[Agency] Trident Media Group

kellion92

Thank you for your advice. Yes, I'm only currently querying agents, but a family friend knew a publisher and that's how that happened. I can't thnak you enough!

I know i will make a mistakes as much as i don't want to. This is all so stressful....not knowing who to trust...

I just got a full offer from David Gernert - John Grisham's agent, (I think) and Steven Chudney for first 50 pgs. Fingers crossed. And here, with all the rejections, I was going to start fresh with a new query letter! I'll wait....I'm open to feedback, good or bad. Off to query....

Congrats, Kiki! Hurrah! Sounds like that query letter is working just fine. My critique partner is repped by Chudney and he just got her a very nice two book debut deal. Good luck!

Thank you JoyMC! Yes, it was a happy surprise. I'm glad to hear your critique partner is rep'd by Chudney. I don't see a lot about him other than a small thread on AW which is possitive.

His personal email was very sweet, which I also hear is reflective of him.

Publisher Lunch: "MacKenzie Fraser-Bub is joining Trident Media Group as a women's fiction agent. Most recently she worked in marketing at Touchstone as publishing manager (and she was previously an assistant at Trident)."

Soccer Mom said:

A couple of questions. Do you pay for these services? The editing and cover design? Or is this covered by the commission mentioned at the end?

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Well, a bit later than I thought but I am going with their e-publishing operations. At the moment their business people are looking over the 1998 contract for my first novel, Of Marriageable Age, as well as the reversion of rights letter just to make sure I do have the rights back -- and then we go ahead.

Ms agent sent me some info about their operations, and yes, everything is included in the commission except:

• Cover Design
○ In-house templates (free of charge).
○ Trident provides a menu of professional cover designers to work directly with the Author on their e-book (Starts at $150 – Author’s expense).

and:

• Conversion (free of charge up to $200/title)
○ For backlist titles this service includes shipping physical books, scanning, digitization, conversion into Word for Author review, and conversion into EPub and Mobi formats.

And to think I could have had the OCR conversion on my book done by them for free -- just last week I paid €50 to have it done by an outside service. Oh well; next time I'll know better! (I'm in the process of getting back the rights on my other two out of print novels.)

Phaeal said:

Oh well. My main point was this. If Trident is proposing to guide its authors through the ever-changing electronic self-publishing process, providing advice and making referrals, this might be termed Assisted Self-Publishing, and it could be a legitimate agency function. Done thoroughly and ethically, with the usual agently functions thrown in, it could be well worth a 15% commission.

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Exactly. So far I'm quite pleased by all this. Takes a load off my mind to
have a publishing partner, so to speak. I'll keep you updated on how it goes.

Trident's web submission form now says, "We do not accept simultaneous submissions that have been sent to other publishing agents." http://www.tridentmediagroup.com/contact-us

I assume they mean they want exclusive reads of mss., not that they expect to be the only agency queried - but I do have a couple of fulls out, so I guess I needn't bother querying.

I'm tempted to ignore this, but I don't want trouble later on if I query and get a ms. request. Presumably if they say this they mean it, right?

Comments?

Transatlantic- On query tracker (for Mackenzie Fraser-Bub) someone mentioned that she explained this means not to send simultaneous submissions to agents at Trident. It seems that if you have queries/partials/fulls with other agencies, there is no problem. Good luck!

Thank you!

Transatlantic, it seems she is making several requests and actively looking right now, so I'd say go for it! Just submitted my full to her.

Cool - thanks. In fact, I just queried her and then checked QT and noticed the same thing myself. Good luck! (To us both! )

Awesome, good luck

Hi everyone...I hope all is well. I just wanted to give an update.

Steve Chudney - requested a partial - super nice guy but he decided to pass on my ms, although he asked to read a partial of my second novel when I'm done.

The Gernert Co. and a small publisher - Pegasus Books - also passed.

I never heard back from Kimberly Whalen at Trident and I'm assuming she has also passed.

Gernert, Trident, and Pegasus Books all requested a full ms and never read it. Just fyi for those in the same boat. I was held up for 2 months b/c of fulls out to read, so to find out they didn't was frustrating and put me behind.

I'm going to continue the query process but I think I will end up self publishing in the next few months.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I'm still going through this thread, but I'd like to ask a blunt, over-simplifying question, which some of us are no doubt wondering: Statistically, is Trident the best Agency for becoming a successful writer?

I'll have to browse their list of clients sometime, to see how many of the biggest names they've gathered. Currently, my belief is that you can become a really big writer regardless of your agent or agency. Though, it might be easier with a great agent/agency.

Hi, Mr. Mask. My 2 cents are that William Morris and Writers House are the only 2 that are more prestigious. However, rumor mill has it that Trident's e-pub is lowering them in some eyes. It's considered unfair to ask a writer for 15% of a book they're handling themselves. Other people however see Trident as at the forefront of the e trend.

As for their slow response times, which Kiki asked about, Trident is exceptionally slow but only because they are exceptionally busy. I pitched last September and only now got word that sounds like an acceptance but isn't finalized.

Isn't the help with managing e-books optional?

The response time is understandable, though still causes anxiety. If they had good response times, it would generally be a bad sign of unpopularity or too many staff.


Congratulations are in order for your hearing back from them. I hope you hear the best possible news from them in the coming days .

Thanks...I sure hope so too!

Yes, their e-pub is entirely up to the author. Interestingly, one of their agents is joining a Publisher's Launch to talk about exactly that topic:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/scale-i...cus-of-our-next-publishers-launch-conference/

May 29... I'll make sure to check that one out.

So the consensus is, even if you have the MS with other agents, we can still query this agency? That wording sounds A LOT like they're expecting full exclusion. Which, sorry, I know it's a great agency... but that's not worth it.

New to the forum and just submitted my query to an agent over at TMG. I'm starting to worry that it's going to be rejected. So far, I'm seeing that anyone who has gotten a positive response heard back within a matter of days. It's been a week for me so I'm leaning towards a big fat no. How long should I wait before submitting a query to another agent within TMG?

Tromboli: Someone in the thread who submitted with them thought it only applies to multi-submitting to several Trident Agents. Not necessarily, though.


perezerin: There are some people in the thread who were replied to months after sending, so it isn't hopeless.

Yes, Perezerin, no need to despair, and definitely don't submit to another Trident agent for at least a couple of months. In the meantime, send your query to agents at other agencies. There are loads of terrific agents and agencies, big and small (and small does not equal small "success" either).

Also, to others, no worry about the exclusives thing. I've got a full out to Alyssa and she read another one of my fulls previously, and in both cases I already had outstanding fulls when she requested.

JoyMC said:

In the meantime, send your query to agents at other agencies. There are loads of terrific agents and agencies, big and small (and small does not equal small "success" either).

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Can anyone direct me to a good list or make some suggestions of who I should start looking at now? TMG was my first query submission and I'm not really sure who I should move on to while I wait. Any help would be awesome. TIA

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