HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHER SAY YES

This evening, in the Edinburgh Book Fest, I'm doing my talk on "how to make a publisher say yes". And I decided to put the bare bones of it below, or at least to try to decipher my notes and then turn them into something that will make sense to you.

I've done the apparently same talk for four years now, but each time I say it differently. Each time, I guess I've learnt more in the meantime. Each year, I throw my notes away because I know I'll do it differently next time.

So, this was how I structured my talk for this evening. I'm sorry you're not there, but you at least have the luxury of being able to relax with wine / chocolate while you're reading it. On the other hand, you don't get to experience my shoes. And, writing this as I am a week ago, I can't predict which shoes they'll be, so spontaneous am I.

WHY DOES CRAP GET PUBLISHED? (I won't use the word crap, because you can't do that in front of a captive audience, some of whom have only come in out of the rain and weren't expect the crabbit old bat to be so rude).

This is the question that frustrated aspiring authors ask. Understandably. The answer is simple: crap sells. Every published book is a book the publisher thought would sell. And, since crap sells in shedloads, you have to admit they were very often right.

Getting angry about why crap sells will get you nowhere. Besides, you're not here because you write crap and want to sell it. You're here because you think you've written something damned good and you're wondering what on earth you have to do to sell it.

I can't (or not here) teach you how to write, but I can show you the most common things people do wrong.

TWO COMFORTING THOUGHTS
The awfulness of the slush pile is reassuring - it means that good stuff shines. When an agent or publisher sees a jewel in a pile of crap, he will leap on it with enthusiasm and is quite happy to get his hands dirty in his efforts to retrieve that shiny jewel and clean it up so that the world can see its beauty.

Because the second comforting thought is: publishers and agents are desperate to find good books, great books, books that readers will love. If your book is good, they want you.

A SLIGHTLY COMFORTING THOUGHT
It's easy to get published: you just have to write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at ther ight time in the right way.

BUT, in order to do that

• you must understand what makes a right book
• you must understand how publishing works, how commercial decisions are made
• you must know (and obey) the rules for submitting your work
• 
  

TO THE POINT
"How to make a publisher say yes" is not the best question.
The best question is "why do publishers usually say no?"

WHY DO THEY SAY NO?
One reason only: they think they can't sell it. (If your rejected book goes on to be published elsewhere and even be a huge success, that does not mean that the rejectors were wrong. They may well not have been able to sell it, for reasons which you'll find below.)

Before we proceed, you need to understand about the ACQUISITIONS MEETING (AM). (Blog-readers, go here; people in audience, sit back and listen.)

REASONS TO SAY NO
These fall in two categories.

1. Publisher-related - not in your power to fix
2. Book / author-related - your job to fix

1. PUBLISHER-RELATED (If even one of these three things applies to your book, it will not get through the AM.

1. book doesn't fit their list or their publishing schedule is genuinely too full. It might not fit their list because they've already contracted something too similar; or they've decided not to handle fairy books any more (thank the Lord). If it doesn't fit the list because they don't handle this stuff, that's your silly fault for not researching, but there are many other reasons that you had no way of knowing
2. the necessary investment is too great. Publishers have to pay a load of money months and years before they have a chance of recouping it. They have to budget and if your fabulous wizard series comes along when they don't have the required budget to invest in it over many years, they should not take it on and you would not (should not) want them too
3. the editor is not in love with your book. This may be because the book isn't good enough (in which case it's your problem) but it may be simply personal taste. Don't underestimate the importance of that. Liking or admiring a book is not an exact science. Hell, it's not even a science at all. And the editor must love your book otherwise she/he won't fight for it.

2. BOOK / AUTHOR-RELATED

1. The writing is not good enough - punctuation, grammar and basic techniques mark you as someone in control of words or not; you cannot expect the editor to overlook these; voice, pace and structure are essential to powerful story-telling and readable non-fiction; are you thinking of your reader at all times and have you avoided over-writing? (Those are the commonest faults which will make the publisher / agent say no)
2. Book is not marketable, even though the writing may be good enough - publishers have to make money (they may make mistakes but they are doing it with their money); you need a HOOK - the hook needs to grab the Sales and Marketing team at the AM; you must understand the current market - read current successes in your genre and read them analytically. This does not mean selling out; it does not mean putting commericality before art: it means thinking of your readers
3. Your submission is faulty - (there are loads of posts on this blog about submissions, so I won't go on about it here too much but here are the absolute bare bones and most common errors:

• obey guidelines for each individual agent / publisher
• write the perfect covering letter (a new post is coming up on 22nd August, during my workshop on The Perfect Approach) - you have 15 seconds to sell yourself
• don't do anything wacky or cool
• don't boast; don't say your kids / friends love it
• show knowledge of the market and willingness to work hard for long term career

TOP TIPS

1. every sentence counts and every word within that sentence must earn its place
2. think of your reader
3. read within your genre - but read like a writer
4. miss no opportunity to improve your knowledge of the industry
5. be very careful whose feedback you believe and whose you ignore. Believe experts before friends and writing group members

MOST TOP OF TOP TIPS
Instead of believing that you are hard-done-by and wrongly ignored or that publishers are stupid, accept that the likely reason is that you haven't yet written the right book well enough. Yet ...

