Agents

in

Since I'm writing about traditional publishing paths (and not doing my layout--bad! bad!), I thought I would touch on the subject of agents. I have had three, and obviously, I have not been published, so you might expect me to be all angry and bitter about them. And there have been ups and downs--my brother once offered to beat up one of them for me, which is certainly the first time he's ever done that. But honestly, I really appreciate the agents I've worked with--they gave me a tremendous amount of support and intelligent feedback, they gave me copious quantities of their time and expertise, and they genuinely shaped my nonfiction project.

And none them ever saw a dime for it. I can point you to Writer Beware's section on agents and to Absolute Write's Bewares, Recommendations, and Background Checks thread, and I can tell you to check agents out on Preditors & Editors, but the basic rule of thumb in sorting reputable agents from the other kind is: They don't get paid until you get paid. Up-front fees = SCAM!! SCAM!! SCAM!!

Real agents take a percentage (usually 10-15%) of the money a publisher pays the writer. So, do a little math there, and you'll see that an agent is not going to be interested in a small-press book. A small press might pay a $2,000 advance--that's $200 for an agent taking a 10% fee. A large, commercial house, in contrast, will be paying more like $20,000. That's $2,000 for the same amount of work. Large houses won't consider a writer who doesn't have an agent; small presses avoid dealing with agents like the plague because they're just not on the same page, budget-wise.

So, you notice how those three agents gave me their blood, sweat, and tears, and made a whopping $0 for their trouble? That's the problem with new writers--they are less likely to sell. So if you are a new writer looking for an agent, you need to be prepared to deal with a LOT of rejection (and to spend a hell of a lot on postage sending out either finished manuscripts if it's fiction, or detailed proposals with sample chapters if it's non-fiction).

Many agents simply won't represent new writers--which is fine if they're willing to admit that up front. When I first started looking for an agent, I found lists of agents that allegedly were willing to represent new writers. I would send them my manuscript Priority Mail, with a stamped, self-addressed, Priority Mail return envelope. Priority Mail takes two to three days to go one way. Many times, the manuscript would be back to me with a rejection notice five days after I mailed it.

Now, I know agents all say that they carefully review everything they get, but who are they kidding? I used to screen stories: I'm a fast reader, but there's no way in hell you're getting through that many manuscripts that fast if you're actually reading them. Why waste my time and money? Just say you don't represent new writers and save yourself a truckload of mail every day.

So I was already pretty annoyed when I went to a convention for science-fiction writers, sat in on a panel about finding an agent, and listened to a narcissist tell a room full of writers that we should all pay to send her our stuff for the 0.05% chance she might represent it. That really irritated me, and later in the conference I mentioned that to one of the other panelists. She said, Yeah, what you need to do is to check out Locus, which is basically the Publisher's Weekly of fantasy/sci-fi, and look at the new book deals. If you see an agent who has represented a new writer, that's who you contact.

And that's what I did. It worked great--it got me in contact with that honest agent, who was also an extremely prestigious guy. Obviously, he didn't feel my sci-fi novel was commercial enough (and once he gave me the key to the code, I realized that that was what the other agents who actually read it were saying as well), but he suggested that I try to cook up a non-fiction book.

So I did. And he liked it! He really liked it! He REALLY, REALLY, REALLY liked it!! Except at this point I was noticing something a little worrying about the guy. He was really, REALLY UP!!! one week, and really, REALLY DOWN!!! the next. I honestly don't know if he was a tad bipolar, or if he was just struggling between feeling enthusiasm and going, Oh, fuck, a new writer! but I've tried dating guys like this, so I knew where it was going to go. And sure enough, one day his random mood generator swung very low indeed, and he told me he couldn't represent me.

But he'd coaxed this awesome book idea out of me and helped me develop this awesome proposal for it, so I was really thankful for that, and I felt well-prepared to go find another agent. The only problem was, I wasn't looking for someone to represent a sci-fi novel any more, so Locus wasn't going to help. I poked around and poked around, and I finally found Agent Query, which in my experience is the most up-to-date listing of agents. If AQ says that an agent takes new writers and represents X kind of literature, that's usually in fact the case--not always, but often enough that I didn't feel like I was flushing money down the toilet every time I did a mailing.

