In these days of viral marketing, self-marketing, and the seemingly 24-hour-a-day job of publicizing yourself, it’s gotten pretty confusing about what a writer’s responsibilities for marketing are. Many writers I’ve spoken to say that their publishers give them some publicity, but to have any success, they have to take their act on the road and market themselves aggressively. It’s gotten me thinking about some of the conventions of self-marketing and how relevant they are to writers.

Business cards Do you have a business card, and if so, how do you use it? I recently had business cards made up, but for the purpose of marketing this blog, not for promoting myself as a writer. If I had a book completed, though, I might consider having the book’s information on a card. Business cards are still useful for people who do a lot of in-person networking, such as going to AWP’s conference, for example, or other conferences. Do you use business cards to promote your writing?

The One-line bio The value of having a ready-to-go one-line bio continues to be very important for writers. Whenever you get something published in a print or online journal, you’re expected to produce a quick bioblurb so that readers know who you are, what you’ve previously written, and where they can learn more about your work. It’s important to have one of these handy, especially because things like Twitter profiles still use them heavily.

The elevator pitch The other old marketing tool that never seems to get old is having a ready elevator pitch. It’s useful to have a ready way to tell agents and editors what your novel or story is about and why it’s a unique project, or why you have special insight into a topic. Many writers shy away from this pitch, though, because it seems appallingly commercial to have to think about their work in terms of selling it. Just remember that the first line of your novel is about pulling readers in and grabbing their attention — and so is an elevator pitch.

What classic (or modern) self-marketing tools do you use to promote your work? What do you think we could use less of in the writing world, or more of? Should writers promote themselves, or does it conflict with their art?

That connects to something I see all the time when talking with writing students or just wandering around the web. Many writers out there know that they need to have a strong platform and make a career out of their passion. They focus on those elements of career-building that they’ve heard about: starting a blog, posting on Twitter, designing book covers, commenting on others’ blogs, pitching literary magazines and agents. In all that flurry of career-building, they often neglect the one thing that’s the most important: the writing.

Writing is that one aspect of the writing life that can’t really be rushed. To complete a novel, a story, or a collection of stories, you’re going to have to put in hours, days, weeks, and months. You’re going to have to put it aside for a week and not think about it. You’re going to go through months of hating everything about it. You’re going to have to write, re-write, re-write again, and then tear everything up and start over. But if you get impatient and start sending out half-finished work, you won’t find the success you won’t. No matter how long it takes (within reason), no one wants to see your work before it’s done. They only want the best of what you can produce, and finding that best will take time.

So the next time you attend a “get published” panel, you might get excited about sending your manuscript out. But ask yourself if that manuscript is really ready to go live. If it’s not ready, then save the postage and get back to work.

Dealing with Agents and Publishers

Literary Agents

The role of the literary agent is to act as an intermediary between authors and publishers. They help authors ‘place’ their books with the relevant publisher. If the book is good (and precisely what constitutes “good” is sadly hard to say), then this is not difficult; any publisher will snap it up. However, it is much harder to place good books with good publishers. For this you need a good literary agent.

Many publishers will not deal with authors directly, partly because of the extra work involved, partly because of the poor quality of submissions they tend to receive this way. Literary agents act as a filter. They identify good and or saleable work, assist the author in any necessary improvements (although you should be suspicious of agents who charge fees for such services – any worthwhile agent who thinks you are a worthwhile proposition will be motivated by their 10-15% of the royalties).

A good literary agent needs:

• To be well-known within the publishing industry; i.e. to have contacts
• And to be knowledgeable about the industry, i.e. to know about contracts, rights, negotiation, publishing law and so forth.

Once you secure your book deal, the publishers will draw up a contract. This is negotiable, and will include at least some clauses that are there simply to see how far the publishers can push their luck. Like any business, even the most reputable of publishers are out to make money and will try to exploit you as much as they can.

If the negotiations are not conducted to your advantage you could well end up with a published book and very little money to show for it. This would not be good; partly because you would lose out on the financial fruits of your hard labours, and partly because it will encourage publishers to expect you to be a pushover in the future.

A good agent will be well versed in literary law (which we will be looking at at a later date). They will know when the publisher is trying to ‘pull a fast one.’ Because they will earn between ten and fifteen percent of the royalties, they will ensure that you get the best deal going.

