authors getting the raw end?

Hi Lenny,

Welcome to AW!

I just thought I'd give you a helpful hint: it's difficult to read large blocks of text online.

You might get more responses if you were to edit your post and put in some line breaks, to chop things up a bit.

Also, breaking it up would let people understand your points more clearly.

Could you explain your checkout analogy? I don't understand it. In a checkout line each customer is giving the checker who represents the business something of worth (money). How does that compare to agent queries? Secondly, I think that because we're writers we sometimes get a skewed view of things. I mean sure I know how frustrating the rejections or no responses can be. Meanwhile there are all sorts of things agents have to deal with that I don't, like being harassed by writers they've rejected, like working to sell their author's manuscripts and then be told that their work doesn't count and isn't valuable because they're the ones trying to sell rather than the ones who created the product. And that's without acknowledging, also, that some do contribute to the product with suggestions on how to make a work better. I'm not saying agents are perfect, but neither are writers. Personally I don't see things the way you do, I guess. Not everything in this business might be convenient for me, but it's not all about me either so why should it be?

Hey, big boy.

Welcome.

I don't care for the analogy. You know, when I moved into my new apartment in Manchester city centre, I went to a Tesco Express. In my basket I had a ready-made curry, a bottle of chili sauce, and a large pack of toilet roll. I only realised just as I stepped up to the checkout girl what it must look like. I tried not to think about it but couldn't stop the grin spreading over my face. I don't think the girl noticed at all. Just some guy with a few random items.

Sometimes shit isn't obvious.

Lenny Jennison said:

Is this just my perspective or do the authors get the worst treatment in this whole process?

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A lot depends on how well you understand the publishing process--which is what I think you're talking about here.

We all have done something most people will never do, write a book. we then have to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours trying to find the people to represent us. then after we do, we have to jump through hoops to get them to even read what we wrote. then and only then, if they deem us worthy, they represent us.

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Writing a book is a big deal. You're right: we writers deserve praise for that. It's hard work, and yet we stick with it and get those words down.

However, just writing those words down doesn't automatically mean that we've writte a good book, or that we deserve publication. You're not looking at this from the agents' point of view.

Agents get thousands of submissions each year. But they don't earn their living from reading those subs: they earn their living from looking after their author-clients' interests. Reading submissions actually takes time away from their money-earning endeavours, with no guarantee of return. And as most submissions are truly dreadful, there's little chance of return either.

this of course is after waiting a while to hope they even respond to us. If we are the lucky ones, we will be graced with their letter of acceptance. yes, they were the ones in the trenches and built the relationships with the publishers, but we are the artists that created something for others. then they submit our work to people they already know.

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Agents are hardly likely to submit their clients' work to editors they don't know, though, are they? If they don't know them they won't know what they are looking for; or if they're good at their jobs, or if they're a good fit for the writers concerned, and so on.

I understand like any career we must pay our dues. this just seems like a very inane way of doing business. we sit here in forums talking about the amount of rejections and how we value the decency in which we hope to get our rejection letter.

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I'm sorry, but the last bit of that sentence doesn't make sense to me. Can you explain what you meant?

this to me seems like an industry that needs new writers, yet treats them at the same time like second class citizens. i also understand that they have thousands of query's to deal with, but this still seems odd to me.

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Again, can you clarify?

we could never go into a "target" and ask to be checked out even though we have the money. only to be informed that out purchase of a bag of cheetos is not what the retailer feels like selling. if they told us that we needed to go back into the store and also gather up some soda and maybe lunch meat they might be willing to check us out! when we question them, their response is :"hey, we are busy checking other customers out and we simply can not check out everyone who feels their purchase is worthy enough for our attention."

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This analogy isn't appropriate for publishing. Writers don't need to "have the money" in order to be published; publishers pay them. If you were talking about readers, not writers, you might have a point but it's still a badly-thought-out analogy.

Readers fund publishing. Writers are suppliers. Think about it: if you ran a business--and publishing is a business--you'd want to find suppliers who could produce the highest quality product for the best possible price. If there were a glut of suppliers--and in publishing, there is, because there are so many aspiring writers out there--then you'd pick and choose who you bought your products from, and you'd ignore the suppliers of lower-quality stuff. Just as publishers do.

again, this seems bitter, but i assure you it is not. i know far too well about the "paying dues" and the real process that happens when we query, i just find this as odd that someone has not come out and reinvented the way a company accepts submissions and deal with the "talent".

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It might seem strange to you, but I think it's because you're not looking at it from the right angle. There's no need to reinvent the way it works because for publishing--the business--it works fine. And there's no way that publishing is going to change its business plan in order to make poor writers feel more cared-for, because that way lies bankruptcy.

please share your thoughts. i am a big boy, and i can deal with your opinions. i do ask that you skip "you do not know what you are talking about" or even "you really sound bitter". i am not, i just think as the new kid on the block, this industry has a funny way of receiving new talent. thanks again!

