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Text of the page (random words):
o obligation to say how many copies of any of your books have sold in print or digital while it s admirable that you want to be honest about your sales record almost every author starts her or his career with small sales and no publisher is going to expect that you ve sold a tonne otherwise they d have heard about it already and if they really want to know how many books you ve sold they can ask you the other point in your question is that you mentioned in the query that you hadn t had much time to promote the book as well as giving other reasons well don t do that again you have no way of knowing why your books do and don t sell and neither does the publishing industry if we knew we d patent it so don t make excuses don t give reasons which may or may not be true the salient points are that you have written and you have published so you already have experience state your experience state what your current project is be proud of the fact that you have both that s it posted by agent sydney at 9 14 am no comments labels ebooks submissions friday august 15 2014 arbitrary word counts and the end of western civilisation i have completed a novel manuscript that is on the shorter side at 66 000 words initially i contemplated approaching agents and publishers who work with young adult titles as it does have a teenage protagonist but after sending it to a few writerly friends and colleagues i m an english teacher for feedback i was told what i think i already knew deep down it s not really a ya novel this leaves me in a bit of a dilemma when it comes to the length from all that i have read online agents are reluctant to take on books this short especially if they aren t literary fiction and are coming from a first time author but i ve also read that nobody wants to read filler scenes and you shouldn t bulk out a work more than is necessary to tell the story do you think it would be wise to try to add 10 15 000 words to start sending queries about the manuscript at its current length or is there something else i should consider or should i put this one away to gather dust with my first few terrible novels and focus on the next one sixty six thousand words isn t short for grown ups fiction it s just fine at least for australia i don t know which country you re in i don t know which websites you ve been reading that say it isn t but it wasn t this website ideal word counts exist largely because of the costing of the book the publisher has to buy a certain amount of paper to produce a book that will turn out to be x pages in length they want to charge y for that book and the cost of paper therefore affects their margin on the book which is likely to be very slim because most of them are your word count is within the range of what s acceptable for general fiction a publisher could make their costing work on that it s slightly larger than most ya titles though in case you re curious the only genre where it might be problematic is fantasy where readers expect the books to be about double that length ultimately though you have to write the story and just let the word count sort itself out if the story feels like it s too fat trim it if it could use more scenes add them but just let the story determine what it needs and work from there this last bit was added for dramatic effect posted by agent sydney at 3 15 pm 1 comment labels submissions word count just because you re paranoid doesn t mean they re after you i m a melbourne writer i m lucky enough to have a literary agent and i have two completed mss to sell my agent has been submitting them and both of us are learning just how tight the fiction market is at the moment where the first one almost got across the line with a couple of the conventional large publishers the second one which she thought would be a dead cert also is struggling my agent says my work is of a very high standard she is an experienced reader and editor and is selling her other clients work so i m wondering if something else might be sabotaging the submissions 1 my age i m over 45 and it s a first novel situation i ve been published in lit journals etc but no book length works published and no high profile celebrity amazing personal story for pr 2 i wrote a couple of reviews on my blog in which i said i didn t love certain australian books have i been blacklisted does such a thing happen i ve asked my agent and she said she doesn t believe either of these things are relevant that it would all be about the work in the view of publishers that s all they look for but really can that be true don t publishers want as many positives as possible to try to sell more books market etc perhaps it really is just such a bad time i ll forgive you for being from melbourne now let s move on 1 your age is irrelevant there appears to be a belief held amongst some unpublished writers that publishers and agents are madly judging all writers based on their age but they re not and if they were that would be silly because most readers especially those who actually buy books are not twenty five ifyouknowwhatimean there is no right age to start out and if younger novelists were preferred why do we need a whole literary award dedicated to them the vogel s 2 if there is a blacklist let me know where it is because i m probably on it and so is everyone else in the industry we all have books we don t like and most of us aren t shy about our opinions if everyone only liked the same few books we wouldn t have so many books published each year you haven t said what type of fiction you write and that detail is important chick lit is apparently dead that is the term one publisher used when speaking to me recently so times are tough for chick lit writers crime fiction is always hard mainly because publishers believe it is but that s a much bigger topic and literary fiction definition still elusive is always hard in general though sometimes you just don t find the right publisher at the time when your novel is being submitted timing is so important the right publisher needs to be in the right publishing house at the right time with the right sales and marketing support and yes it really all does come down to the work the bells and whistles are great but they re no substitute for the work bells and whistles we can help with the wriiting we can t so your time may not be now it may be next year or it may be several years off yet if your work is good and your agent thinks it is so that s a clue have faith in yourself and most importantly keep writing because maybe it s your next manuscript that will break through then you ll have the current manuscript available just in case the publisher wants another one posted by agent sydney at 3 06 pm no comments labels australian fiction fiction publishers tuesday july 29 2014 it s not you it s me okay it s you i do actually have an agent who took me on nearly five years ago based on producer interest in a film project of mine nothing came of it or other projects that followed so the agent prepared a lot of contracts for no income true they were riddled with typos and missing clauses but i didn t feel like i was in any position to complain i m not sure the agent is the biggest fan of my writing either based on the fact that some of my scripts elicited no response at all when i submitted them for feedback and i think they only sent one to any producers who did end up optioning it then last year i was commissioned