By Tim Waldron
One writer’s swim in the stormy seas of book publishing
Tim Waldron is a local author who is in the process of trying to find a publisher for his first novel. We asked him to write about the challenges writers face when trying to get their works into the world.
I don’t remember when I finished writing my novel. There’s nothing as definitive as a whistle or buzzer in the final second of a game. It’s not like crossing the finishing line at the end of a race.
You just kind of shrug and tell yourself it is done. To my best recollection, that happened at some late point in 2013, just after I finished grad school. I had a word count that seemed like a novel. The story, called A Sad Little Happiness, had a beginning, middle, and end; it felt done. It seemed to be the right time to think about getting the book into the world.
I have a short story collection published by Word Riot Press, called World Takes, and thought of Word Riot right away. It is a wonderful independent press that has been incredibly supportive of my work for a number of years. But in the time since my collection was published, in 2009, I have joined the press’s board of directors, and it didn’t feel it right to nominate my work over another writer’s. So I was still largely starting from scratch.
It wasn’t too long after that all important shrug that I googled something like “publishing a book” and from that, cobbled together a strategy that primarily consisted of trying to get a literary agent. The key to accomplishing this feat was writing a query, a one-page letter intended to introduce me and my work to an agent.
Writing a query letter is one of those tasks that seemed vaguely unimportant and not altogether difficult. I mean, the novel was complete; that was the hard part. I looked up query letters online. A number of sites offered samples of successful letters, along with other insights and wisdoms. Based on that cursory research, I wrote up a one page synopsis of my novel, included my bio and publication history, and sent out a dozen letters.
The first couple rejections came quickly: “Thanks, but no thanks” form letters. Some were a bit more personal and went the “It’s not you, it’s me” route by saying they didn’t have the skills to market my particular novel.
I looked to trade magazines like Poets and Writers and Publishers Weekly for more substantial advice. There is a great deal of useful information on the subject. It seems that enough writers have come to this crossroads to sustain a cottage industry of giving advice.
The more I read about query letters, the more this mundane task came to seem formidable. There could be entire graduate programs devoted to the pursuit of successfully crafting these one-page letters.
Most of the query letters I sent in that first batch were met with a powerful form of uninterest, and remain ignored to this day. I came to see the process of querying agents much like that of selling vacuums door to door. You are basically showing up to a stranger’s home, and asking them to buy something they already have. And I didn’t even know what to say when they came to the door.
I took a break from submitting. I had lost confidence in my letter, and the odds seemed bleak. Occasionally, during this hiatus, I’d go back and tinker with the letter and make it a bit more personal, cut down on the summary, and try to find some hook, something that would make a person sitting in room full of vacuums take notice of what I was selling and want it for their own.
As luck would have it, I was invited to the Literary Writers Conference at The New School, held in New York in November. The two-day event was for writers who had just finished a novel and were looking for an agent.
We were to gather for panels, lectures, author interviews, and workshops devoted to critiquing query letters and first pages of manuscripts. At the conclusion of the conference, after absorbing all the publishing knowledge to be had, each writer would get to meet, one on one, with agents for an eight-minute pitch. It was billed as literary agent speed dating. It sounded exciting in the kind of way that makes one nauseated.
So I went to up to New York, staying overnight in the city. Trade conferences can be boring, but they are an excellent way to glean a great deal of information from the experience of others. Sometimes, the advice can feel somewhat obvious, in that way where you immediately agree with someone else’s idea, rather than you have had to come with the same conclusion on your own.
So, a conference can be helpful in that sense, saving time and alleviating the frustration of reinventing the wheel on your own. Not to mention the comfort of being in a room full of people in a similar situation to you. Writing is a solitary business; it is easy to forget that there are other like-minded souls out there.
The major downside is that all the people in attendance are looking to be told that they are special, that their work stands above everyone else’s. What they have written is perfect and needs no work and here is your agent, now go get that book deal! In that regard, it could only be disappointing.
The guest speakers were there to give feedback and criticism. So their default response to the attendees’ work was to focus on what went wrong with a letter or novel, rather than talk about what was working. This meant that people got upset. There were tears, there was excessive sweating, and occasionally, someone stormed out.
There is a version of the experience that would be good fodder for lovers of schadenfreude, but I have decide to dedicate this space to what I saw as the more helpful and hopeful takeaways.
The overall, no-bull, median advice given by agents at the conference was to be brief and interesting. Agents review hundreds of query letters a day, and rarely have time to give each letter more than a few minutes (if that) of their time.
