Visiting websites from querying writers
- Thread starter Woollybear
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- elizabethbonesteel.com
I don't, actually, but I get views that are almost certainly from agents who are curious. During a call with my previous agent, she made it clear she'd gone through my social media, including a page I'd set up under a pen name. In her case, I'm guessing it was a kind of personality check - I don't expect she'd have looked if she didn't like the pages.
All right. I definitely see a spike to my science website right before a response from an agency rolls in. The visits to my website don't seem to be helping generate requests, but maybe it indicates the pages were good enough that the agent took a look, anyway. I take the visits as a win--get more eyeballs on some of the carbon cycle science and climate and whatnot.
Since my last rant, another person in the industry told me the idea is a downer, anything to do with climate a downer and they don't want to hear it, and an agent after reading the full said they didn't know how to market it. I sometimes wonder if the more-inclined agents are curious if my website could help with marketing (no, it really can't) before requesting.
I think that all lines up to a clear path for me, but it's encouraging to imagine the pages were enough to spark some small interest, if not a request.
Since my last rant, another person in the industry told me the idea is a downer, anything to do with climate a downer and they don't want to hear it, and an agent after reading the full said they didn't know how to market it. I sometimes wonder if the more-inclined agents are curious if my website could help with marketing (no, it really can't) before requesting.
I think that all lines up to a clear path for me, but it's encouraging to imagine the pages were enough to spark some small interest, if not a request.
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An agent read the full and didn't know how to market it???? Does that mean they couldn't figure out genre? It's hard to see how topic affects marketing. While "cli-fi" is a subgenre, it's hard to imagine marketing directly to readers of it exclusively. I'm surprised someone could read your prose and not have more constructive thoughts on how the story works.
As regard web visits, my site is also an academic one, and I include the link since my academic identity is grounding for some of the work. I've gotten hits from addresses near agencies where I've submitted, but so far, I can't link those to any requests. Thus far, I've only received two of those. I can say pretty confidently that none of my fast rejects ever looked at the website.
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I don't recall if she used the word market--she might have used the word sell--or something like this.
I think the "I don't know how to 'sell' this" could mean a few things.
1. The editors I've worked the most with aren't looking for this. (they're looking for other things)
2. I don't see an appetite for this among readers.
3. I'm new to the game and really need to focus on representing home runs to establish my own brand before branching out on something more experimental
etc (not a genre thing, but a 'the market is not hot for this' thing, or a 'this is not fully in my wheelhouse' thing, etc.)
I see it as along the lines of (but opposite to) aphorisms like 'sex sells.' Yes, cli-fi exists, but if you dig a little cli-fi novels aren't usually debuts (hence the thoughts about marketing--and more thoughts about marketing--an established author can get away with a little more, platforms and so on). But I certainly don't fault the agent and I'm very glad for the feedback. It fits (perfectly) what I've heard elsewhere and continue to hear, and is preferred to something more focused on craft or ability (which would hurt at a personal level). Also preferred to being ghosted on fulls, an experience I've also had. This didn't feel like a form rejection. It felt like a human being saying, 'your story is different. I'm not sure where it fits.'
I know.
Publishing is a business. I get it.
p.s. yes some rejects fall in quickly without any hits on the website. Today my traffic is definitely spiking. I contacted a publisher over the weekend to ask about the status of a sub. I suspect that's why the traffic is up. It also spiked on Sunday, and an agent R'd me the next day. That's kinda how it seems to go. At least he looked.
I think the "I don't know how to 'sell' this" could mean a few things.
1. The editors I've worked the most with aren't looking for this. (they're looking for other things)
2. I don't see an appetite for this among readers.
3. I'm new to the game and really need to focus on representing home runs to establish my own brand before branching out on something more experimental
etc (not a genre thing, but a 'the market is not hot for this' thing, or a 'this is not fully in my wheelhouse' thing, etc.)
I see it as along the lines of (but opposite to) aphorisms like 'sex sells.' Yes, cli-fi exists, but if you dig a little cli-fi novels aren't usually debuts (hence the thoughts about marketing--and more thoughts about marketing--an established author can get away with a little more, platforms and so on). But I certainly don't fault the agent and I'm very glad for the feedback. It fits (perfectly) what I've heard elsewhere and continue to hear, and is preferred to something more focused on craft or ability (which would hurt at a personal level). Also preferred to being ghosted on fulls, an experience I've also had. This didn't feel like a form rejection. It felt like a human being saying, 'your story is different. I'm not sure where it fits.'
I know.
Publishing is a business. I get it.
p.s. yes some rejects fall in quickly without any hits on the website. Today my traffic is definitely spiking. I contacted a publisher over the weekend to ask about the status of a sub. I suspect that's why the traffic is up. It also spiked on Sunday, and an agent R'd me the next day. That's kinda how it seems to go. At least he looked.
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Some if not all do visit the sites definitely. They also visit your social media accounts as well. Quite a few writers have screwed up their chances of getting deals based off of stuff they posted on Facebook or Twitter. That's why it's best to be professional always. But, yep, they do look because they want to know what they are dealing with and how you act in public in case they offer a deal. Also, agents and pubs are human so they are curious like most people and probably just want to look for the heck of it. If you are previously published they look at your site to see how you're promoting and to read more about you. Just like how writers check out agents/pubs on FB and Twitter...they do the same. 
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I would assume that the agent means she doesn't know how (meaning to whom) he/she would sell it. Agents aren't responsible for marketing published books; publishers are. And most agents, before taking on a book, want to have a reasonable game plan for selling it and at least a few likely editors in mind.