And I found another agent! And she was awesome! She was an editing whiz (agents in general have great ideas on how to market books, while writers tend to focus very narrowly on the book itself). By the time she was done with it, that proposal was beyond awesome--it was staggeringly good. Unfortunately, she'd been having family emergencies all along, and she decided to retire. But, being awesome, she passed the proposal along to another agent--this guy was so far up into the stratosphere that I never would have made it onto his desk without her help. And he LOVED it!! And he submitted it to publishers with great enthusiasm!

And it didn't get published. Yeah, there's not a nice, neat happy ending here that you can tie up with a bow. The thing is, getting an agent is like buying a lottery ticket, if buying lottery tickets were really, really hard--if you had to pass a test or something, you couldn't just walk into 7-11 and pay a dollar to get one. Once you have the ticket, there's no guarantee that you'll win.

But frankly, I wouldn't have the confidence to do what I'm doing now if it weren't for these agents--there's nothing like being told you are good by people who work at the very top of the industry to encourage you. At least one of my books-to-be would not exist in the first place if it weren't for these agents. And while I know that "It's about the journey, not the destination" is a cliche, developing yourself as a writer is indeed a quest. Rewards like publication (assuming that even qualifies as a reward) aren't really the point.

This is a public-service announcement

in

I just want to post a link to Writer Beware's page on print-on-demand services. In general, if you are hoping to get published, you should acquaint yourself with Writer Beware and the Absolute Write Water Cooler forum, because there are a LOT of scams out there. (The worst was when I had to explain to some lady that the writing "award" her daughter won was actually a pretty common scam. That was just awful, even though they wisely hadn't paid the scammers any money, because she was so proud of her daughter.*) I mean, yes, I am self-publishing and producing a print-on-demand book, but you'll notice that it's been quite a bit of work. I'm also (and this is key) not expecting to make any money off it. Seriously. I mean, it'll be nice if I do, but I'm not in any sense betting the farm on it. I also don't mind if I alienate traditional publishing houses by producing a POD book--I'm pretty much fed up with that world, and I'm in a position now where I don't have to care.

But while I don't have to make money on my books, I also don't want to lose a lot of money, and I really don't want to get ripped off. So I have done my homework regarding things like rights, and of course a major part of the appeal of Amazon for me is the fact that it includes a distribution channel. I also am willing and (more or less) able to do things like the layout, which has brought my costs down to the price of Adobe Acrobat (and I know there are cheaper PDF converters and editors out there, I'm just not technically adept enough to figure them out). The main costs for me have been 1. my totally optional Web site, and 2. my time.

Another, not-insignificant reason for me to do it myself is because there are a host of people out there looking to take advantage of would-be writers. I've seen enough to not trust the people who say, Hey, gimme a big wad o' cash, and I'll turn YOUR book into a STAR! The pitch may be, I pay you, and you'll do the art. But will it be good art? Or are you relying on me being a rube who doesn't know the first thing about how a book ought to look? Let's just say that I've seen enough crappy expensive professional layouts that I feel OK if mine is crappy but free. (Of course it's worth it to pay for what you know will be good quality--I was more than willing to pay 11th Hour to do my cover art, but alas the talented artists tend to be really busy.)

As much as the scams/bad values are an issue with art, they're an even bigger issue with editorial. Editorial services are basically a rip off--even if the person improves your writing greatly, they cannot possibly guarantee publication, and given the rates they charge.... I mean, for Christ's sake, my super-duper, fanciest-of-the-fancy-pants, his-client-list-would-BLIND-you agent couldn't get my nonfiction book published. Someone who advertises in the back pages of Would-Be Writer's Monthly isn't going to do you any better.

I think it's totally worth it to work on your writing and become a better writer, and that's pretty hard to do if you're not on staff at a publication and constantly getting feedback from editors. But it is possible to do, and to do much more cheaply, by joining writer's groups, submitting your materials to workshops, taking writing classes, learning grammar, and even just reading and watching stories critically, with an eye to their structure and figuring out what works and what doesn't. And, you know, don't be an idiot--check out people's qualifications. If you're being asked to shell out for a workshop, find out who the hell is going to be looking your stuff over, and why the hell you should listen to them--don't just cough up hundreds or even thousands of dollars for editing services by Promises-Promises, Ltd.