FINALLY - regard the rejection of your book as the rejection of your book. Not the rejection of you. Write another one. Because if you can't write another one, you can't be a writer anyway.

(And then, after illuminating questions from the audience, the event chairperson thanks me for being so interesting and everyone flocks to the signing tent where they buy copious quantities of my book and we staying signing and chatting and generally bonding for about half an hour. Then, the chairperson escorts me across the summer evening grass towards the calming cavern of the Yurt, where I strengthen myself with a glass of wine and some dinky sandwiches and pastries. I then go out to dinner with my husband, older daughter and her French boyfriend and younger daughter who is working in the bookshop [putting my books face-out] and I tell them how a very kind blog-reader brought me chocolate and that three people commented on my shoes.)

I'll tell you if it happens like that.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 4

Today I'm mostly going to be stressed. In a good way. I'm writing a week in advance of posting it but when you read this it will be the day of my very last AGM of the Soc of Authors in Scotland, and also our party for 200 which I've been organising with military precision. (Last email document to the committee was headed "The Micro-Manager Strikes Again"). The sun will be shining and I will be welcoming well-known faces to the glorious tent that is the Party Pavilion. I'll post you some pics if I remember to get my camera out of my bag.

Anyway, that is so irrelevant to this post. On the other hand, bearing in mind that this post is about being irrelevant, that is perhaps relevant in itself.

Pointy Thought 4 is: Do not tell your potential agent/editor how much you love writing. It is so not relevant to her / him, though it is to you.

Fabulous blogger Rachelle Gardner prompted this thought. See her post from last week here. It's also very relevant to the conversations (here and here)I've been having with you on covering letters and will be mentioned in my post on Aug 22nd when you get the results of that exercise while I am doing the accompanying workshop in the book festival.

She's absolutely right. The fact that you just love writing and have been indulging your passion since you were two is the sort of detail you can keep for your memoirs or for a talk you do to the Women's Guild. In other words, AFTER you've been successfully published.

When, as an unpublished writer, you tell a writing professional that you've always loved writing, you are prompting all sorts of reactions in the professional's mind:

• loser alert
• where's the emergency exit?
• tell me your name so that I can remember not to read anything you ever send me
• another one for the wood-burning-stove

Well-known fact: all agents and editors have wood-burning stoves for exactly this purpose.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 3 - SANITY (and book fest pics)

Continuing in my series of Pointy Thoughts, I bring you a thought of extreme importance. This has been engendered by correspondence from an agent friend of mine.

It is simple: do not submit any work to an agent or publisher when you are high on hallucinatory drugs. Ever.

That is the only explanation for the extraordinary example of mania that an agent has shown me.

No, let me be fair. I am going to think about this more carefully. There are some other feasible explanations, and I offer them all to you here:

• the writer was in the grips of a quasi-religious seizure - this could be the right explanation, as it did contain references to the notion that God had called him to a writing career. Well, I think it did, but it was a bit hard to make sense of. God did come into it anyway. (And please don't tell me God comes into everything and that God is everywhere. God was definitely not with this guy when he wrote the letter, unless He wished to knacker the guy's career before it started. Which is actually not a bad idea. So, maybe it was a religious seizure...)
  
• the writer was at a particularly difficult and intransigent stage of severe mental illness. Now, this I am very sympathetic to (not through personal experience, but through general human sympathy) and such situations are very tragic. However, this is really not the time to submit work to an agent. Or anyone at all.
• a mad axe-man had burst into the writer's garret and was threatening to cut his head off unless the writer submitted the work right NOW and under conditions of extreme stress.
  

There are no other explanations.

People, submit your work when sober, clean and stable. Do it only of your own volition, not because forced to by either God or an axe-man.

And now, unconnectedly, I bring you some photos of the first couple of days of the Edinburgh Book Fest, including, by popular demand, some never-yet-seen photos of The Yurt.

Day One and Two of the festival, and the sun shines. See!

