Erica Verrillo's Blog, page 103

Literary Agents Who Are Seeking New Writers

If you are a new writer, finding an agent may seem like one of the twelve labors of Hercules.  Chances are, if you've already sent off a few dozen queries only to receive generic rejections or, even worse, no reply at all, you are feeling hopeless. Take heart! There are agents who are looking for you! Often, these are young agents who have recently joined a literary agency and are building their client list. They may not have a lot of clout on their own, but if they are part of an established agency, editors will listen.

Here are three agents who are actively seeking clients. Make sure you read their full bios and check out their agency's submission guidelines before sending a query.

1. Roz Foster of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency

Roz is a talent scout for one of the top literary agencies on the West Coast. Right now she is looking for new talent. She is interested in literary and commercial fiction, women's fiction, literary sci-fi, and literary YA. She loves novels that make her feel like the author is tuned into a rising revolution - cultural, political, literary, or whatnot - that's about to burst on the scene. She looks for a resonant, lively voice; rich, irresistible language; complex characters with compelling development arcs; and a mastery of dramatic structure. Roz is also interested in non-fiction in the areas of current affairs, design, business, cultural anthropology/social science, politics, psychology and memoir. Here, she looks for driven, narrative storytelling and sharp concepts that have the potential to transcend their primary audience. Please note that Roz is specifically not interested in: sports, cookbooks, screenplays, poetry, romance, and children's middle-grade/picture books.

2. Sarah E. Younger of Nancy Yost Literary Agency

Sarah is interested in representing all varieties of romance / women's fiction: contemporary, historical, Western, sports, regency, inspirational, urban fantasy, paranormal, young adult and any combination thereof. Out of all of those, she's really love to see a contemporary military romance, a great/quirky historical, or a really awesome inspirational romance. She also enjoys stories with a strong supporting cast of animal characters: horses, dogs, cats.

3. Bridget Smith of Dunham Literary, Inc.

Bridget is looking for middle grade and young adult novels in a range of genres, including fantasy and science fiction, historical fiction, romance, and contemporary. However, she's also keeping an eye out for any book that bends the rules of genre or any books with underrepresented or minority characters. When it comes to adult fiction, Bridget especially wants fantasy and science fiction, historical fiction, and literary women's fiction, as well as informational, literary nonfiction, especially science or history written by experts for a general audience.

HAVE YOU WRITTEN A LOVE STORY? THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO WIN $10,000 AND GET YOUR BOOK PUBLISHED!

Quirk Books has announced its “Looking for Love” Fiction Contest. First prize is $10,000 and publication by Quirk Books. They are looking for love stories that are fresh, fun, and strikingly unconventional. Boy Meets Girl. Girl Meets Girl. Girl Meets Shark. Shark Meets Pirate. Anything goes! (Except vampires.)

Best of all, this contest does not require an entry fee. It's FREE.

The contest deadline is October 1st, 2013. For official rules and entry form, go HERE. Good luck! 

Here are the rules. 

1. There is no entry fee.

2. The contest is open to any professional or nonprofessional writer, regardless of nationality. Writers may only enter one manuscript into the contest—so take your best shot. If you are under the age of 18, you must have the permission of your parent or legal guardian to enter the contest.

3. All manuscripts submitted: a) must be original works of book length (at least 50,000 words) written in the English language by the contestants; b) must not violate the rights of any third party; and c) must feature a love story. The editors of Quirk Books will have sole and absolute discretion and authority to decide if a manuscript meets these criteria. All decisions will be final.

4. All entries must be postmarked no later than October 1, 2013 and must include:

a) A double-spaced and neatly typed copy of the manuscript (photocopies are acceptable), with pages numbered consecutively from beginning to end. The author’s name should appear only on the title page and otherwise not appear anywhere on the manuscript pages.
b) A synopsis of no more than 250 words.
c) This application form, signed and completed.
d) a self-addressed stamped envelope if you would like us to acknowledge
receipt of your manuscript.5. All entries must be mailed to: “LOOKING FOR LOVE” FICTION CONTEST, Quirk Books, 215 Church Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106.

6. You should keep a copy of the manuscript for your own protection. Quirk Books will not be responsible for lost, stolen, mistransmitted, or mislaid manuscripts. Because of the great volume of submissions (and because, hey, there’s no entry fee) we anticipate manuscripts will not be returned. Please do not send return postage or envelopes.

