Show of hands. How many of you have read The List? Alright. Everyone put your hands down; that’s what I thought. Laura Cullen, author of The List and several other fan fic favorites, is an amazingly talented woman who I feel privileged to know in this fandom. She is also about to be an honest-to-God published author! And because she’s just such an amazing person, she’s agreed to share with us some of her secrets about writing her novel, getting her work published, and obtaining representation. Get out your pens and paper, ladies. This is going to be chock full of tips and information for all of you aspiring authors!
Laura's novel, a paranormal romance entitled Forever Freed, will be published by the Wild Rose Press in late 2010 or early 2011 under the pen name Laura Kaye. Forever Freed tells the story of Lucien Demarco, an empathic vampire, who unexpectedly falls in love with a young single mother and her daughter, whom he planned to kill: "Love can heal a broken heart, even one that no longer beats."
Did you obtain an agent before you began querying publishers? Do you have one now?
Though I have queried near and far, I have not yet landed an agent. While most of the big New York publishing houses accept only agented submissions (i.e., submissions from an author with an agent), many of the small to moderate-sized publishers and e-publishers accept unsolicited submissions. The Wild Rose Press falls in this latter category. After unsuccessfully querying to get an agent, I identified 6 publishers that accepted unsolicited submissions. The Wild Rose Press was the first I submitted to and they were interested almost immediately. When I finish my next novel manuscript (not related to the Forever series), I will begin the process of trying to get an agent again.
When, in the writing process, did you begin querying publishers? Was your manuscript complete or was it sooner in the process?
Only query agents and publishers with a complete and polished manuscript. I can't emphasize this enough. Only established authors can get away with pitching a story concept or an incomplete manuscript.
Could you tell us a little about the process of obtaining representation and publication?
The process of obtaining representation is a lengthy and time-consuming one, and one filled with a lot of rejection -- that's something people need to be prepared for. Here are the steps to obtaining representation:
1) Complete your manuscript then revise, and revise again, and revise again, and do some polishing, and then go through one last time to polish some more. Agents don't want to hear from authors unless their manuscript is completed. And, since the etiquette is that once an agent says "no" to a manuscript, you can't resubmit that same manuscript to them again even if you've made big changes/improvements to it, you should never query until the manuscript is as good as it can possibly be. There's a saying that goes something like, finishing a novel is 10% writing and 90% revising/editing, and there's a lot of truth to that.
2) Write the following marketing documents that will be necessary during the querying process: a query letter, a 1-page synopsis, and a longer/full synopsis (roughly 1 page of synopsis for every 50 pages of manuscript). A query letter is THE MOST IMPORTANT part of the querying process. Every agent expects to see this from you and most will determine on the basis of that letter alone -- and the story blurb it includes (along the lines of the one I used for Forever Freed above) -- whether or not they actually want to read any pages of your story. A synopsis is a summary of the entire plot, including the ending. These are not easy documents to write and the same care must be taken with them as with the manuscript. Agent Nathan Bransford has excellent how-to resources and tips on his blog: http://blog.nathanbransford.com/ . And agent assistant Jodi Meadows runs a query project on her blog where she tears apart/comments on actual query letters to show you why they do or don't work: http://jmeadows.livejournal.com/tag/query%20project
3) Identify agents who represent the kind of book you're trying to sell. There are guides to literary agents available to help you do this. You will waste your time if you send queries for your romance novel to an agent who only represents mysteries, for example.
4) Begin querying, noting from the agents' submission guidelines exactly what it is they want you to submit. Some want just a query letter, some want a query letter and a full synopsis. Some want a query letter and the first 5 pages. Some want a query letter and the first 3 chapters. Etc. The point is, with both steps 3 and 4, you have a lot of homework to do about the agents and their submission guidelines before you send that first query. And these steps are a lot more time consuming than you might imagine.
5) Sit back and wait to hear from the agents you queried, and try not to gnaw on your fingernails too much or overindulge in chocolate.
6) Expect one of three responses from the agents: 1) Rejection, 2) Interested, and they request a partial manuscript, often the first 3 chapters, and 3) Interested, and they request the full manuscript. Expect that most of the responses you get will be rejections -- and, because agents are inundated with queries, the rejections are entirely form letters or one-line "Not a good fit for me" responses. Getting a request for a partial or a full is great, and the possible outcomes from there are: 1) if they requested a partial and liked, they'll go on to request the full; 2) if they requested a full they liked, they might offer representation, or 3) if they didn't like either the partial or the full, they'll reject, often without much/any explanation as to why.
7) My own stats for Forever Freed: I sent out queries to about 60 agents, and had 3 requests for fulls and 5 requests for partials, all of which were ultimately rejected. Out of the 60, 15 never replied at all.
8) The stats on agents and queries: There are a couple of agents who blog on their statistics. It's not at all uncommon to see an agent report receipt of 100-200 queries in one week, out of which they requested one partial.
Did you receive any rejections during this process and if so did they explain why your novel was rejected or was is just a blanket rejection?