Now (below) we approach that glory of glories, the Yurt. First, the peaceful bit outside, with authors relaxing in the sun:



And here the entrance, which is deceptive, revealing none of its hidden mysteries.

In the background is the Press Pod.

Below is the entrance again, at a busy time, with Roland, the programme manager, looking important. Which he is. He looks as though he's smoking a pipe, but of course he's not: he's saying "over and out", or something equally technical, into his radio thing.


Here is the hospitality table, with, remarkably, no one there.

The roof of the Yurt, which never leaks.


And the carpet of the Yurt, with some rather fetching shoes.

The children's book tent

A shelf of my books, the non-fiction ones. Sadly, I could not photograph my daughter's handiwork in giving me prominence in the fiction section, because there were too many people in the way. What nuisances readers are.



And the tail end of some party or other - can't remember which. They blur ...


And just to show you that the sun always shines on my blog: Not a drop of rain or gust of wind have we had. Trust me, I'm a novelist.

CRAPPY AUTHOR BEHAVIOUR: THE LAUNCH

It's a while since you've had a full-scale rant from me and I feel it's been too long. How you have managed, I have no idea. Wait no more: I feel the need to share a little thing that has been bugging me since a book launch I went to a while ago. Let's not be precise about the exact date and let's not go anywhere with the name or genre, because I do not wish publicly to embarrass the author, who should be embarrased enough all by herself. I'll just say that once I was in London and found myself persuaded.

Tomorrow evening, I am going to a launch which will not be crappy. Lin Anderson, gruesome crime-writer par excellence (gruesome crime, not gruesome writer) is launching her new book in the Edinburgh Book Festival and I am going. Partly to cast my eagle eye over the tent because that's where the Soc of Authors party is being held and I need to forestall any glitches which would otherwise come back to haunt me. Partly because I've been asked to another party immediately after it (God, my life is dull) in the same venue so I won't even have to damage my pink suede shoes by walking anywhere. But mainly because it will be a good do and Lin is the consummate professional.

Unlike the author whose launch I took time out of my day to support. Little did she care. I tried to talk to her and say well done but I just got a slit-eyed glare and a miraculous disappearing act. Had my reputation preceded me? Did I kick her with my pointy shoes? No, I missed that chance. Next time, next time ...

Now, when it's your first book, there are lots of things that you can do wrong at your launch and get away with, like being nervous and shy. Nervous and shy can be very endearing. I remember a debut author's launch when there was barely a dry eye in the house, so endearingly nervous and shy was she. You could tell that she had really taken trouble - she'd spent time working out something nice to say and how to thank the various people "without whose help and support" etc etc. Yes, she was shaking with nerves, but she looked at us. Yep and yay, she looked at us. And smiled. Even one of those two would have been enough.

But rude author did neither of those things.

See, there are crappy things that no one should ever do at one's own launch (or in fact anyone's). A sensible publisher should never let a new author loose on a book launch without some timely advice.

Now rather than personalise this, because I really don't want to, let me stop talking about that launch and just talk about launchy mistakes in general, mistakes that can be made and indeed have been made at book launches. In the spirit of helping you achieve a happy launch when your time comes, I give you my simple guide to:

"How to make a good impression at your first book launch."

• of course you will invite lots of your own friends: lovely! But please ask them not to be rude to the staff or to the established authors there, who have come to support you, and who may well have better things to do. Those authors wish you well - usually - but you won't get many chances. Earn your place; earn your friendships. Or live to rue the day you were so frigging rude.
  
• prepare something to say - you don't have to be a stand-up comic: just say a few words about how happy and how grateful you are. Because you should be.
  
• prepare a little bit to read; and damned well practise it, often, until you can actually read it in a way that people will listen to while they're standing up with warm wine in their hands (it's always warm, even when it starts cold - it's not the host's fault ...). And, while, you are reading, look up.
• smile modestly, occasionally. Or even often.
  
• don't drink too much wine before you speak
• if anyone from your publishing company comes, show gratitude. If two people come, be seriously flattered.
  
• when your editor says fabulous things and compares you to JK Rowling, realise that this is what editors do. It means sod all**. It does not mean you're going to be really really successful, or even a bit. It means they're living on dreams and couldn't think of anything else to say. And it also means that everyone in the room who actually knows about publishing is trying not to laugh. (**For Lynn's sake, I should stress that it's only the JKR bit that means sod all - all the other lovely things your editor says are most likely true. Even when they are being paid to say it.)
  
• if anyone buys your books, be grateful; spare them some time to chat and SMILE; thank them for coming
• and never, ever, ever play the prima donna. You've got to be stupendously good to get away with it. Actually, to be honest, you'll never get away with it. No one ever does. You may sell books but people will say crappy things behind your back and then blog about you.
  