7. Manuscripts submitted to the contest cannot be shopped by literary agents or other third parties during the submission period, which runs from June 1, 2013, through October 1, 2013. However, you may be represented by a literary agent provided that you—and not your agent— agree to abide by these official rules.

8. The winner will be selected by the editors of Quirk Books. Quirk reserves the right not to select any winner if, in the sole opinion of the editors, none of the manuscripts submitted are of publishable quality. An attempt will be made to notify the contest winner, if any, no later than January 15, 2014.

9. If a winner is selected, Quirk Books will be prepared to publish the winning manuscript pursuant to Quirk’s standard form author’s agreement with the contestant. The winner will receive an advance against future royalties of $10,000 after that standard form author’s agreement has been executed by both parties. Additional terms will be determined by Quirk Books at its sole discretion. The contestant may request reasonable changes in the offered terms, but Quirk Books shall not be obligated to agree to any such changes. Quirk Books may, but will not be required to consider for publication manuscripts submitted by other contestants.

10. No critical evaluation or commentary will be offered by the editorial staff of Quirk Books unless, in the sole opinion of the editorial staff, evaluation or commentary is appropriate in the case of a manuscript being considered for publication.

11. This competition is void where prohibited or restricted by law.

12. Good luck!

Top 5 Online Resources for Short Story Markets

"Leo Tolstoy" by Nicolai Ge It is received wisdom that in order to get a book published you should start by placing short stories in literary magazines. Like most received wisdom, this is hogwash. It is easier to get a book published than it is to get a short story placed in any kind of reputable literary magazine. (That being said, there are literary magazines of ill repute, and your stories may wind up sliding down the slippery slope into a few of them.) Not only is it hard to break into the literary magazine scene, it takes forever. Literary magazines are often staffed by underpaid, overworked grad students, who will take a minimum of three months to respond to your submission – if at all. Moreover, their readerships are generally small (1000 subscribers is a lot), their editorial staff quirky, and their requirements absurd. (No simultaneous submissions? Snail mail? Seriously!)

So, why bother? For one thing, some people are really good at writing short stories – much better than they are at writing novels. Short stories are not easy to write. Unlike novels, which allow writers to natter on for hundreds of pages before getting to the point, short stories are an art form that requires fast efficient character development, a plot that moves at the speed of light, and an ending that sticks in your mind like that song you can’t get out of your head. If you can write a good short story, I envy you. Get it published!

Here are the most extensive, and most useful, resources for finding the perfect home for your short story.

1) Poets and Writers
Poets & Writers is always my first stop when I am looking for a short story market. Their list is not comprehensive, but P&W includes a great deal of useful information, such as circulation, length of time for a response, genres, representative authors, reading period, whether they accept electronic submissions, or charge a reading fee. (Don’t submit to magazines that charge a fee. They will take your money and run.) Listings are alphabetical, but you can also do a search by genre and subgenre.

2) Every Writer’s Resource
These people were not overstating their mission when they called their site Every Writer’s Resource.  Not only do they feature articles, blogs, publishers, but oh! The lists! The big list has 2000 literary magazines on it, which is enough to make anyone’s hair fall out. To keep you from going bald, they also narrow the field down to a list of the top 50 literary magazines, university magazines, print magazines that take online submissions (bravo!), and genre-specific magazines (horror, fantasy and sci-fi).

3) Random House list
Random House doesn’t do anything half way, and their list proves it. It’s very long.  If you are blitzing your way through submissions – and, as an aside, blitzing is a good technique if you don’t have years to waste waiting for replies – this list will enable you to submit to a hundred magazines in a day. There is very little in the way of detailed information, but for sheer convenience, nothing beats the RH list.

4) New Pages 
New Pages keeps a well-organized list with new and featured magazines at the top. Best of all they include icons of the magazine covers. Magazine covers are just as important as book covers (by which we make ill-informed, yet somehow completely accurate judgments). You don’t want your short story appearing in a magazine that has cover art drawn by the editor’s six-year-old grandson. The short summaries alongside the cover icons provide the essentials that will enable you to make a fast choice.

5) Duotrope (payment required)
When Duotrope was free I used the site daily. Not only does Duotrope include every literary magazine, you can search magazines by genre, whether they take electronic submissions, response time, and acceptance rate. These last two details are extremely important, and because Duotrope’s figures are based on what writers report, they are fairly accurate. The subscription is $5 a month (7-day free trial). (You can access Duotrope’s basic stats for individual magazines by doing a Google search on “duotrope” and the name of the magazine.)

WHAT BOOK MADE YOU?