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You'll notice that I've not skipped the "you do not know what you are talking about" bit, because that's exactly what's going on here. Publishing is an odd business. Writers have to learn how it works, or they'll be lost. No matter how much they might not want to be told.

Lenny Jennison said:

Is this just my perspective or do the authors get the worst treatment in this whole process? We all have done something most people will never do, write a book. we then have to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours trying to find the people to represent us. then after we do, we have to jump through hoops to get them to even read what we wrote. then and only then, if they deem us worthy, they represent us. this of course is after waiting a while to hope they even respond to us. If we are the lucky ones, we will be graced with their letter of acceptance. yes, they were the ones in the trenches and built the relationships with the publishers, but we are the artists that created something for others. then they submit our work to people they already know. I understand like any career we must pay our dues. this just seems like a very inane way of doing business. we sit here in forums talking about the amount of rejections and how we value the decency in which we hope to get our rejection letter. this to me seems like an industry that needs new writers, yet treats them at the same time like second class citizens. i also understand that they have thousands of query's to deal with, but this still seems odd to me. we could never go into a "target" and ask to be checked out even though we have the money. only to be informed that out purchase of a bag of cheetos is not what the retailer feels like selling. if they told us that we needed to go back into the store and also gather up some soda and maybe lunch meat they might be willing to check us out! when we question them, their response is :"hey, we are busy checking other customers out and we simply can not check out everyone who feels their purchase is worthy enough for our attention." again, this seems bitter, but i assure you it is not. i know far too well about the "paying dues" and the real process that happens when we query, i just find this as odd that someone has not come out and reinvented the way a company accepts submissions and deal with the "talent". please share your thoughts. i am a big boy, and i can deal with your opinions. i do ask that you skip "you do not know what you are talking about" or even "you really sound bitter". i am not, i just think as the new kid on the block, this industry has a funny way of receiving new talent. thanks again!

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Just because you've written a book doesn't mean you are saleable "talent."

You're not a paying customer, you're a vendor with a product to sell. There are many other vendors trying to sell the same product, and most of the products being offered are crap. So, you're looking at it from the wrong end.

Rather than the checker at a supermarket, think of the agent/editor combo as the guys outside the doors of a trendy nightclub, deciding who gets past the velvet rope.

They can't let everyone in, because, if they did, the Fire Marshall would shut them down.

If you're Paris Hilton, you get in (even if your contribution to the world is only that you're using up oxygen that some plant worked hard to make). If you're with Paris, you get in. But if not -- you'd better look cool.

So what can you do if you don't get into Studio 54? Either go to another night club, or work on becoming really cool.

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Or, to get back to the supermarket: You own a supermarket. There are hundreds of brands of cheese-snacks available to you. Cheetos being only one of them. Which of those thousands do you stock? How many units? You have limited resources to stock them, and to present them to the public -- and if not-enough customers take them to the checker, you go out of business.

Now you're a cheese-snack maker. What do you do to make sure the grocer wants to stock you? You make cheese-snacks that a whole lot of people want to buy.

Yes, writing is an art. But writing for sale is a commercial art -- and the accent on "commercial" is equal to the accent on "art."

Agents do not get paid to read queries. Queries are not actually part of their job. They don't owe anyone a response for doing work outside what they get paid for.

To keep up the check-out analogy, it's more:

Go into Target and put together what you want to buy, then get to a line. Instead of waiting, you go up to the checker and tap them on the shoulder, saying "I've got this stuff to buy - check me out!" but their job is to check out the people in line.

So you go to some kid in a Target shirt, but who's clocked out and say "I've got this stuff to buy - check me out!" but the kid's off the clock.

Then you find a manager who's willing to help you at the jewelry counter, but you're buying bananas, and there's no scale to weigh them at that counter, so he says you'll have to get in a regular line. Angry, you shove the basket aside and storm out of the store lamenting that you did the work; you gathered the goods; you presented them to be purchased, but they "still" couldn't be bothered to make a sale!



(And please don't take this as a dig at you, but agents and editors trawl these forums. I don't say this to make you wary of what you say, but to point out that - on a writer's forum - you might want to take a bit of time to hash out proper capitalization, etc.)

Lenny Jennison said:

We all have done something most people will never do, write a book. we then have to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours trying to find the people to represent us. then after we do, we have to jump through hoops to get them to even read what we wrote. then and only then, if they deem us worthy, they represent us. this of course is after waiting a while to hope they even respond to us.