If you want to make writing your career, it will be a good idea to have a second book in the pipeline. Even if it is not written, the publishers may well try to secure the rights to this. With the help of a good agent, you can secure a good ongoing contract arrangement. This will entail reasonable advances (we’ll be looking at publishers’ advances later) and proper support. For example, while you are writing the sequel, the agent will deal with the publishers.

Like a good employment agency, they will save you from having to attend to all the peripheral details that surround the main job, in this case, writing. Of course, just as there are employment agencies that seem to do very little for the people on their books, some agents are less helpful. But a GOOD agent will do more than simply find you a publisher. They will help you to organise your career, based on their expertise and knowledge of the industry. They will advise you what to do and when, schedule your workload; arrange interviews, book launches, book-signings, and other promotional activities. They will also build a career strategy that will help you to build up a readership, a fan-base, and this in turn will help you get a better deal for your writing.

Things You Should Bear in Mind

1. Make sure that the agent is used to handling your kind of writing; that they have the right experience and the right contacts. While looking for an agent, you should have been guided by the kind of writer they represent; equally, they are unlikely to agree to represent you unless they think they can sell your work. But make sure about this before signing anything.
2. When you do sign a contract with an agent (and you will do, this being separate from any contract with the publisher) DO NOT sign if it locks you into a relationship that lasts more than three months. If it is not provided, negotiate a clause that gives you the right to leave the agency after ‘reasonable notice.’ i.e. thirty days. When you are negotiating with the agent, you will be on your own, unless you choose to (and can afford to) secure the services of a solicitor who deals in this line of work. This would be expensive, but could be worthwhile if you can afford it.
3. Make sure that you know what will happen to your work if your current agent leaves the industry, retires, dies, suffers from long term sickness or is otherwise unavailable to represent you. There may be a clause stating that you will automatically be moved to whichever agent takes over the business, or that side of the business. If you want to have a say in what happens in this eventuality, make sure it is written into the agreement.
4. Try to develop a good working relationship with your agent. The best agents are work colleagues if not friends. They will be on your side (even if it is in pursuit of their own interests). The publishers are on their own side. If you feel that the agreement is not working for you, however, then be ready to look for another agent elsewhere.

Dealing with Publishers

We will be looking at how the publishing industry works in more detail next week, but it will help you deal with publishers if you understand something of the process of publishing.

As we have already seen, the best way to secure a book deal is through the representation of an agent. If you send a submission straight to the publisher without previously contacting them it is an ‘unsolicited submission.’ This will end up on the dreaded ‘slush pile.’ Here it will eventually be read by a low paid publisher’s reader (usually a recent graduate on the first rungs of a career in publishing, and with very little clout within the organisation).

Should your manuscript be identified as being of ‘sufficient quality’ OR ‘revenue potential’ (i.e. either GOOD, or SALEABLE), then the reader will refer it on to the acquisitions editor. If it passes through this filter, your manuscript (presumably slightly dog-eared by now) will be passed on to a junior member of the editorial staff. (The process is simpler if the company is small).

Whether you employ an agent or go through the purgatory of the slush pile, the next stage will be when your submission is ‘championed’ by a junior editor. They will be laying their professional reputation on the line by doing so, and if your work is not taken on it will be a black mark against them; equally, if your work happens to become a bestseller, it could be a rung on the ladder for them. They must take a gamble by championing your work.

They must now convince their superiors and other staff that the submission should be published. Very few submitted manuscripts reach this stage; even fewer get further. The next stage is the negotiation of such matters as intellectual property rights and royalty rates. We will look at this in more detail in the future.

Getting Your First Novel Published

Getting your first novel published is never easy. The competition is enormous, the publishing industry is suffering both from such factors as book sales by supermarkets and book chains such as Amazon (though no longer Borders) and like everyone else by the recession.

In order to get a successful career as a novelist you must make your mark in the first place, and then sustain the momentum. Although agents can help you to some extent, ultimately it is your own work and your own skills that will help you achieve this.

Forget the stories you see in the press about advances in the region of several hundred pounds; even if you secure a two-book deal you are unlikely to get more than a £12, 000 advance. Publishers have found that high advances can create ‘artificial expectations’ in writers and the kind of hype you sometimes hear about first time writers is precisely that. Few writers who are offered vast advances actually live up to expectations, or even go on to have a career.

