Purgatory's Pit of Doom

soulcascade said:

Ink I think the timeline Teri posted is possible on both the agent and editor (as far as getting a book deal, anyway) ends. It's worked for some writers! But generally speaking, I do think it's pretty far fetched for the average writer to 'expect' to get an agent or an editor quickly. Most won't. There are always stories like yours where 'miracles' did happen but they are not the norm.

That's why I dislike how misleading these sorts of quotes can be. They make quickly getting an agent or an ed seem like the norm and that far, far from the truth for most of us...

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Yes, and it doesn't take into account how many books it can take to even get to the agent point.

Mornin', Pit

Eh, my point was simply that things on the agent *can* move very quickly, and often do, while it's far more rare for things to move that quickly on the editorial end unless you're dealing with a time-sensitive topic. (I don't think my timeline was in any way miraculous. It still took me three months.) But I retract the statement.

Ink you're certainly entitled to your opinion even if we don't see eye to eye! I mean I dislike quotes like the one Teri found and shared with us. It's one thing to have an opinion. IMO it's another thing to post it 'out there' on the internet as if it were fact and that timeline is how things 'typically' go in publishing.

Remember the context for the timeline. The quotation was from a blog intended for publishing professionals. The point was, "Listen up, publishing execs! Listen to why authors may start fleeing to self-publishing! Think about how frustrating the traditional route can be."

Then he gave that time line.

How many beginners do you know started looking for an agent, then, 18 months after they began their agent search, saw their book in bookstores?

I would have rather had him present publishing executives with a more realistic timeline of what a beginning writer faces, so they can set their policies accordingly.

JK sees himself as leading a revolution. Free the oppressed writer! He is trying to lead a strike of sorts.

(((Ink))) I know the utter helpless and hopeless feeling of an agent disappearing act. But I don't think it means what you think it does.

I'd consider going ahead with your revisions, even the hard parts. It's your book -- you'll get it right because you get to decide what's right. And if she hasn't responded, well, a trains keeps moving, whether a passenger makes it to the station in time or not. You are the train, Ink. You can be the conductor too.

Oh well, that sounds pretty silly. Ignore.

ETA: Teri and JK are trying to free oppressed writers from agents. That's all well and good, but I want an agent! So what I'm saying, Ink, isn't to free yourself from your agent -- I'm saying don't let your agent oppress you. I think agents can have an important role, but as writers, we need to be in charge of our own careers, agented or not.

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Teriann said:

Remember the context for the timeline. The quotation was from a blog intended for publishing professionals. The point was, "Listen up, publishing execs! Listen to why authors may start fleeing to self-publishing! Think about how frustrating the traditional route can be."

Then he gave that time line.

Interesting. Thanks for the reminder. When I read the timeline at first I saw red because it seemed to dovetail with the general idea that 'if you wrote a good book it will sell' and 'just query an agent. If your book is 'good' it WILL get someone's attention' all of their trappings.

How many beginners do you know started looking for an agent, then, 18 months after they began their agent search, saw their book in bookstores?



I would have rather had him present publishing executives with a more realistic timeline of what a beginning writer faces, so they can set their policies accordingly.

Exactly. To say nothing of how poorly many writers have been treated by some agents/publishing in general

JK sees himself as leading a revolution. Free the oppressed writer! He is trying to lead a strike of sorts. With there being such an imbalance of power between agents/writers or editors/writers, perhaps self publishing is the way oppressed writers will find some measure of freedom.
Surely the very attitude of traditional publishing would need to shift from one of a cold, heartless business machine where writers are seen as overly emotional eccentrics to one that at least pretends to care about the art itself...or that the writers behind the books are human and deserve some respect and kindness...

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kellion92 said:

(((Ink)))

ETA: Teri and JK are trying to free oppressed writers from agents. That's all well and good, but I want an agent! So what I'm saying, Ink, isn't to free yourself from your agent -- I'm saying don't let your agent oppress you. I think agents can have an important role, but as writers, we need to be in charge of our own careers, agented or not.

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JK is trying to free oppressed writers from traditional publishers, but I want a traditional publisher.