The people you meet at your launch are people who gave up some time to support you. They did not come for the free drink and pretzels.

Thing is - back to that launch ... - I had a look at the book, read a few sentences. But all I heard when I tried to read a few words was the author's voice.

And I didn't buy it. Frankly, I wouldn't read it if you gave it to me.

MAKING BEAUTY PUBLISHABLE

This post by thoughtful and clever author, Emma Darwin, contains lots of apt stuff for all of us, whether published or trying to be. It also connects with this recent post of mine on pigeon-holes.

I like the way it rather successfully answers that thorny question, "So, you mean I have to sell my soul, sell my art, in order to be published? I have to sell out???" No, you don't. You can if you want to but you don't have to. What you do have to do is not be so self-indulgent, so self-obsessed, that you earn no readers with your unattractive selfishness.

It's a bit like Pointy Thought 1 - that the world doesn't owe you a contract.

I was going to treat you with a photo of the Edinburgh Book Festival DDay minus 1, but I walked all the way up there in the rain and then forgot to take a picture of it. Instead, you can have a picture of my sitting-room four days before the AGM and party which are pretty much all I'm thinking about at the moment (with apologies to all the people who are coming to my events which I should be thinking about - fear not, I'll be perfectly prepared when the time comes.)



And yes, those are Starbucks bags that you see before you. In them are not only 200 bags of coffee but 200 bars of chocolate, I'll have you know. Chocolate that I may not eat. It's killing me.

Oh, I have just remembered that although I forgot to take a pictire of the outside of the book festival and the sign saying One Day To Go, I did take a picture inside the foyer. Doesn't it look calm? You'd never know that this time tomorrow it will be buzzing.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 2 - IDEAS

Continuing my series of little pointy points while I try to improve my time management skills and deal with book festival generated overload, here's one prompted by catdownunder's comment in which she reminded me painfully of that most hackneyed question that all authors get. A lot.

Pointy thought. "Where do you get your ideas from?" is the wrong question:

Listen, ideas are nothing special. Ideas are just thoughts. Everyone has them. All the time. You can't help it. Where do your thoughts come from? They come from your head, or from someone saying something, or you reading something or simply having an unexplained train of thought.

What's interesting and important - no, essential - is what the writer does with those thoughts. Shaping them into a story is the hard bit, the bit you have to learn and practise. And practise some more. And improve all the time. And sweat over.

People sometimes say to me, "Why don't you write a story about ...?" or "You should write a story about that." Well, yes, that's a thought. But it's not an idea until it's grown a lot, and in my head is where it grows. I nurture it with questions like "What if?" and "What would happen then?" and "How would it affect the story if that happened?" and "Who are the characters who will make this story grow into a full and fascinating shape?" and, crucially, "What problems am I storing for myself if I start down that particular ideas road?"

Because thinking of the idea is easy - shaping it into something that works as a piece of fiction is much much harder.

And you can do it in a formulaic way or you can do it in an original way. I can't do formulae - they bore me rigid, as reader and writer - but formulae can be very successful.

So, ask not where I get my ideas: ask how I turn them into stories that work. And for that I only have one answer: damned hard work.

POINTY THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: 1 - MOUNTAINS

Since I don't have time for full blog posts this month, I thought I'd give you a series of brief thoughts to think. Pointy thoughts, to go with pointy shoes.

Pointy Thought One:

The world does not owe us a book contract: we have to work for it. We have to suffer and develop blisters on our brains and RSI in our wrists. It's not meant to be easy. Easy is for lazy people, and we cannot be lazy if we want to be successful. As Neitzsche said (or German words to this effect): the more painful and blistery the climb to the top, the more goddamn brilliant the view.



Ah, sorry - not such a good example.

Here's a better one:



Or this:



And you know something? I'll give you a subsidiary pointy thought for free. (Note to self: they're all free, you idiot. Ah, yes, I forgot.)

Subsidiary pointy thought: there's a lot more hard work and a lot less luck involved than some people would have you think.

So, if you want to be published, a) make sure you deserve it and b) be prepared to fight for it. Be prepared to sweat and shed tears. And yell HOORAY from the highest mountain when you reach the top by your own effort.

BE CAREFUL WHEN FALLING OUT OF PIGEON-HOLES

Excellent example of how not to hook a publisher in this insightful post over on Editorial Ass today. And for once, it's silly agent behaviour, not silly author behaviour. Please read and then return here for my piercing insights.