Once your publishing contract is secure, you cannot expect your publisher to put much effort into generating publicity. This is left to you and your agent (another reason to get an agent!) First time novelists depend on word of mouth, the media, book clubs and book prizes, and of course book reviews for their publicity campaign. As a first time writer, you may be both over-exposed and under-exposed.

Gavin Chappell has been teaching Creative Writing in the UK for several years. He is editor of online magazine Write On Wirral (www.writeonwirral.co.uk) and also writes for Schlock! The webzine of science fiction, fantasy and horror (www.schlock.co.uk) and the Heswall Magazine (www.heswallmagazine.co.uk).

It’s funny how being a writer is changing these days. In the olden days, all a writer had to do was write; after a little wrangling to get a publisher, an in-house editor, an agent, and a publishing house would take over all the other work that was required. Now that the internet has kind of exploded over all of our lives, though, the business of promotion and creation has changed dramatically. Most publishing houses don’t do the work of pairing an editor with a writer for a long-term relationship anymore; it’s mostly up to the writer to produce a polished work. And they’ve even left some of the work of self-promotion up to the writer as well. Writers are in a much better position nowadays if they blog or have friends with blogs or have some sort of online presence. You should be Googling yourself regularly, they tell us, and you must control what those search results are very carefully.

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Do you want to see your work in print? Most writers do. They can see the distant goal sometimes, as a far-waving flag above the tops of the many trees between themselves and that day. Most of the time, however, we get sucked into the demands of the everyday, the small ways in which we feel needs and step-by-step goals that must be satisfied.

The danger with the recent boom in productivity strategies such as the ‘Getting Things Done’ philosophy, I’ve found, is that it enables you to take care of small tasks much better than long-term ones. It feels great to check things off a list, so we fill our days with these small things. For our writing, we do this as well, only looking as far as one scene, one story, not considering long-term publishing goals, the hard work of reading and querying and being rejected. We’d so much rather keep our heads down and check neat little actions off a tidy list.

The Getting Things Done fans will dispute this, I know, and definitely, if it’s done right, that methodology and others leaves room for long-term goals. However, I think the emphasis is still skewed. The problem with small goals is that they don’t just stop when you reach the end of the list. They breed. They can fill a forest. If you like checking small things off, you’ll add tidying the kitchen, or vacuuming the carpet, or sending letters to those relatives. There is an infinite number of tasks you can add to the short-term list, but not enough time for the big picture.

After the jump: how to see the forest.

Don’t accept short-term rewards.

Over-emphasizing short-term goals is problematic because it rewards completing small things over big ones. This can be seen in debt-repayment plans for the better, and in book-reading for the worse. Attacking the small debts first helps people in debt get motivated. With book-reading, however, it can become problematic. It feels more productive to read many short books, so I’ll favor the books on my shelf that are shorter, and never get around to David Copperfield or The Idiot. These classic, essential books are neglected in favor of other books purely because they are longer. I felt guilty about that tendency this week, and deliberately launched into The Idiot. I am loving it already and am very glad about my choice. But it took a conscious moment of seeing the big picture for me to make this choice.

Decide what you want to do.

That is the crucial way we writers can make productivity work in our writing lives: we need to decide what those far-waving flags are, and keep looking up, reminding ourselves that they are there. Set a big goal for yourself, such as publication in a magazine you admire, and keep reminding yourself regularly what the next step toward that is. It’s not just improving your writing, though that’s a big one. It’s also sending out those queries, getting the stamps, reading the magazine, doing the research. All of these things take time and dedication. If you don’t focus on these big goals, you’ll find yourself endlessly — and meaninglessly — checking off boxes for tasks that have little significance.

I wrote the story “Shooting Range” when I was a junior in college. That would be in 2007. I finished the first draft very quickly (two weeks), then put it aside until the end of the semester. That spring, I sent the story out to a few magazines. Five months later, in senior year, I began revising the story to be part of my senior thesis. A year later, in the spring of 2008, I found out that a magazine wanted to publish the original version of the story. Of course I was wildly excited, but I’ve been published before, I know how long the wait can be. I was patient and after sending in a final version of the story, I let time pass. And pass it did — I didn’t hear a thing for the rest of 2008 or for any part of 2009. Occasionally I would check the website: it still had the same issue listed as its most current one. In the spring of 2009, when a year had passed, I emailed the editor to make sure I was still on the radar, but got no response.