So I know how you feel.

I still like the idea that you can get the agent, get the traditional publisher (protecting yourself from bullshit) and also go on to self-publish, or vice versa. There's no shame in trying from both ends. As long as you don't reliquinsh your power to any party. But again, that takes a lot of know-how and courage, I think.

It's funny because you'll always hear of those ppl for whom the process was simple. M3liss@M@rr for example...I think she said she got an agent two weeks after subbing and sold the weekend after or something like that. Quite a few people have those ridiculous timelines from finishing the ms to seeing their books on the shelves, but most have to struggle for years. Even I had a relatively easy time finding an agent (just half a year). So I know that even if I haven't been able to pub anything yet, I'm still one of the luckier ones.

Ink, I'd open another document and just start ahead with revisions, like kell said. Even if your agent comes back with different notes that take you in another direction, you might be able to use what you've already done in that other document as a jumping off point.

If you don't want to do that and you don't want to start anything new, then maybe just spend your time reading (other books in your genre, articles etc) and researching and brainstorming? Just random 'what if' ideas so that when your agent gets back to you, you have a pile of ideas already swimming in your head. You have to drive things. There's ALWAYS something else you can be doing other than wait for your agent, even if it's not writing related.

Trust me, I get you. Well, I know I haven't been waiting that long for my agent to get back to my on my ms, but it's been 20 days so far. But I've tried to spend those 20 days immersed in another project, that's been both infuriating and exhilarating to thing about. Plus I have about three papers I might be able to publish for academic journals that need rewriting and researching (not starting the hard phD stuff til June though as per my schedule) and tons of books to read. Still, in my quieter moments I have to talk myself down from emailing her for a status update (though I wonder why emailing would even be that bad?).

Oh yeah, MORNING ALL

Adding:

I'm really not trying to free individual writers from their agents. People around here have gotten really mad at me because they think that's what I'm doing. If the agent route works for people, all the better.

My agenda is for editors and publishers to change their requirement that writers have agents.

Choice is a good thing.

Amzn does keep taking the fun out of self-publishing. First with S3lect, then in April they added consensus quotes of reviews.

It pulls 3 sentences and under each sentence is X number of reviewers made a similar statement. The problem with it trying to pull a consensus is its program is too simple and looks for exact sentence duplicates among your reviews.

So you get the brilliant quote of "I read the prequel and the book." Yeah, Amzn, that's helpful.

The problem goes further when it only pulls negative sentences to quote because they were repeated and doesn't touch the glowing reviews because they were originally written. When the consensus quotes are visible, they're above the actual reviews and right below the blurb.

A lot of people's sales have been tanking from the last week of April on since these got added to book pages. It was bad enough that Sel3ct books get priority visibility over non-Sel3ct...

K. Taylor said:

Amzn does keep taking the fun out of self-publishing. First with S3lect, then in April they added consensus quotes of reviews.

It pulls 3 sentences and under each sentence is X number of reviewers made a similar statement. The problem with it trying to pull a consensus is its program is too simple and looks for exact sentence duplicates among your reviews.

So you get the brilliant quote of "I read the prequel and the book." Yeah, Amzn, that's helpful.

The problem goes further when it only pulls negative sentences to quote because they were repeated and doesn't touch the glowing reviews because they were originally written. When the consensus quotes are visible, they're above the actual reviews and right below the blurb.

A lot of people's sales have been tanking from the last week of April on since these got added to book pages. It was bad enough that Sel3ct books get priority visibility over non-Sel3ct...

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They probably think it's helpful to customers.

Is anyone trying to tell Amazon what it's doing?

Kellion, you crack me up. Yeah, I have some time on Friday, so I'll probably suck it up and keep working on revisions. I hate feeling like I'm going nowhere.

KT, that's annoying. And it's the problem with letting any one company get too big a slice of the business.

I think the beauty of the Pit is that we recognize there are no wrong ways, just some better suited for different people. (That, and we acknowledge the huge role of luck.)