Clearly the agent in question was clueless. Or you could say that he was actually very clueful: he gave loads of clues but no actual answers.

Let's do some unpicking and see what we can learn. EA says that the category of your book is "perhaps THE most important question for an editor and his/her sales team." It's an important and possibly somewhat shocking lesson. There was you thinking it was your writing or even the story that was the most important. Of course it is, to you and your readers, but you and your readers will never see your book at all if the bookseller doesn't know where to put it.

See, booksellers have a simple system, which you may not like. They have it for a good reason: customers are simple souls who do not wish to look far to find a book. Customers think they know what they like, and don't want to be told otherwise, so they really need to know where they might find it. Fast. You might wish that a bookshop could be a glorious muddle of treasures just waiting to be found serendipitously, with a squeal of glee. "Oh, how wonderful! A part-monograph-part-travel-guide-part-poetry-collection-part-local-history-of-the-inner-hebrides! I normally read sci-fi but this sounds quite delightful." But what real readers want is the exact book that they want (even if they don't know what it is) just THERE, under the label that says "book that you want".

So, first thing to do when you pitch your book is to know what it is. This applies both to covering letters (see on-going competition) and to query letters; it certainly applies when the editor pitches your as yet uncontracted book to the sales/marketing team in the Acquisition Meeting; it also applies when you answer the casual question about your WIP: what's it about? Because before you say it's about a boy and a girl who get lost in the woods, you have to say it's a fairy tale about a boy and girl who get lost in the woods.

If you are innovative enough to have written a book that defies categorisation, be afraid. I did. I wrote a book called Blame My Brain. Now, luckily for me, I never had to pitch it to anyone as I already had a publisher and an agent and all that happened before commissioning was a conversation that went almost literally like this:

Chris (editor): Would you like to write some non-fiction?
Me: Yes.
C: What would you like to write about?
Me: The teenage brain.
C: Good idea.

That afternoon I drafted a one-page plan and wrote the intro, and about three days later she'd come up with an offer.

Yes, I know. You hate me. I don't blame you. But I did take a long, long, long time to get to the point of having an editor trust me that much.

BUT, when it came to the bookshops deciding how to shelve it, then the fun began. Clearly, there is no category in any bookshop called "teenage non-fiction". (There may occasionally be a tiny little bit of a tiny dark shelf very near the floor, and occasionally when there is, I'm on my own in it.) Luckily - understatement - for me, booksellers thought the idea was so strong that they went out of their way to find a place for it but I still can't confidently predict when I go into a bookshop whether I'll find it in teenage/YA fiction, kids' non-fiction, psychology, parenting, popular science, neuroscience, mental illness or Scottish. (I joke not). Yes, this has been a problem. The only reason it was such a commercial success is that we got fab review coverage everywhere and there was nothing else on the market ticking the same boxes (still isn't - yay!); so word of mouth and market position now means that it doesn't matter that no one knows where to shelve it and no one knows where to find it. Well, it matters a bit ...

Anyway, that sort of situation is rare.

So, consider your WIP carefully, lovingly and calculatingly. Which shelf will it go on in the shops? I'll mention this and talk more about it - if I remember - in my Edinburgh Book Festival talk on How To Make a Publisher Say Yes on Aug 19th. (I don't mean it's about how to make a publisher say yes on Aug 19th - I hope a publisher will say yes on many other days as well). And do remember that it will hardly ever go in two sections, much as perhaps it should.

If you write for young people, in which age section of a bookshop will readers find it? I'll talk about the difference between 10-12s and teenage in my talk on Aug 20th. Again, a book that 10-year-olds AND 13-year-olds will love, will not be found in both 9-12 and the teenage sections.

However, there's more to categorisation than what shelf it will go on. We (humankind) like to pigeon-hole things. It's often an unattractive and unhelpful habit. Pigeon-holes are places of safety and comfort, but they are restrictive because you can't easily see out of them. However, while readers continue to be human and want categories, we have to work with them. And, actually, it is helpful when it makes us analyse the elements of our book, to make sure it ticks the right boxes or follows the right rules for that particular category or genre.

So, as well as knowing what section in the shop our book will end up on, we need to know in more detail what sort of book it is, so that we can describe it better and give people (agent, then editor, then marketing, then bookseller, then reader) a clearer idea as to why they might like it. Now, many books don't sit neatly within one pigeon-hole. And that's fine. No one ever said you had to sit neatly in the pigeon-hole. You're allowed to sit on the edge with your legs hanging out - it's a tad dangerous if you've had a bit much to drink, but just be aware of the dangers of alcohol and other substances and you can dangle to your heart's content.