One full year later, I got a package in the mail. It was the issue of the magazine with my story in it. One story journeyed from 2007 to 2010 — and that is a very typical trajectory for a story. The path is usually even longer for a book. It should be a reminder for you how much patience you need to have on the publishing trail — and how you should always be moving forward, continuing with other work while you’re waiting for older stories to appear.

The expression says to “keep things in the pipeline”, and that’s crucial if you don’t want to waste years of your life on getting published! While one story is accepted and you are waiting for publication, another story should be sent out to magazines, waiting for word back. At the same time, one story should be finished but getting edited, and at the same time, you should be working on new stories. Only by having stories continually moving on and out in this way will you feel yourself moving along the path to literary success.

I’ve seen it all by now, and some letters can be pretty disastrous. I always read the piece anyway, but there are plenty of things that can make a reader much less well inclined toward your writing. Here are five cover letter mistakes I’ve seen, and that you would do well to avoid!

Being disrespectful to other people, even if it isn’t us.

Few people are bold enough to slam the very magazine they’re submitting to, but you’d be surprised how many people badmouth others in a petty or disrespectful way. I still remember the cover letter that called the female editors of other magazines b*tches because they wouldn’t take his work. Misogyny won’t really make an editor feel warm and fuzzy about your writing, nor will any kind of aggressive, disrespectful or dismissive attitudes.

I’m awesome! You have the honor of publishing me!

It can be a fine line between listing your accomplishments and outright bragging. Make sure you are understated about your general awesomeness, but don’t be afraid to list the facts about your past publications.

After the jump: three other no-no’s in your cover letter.

What magazine is this again?

Yes, it has happened — people write cover letters with the wrong magazine or editor title on it. What happens more often is stories get sent that have no place in the magazine because they’re all wrong for it — they’re way past our reported word limit, they’re the wrong genre, or they’re non-fiction essays (yes, even magazines that call themselves fiction-only mags get offers for non-fiction essays). A surefire way to get rejected is to not do your research or even read one past issue of the magazine. Don’t waste your own time by sending a story to places that don’t fit it.

Tell me now what you’re paying.

Most literary magazines don’t pay anything to authors beside a few free copies. If you start demanding money in the cover letter, it shows that 1) You’re so full of yourself you already expect to be accepted; and 2) You haven’t done your homework about what the magazine pays. Don’t ask about money until you’ve gotten an acceptance; then you can ask about everything.

DON’T DO ALL CAPS AND CHEKC YUR SPELING.

I know, it sounds basic enough, but with the advent of online and email submissions, I’ve been getting more and more of these beauties, where people don’t even take the time to proofread their stories or cover letters. It shows me that you haven’t taken the time to polish your piece, so it’s probably not ready for publication even if some of it is brilliant. It’s also really obnoxious to have an all caps email. So just don’t do it!

Ideally, a cover letter should be a modest, understated, but intriguing doorway in to you as a writer and to your piece. Offer your past publications, a sentence at most about what inspired the story or why it is a good fit for this particular magazine, and get out of the way for your story to do the talking. Now go to it, and good luck!

Put your best foot forward.

That was lesson number one: show your absolute best work. If you’re showing one story you like and one story that needs work and one story that you know is weak but you need a third story, you’re not ready to submit. Agents see hundreds of pieces a week, and they need to know that you have more than one good story behind you. So edit, polish, and edit again. Show your absolute best work; don’t hold anything in abeyance, because if you do, you’ll never get the chance to show that piece that you’ve been saving that you think is your best.

Be creative! Be exciting!

Agents need to feel excited about the work they are representing. That means they will choose work that has something original in it, something they’ve never seen before, and that has a lot of life and vigor in it. A few pretty sentences aren’t enough; they want to feel engaged and moved by the characters you create and the ideas and words on the page. When you’ve polished a few stories to death, spend some time thinking about whether these stories are just good copies of what you’ve read, or have something new to bring to the literary world.

There’s no accounting for taste.

As the agents said many times in the course of the panel discussion, they will only represent work they feel personally engaged by. That may mean that your work just isn’t their taste. The good news is that agents are experts, and even if your work isn’t for them, if they recognize the quality in it, they will often refer you to someone else who might like it, or even send it on themselves with a recommendation. That means that you shouldn’t take rejections personally; but choose who you send to carefully. That leads me to the final point:

Do your research.