*ETA: You know, what's really evil about this kind of thing is that, for all anyone knows, that lady's daughter is indeed a great writer, or could become one. If they aren't working in the industry and aren't surrounded by people who are very frank and know what they're talking about, writers don't get a lot of meaningful feedback or affirmation. So to receive this kind of affirmation, but then to discover that it is a fraud--well, it was pretty brutal for the mother (I knew it was going to be, but I felt like I had to tell her, because the alternative was to have people ripping her off every time she turned around). I'm sure if she passed the news along to her daughter, it was pretty damaging to her confidence as well. It was just an evil thing to do to them.

Whew

in

I totally almost gave myself a heart attack. Earlier I'd looked up the maximum page counts with Amazon's print-on-demand program, and the number 480 had stuck in my head. So, I'm laying out this book, and I've got a few chapters to go, and I'm up above 460 pages...yoikes....

But then I looked it up again, and it's a maximum of 480 for a color book. For black-and-white text, the maximum is 828 pages, and I'm well below that.

The hidden perils of DIY publishing

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In most offices, cats are not allowed. That means that, when people are trying to print out layouts for later proofreading, they do not have to deal with a furry feline who has just decided that it is her mission in life to KILL ALL PAPER. DIE, PAPER, DIE!

Anyway, I was stupidly trying to multitask by printing laid-out chapters while at the same time laying out more chapters. This was a bad idea even after I shut the cat out, and further evidence that successful multitasking is a myth. (No, I don't care that I'm a woman--we can't do it either. And F everyone's I, I worked with teenagers a couple of years ago, and they don't multitask for shit, either--a kid staring at a small electronic device in his or her hand is not paying attention to you.) So I only got to chapter 12--I may push on and do another, or I may not.

Oh, my eyes

in

I have finished laying out chapter 10--there are 19 chapters all told, so I'm a little more than halfway through. Oy. There's a reason they have to pay people to do this; my eyes are feeling decidedly crossed.

Oh, and more evidence that I can't spell: I realized the other day that I spelled lightning "lightening" here, and then I realized today that I spelled it that way in Trang--yoikes, how embarrassing. I've uploaded corrected versions already. That's just aggravating--not only do the two words sound the same, but "lightening" will pass a spell checker with no problem ("Lightening his work load should be our first priority!").

Ghost rules

in

Everyone (well, everyone I know--my social circles are admittedly very heavy skewed to the language geeks) is loving this article in Slate about how you shouldn't use two spaces after a period. (I will to add to that article an economic argument, which I would bet is the actual reason typographers adopted the one-space rule: Using two spaces after a period means you use more paper, and paper ain't free.)

What really strikes home in this article (and REALLY bothers the author) is how sure people are that there is a two-space rule when there is none:

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the 'correct' number of spaces between sentences.... Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space—but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space 'rule.'

This avid belief in rules that do not, in fact, exist is common (and I would argue more harmful) in grammar as well. Grammar education in this country is horrible: When I was attending my (crappy) secondary schools, most years the English teacher would one day say, "OK, we're going to start the unit on grammar!" And the kids would say, "GRAMMAR!?!?! Oh, NO!!!" and the teacher would say, "You don't want to learn grammar? OK, we'll skip that unit." (Imagine how much fun it was to be an English major at Harvard University and then to break into the field of publishing on that kind of sound educational footing!)

Anyway, given this attention to grammar in our public schools, if you ask the average American to name a rule of grammar, they will likely respond with one of two rules, neither of which actually exist.

Ghost Rule #1: Don't split an infinitive. Um, why not? "To boldly go where no man has gone before" sounds a lot better than "To go boldly where no man has gone before" or "Boldly to go where no man has gone before," and it doesn't affect the meaning one bit.

Grammar rules, believe it or not, tend to make logical sense and clarify meaning: You don't say "John and me went to the store" because you wouldn't say "John went to the store, and me went to the store," and you say "I ate only one slice of pizza" because that's all you ate, and "I only ate one slice of pizza" implies that your interrogator is wondering if you, I don't know, had sex with your food first or something. If a grammar "rule" doesn't makes sense or help with meaning, then it's not actually a rule--it may be a preference, but it's more likely a ghost.