not as a result of any agent involvement to develop a tv series generating enough commission to compensate i think for that earlier unpaid work karmic balance and all that relations were cordial until the agent forwarded me a contract to sign saying it looked fine even though it was 18 pages long and the agent had received it literally 10 minutes earlier i found some unfavourable terms in there that had to be renegotiated so is switching agents frowned upon in australia would i be assumed to be a high maintenance client best ignored am i expecting too much switching agents isn t exactly applauded in any country but it s not verboten either it s a business decision and you have to do what s right for your business there are a handful of things which suggest that your existing agent perhaps isn t right for your business 1 the contracts riddled with typos and missing clauses typos are one thing i ve seen contracts from publishing companies and film studios with typos and i ve also made typos in my own contracts they happen to everyone but missing clauses are another the intent of a contract can still be clear if there typos but that s harder to say if there are missing clauses as for preparing contracts for no return well that s the risk film agents take literary agents do a lot of work on manuscripts and that s the risk we take 2 not appropriately reviewing the latest contract it may not take the agent long to look at contracts those of us who have seen a lot of them tend to hone in on particular clauses and therefore don t give the same scrutiny to all clauses e g the governing law clause doesn t get reviewed as closely as the subsidiary rights clause but in light of your earlier experience with missing clauses it s not great especially as you picked up on those unfavourable clauses 3 lack of engagement with your writing even if your agent is primarily a deal making type of agent and each agent is different writers still want to feel as though their work is appreciated by their agent or at the very least that the agent is paying attention i don t always give my clients a gold star sometimes they re asked nicely of course to do an amount of work or even to start again and when i say asked i mean i make a suggestion not give a directive so they may not like what i have to say but they do know that i m paying attention most agents pay attention to the work the work after all is the reason for the agent client relationship to exist if your agent was doing everything else right apart from paying closer attention to your work perhaps you d be prepared to overlook that omission but in light of everything else it all seems to add up to a situation where you don t feel as though you have an agent who is as supportive of you as she or he could be in short you re not expecting too much to want to have your contracts scrutinised or to have attention paid to your work these are standard services to expect from your agent but i would suggest that you give the agent a chance to either redeem or explain him or herself just because you do have a relationship and it s good to end things nicely if they re going to end ask a direct question it s been good to work with you but i have the feeling that you re not wild about my writing is that the case i haven t ever received feedback from you when i ve sent scripts to you the agent may say that they do love your writing but don t personally feel qualified to give feedback they just might not have wanted to admit that to you you may still think that they re not properly supportive anyway in which case you need to leave if however you think there s hope there perhaps you want to try to work out the contract reviewing issues if you don t though it s quite okay to change just make it clear it s a business decision you re not the right client agent fit wish them well if only because you want them to wish you well also because they may turn up at the next agency you go to posted by agent sydney at 12 18 pm no comments labels agents film agents monday july 28 2014 appraise to appease i have written a fantasy and i want it to be a series i had sent it for appraisal and the response has been rather good regarding plot structure conflict description and character negatives were punctuation alignment and grammar at some places along with suggestions to plump up and explore the events i am working on incorporating the suggestions i have two questions here 1 i have heard that sending the appraisal along with the manuscript helps however my appraisal has the negatives so should i send this appraisal while sending the draft to the agent should i get a re appraisal done after corrections or should i just mention that it has been reviewed by a professional agency i am afraid that the negatives in the appraisal however minimum will create a bad impression 2 since the negatives are mostly about punctuation i reckon it can addressed by help of a copy editor but most people suggest copy editing after appraisal if you suggest re appraisal should i copy edit it before sending it the second time well i can save you the trouble of sending your appraisal also known as a manuscript assessment in these here parts as part of your submission the agents and publishers i know don t pay any attention to them appraisals assessments are meant to be a useful tool to help a writer work out what needs to be done to their manuscript before it s sent to an agent or publisher it s not a tool for the agent or publisher though and consequently they won t pay much or any attention to it we ve also all been burnt by the number of appraisals we ve seen that say this book should be published even though it s clear that the accompanying manuscript is nowhere near publishable standard but the fundamental reason why we don t need to read the appraisal is this we do our own appraising i don t care what someone else s opinion of your manuscript is i want to establish my own opinion sending someone else s opinion just makes it look as though you re worried about what my opinion will be and that means at some subterranean level of your consciousness you re worried your work isn t up to scratch so get it up to scratch and then send it to an agent or publisher who will make up their own mind in this case it sounds as though the appraisal you had done has actually been beneficial in pointing out some work you need to do unless the punctuation errors are egregious don t worry too much about them we all make errors if your writing is otherwise great we can overlook them but if those errors are sufficient to make me not be able to read your writing the way you intend you should fix them regarding freelance editors they are an increasingly popular option for writers and for good reason as they look only at whether or not your manuscript is working and they won t offer an assessment of whether or not it s publishable they re not affordable for everyone though in which case a manuscript assessment service could be useful as i m often asked to recommend editors this is as far as i ll go http www fen net au the editors i know in this network are excellent but i m not going to single out just one posted by agent sydney at 2 44 pm 1 comment labels manuscript assessment tuesday april 15 2014 from the deepest recesses of the bottom drawer when querying should i mention the three other never to see the light of day manuscripts i ve written or not i feel their existence shows i ve been working hard on my writing for some time but they re not ...