I support whatever avenue writers want to try to get published.
While I wish I had an agent, I do like that self publishing is available for writers who don't want to go the agent route or feel that route wouldn't work for them. It gives them another way to get their stuff out there.

I wonder if self publishing increases in popularity and more writers get fed up with being treated poorly by agents (and I get that not all agents treat writers poorly! But for those who do...) and choose a non-traditional method of getting published, well, I wonder if that'd be a bit of a wake up call for the ones who engage in not-so-nice practices to straighten up. Writers ARE valuable and should be treated as such.

soulcascade said:

I support whatever avenue writers want to try to get published.
While I wish I had an agent, I do like that self publishing is available for writers who don't want to go the agent route or feel that route wouldn't work for them. It gives them another way to get their stuff out there.

I wonder if self publishing increases in popularity and more writers get fed up with being treated poorly by agents (and I get that not all agents treat writers poorly! But for those who do...) and choose a non-traditional method of getting published, well, I wonder if that'd be a bit of a wake up call for the ones who engage in not-so-nice practices to straighten up. Writers ARE valuable and should be treated as such.

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As the mid-list moves to self-publishing, the question is how traditional publishers will react. Will they want the mid-list writers back, and hence do more to court them? Or is the future of traditional publishing changing so that they only want and cultivate big books?

Teriann said:

They probably think it's helpful to customers.

Is anyone trying to tell Amazon what it's doing?

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Not that I know of. They're notorious for either not answering or doing a bad job of it when authors have problems, so...

Ink, it's very annoying. Some authors make more at the other e-stores, but most need Amzn for a majority of their business, so you either leave it out and don't make much, or suffer because that's where the customers are.

Other e-stores that haven't been international are said to be going so, so fingers crossed that'll help. Can't come soon enough. I've gone from over $80/week in royalties on my novel to less than $60, even with having 2 other new e-books out.

Teriann said:

As the mid-list moves to self-publishing, the question is how traditional publishers will react. Will they want the mid-list writers back, and hence do more to court them? Or is the future of traditional publishing changing so that they only want and cultivate big books?

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That's a big question to watch for the near future. We'll probably know within 2 years, with how fast everything is moving.

I think I read an article somewhere where a ceo of a big pub (RH I think)) admitted that the midlist is disappearing, because now it's all about trying to find the next hit that'll make millions. The problem is these big books are only bought because pubs HOPE they'll be big. They may not be. In fact they may tank. Books like St@rcr0ss3d (H.T33n) got million dollar advances but didn't do well sales wise. These books lose the company money. And with the midlist disappearing I think we're going to see more and more big 6ers in hot water if they don't wise up. I hope so anyway. They need a wake up call.

{{{DVI}}}

Good points everyone.

Roly, yeah, the B6 are gambling big time now and they have to support that somehow, so the midlist suffers.

In defense of Teri's quote (which i agree with soul can give a misleading impression) I read it as: (1) talking about 1 book to find an agent, not the many times an author queries different agents. But the specific book that gets an agent. (2) when speaking about "weeks" that means 7 weeks or less. (3) when speaking about "months" that means 11 months or less and more more than 2 months. If you add up all the timelines the quote refers to, we're talking about 2 years from query to pub. I don't think that's a far off timeline.

Well, if you want to read something that's a total downer, here's what agent St4ve Laub$ said on his blog: "The mid-list writers are being cut out of the herd and slaughtered. Only the big names or the fresh newcomers are being given a chance."

Great conversation going on in the Pit. I have nothing to add.

I went out for a walk during lunch today, which is huge since the times that I've done that in four years I could count on one hand. Unfortunately, the weather is a little rainy. Sad.

Gonna curl up in a ball and suck my thumb now. Oh hey, how many peeps are hiding under this couch? *elbows way in*

ink wench said:

Gonna curl up in a ball and suck my thumb now. Oh hey, how many peeps are hiding under this couch? *elbows way in*

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I'd say we need a bigger couch, but I'm pretty sure this is the biggest couch ever made.

At least according to the agent it's better to be unpublished at this point so you can be a fresh voice instead of one of the boring herd

Boy, I love an agent who can make me regret my small press release more than I already do.