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Writing a book is difficult, but a lot of people seem to manage it, judging by the avalanche of manuscripts that come in to us every day. The fact that you have to jump through hoops to get read is a consequence of this fact.

We publishers don't work off big profit margins. Publishing is basically a system for sharing risk; we take on the cost of making, printing and distributing a book, add as much value to it as we can during the process, in order to protect our interests and yours. But it's a chancy business. If we end a year having made a double-figure margin, it's probably been a good year.

We don't get paid a lot. I work in the industry because I love working with creative people, and I get the chance to be a little bit creative myself. I live modestly and spend more time at the office than I do at home. A lot of the hours I put in there, I spend reading manuscripts. I load them into Kindle and read them on the train home. I sit eating my lunch poring over picture book texts.

I don't intend this as a sob story, because I like my job, but we're reading just as many manuscripts as we possibly can; and do bear in mind that we have taken the decision to only look at agented stuff. A fiction editor I know received over 300 YA novels last year from agents. She read them all. 32 went to an acquisitions meeting. 15 were bought. Meanwhile, she edited the 15 or so books she'd bought the previous year, and managed their publication. (Oh: of the 15 books she bought last year, I think about half were debut novels.)

Agents are in the same boat. The hoops you have to jump through are a progressive filtering process. If we're slow to respond, the odds are it's not caprice or disrespect; if you succeed or fail, it's more likely to be someone's considered, though fallible, judgement, rather than luck or whimsy.

Lastly, I just want to take issue with the idea of 'paying dues'. This isn't how the business works.

I worked in television for about three months once upon a time. You start off as a 'runner'. This means you're a general dogsbody. You make the tea, get the sandwiches, work 60 hours a week and get paid peanuts. The culture is, you do this until people feel you're humble and hardworking enough, or perhaps it's until people feel you've been exploited enough to do it to the next generation. Either way, it's 'paying your dues.' You have to do stuff that maybe doesn't even make sense, but it's about displaying the right attitude.

That isn't what publishing is about. We want to be your partners if your book is good. We will, in fact, put our money and our expertise where our collective mouth is. We honestly don't care if you've had to jump through hoops or not. But first we need to read your manuscript, and it's eight-thirty, I'm still at the office, and there are a hundred other potential gems in my in-tray.

Actually, what am I doing writing long posts on AW?

Let's see. I have good idea, write good query, get a contract to write book (this is nonfiction). Write book, and publisher edits it. Then publisher sinks a whole lot of cash into printing, promoting, and distributing the book.

Not only do I get ego boost, publisher sends me a check. A check to do much more then take my wife out to eat.

How did I get the raw end?

I write a bad query, or one that doesn't interest agent. Agent ignores me.

Again, how did I get the raw end? If I wrote a better query, I won't have the problem.

Worry about what you can control.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Lenny Jennison said:

yes, they were the ones in the trenches and built the relationships with the publishers, but we are the artists that created something for others. then they submit our work to people they already know.

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Again, this is evidence that you're looking at the industry in the wrong direction, as it were, which is very common.

Submissions are only a very small part of an agent's job. An agent's entire day does not consist of sending off mss and having lunch with their editor pals. Agents read and negotiate contracts, and that's a big and complex job. They step in if there's some sort of dispute between author and editor/publisher: over edits, over covers, over release dates, over anything else. They give their clients pep talks, brainstorm with them, and offer feedback and often editorial suggestions.

They handle an author's money; they collect checks from publishers and then issue them to authors. Much of the time collecting them from publishers involves multiple phone calls to multiple people. If there's a dispute about money the agent handles that.

All of this work becomes doubly complicated if we're talking about foreign markets, where the agent may have to go through a sub-agent or deal with people with whom there's some kind of language barrier. All of the business of converting foreign currency to domestic is also the agent's job, and then they have to parcel out money to their subagents as well.

All of this is in addition to reading their clients' work and, yes, meeting with and submitting to editors. But that's not easy either; there are hundreds of editors, at all sorts of different imprints, and agents need to know not only who they are but what sorts of books they like and what they're looking for at that particular moment. It's an agent's job to know that Editor A at Ballantine likes funny, light-hearted books while Editor B likes dark, brooding books, and to submit accordingly. It's an agent's job to know who Editor A's boss is and what imprints they oversee; it's an agent's job to know that last week Editor C moved from Bantam to Del Rey and what they're going to be looking for now that they're there, and what the hierarchy is there. People in NY tend to move around; that's a complex job all on its own.

An agent had to know which imprints work along the lines of "If you submit to this one you can't submit to that one" and which don't. Hell, an agent has to know what each imprint handles to begin with and what the differences are--each and every imprint at each publisher, and what lines they fall under, and who the publisher and higher-ups are in each line.