If they're interested in your book, they'd look to find out more about you. If they're not interested, they wouldn't bother.
That's what I'd like to think, Barbara--Thanks. I'd like to think that the peeks mean the writing is 'good enough' to have a look and the story idea 'good enough.' I'd like to think the lookie-loos are not the first thing that happens, but the last. Of course, this all feels like reading tea-leaves, but there you go.
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So by extension, agents may say they are interested in cli-fi, but when push comes to shove they might not be able to think of a publisher/editor interested in it as cli-fi per se.
PK, it seems to me to be a marketing decision. As in (and this is from someone in the industry): "It's in the headlines. Why would we want it in our fiction?"
The warming is our fault. There is no 'good guy' here, and in our hearts we all know how dire things really are. There's no easy solution (although, for any one person to lower their individual footprint is beyond easy--you can do it a hundred different ways). But on a global scale, given the interests at play, the diversity of opinions, greed, corruption, and the nature of fossil carbon as a remarkable source of energy, it's hard to see how we win. It's like asking people to stop eating. Stop reproducing. Both of which would help, by the way--but when it comes to fossil fuel combustion we need compliance on a very large scale.
Anecdote: At the climate march Friday there was a gent (from the accent, I believe Australian
) with a sign promoting iron fertilization in the ocean. He said it's time for private industry to start dumping iron to create algal blooms to pull the carbon out of the air. This solution? (A) is a moral hazard and (B) also fraught with real ecological risk. To the oceans. (C) by the way, producing and transporting iron has a carbon cost. There's no superhero or allied forces or anything like this to identify with, when it comes to the climate crisis. We are the villain, and there's no good way for us to 'see ourselves as the hero' in this particular story. It's not clear how to write something that would sell--it's not easy to see the story arc that leaves people anything but more unnerved than they already are about what is happening because of their (our) choices.
Thankfully, people do care, and there is the Greta effect, and whenever I ask tweeple (and others) if they're interested in seeing a few opening pages, many say yes, and some say it emphatically. Other people approach me, unsolicited, because of my background, and ask me to explain, for example, fundamental carbon cycling type science to them. (Sometimes, so they can then explain it to their crazy relative). I'm not too worried about sales, but it's a shame the trade route hasn't worked out (yet). I think one of the publishers I submitted to may be deliberating over it based on the traffic I see to my website and my other website.
-Patty
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I do see a few editors claim interest in climate fiction. Diana Pho, for example. But not many, and Diana (I think) is a YA editor. Sometimes an editor will say 'climate fiction' and they mean something very specific--like contemporary fiction about the social injustice inherent in climate change. Imagine a story set in Arizona, where a reservation is losing what little water it had to begin with, for example, and imagine the ripple effect that has on everything within that community. Imagine telling that story from a YA viewpoint. That's an important story to tell, and occasional people (editors) want that sort of climate fiction.
Important, undeniably, but that kind of story also shifts the blame, the focus, of the larger issue. For example, I do not personally feel guilt about displacing indigenous people--Maybe I should, because of the history of the US, but FWIW I do not. I support reparations to African American communities. I march to close the camps and cages. So, I don't feel like 'the villain' in these scenarios, and a person might conceivably come away from a social injustice climate change story with righteous indignation instead of guilt.
That could sell.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels. It's that simple. I wrote a story to try to make the math of the problem a little more obvious, because too many people say things like "CO2 is plant food" as though that absolves humanity of warming the planet and causing the sixth mass extinction in planetary history.
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Who reps Paolo Bacigalupi? How did he get published? He's definitely writing cli-fi, and definitely not "we fixed it with this near-magical carbon capture gizmo" cli-fi. Maybe even reach out to him personally. The Water Knife is not a happy story. At all.
Russ Galen--I believe I queried him. I believe it's a CNR but if it wasn't it was a rejection.
Good thought on that, though--I might reach out to Bacigalupi. I used The Windup Girl as a comp for a while. What I've seen of The Water Knife is more the apocalyptic strain of Cli-Fi (similar vibe to that Nat Portman movie/based on the novel Annihilation). I didn't read past the blurb and opening pages on "Look Inside."
Nice interview here where Bacigalupi joins the chorus of folks that talk about the importance of determination and patience in the publishing world:
http://techland.time.com/2010/09/27/paolo-bacigalupi-this-is-what-it-takes-to-write-a-novel/3/
Those, at least, are traits I have.
Apparently it was his fourth novel that sold. Looks like he was agented on his first and has a strong literary fiction streak.
Good thought on that, though--I might reach out to Bacigalupi. I used The Windup Girl as a comp for a while. What I've seen of The Water Knife is more the apocalyptic strain of Cli-Fi (similar vibe to that Nat Portman movie/based on the novel Annihilation). I didn't read past the blurb and opening pages on "Look Inside."
Nice interview here where Bacigalupi joins the chorus of folks that talk about the importance of determination and patience in the publishing world:
http://techland.time.com/2010/09/27/paolo-bacigalupi-this-is-what-it-takes-to-write-a-novel/3/
Those, at least, are traits I have.
Apparently it was his fourth novel that sold. Looks like he was agented on his first and has a strong literary fiction streak.
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I think it's getting hotter.This is the first time I've ever heard of climate fiction. Learn something new everyday.
(Buy Patty's when it comes out. It's going to be good.)
He had some very good short fiction sales before that, the sort that get you noticed.
Not sure what good it does to say they're interested in a genre they don't think they can sell. But it takes more than adherence to a genre to generate the level of enthusiasm it takes for an agent to take on and an editor to buy a book--that's a much higher bar, requiring serious investment of time and self-interest, editors being judged largely on their bottom line.