Ghost Rule #2: Don't end a sentence with a preposition. Again, there's no real reason not to if it makes your sentence clearer and more concise. It can be more casual, although the fixes aren't necessarily more formal. Which leads me to an inappropriate joke (told to me by my late father, the source of roughly 90% of the inappropriate jokes I know):

A fellow is touring the Princeton campus when he stops an undergraduate. "Hey, where's the library at?" he asks.

The undergraduate pulls himself up stiffly. "Sir," he replies, with great disdain, "here at Princeton University we do not end our sentences with a preposition!"

The man nods. "OK," he says. "Where's the library at, asshole?" 

To take that fix more seriously, the real problem with "Where's the library at?" is conciseness--that extra "at" at the end is unnecessary. But that's not always the case, and pretzeling a sentence around to avoid violating this "rule" can result in horribly awkward prose that was best mocked by Winston Churchill in his famous comment, "This is the sort of English up with which I will not put."

That link will take you to a whole slew of ghost rules for grammar if you want more. What really bothers me about ghost rules is the underlying assumption that grammar is arcane and arbitrary, a collection of mysterious, upper-class, Victorian-era, etiquette-type rules that ordinary people can't possibly understand and won't have much use for. The truth is: Grammar makes sense. It tracks logically, it helps you say what you mean, and because it is so logical, it's easy to understand. It's worth learning because it helps you to communicate to others--and that's well worth doing.

Oh, right

in

It occurred to me that instead of simply telling you that I know all about loose lines, stacks, and widows, I might actually try to (gasp!) serve the reader, specifically the self-publishing writer thinking of doing their own layout, and let people know what these things are.

This is going to be a little weird, because LiveJournal doesn't exactly support reams of formatting options (or maybe it does--I haven't figured them out, though). But bear in mind that typically in a book the text is justified--it all lines up on both the right and the left, unlike here, where they only line up on the left, and LJ disregards all my attempts to get them to line up on the right.

Justification causes problems because sometimes you've got too many words in a line, and sometime you don't have enough. A loose line is caused when there aren't quite enough words in a line so it looks all spread-out and weird. (Oh, I tried making that line loose, but LJ is ignoring me and my extra spaces.) Alternately,youmighthavetoomanywordsinaline,andtheygetallsmushedtogether. Logically enough, that's called a tight line.

A stack happens when you have three or more (two is OK, don't ask me why) lines that end in the same word or, more commonly, in a hyphen. A paragraph with a stack in it looks like this:

He enjoys hik-
ing, bike rid-
ing, and canoe-
ing.

Note that I got stacks on both sides of that paragraph! Bonus hideousness! Tight and loose lines are hard to read; stacks are just ugly and distracting.

The example paragraph above is also bad because it has a widow. A widow is when you have a line that's just a little word fragment, like that "ing" all by itself up there.

Wanna start a fight among book designers? Ask if a small word--not a fragment--counts as a widow, and then stand back and watch the fists fly.

It doesn't affect
readability, but
many designers
think this looks
ugly.

Others think it's not worth the trouble to have to fix every last one of those.

Another thing I didn't mention before are bad breaks. That means that a hyphen has been place in a word in a way that is, well, bad.

It could be bad because it's incorrect (the dictionary is your friend here):

He enjoys bi-
king.

Or it could be bad because there's already a hyphen in the word, and now you have two:

Those worries are not well-found-
ed.

Or it could be bad because the page ends on a word break, and the reader has to turn the page to get to the next syllable.

As much as you can, you want to break compound words where the two words attach: train-spotting instead of trainspot-ting. Also, you typically don't want to break a small word--for example, video--even if it's two syllables, because the resulting fragments are really tiny.

There are lots of ways to fix layout problems. Obviously if it doesn't matter to you, you could always edit the text itself. Designers aren't allowed to do that, and of course altering text to fit space hardly ever results in the best prose choices. Instead they have to noodle with the lines themselves, bringing down a word (usually there's some kind of soft return/text wrap break option in the software) or breaking words with a hyphen to bring a syllable down or up (watch for stacks!). There's also something called kerning, when the software will squish together or spread apart the letters themselves, but you have to be very judicious in your use of kerning, because otherwise it looks like you suddenly changed fonts in the middle of your story.