Last month, the British bookseller, Waterstones, launched a conversation. Readers were invited to comment on "The Book That Made Me." The invitation drew enthusiastic replies, not just from Waterstones aficionados, but from celebrities like Terry Pratchett. What book made you? Join the conversation HERE.

"Waterstones invites readers to share books that changed their lives," by Catherine Scott.

Telegraph: May 29, 2013

"Waterstones is inviting readers to name a book that altered their lives, as part of a project launched today called ‘The Book That Made Me’. Readers are encouraged to share their stories (in less than 100 words) online and instore. The bookshop will then feature their favourite contributions on its website and in their shops around the country.

Waterstones has already received contributions from a number of celebrity readers, including former political aide Alastair Campbell, who selected Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary because "it gave me a love of the French language". Author Malorie Blackman hailed Alice Walker's The Color Purple for "showing me not only could we black women become writers, but that we could write stories in our own way, using our own voices".

Commenting on the rationale for the initiative, Jon Woolcott of Waterstones said: “Our bookshelves reflect us – we are all made up of books… And each one has an effect, a slight hand on the tiller sometimes, occasionally a wrench which changes our course completely.”

Read more...

What Types of Books Are People Buying ... and Who Is Buying Them?

Bowker is the publishing  industry's leading source of statistics. Their 2013 Consumer Demographics report reveals some eye-opening trends. Although most buyers purchase books online, they are still buying more print books than ebooks. Who is buying? Women. What are they buying? Adult fiction. Click here for Random House's enlightening inforgraphics.

Source: Random House Notes

By Milena Schmidt and Mina Park

How do people learn about new books?  What types of books are they buying? What formats are they selecting?  Consumer insights play an important role in a publisher’s strategies, from acquisitions to pricing and marketing campaigns. During a recent industry event at Random House, Carl Kulo of Bowker Market Research shared highlights from their 2013 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics & Buying Behaviors Annual Review.

The report shares insight into buying trends from 2012, as well as the first quarter of 2013. A nationally representative sample of Americans aged 13+ is invited to take a survey on book buying each month. Responses from at least 6,000 panelists who purchased a book in the month prior to each survey are aggregated to gather insights on who the panelists are, their preferences and habits, and what’s important to them when they shop for books.

Read more ...

Rejected by Publishers All Over NYC, Amanda Hocking is Now a Self-Published Millionaire

Amanda Hocking This is one of those rags-to-riches stories that inspires self-published writers. Why? Because Amanda Hocking wasn't "discovered" by an agent or a publisher. She's still self-publishing, and selling 100,000 books a month.


Source: Jezebel

Amanda Hocking's story isn't just interesting because, at 26 years old, she's a millionaire from selling eBooks. Her tale is also fascinating because it remains a work in progress. Success brings new challenges, one of which is often defending that success. Something Hocking is having to do.

Hocking, a self-proclaimed unicorn enthusiast and Muppet activist, writes about vampires, zombies, and yes, romance. According to reports, just one year ago, the Minnesota-based writer was "impoverished," "living paycheck to paycheck," and the manuscripts she sent out were rejected by publishers all over New York. Like many authors, Hocking turned to self-publishing, creating a store on Amazon. She set the prices of her work relatively low — 99¢ to $2.99 — and for every $2.99 book she sells, she keeps 70%. Hocking tells USA Today: "To me, that was a price point that made sense for what I would be willing to spend on an e-book… I use iTunes a lot, and it's 99 cents and $1.29 a song."

Between her blog, Twitter, Facebook and word of mouth, Hocking's stories caught on; she sold 100,000 of her works in December, and over 10 months she's sold more than 900,000. She's about to buy a house, she's getting a lot of press, and Elle magazine is going to profile her. Cue the inevitable backlash.

Read the rest of the story here...

Are You Ready to Contact an Agent? Take This Short Quiz and Find Out!

You’ve finally completed your book. You’ve had it critiqued – brutally – and done more revisions than you care to count. Your proofreader has made sure there’s not a single error in the entire manuscript, and now you are confident that your work is ready to be published. What next? Obviously, you need an agent. So, after searching AgentQuery for agents representing your genre, and consulting Jeff Herman’s Guide and the most recent Writer’s Digest, you are sitting down to compose the perfect query letter.

Stop. You’ve skipped some steps.

Before you can even think about contacting an agent, there are several important questions you must be able to answer. Why? Because, if an agent calls you, she or he will ask them. (I know this from painful personal experience.) You must be prepared to reply with compelling answers.