But, while you're allowing your sci-fi book to dabble in romance or your historical novel to veer into magical realism, consider your reader. Are there enough readers out there who will go with you on your strange journey? Is your book like something else (something else successful - and not SO alike that you end up being cited in an anti-plagiarism fracas)? Does it fit a pattern? Are there good reasons why it contains several genre elements? Have you really got the experience to handle more than one? Are you genre-hopping because you haven't got your act together or have you genuinely thought this through?

If your book is a mixture of too many (say, more than two) genres, you are likely to lose readers. You are also likely to show a potential agent or editor that you haven't a clue what you're doing. Now you may well have a clue: you may be about to set a completely new genre-busting target of astonishing, innovative brilliance**: but the first page of your submission is not the place to tell your potential agent/editor this. Allow him to discover your avant-garde brilliance through your writing, not by leaping at him shouting BOO. Remember: eccentric brilliance often looks like crass lunacy at first sight and first sight is often all you get, if you're not careful. Later, the two of you can work out how you're going to pitch your magic to Sales and Marketing, but it will not be by telling them that it's a mixture of eighteen genres and hard to categorise.

** Edited to add: Have just seen a fabulous post by the inimitable Lynn Price, describing the inexcusable ignorance of the author who thought he was writing "literary action/adventure" - go read.

In short:

When you write, first consider your reader.

When you pitch, first consider your bookseller.

When you get your contract, first consider yourself: in my case, buy shoes, chocolate and sparkly wine.

There's no chocolate in that picture, for obvious reasons.

CLUES ABOUT THAT COVERING LETTER

Yesterday, while you were all frantically trying to find ways to criticise my near-perfect covering letter without offending me by criticising my near-perfect covering letter, I was in town buying SHOES. Because, with 14 days till the start of the Edinburgh Book Festival, things were close to a panic situation. I can't show you the shoes (there's a news blackout) but I can show you the beginning of the tents going up.

Meanwhile, I thought we'd stay on the topic of covering letters and I'd answer a few of the uncertainties in your attempts to guess what my agent thought could be improved about the letter. (If you've just come to this and haven't read the letter and the attached competition, please do now.)

Meanwhile meanwhile, I should also say that one person has guessed one of the two imperfections correctly. I'm not saying who, but I will say that this person has identified the one sentence that isn't quite strong enough.

So, a few points raised by you, in no particular order:

1. Ebony suggested not saying that I've already been knocked back by the Tanya Highbury agency. No, I put this in to show my honesty and professionalism; and to say that I know how busy she is shows that I understand her task and that I'd be nice to work with. (Then Ebony redeemed herself by saying that the covering letter rocks, which it obviously does.)
2. Wendy said I should say she was my first pick as agent - thing is, she wasn't. (No, in real life, my agent WAS, but for this made-up one, I've said I approached someone else first). Keren made a linked point - again, I'm going for honesty and professionalism.
   
3. Rachel said that I should point out that the book is finished. It certainly should be finished, but I've given its word count, so it most likely is; I think it's clear from how I talk about it that it's finished. So fair point, Rachel, but not the right one.
   
4. Rachel also has doubts about this sentence: "I have worked very hard to make this novel as ready as possible", saying that it should be better than that, ie perfect. Point taken, but I wanted to show that I am not arrogant enough to think that it's perfect and that I will work well editorially, while not presenting a piece of work that is less good than I can make it on my own. Rachel also suggests I say why I'm approaching this particular agent (you said author, but you were tired!!) - a valid point, but not the one my agent raised! Actually, I've just found the real letter that I did hook my agent with, and in that I DID say why I was contacting her.
5. Donna - the YA market IS small in volume. Yes, the quality is strong, but the size is not; and I put that in to show my understanding of the market. Your other point is a good one, but again not what my agent picked up on!
6. Catdownunder - you comment that the letter was long. It's fine. And the synopsis IS separate and would be much longer (two pages). Re the CV - I agree, but some agents ask for one, and the reason I said this was that it shows I've read her submission guidelines. (viz Lexi's comment, too). The covering letter for some books might be shorter, but it's important to select the info that nails your book and to write a letter which is long enough to say what you feel needs to be said. If what you feel needs to be said is too long for the agent, yes, the agent will switch off, but it's a call you have to make for each book and each agent/publisher. So, yes, a letter could be too long (or too short) but this one is not. Oh, and I'm not sure if the comment about not needing to know how hard I've worked on my submission is part of your joke (!), but the point I wanted to make was that although I've worked hard (and am therefore professional and not blasé) I understand that an editor might have some changes to suggest (so I'm not arrogant) and that I'd respond well to that (and so am easy to work with).
7. AND, catdownunder, I hope you are joking when you say I should say I know how much she will like my submission! That's an absolute no-no!
   