By the by, if all of this sounds really focused on small details, it is. Cover art and chapter headings can be beautiful, but a good book layout is supposed to make reading easier, so you really only notice if it's not there.

OK

in

I laid out a couple of the chapters--I think they look OK. I'm not making any great claims for my eye, of course, but I've worked with designers enough to know that stacks, loose lines, and widows are bad, and to have some vague clue as to how one goes about fixing them. I think I've figured out enough about Acrobat to get everything into the PDF format OK.

I got surprised when I did some high-quality printouts of the covers on high-res paper (using up another thing of toner in the process). I figured I would spot errors (and I did), but mainly I realized that 1. the things you can't read very easily in a crappy printout can't be read in a good printout either, and 2. my name, which is totally legible on the electronic version of the front cover, is completely illegible in a printout! It's not just that it doesn't stand out--you can't read it at all. So I went with light-blue letters. Now I can't decide if that's too Easter-eggish (and let me tell you, my freebie photo editing software tends a LOT toward the Easter-egg end of the spectrum), but I did try gray and white before, and they have legibility problems as well. (OK, I just went back and found an icier blue.)

Ah ha!

in

I received the Acrobat disk today, and it still didn't work. So I called them, and luck was suddenly on my side because I got The Lone Magical Dude Who Actually Knows What's Going On. He was rather peculiar, of course, but he sure fixed the problem.

The thing is, this is all sort of deja-vu for me, because I have memories of people in the art department having similar problems and fixing them in a similar way. I don't remember enough for it to actually be helpful, I just remember enough to go, "Oh, RIGHT!" when the solution is offered.

Trang is up on B&N!

in

Trang finally went up--you can see it here. It's got the first draft of the cover art--I've uploaded the new art and (sigh) republished, so we'll see how long that takes. It also isn't showing up in the search results, which is annoying, but hopefully that will change. (ETA: It shows up now, yay.)

Hee--if you search my name in Amazon, a big chunk of the books you get are related somehow to genealogy. See, I didn't lie!

Another version of that cover

in

Since I'm stuck waiting for Acrobat to arrive (I am patient, I am calm. I am patient, I am calm. I am GOD DAMN IT!! WHERE IS THAT THING!!! AND WHY HASN'T BARNES & NOBLE PUT TRANG UP YET!?! IT'S BEEN THREE DAYS!!!! patient, I am calm), I figured I'd start trying to figure out how to make the cover suitable for a paperback book. The proportions are quite different, so now it doesn't look quite so much like a textbook, and because the cover is narrower, I had to do two lines for the slightly misleading series teaser. I also had to scoot everything away from the edges, because you just don't know what's going to happen there--it's chaos on those edges, people!

I'm trying to update the cover on Amazon without republishing, so we'll see how that works.

ETA: Apparently not well at all! I put in a plug for marysisson.com while I was at it.

Maybe it's the Revenge of the Tech Department

in

Ai-yi-yi. I bought Acrobat and paid $20 to be sent a backup disc, because I didn't want to lose the software if my computer crashed. And I'm hoping that investment will pay back in spades, because I cannot get the downloaded version to work (it says it is missing files). I called tech support, who transferred me to customer service, and the two people in the two different departments are telling me two totally different things, with each suggesting that the other is an idiot.

Hopefully I can get it to work off the disk when it comes. It's annoying because I was really hoping to have Trang at least partially laid out by now.

I'm not exactly working to my strengths here....

in

All right, I've put a new cover up--I get the feeling I'm not doing it right, because I'm telling Amazon to "publish" again every time I change the cover art, and I think I could just upload the cover art and be done with it. But I'm not sure, so I've probably cost them an additional fraction of a cent with all this. Sorry, guys.

Anyway, the concept here is lightning, because (spoiler alert!) poor Trang gets blasted at one point, plus lightning is fun and dangerous! But I felt like that on the original cover, you couldn't really see the lightning, so it was just a plain black cover with yellow lettering. What with the choice of font and the yellow color, the lettering reminded me of a Hardy Boys book from the 1970s, plus the thing was boring and far too sparse.