Most of them already have clients, and there are many other aspects to their job besides finding new writers to represent. Writers seeking representation should know other clients an agent represents. A query letter should note novels similar to one’s own, preferably ones that the agent published within the last six months.
Agents refer to these types of books as comps. They are books that give the agent an idea of what type of novel you are trying to sell and how that book does in the market place. It also saves the querying writer a lot of ink. Rather than explain and summarize your 80,000-word novel, you can simply say it is like this novel from this writer that you (the agent) represents.
If you say your book is like the Harry Potter series, and the agent only represents writers of historical fiction, the conversation ends there. The most repeated advice I heard at the conference was to proofread my query letter to death, and have others read it for mistakes. There are a hundred more query letters to be read after mine — so I don’t want to give the agent any reason to pass.
The most helpful advice I got was simply to use the query to introduce myself, let the agent hear my ‘voice.’ In that sense, a query letter is like an audition where writers put their style and skills on display. It doesn’t hurt to name drop — let the agent know my famous author friends and how much those authors love my work. In a similar vein, it’s useful for a writer to list credits he or she may have that would impress the agent being queried.
Finally, I learned that it helps to live in New York City; go to parties with agents and literary types. The last part may not have been verbalized, but seemed implied by most panels, lectures, and side conversations.
* * *
“Ideally, you should be able to summarize your novel in one sentence.”
This lapidary statement came from an agent on a panel midway through the conference. The well-intentioned advice caused an audible gasp from the attendees. With all the hours of effort, thousands of words written and rewritten, how could it all be boiled down to one sentence?
A woman sitting next to me, who had been published by a big house and was looking for new representation, asserted that lauded turn-of-last-century novelist Henry James couldn’t get published today. The agent calmly agreed.
It sounded like the flip advice of a bitter person. However, the sentiment was echoed by dozens of other agents, a countless number of times. It initially struck me as grim news, and a task I could in no way accomplish. However, as it sunk in I started to appreciate the blunt honesty of the advice. These agents were telling us how to get their attention, which was the entire point of the conference.
I had a day-and-half-crash course in agent kung fu under my belt when the speed-dating pitch session started. I reviewed my query letter: just a day ago so crisp and pristine, it was now littered with notes, lines through whole sections, and arrows directing me from the end of one sentence to the middle of another. The back side of the page was filled with many handwritten attempts to land the all-important one sentence summary.
It looked like the work of an insane person. I sat down with the first agent, hoping to channel Don Draper’s succinct Kodak pitch from Mad Men. Instead, I experienced what seemed to be uncontrollable logorrhea.
It was only after completely losing track of what I was saying that I paused. I expected nothing more than an averted gaze and laconic response from the agent sitting opposite of me. To my surprise, she was able to follow my meandering pitch. She asked me questions, which meant she had understood me, and I happily answered.
There was another pause, and then she said that my novel was of interest to her, and that she would like to see the first 50 pages (the holy grail of query letter responses). I moved on to my next agent date, a little cockier with an agent’s business card in my hand, and delivered what had now become a successful pitch. It was again met with enthusiasm and interest. By the third meeting, I felt as if I may have just become the greatest vacuum cleaner salesman alive.
In the weeks since the conference, I have been in touch with the agents who expressed interest in A Sad Little Happiness. One asked for an exclusivity deal, which I agreed to, but then passed on the novel. I’ve sent the first pages to the other two agents, but have not heard anything final from either one. Both were nice enough to acknowledge receipt and ask some polite follow up questions.
The book is also under review at a few small press houses. From my experience, the review process for a small house can take anywhere from three months to a year.
The point isn’t that these meetings went well. The book is still unsold, after all. The point is, going to the conference, researching query letters, grad school, writing and rewriting the novel were all parts of the process. Each task on its own didn’t amount to much, but taken together they left me prepared, albeit unwittingly. Whether you are a vacuum cleaner salesman or a novelist or whatever, the door swings open for only a moment. Do you know what you will say before it closes?
Ewing native Tim Waldron lives in Lawrence with his wife Corey and their dog. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Literary Review, The McNeese Review, The Serving House Book of Infidelity, Necessary Fiction, Sententia, What’s Your Exit? A Literary Detour Through New Jersey, The Atticus Review, and The Word Riot Reader. He received an MFA from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where he was the winner of the 2012 Senior Graduate Assistantship, and was named the Assistant Editor of The Literary Review from 2012-2013. He is an editor with Best New Writing and an adjunct English instructor.