You'll never meet a writer pursuing publication that hasn't experienced rejection. Writing is very subjective, and what may seem trite or unoriginal to one person could elicit a strong emotional connection from the next. Also, agents and publishers have other, outside considerations in mind as they take on new projects: if you're submitting a vampire romance and it's good, but they've just signed four other vampire romances, they may pass on yours regardless of the manuscript's high quality. Of the 8 full or partial manuscripts I've had read and rejected, only in one case did the agent bother to give me any substantive feedback about why she was passing. Agents are absolutely buried under unsolicited queries and submissions, not to mention ones that are referred to them or they've requested, so the best you often get is a form letter rejection. Here are a few typical ones from my own (thiccckkk) folder of rejections:
Thank you for taking the time to send your query and/or writing sample. While your project sounds intriguing, this is just not what I'm looking for right now. Please keep me in mind for future projects, although, due a backlog, I won’t be looking at queries again until after May 1st.
Thank you for sharing your work with me. Unfortunately, I feel that in today's market, I cannot take on projects unless I feel strongly about them. I'm sorry to say that it didn't happen with this one. This, of course, is just my opinion and others may feel differently. I wish you the best of luck with all your publishing endeavors.
Thank you for querying me about your manuscript, FOREVER FREED. I've read your sample pages, I'm sorry to say that the project just isn't a perfect fit with my current needs. This has less to do with your strengths as a writer and more to do with my goals as an agent and the trends of the current literary marketplace. I wish you the best of luck in your search for the right agent and publisher. Keep writing!
Sorry, not right for me. (Yes, that is the whole response.)
Thank you for your query. I didn’t make the connection with your material that I would need to request more, but please keep in mind that another agent may feel differently. I wish you the best of luck in placing your work.
Thanks very much for your query. I would be happy to take a look at a sample of your work. Please send the first 2 chapters to me electronically as a word attachment. Please allow several weeks to hear back from me. Thanks again for your interest and I look forward to reading your work. (YAY! YIPPEE! BREAK OUT THE CHAMPAGNE!) But then, 6 weeks later: Thanks very much for sending a sample of your story, FOREVER FREED. I very much appreciate the opportunity to take a look at your story, but unfortunately I didn’t find the first pages grabbed me in a way that I hoped they would and I am going to pass on the opportunity to read more. As I am sure you realize another agent may feel completely differently about the work, and I wish you all the best with your writing. Thanks again for giving me a chance to read your work.
What is one thing about this process that surprised you?
I've been most surprised by how important fiction writing has become to me. Before two years ago, I'd not written any fiction since high school (which was, erm, a while ago....). I couldn't imagine my life without it now. Writing fiction, I feel more intellectually alive than I have in years, and I say that as someone who makes her livelihood from a career based around ideas (I'm a college history professor). I have an idea file a dozen novel-length stories thick, and my brain is constantly percolating ideas for each of them. Inspiration strikes at odd times -- while driving and while brushing my teeth are two examples (?!) -- and it's not unusual for characters to insert themselves in my brain and hang out for a while. For example, I have Lucien (my lonely/tortured soul Italian vampire) to thank for my love of Linkin Park. I'd never once listened to their music before Lucien Demarco existed. The Beatles's "In My Life" has also become one of my all-time favorite songs -- and it's Lucien's as well. (Please don't send the men in white coats after me....) In terms of the process of trying to become published, though, the most surprising thing is just how long it all takes. And the best way to deal with the waiting? Keep writing.
Do you have any tips for would-be authors that want to make the jump out of fanfiction and into mainstream publishing?
There are a lot of very talented people writing in the Twilight fandom. So many times I've been reading a fic, particularly an all-human story (most of which would either fall into the historical romance genre or the contemporary romance genre, in terms of the romance market), and have thought, "Wow. They really should've made this into an original story. It's good enough to be published."
The biggest tip I could offer may also be the one fic writers least want to hear, and that is, stop writing fan fiction and spend the time writing your own stories.
I don't mean this to denigrate writing fan fiction at all. I've LOVED my experience writing fan fiction and made a lot of wonderful contacts and friendships. I found it a hugely rewarding experience. It's just that, once you've posted something as a fan fiction, even if you take it down and change the borrowed elements to make it purely original, it can be very difficult to get that story published (i.e., by a publisher, not self published -- the difference is that a publisher pays you to publish your work, whereas in self publishing the author pays to have their work published and/or the only distribution is print on demand (POD)). A lot of agents and publishers specifically state, in their submission guidelines, that they will not consider a story that is or once was fan fiction (the new Omnific Publishing is an exception). If you have no desire to seek formal publication, then this is obviously not a concern for you, and you should continue doing what you love, which is participating in this great fandom by writing fics. But, if your goal is to become a published author of original fiction, you need to focus on that. You need to treat it as a business. You need to write, and find a critique partner(s), and join the relevant professional organizations (for me, that is primarily the Romance Writers of America, but I also belong to several of their chapters, including my state-level chapter and their FF&P chapter, which stands for Fantasy, Futuristic, and Paranormal), and attend writing workshops, and perhaps enter your work in some writing contests to get more feedback, and spend the time it takes to revise and query. Depending on the time you have, maybe you can find time to both write fanfics and work on your own original stories, but there's only so many hours in the day, and the kids always seem to want things like food and clean clothes....