8. Various - no need to say what I'm now working on. Nothing wrong with saying that, but no need. Yes, I agree that we need to show that we have a long-term career in us, but we can do that in other ways - eg when I say I want to work within the YA market.
   
9. Various - wanting more details of the plot/motivation? No, not for the covering letter when a synopsis is enclosed. I think I've given the max that an agent would need at this point. If it was a US query letter (ie not accompanying a synopsis and sample) then yes, I'd agree we need more details.
   
10. Juliet - no need to compare to style of another author. It's possible to do this but you have to be very careful.
11. Juliet and others - re the mysterious bit about the mother dying twice: my agent was quite happy about this but I agree that making the genre unclear is not a good idea. However, I'm happy with the tone and the air of mystery about this, and that the agent would discover the answer in the synopsis. Thing is, if you write the letter confidently enough and well enough, little mysteries that are deliberate can have no detrimental effect.
12. Thomas - a motive for writing the story? No, definitely not. The motive should only ever be a love of telling stories, not a personal connection with the idea/characters. If I'd said it was anything to do with my life, the agent would have run a mile! (But thanks for your comments and please don't apologise - you're all being very brave!)
13. Juliet - ah the MUFFINS! Of course!!

There's a load more I could comment on but I think that's enough. In fact, it's probably too much. Anyway, keep the comments coming, either on this post or the competition one - I'll consider them all for the competition anyway. Deadline is Aug 14th and the results will go up in a definitive post about perfect covering letters on Aug 22nd, the day I'm doing the workshop. The workshop is 2pm (GMT) so Ill schedule the post for that moment, and you can all think of us having fun in our tent! With chocolate!

As the competition now stands, your task is

1. work out who got the weak sentence correct (and why) and
   
2. identify what my agent thinks is missing (though it would not be a deal-breaker, I have to say)
   

Excuse any typos in this post - am being hassled to get my walking boots on and go climb a mountain. And my walking boots are not pretty.

LATER ...
I am now down from my mountain. Here was the view from the top, looking over Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth. The fact that I now have no power left in my legs is entirely beside the point. And there is my dog, looking rightly proud. Though in true dog fashion she has her back turned to the view, as she has no appreciation of anything that doesn't taste like food.



Maybe I should have enclosed a picture of her in my covering letter?

COVERING LETTER - PERFECTION REQUIRED

(It's a long one - settle down with wine, chocolate, anything you need. But there is a competition at the end, so it will be worth it.)

"What's so important about the covering letter / query letter? After all, isn't it the book that counts?"

Yeah, sure it's the book that counts. But the agent/editor isn't going to get that far if your covering letter isn't good. No, forget that. The agent /editor isn't going to get that far if your letter isn't absolutely damned perfect. Or better.

You've been reading the recent Submission Spotlights on this blog. Well, I've been reading the submissions to the Submission Spotlights. Some of these are so bad that if I put them on my blog there'd be blood on the floor and tears at bed-time. So now, I feel, it is time to pound you with some serious sit-up-and-take-notice instruction about covering letters. (Or query letters if you are across the pond. They're not quite the same but pretty close.)

Here we are. Please take note. Even though I hardly know where to start.

1. when describing your book, give the most important info first. The most important info is the info that the agent/editor needs first. And that is, what sort of book it is. So, Redleg needed to tell us right off that it's futuristic / sci-fi. Yes, lots of people (readers/agents/editors) hate sci-fi and don't read it: that is no reason not to tell them. In fact, it's all the more reason to tell them, otherwise you get one seriously pissed off agent who finds out half way through chapter one that she's reading a piece of rom-com that she thought was an American Civil War novel.
2. actually, there's an even more important piece of info you have to give first, but it's something you can't say out loud, only show. It's this: that you are not the run-of-the-mill useless sort of rubbish that the agent/editor is assuming you will be. Let your professionalism steam.
   
3. don't ever call your book a "fiction novel". Do you need to know why you shouldn't do this? If you do need to know, you're not a writer because you haven't properly thought about the meaning of your words. Which is the entire point of being a writer not a piece of crapness.
   
4. don't say that your book is a historical-satirical-romantic-sci-fi novel. If it is, it's a mess.
5. don't confuse the description of your book with the back cover blurb which you'd like to go on the back of your book. Your letter needs to say more than that - the blurb poses intriguing questions but the covering letter has to give us a bit more detail about how you will answer those questions.
6. don't ...