So I used some bigger lightning, I changed the fonts, and I made the title and my name different colors. I put a banner across the top, too--marketing always amuses me, because the goal with journalism and educational/reference publishing is to be precisely accurate, with as little room for misinterpretation as possible. Marketing's a whole 'nuther story, so I put "#1 in the exciting Trang series!" up on the banner so that people will see that "#1" and go, Gee, this book must be number one in something! It's silly, but rest assured that Trust's banner will say "The second book," not "#2"!

Anyway, now the cover looks kind of like a textbook, although maybe that's just the dimensions of the thing.

ETA: It's up on Amazon now. It still looks like a textbook to me, but at least you can read the title in that tiny 1" x 1" format you see when you put in a search. That's kind of an issue, I think--there are a lot of very beautiful covers that are just illegible when they're shrunk down so much.

Business models, or the McQuestion question (I'm sure that joke never gets old for her)

in

I mentioned earlier that Karen McQuestion has sold 36,000 copies of her books in 11 months as Amazon e-books. That raises some interesting questions about the future of book publishing, so I wanted to look at it a little closer. (Yes, once a business reporter, always a business reporter--get used to it. In fact, delving into this strange little world is probably going to be a significant sideline to this blog.)

Selling 36,000 copies of a book is not bad in traditional publishing--but it's not great, either. McQuestion would definitely be considered a midlist writer, not a bestselling author, but she would probably get a contract for a second book.

Assuming, that is, that those 36,000 copies sold were all of her first book. But that's not the case: She has six books up on Amazon. Selling 6,000 copies or 10,000 copies of a particular title--that's just not enough if you're at a commercial house, and you won't get another contract. You're off to the small presses.

But...McQuestion sold those books on Amazon, as e-books. Now, Amazon didn't start its 70% royalty program until last June, but let's pretend that for the sake of simplicity that over the past year McQuestion sold 36,000 copies of her books at $3 a copy. We'll round that royalty, too, and say that she got $2 for every book sold, and Amazon got $1.

In that scenario, in a year, Amazon makes $36,000 (minus production costs, which are reportedly quite low, plus whatever they make selling Kindles, which is the real reason they're publishing e-books in the first place). McQuestion makes $72,000! For a writer, $72,000 in a year is pretty darned good--most writers make far less (impressionable youngsters reading this should know that they'll make their parents much happier if they go to law school). Plus she got a movie deal out of it, so there's more money there.

In other words, McQuestion's sales are of zero interest to a large, commercial publishing house. But because of the way Amazon is set up, she's still doing fine!

Le puff, le pant, le puff, le pant....

in

So, I have formatted Trang so that it complies with the Nook quirks instead of the Kindle quirks, and it should be up for sale in 24-72 hours. Also the Nook site made me feel all weird about not having cover art, so I mocked up a simple little cover. It looks very much like an amateur cobbled it together on the free photo-editing software that came with her computer, but I guess it's better than nothing. (You know, I think what it's missing is more text. I'm going to put a series teaser on there....)

Ya learn something new every day

in

One of my friends was like, Hey, I have a Nook--why are you excluding me? And I was like, Hmmm, when I looked on the Barnes & Noble Web site, they didn't seem to support self-publishing. But I looked again, and yes, if you go past their main page and to their Nook store, they have a very similar program to Amazon. So, Nookites (Nookies? Nookers?), never fear, I shall e-publish there as well. Tomorrow.

Why I ask you to review my books

in

If you've bought one of my books, then thank you very much, you've done PLENTY. But if you liked it and want to go the extra mile, pleasepleaseplease post a review on the site where you bought it.

Why? Well, one advantage of self-publishing on sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble is that they are actually quite good at marketing titles to people, and I of course have no marketing department. Let's say that you (like me) are a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga. (How big a fan am I? I spelled all that right on the first try! And I can't spell!) And let's say you've bought her books on Amazon, and then you leave a favorable review for Trang there. The next time someone goes to buy a Vorkosigan book, Amazon will recommend to them that they take a look at Trang as well.

How effective is that? It can work pretty darned well! According to this article in The Wall Street Journal (which you probably need a subscription to access, argh), Karen McQuestion, who has never been published by a traditional house, has sold 36,000 copies of her books in less than a year this way!