Don’t just pick names randomly out of an agent’s guide. The agents recommend finding people who you know represent writers who are like you. The way to do this is to look at the acknowledgements page of a writer you admire. Writers always thank their agents. Rather than going for old, established writers, look on the acknowledgments page of a young, up-and-coming writer, who is likely to have an agent more open to unsolicited queries and young writers.

Are you aiming for adult fiction? Or maybe you’d like to be a part of one of the most lucrative and growing branches of literature out there — YA literature. Books for teenagers and young adults are a huge market, and they also pose a unique challenge for writers that can still be very artistic and literary. The best YA lit, after all, doesn’t pander or condescend; it isn’t writers dumbing down their work. Rather, YA lit is an attempt to give a window into the world of young people and show a sympathetic view of the problems they face. For this reason, the best YA is, of course, able to also be enjoyed by adults. Here are a few reasons why you might want to consider writing for a slightly younger audience.

Greater focus makes for better writing.

Sometimes you’re working on a novel or story and it seems to be floundering. There just isn’t enough reason to care about the characters or interest on your part in what is going on in their lives. Try thinking about it as from the perspective of one of your teenage characters. You might notice that things suddenly take a much more focused and dramatic turn. Things seem inherently more dramatic when, like a young person, you believe small events to be be the entire world. The social jockeying in high school, for example, can seem pretty ridiculous once you’re out of it, but for teenagers it’s deadly serious.

Write what you know.

A lot of my audience here is made up of young writers, people who are just starting out, and there’s no better way to begin than to work on a project that has a firm foundation of experience. That’s why the first novels of so many great authors are largely or partially auto-biographical. You’ve already lived through the teen years; you’ve experienced the awkwardness, the heartache, the feeling of being young and either wishing to grow up or wishing you never did. Experience can often be easiest to write when it comes from genuine experience. Write about the way you felt as a teenager, and don’t hold anything back.

YA stories are in high demand.

From a publishing or career standpoint, writing YA can be a very clever move. While the budgets and market shares of other genres continue to shrink, YA continues to grow. Books like Twilight and Gossip Girl are dragging the quality level down, but they prove there’s a tremendous appetite out there for books for young people, about young people. What can you contribute to this genre? What can you teach without being preachy? Can you reassure worried teens that all of this drama will seem silly someday? Can you show how exciting it is to be alive when it seems like anything can happen?

Remember, the best YA does not stoop or become dumb. Its writing can be just as literary as the best adult fiction. Don’t hold back on your writing quality; just be true to the perspective of a young person, which might be a little more simple, a little more blind or selfish, than an adult perspective.

So if you’re on the publishing trail, be warned and avoid these five plotlines!

The break-up

Yes, break-up stories are the NUMBER ONE story we get in the slush pile. They are everywhere, and every last one of them hashes over the same details, the same gradual growing apart, the same pattern of fights and touching reunions. Avoid this most common of storylines.

Diary of the madman

This is another one that I’ve seen many many times in workshops as student work, but never successfully in print. It’s because it was done almost two hundred years ago (Gogol’s Diary of a Madman) and few works since have added much to the genre. A story with gleefully over-the-top prose, cliche phrasings, and quivering narcissism is so not new.

Dead child

This may sound callous, but I went to a panel discussion of several editors of literary magazines lately, and they all agreed this was the most common plot choice of all. Need a crisis for your characters to slowly and poignantly recover from? No problem — just kill off a kid! Seriously, there’s no describing how tragic this event is in real life, but in story world, this plotline has been done and done.

After the jump: two more plotlines to avoid.

Exchange of letters

This is another convention of stories that I see often in my workshops, but I never see successfully getting to print. That’s not to say they can’t be beautifully done, but there’s something a little boring about them — their need to repeat information, the tedious back-and-forth, and the ability to only talk about action instead of doing it. It might get in if it’s good, but it’s a risk.

My workplace is a drag!

This was another storyline I saw to no end while reading manuscripts at one magazine. I might read twenty stories in a day that just write down the typical dull aspects of a boring, cubicled workplace. These writers had confused dullness with artistic malaise: that which is boring is not inherently artistic and deep. In fact, you’d have to work extra hard to make it interesting. Notice that stories that do rely on the sadness of suburban working people don’t actually have a lot of their stories set in the dull office, such as Raymond Carver’s “The Country Husband.”

So that’s it, writers! Try avoiding these storylines for a while, and you may find yourself getting that good rejection — or even an acceptance — instead of the anonymous rejection slip. Good luck!