Why it's harder to get published and agented
Querying agents and publishers has always been a challenge. It's become harder in the last few years, and could be even tougher in 2020. One reason for the hurdle is the way publishers produce profits.
Mike Shatzkin is a publishing industry expert. He's written The Book Business, a title that's indispensable for authors who need to know the industry they want to crack. Shatzkin says that digital publishing has made it harder to land a publisher. A glut of books is the problem.
"The fact that nothing ever goes out of print is part of what contributes to the title glut," he says on his website, "and that has made launching new titles successfully so much more difficult."
Before ebooks, whenever a book stopped selling well enough to meet contract terms, the rights would go back to authors. The publisher had to find new titles to replace the revenue. Books were picked up off agents' client lists, or the authors sold directly to publishers.
Today, there are so many titles in a publisher's catalog ranging from 15 years ago, or more, that the lower-performing books still contribute to short term profits. It costs a publisher virtually nothing to keep an ebook book available for sale. Even printed books, printed on demand, make up the millions of books that never go out of print. Fewer deals with new authors get signed, because launching a title from a new author is such an expensive proposition.
Shatzkin does not have a solution to this problem for authors who are on the outside looking for a way to break in. Knowing the problem is out there, though, should give authors the right mindset to get a publisher. Agents and publishers operate commercial ventures. Making a book look like a profitable prospect, with queries written to match the current markets, is essential to finding a first publisher. For those authors working on getting a book contract, my blog The Write Stuff at the Writer's Workshop site has more.
Using "And,"
That's not a typo above, but the line does illustrate a mistake. Conjunctions like "and" and "but" often populate the starts of sentences. Either of those words can appear to begin a sentence. But they should not have a comma following them. Authors like to use the conjunction-plus-comma combination, thinking that it sounds more like a serious pause. It's not; it's an interruption of the mission of a conjunction: joining things. If you want to assign a stop right after a conjunction, consider an em dash. Better yet, skip the punctuation and let the joiner of things do its work.
Where first lines thrive
Memorable first lines might be everywhere, but starting your search could be easier. A literary journal called The First Line makes fun use of the significant opening line meme, inviting contributors to creating stories with the same first line per issue.
Booklife, the self-publishing guide published to attract the business and attention of first-time authors, has a roundup of first lines in each of its monthly issues. The Art of Racing in the Rain has one of my favorites, coming from the mouth of its golden retriever Enzo. "Gestures are all that I have, so they must be grand in nature."
Do comps better
Getting a publisher interested in your book depends on several crucial things. One of those essentials is comps. They're a lot like the comps you might know from a house hunt. You're asking the buyer to look at books that did well in the market, books that your own has a resemblance to. Comps for books differ in one significant way: you need a comp title in your query that's been published recently, like in the last five years. Just because Terms of Endearment crushed in the Eighties doesn't mean your cancer novel will do as well, even if you have the same elements.
When you're not going to publish with a company, comps still matter. You're asking a reader to decide if your book is a good fit, and comparing it is a natural tool. "For readers who enjoyed Buzz Bissinger's Father's Day, and Senior Year by Dan Shaughnessy," was how I described my baseball-fatherhood memoir Stealing Home while I was querying it.
On the way out
Jane Friedman, publishing guru extraordinaire, continues to hit the bullseye with each edition of The Hot Sheet. My subscription just renewed to her every-two-week publishing newsletter. Best $59 a year that I spend on the Workshop toolbox. She's got an article called "People Don’t Have to Read Your Book to Support It" that explains the differences between media coverage for a book: owned media (like your newsletter) paid media (ads or paid reviews) and earned media (media attention from blogs, magazines, and the like.)
Springtime writing contests, including those for complete books, are up at the Writer Unboxed website list. Contests can be a great idea for two reasons. They can earn your work good notices, plus they give you a reason to keep finishing your work. Entry fees from $0 to $27 on the list.
IngramSpark (the printed book producer that's got a bigger reach than KDP for POD) warned authors that some books will be culled out of the millions of titles Ingram prints. "We will remove print content from our catalog that does harm to buyers and affects the reputations of our publishers and retail and library partners." No more scanned books, but also they're pulling the "Books that mirror/mimic popular titles, including without limiting, similar covers, cover design, title, author names, or similar type content."
An alternative to Amazon is making friends and luring readers. Bookshop.com makes life more profitable for local bookstores while it sells books at the same price as Amazon. This month they've got a 10-book list of Novels for Surviving a Pandemic. I'd suggest that it could be an 11=book list with Viral Times, of course.
One pass is all I need for an edit, right?
The answer to the above is "Yes, if that's all you can afford." Any book with a single pro edit has an advantage over books that only get the "$100 plus a case of beer" edits. A better choice is two passes, with time in between to let the words cool and consider your editor's memo and the comments on the annotated Word file. Word lets you respond to your editor's notes after you make your revisions, just by adding a comment below theirs like "Did this!" or "Does this work?"
Get in touch with me if your book is ready for a first pass, or an ultimate one.
It's springtime in Austin, so the birthday bouncy house at Joshua's party could be outside in the backyard. Shoes that came off stayed off, of course.
Ron Seybold
512-657-3264
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