.

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Query, yes. Hook, no.

My understanding, at least.

I third that. Hook is different from query.

Yeah, the info needs to be in the query, but shouldn't be stuck in the middle of the hook--the hook should be purely about catching their eye with your story.

Is the book capable of, to a degree, standing on its own? If so then I would mention that it has series potential, or that you have later possible books planned, but this early in the game I'd try to omit the number thirteen. ^_~ It's hard enough to get people to take a trilogy from an unknown, let alone thirteen books, so if possible I would suggest getting them to take a look at it and see if they like it before you try and sell the whole set. If it can't stand alone though, then I'd be honest and tell them it's the start of a series. (again though, I'd not mention numbers. That's just me though, someone else who knows more than me may say differently).

My 2 cents, the comments seem dead on to me.

The material in red is just fluff you don't need at this point.

As for series part, this would vary from publisher to publisher, but at this stage nothing matters except getting somebody to read (and then purchase) the first book. Once you have somebody hooked then you can mention that you have ideas you could turn into other books in the series. Or ideally a publisher will say, "you know this would make a great series..."

Just a further thought on the series thing.

Perhaps you could say there is scope for it to be a series. That gives them the possibility if they want it, but also reassures them that this book will stand up on it's own.

Of course, this won't work if your series is a Jordanesque epic relating one story in a dozen books....and if it is, I might have to kill you too