Actually, I've had a way better idea. Today, I was preparing for a workshop I'm giving at the Edinburgh Book Festival, on "The Perfect Approach to Publication", and I was planning to major on the ultra-important topic of covering letters. So, in the spirit of putting mouth where money is I decided that I should write a lovely sample imaginary covering letter, and my workshoppers and I could all discuss it and learn from it.

Then .... I had the bright idea of sending it to my actual agent - praise be to her for her tolerance of me and most of my wacky ideas that disrupt her working time and ability to drink coffee at peace - and seeing what she thought of it, professionally, imagining that she'd never heard of me. (Like many people). And guess what, she said liked it, that it was almost perfect and she'd love to be my agent!! Yay! Then we both remembered that she already was.

BUT - and here's the real pointy point - she did actually have two suggested improvements. Aka imperfections. (How dare she? Did she really think I wanted an honest opinion? Hasn't she learnt by now that authors only want to be told they're brilliant?) And then I had my wheeziest wheeze of the day, if not week.

I thought I'd put the covering letter here, just as I wrote it, and ask YOU to say what you thought were her two alleged imperfections. See, I know how much you like competitions and this is one. There will be a prize for the person who most closely (IMHO) guesses the two (obviously deliberate) flaws in this beautiful covering letter.

Clues: one is a sentence which she thinks (rightly) is not strong enough / right. And the other is something she (rightly, because she is nearly always right) would like me to have said but I didn't. (Obviously deliberately. Duh.)

ANSWERS IN THE COMMENTS SECTION, please.

First, I should stress that the book I am talking about is actually my next book, and is being published in June 2010. All details are as the book is - except that the description of me and my attempts at approaching agents are obviously not true, because I have one. Wasted has already been written and accepted and paid for and the copyright is mine all mine, just in case you thought it sounded like an idea you might use. Dabs off - go think of your own ideas. I'll have no plagiarists on my blog.

And obviously I have not enclosed any toffees, glitter, or a photo of me wearing nothing but a snake. I have not listened to myself bang on for nothing.

So here it is. And obviously ignore the silly address etc.

Perfect Author
Address etc etc
Email Address
Phone number

Anne Hathaway
Anne Hathaway Agency
12 Aspirational Avenue
Dreamland

Date

Dear Ms Hathaway,

I enclose the synopsis and sample first chapters of my 67,000 word Young Adult novel, Wasted. I also attach my CV, as requested in your submission guidelines.

Wasted is a story of love, choice and the science of chance. Jack and Jess meet by chance, and fall powerfully in love. Jess - beautiful and talented singer - and Jack - impulsive, fascinating, intense, drummer in his own band, Schrödinger’s Cats - are on the eve of leaving school; freedom beckons. But Jess’s mother is an alcoholic and Jess, only child in a single-parent family, feels responsible. As for Jack: his mother died long ago - twice. After such unlikely bad fortune, he is obsessed by luck, chance, fate - whatever you call it. Jack calls it something to be controlled and so takes deliberate risks, playing a game with a coin, challenging chance to beat him. Chances are that, one day, it must. Events come to a dangerous climax in the heady, alcohol-fuelled beach party after the Leavers’ Prom, when life or death hang on the toss of a coin.

An unusual voice - present tense, omniscient, vivid - is not the book’s only defining feature. Twice within the story, I write alternative versions of an event, versions which turn on an almost unnoticeable chance difference, but a difference which has vastly different consequences. I then toss a coin and the story continues with one version, depending on the result. Finally, I write two alternative endings and challenge the reader to toss a coin to “choose” the ending. How the coin lands affects which possibility becomes reality. And it’s a life or death difference.

I have worked very hard to make this novel as ready as possible for publication but I am also very used to welcoming editorial guidance. I have had a few pieces published in other fields, as you will see from my CV, but I am ambitious to become a successful author for young people and am prepared to work as hard as necessary to achieve that. The high quality YA market may be relatively small, but it’s one I love and would be so proud to work in.

I have already submitted Wasted to the Tanya Highbury agency and, although she gave me some very positive feedback, she did not feel that it was right for her at this time. Otherwise, yours is the only agency which I have approached so far. I know how busy you must be with existing clients but you will understand that I want to approach other agents fairly soon; therefore, I would be most grateful if you could tell me what your position is on my approaching other agents or indeed some publishers.

I very much hope that you will like what you read and that you will want to see the rest of Wasted.

Yours sincerely,

(incredibly amazingly potentially successful author but wishing she could really be even more so and will definitely follow all editorial advice - no that's not what I would really put: this is for the purposes of HUMOUR)

So, then, whatchyathink?