Then once a work is out on submission agents need to keep track of who has it and what they say, and call them to follow up, and plan their further submissions, all the while both keeping their client from freaking out and calling other editors to tell them how they have an awesome project the editor is going to flip out when they see.

It's not just handing out a few mss to their buddies and waiting for the money to roll in. It's an extremely complex job with a very specific skillset and a huge amount of information to learn and track. It's a huge amount of paperwork and administration.

That's why it takes agents so long to reply to queries and why so many have gone no-response-means-no; they're incredibly busy, and queries are the least important thing on their lists, because their first duty is to their clients.

Lenny Jennison said:

Is this just my perspective or do the authors get the worst treatment in this whole process? We all have done something most people will never do, write a book. we then have to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours trying to find the people to represent us. then after we do, we have to jump through hoops to get them to even read what we wrote. then and only then, if they deem us worthy, they represent us. this of course is after waiting a while to hope they even respond to us. If we are the lucky ones, we will be graced with their letter of acceptance. yes, they were the ones in the trenches and built the relationships with the publishers, but we are the artists that created something for others. then they submit our work to people they already know. I understand like any career we must pay our dues. this just seems like a very inane way of doing business. we sit here in forums talking about the amount of rejections and how we value the decency in which we hope to get our rejection letter. this to me seems like an industry that needs new writers, yet treats them at the same time like second class citizens. i also understand that they have thousands of query's to deal with, but this still seems odd to me. we could never go into a "target" and ask to be checked out even though we have the money. only to be informed that out purchase of a bag of cheetos is not what the retailer feels like selling. if they told us that we needed to go back into the store and also gather up some soda and maybe lunch meat they might be willing to check us out! when we question them, their response is :"hey, we are busy checking other customers out and we simply can not check out everyone who feels their purchase is worthy enough for our attention." again, this seems bitter, but i assure you it is not. i know far too well about the "paying dues" and the real process that happens when we query, i just find this as odd that someone has not come out and reinvented the way a company accepts submissions and deal with the "talent". please share your thoughts. i am a big boy, and i can deal with your opinions. i do ask that you skip "you do not know what you are talking about" or even "you really sound bitter". i am not, i just think as the new kid on the block, this industry has a funny way of receiving new talent. thanks again!

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I hope your fiction is better structured than your post, but what funny way of receiving new talent?

If a writer actually has talent, and can write a query and a book that displays his talent, he'll have no problem at all finding an agent and a publisher.

You need to put yourself on the other side of the desk. Pretty much everything gets read, and no agent or editor is to busy with other customers to deal with you.

Your query will be read. If the query is good enough, your manuscript will be requested. If the manuscript is good enough, it will find a publisher.

Trouble is, very damned little that comes in displays any talent whatsoever. Not the query letters, and not the manuscripts. Worse, much of what does display talent is same old same old that agents and editors have seen a thousand times.

I think we all believe our work is good enough, else we wouldn't submit it. But maybe, maybe, one percent of what comes in is professional quality, which just means it will find a home somewhere, sometime.

Maybe one tenth of one percent actually catches the reading public's eye enough to earn really good money.

For that matter, it's perfectly possible to bypass the agent and sell your own novels. But nothing much changes when you do this. Talent and quality still rule, and just like with agents, will still attract attention. Lack of talent and lack of quality still get ignored.

Yes, we create things for others to read. This does not mean very much of it is worth reading.

As for no response, who cares? No response is a response. A smart writer waits for nothing. He spends all his time writing the next book, and the next after that.

Lenny, please don't feel the need to apologize! Publishing is often a confusing and opaque business, and we're here to help and answer questions. You owe no one an apology, seriously. Don't ever feel bad for asking a question, especially not when you respond so gracefully.

That said, I do appreciate that you've started breaking up your posts into paragraphs and capitalizing letters. It is fun here, absolutely--check out places like Office Party!-- and we joke a lot, but it's a lot more fun to read posts when we can understand them a bit better.

And a belated welcome to AW! Glad you joined us.

I'm new at this, so forgive me if this is already posted--
I just epublished my first novel at smashwords.com, "Mjolnir Found, A New Mythology", and I'm new to publishing. I briefly(4-5 months) queried, to no avail. I'm convinced I've written a damn fine book, but I'm mystified by what might grab the attention in a query letter.
(pause for cheetos I dug out of couch cushions)
I have worked in film and video production for twenty years, and the process is just as crazy. About twelve years ago the WGA registered around fifteen thousand scripts a year. For all the crap that gets produced, there's tons more that doesn't.
While there may be jewels in this great heap of manure, who's going to pay someone to sift through it?
That's why I gave up on the traditional process so quickly and epublished. It's still a crapshoot, but at least it's out there.
So keep at it, and good luck, or karma, or God bless, whatever.