Scribbles & Munch

For those of you unfamiliar with the process, getting a novel published professionally is actually a heck of a lot of work. First there’s finishing up your manuscript to industry standards. If you don’t have your manuscript formatted correctly, it’s a glaring red flag of your lack of professionalism, and neither agents nor publishers are going to take you seriously. Then there’s the submission/query process itself: are you going to hit up publishers directly, or try to find an agent? Either way, you’ll need to do plenty of research to find out who might be interested in your work (if you write children’s books and query an agent who only handled political biographies, you get an “F” in research), whether or not they look at unsolicited manuscripts, whether or not they are accepting queries right now, and – if they are – precisely how to approach them. If they want a query letter and the first ten pages, and instead you send a query and the first three chapters, guess what? You’ve just proved you don’t pay attention to detail, your carelessness essentially suggests that the agent/publisher’s time is not all that important.  Once again: “F.”

So where am I in all this mess? Well, I have two complete manuscripts, formatted perfectly to industry standards. Both have a composed pitch. Right now only one has a synopsis (soooo hard to write, but that’s another post), I need to do a good one for the other. Currently, I’m working on compiling a list of agents to query. And this. Takes. Time.

At one writer’s conference I attended, I heard an agent say she wouldn’t bother querying fewer than 30 agents at a time. I also heard one published author explain that he had blanket queried about 60 agents, but only heard back from about 26, out of which four were interested, and only one had a potential publisher in mind. See how this works? Putting together a list of potential agents is like the opposite of shopping for good produce at the farmer’s market: you are not eyeing multiple vendors of the same goods, sniffing and testing until you select that one, mouthwatering, perfect peach. Nope, this is a lot more like panning for gold: dump a ton of gravel in, swirl with care, and see if anything glitters as the silt slowly washes out…over…and over…and over…again.*

So I’m visiting dozens of literary agency websites, reading up on the individual agents in said agencies, checking out other books/authors they’ve represented, and then drafting query letters to each. Oh, and yesterday I went to bookstore and actually read a few chapters from some of the books represented by some of the agents I think are the most promising. This all very important – and it can be very exciting, like flipping through a great cookbook and seeing so many beautiful possibilities – but it’s also rather daunting; it’s easy to see these polished, professional finished products and second guess myself. But hey, how do I know they didn’t all feel the same way when they started this process?

I’ve started a page on this blog for documenting my progress. I intend to update it every weekend, so feel free to check in.  

*If there are any agents reading this post, please do not mistake me: you are ALL glittering gold nuggets—you just might not be mine. :-D