This short quiz will tell you if you are ready to take on the publishing industry.

1) Have you written a one-page summary of your novel? Do you have a “hook,” an intriguing sentence that will draw your audience into your story, for example: “A man wakes up one morning to discover that every single person he knows is trying to kill him – even his wife and kids – and he has no idea why.” Can you keep your agent’s full attention for three minutes while you describe (verbally, or in writing) the rest of the story? In short, if your agent asks, “What’s your book about?” can you sell it? 20 points

2) Have you researched your market? Who will buy your book? Agents rely on numbers because publishers do, so you have to be able to say, with accuracy, how many people are in your demographic. (Hint, “adults” is not a demographic. College-educated, married women with small children is a demographic.) 20 points

3) What is your competition? Your agent will want to know the titles, authors, publishers, and year of publication of other popular books in your genre (or field). There are two reasons for identifying your competition: 1) You have to prove that there is already a market for your kind of book, and 2) You have to prove that your book is better or different. (Give specifics.) 20 points

4) How will you reach your market? Do you have a platform? You may think that marketing is the job of your publisher, and it is. But agents must convince editors that not only is there a market for your book, but that you have the credentials, and visibility, to promote your work. In the old days, BI (before internet), this was done through book tours, signings, and talks. You can still do those things, but what agents really want to know is how many people are reading your blog/website. (Publishers are fond of the number 10,000, so it helps to be able to say, “My blog/website has had 10,000+ page views.”) If you have published other books, how many were sold? Do people in your field or niche know who you are? Do you have any famous contacts who can give you endorsements? 20 points

5) Do you, in Michael Larsen’s immortal words, “harbor a consuming lust for success,” and are you “irresistibly driven to do whatever it takes to make your books sell?” Your agent will expect you go the whole nine yards, and to comply – eagerly – with whatever sports metaphors your publisher will hurl at you. This is no time to be a shrinking violet. You are going to have to step up to the mat and bat a thousand. 20 points

If you scored a hundred, congratulations! You are ready to contact an agent. If you answered, “I don't need to do that,” “I can't do that,” or “Huh?,” to any of the above questions, then get to work!

How to score 100 on the test

1) Fortunately, there are a many good books about pitches and proposals. I recommend Michael Larsen's How to Write a Book Proposal. (This book is also useful for fiction.) Larsen really understands the publishing industry, so you can rely on his advice. To get the hang of preparing pitches, start with a pitch for a book you haven't written. If your one-sentence hook can make your friends want to read the book, then move on to pitching your own work.

2) To determine your demographic, check the Alexa ranking for every well-trafficked website related to your genre or field. Alexa includes a demographic profile for high-ranking sites. Identify all the organizations or groups that might have an interest in your topic. What is their membership?

3) Amazon is one of the greatest research tools of all time. To identify your competition, look up the bestsellers in your genre. What books are on the top 100 lists? Who publishes them? Use the “look inside” feature to compare those books with your own. (Google Books also allows generous previews.)

4) Building a platform takes time. But you can accumulate 10,000 page views in a few months if you blog about interesting topics – and if you do some social networking. Advertise your blog posts on BookBlogs, Goodreads, and LinkedIn groups. You can precycle your posts on blogs that get more traffic than yours. You can recycle your blogs, as well, on sites that accept reprints. Look up the "Top 50 blogs" in your genre on Blogrank and read them! High-ranking blogs invariably contain lots of insider tips, trends, news, and industry gossip.

5) Getting writers to harbor a consuming lust for anything other than writing is a tall order. Writers are an idealistic lot, deeply committed to exploring the human soul while crouched in front of a keyboard in a dim, unheated garret. Before you contact an agent, you need to go through a metamorphosis – from idealistic writer, to practical businessman. When your agent asks if you will do anything to sell your book (mine did), there can only be one answer.


This article first appeared on Writer Unboxed on May 30, 2013.

What Did Stephen King Read as a Child?

Stephen King
"I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk." ~Stephen King

Stephen King - he's smart, he's successful, and he says exactly what he thinks. He grew up without a TV. That explains a lot.

Stephen King on What He Read as a Kid
By Ken Tucker

Sunday’s PARADE features a rare interview with master storyteller Stephen King. His new novel, Joyland (a paperback original due June 4), follows lovelorn college student Devin Jones, who, while working at a small-time amusement park, learns the secret history behind a shocking murder.

“I’ve been typed as a horror writer, but I never saw myself that way,” King tells PARADE’s Ken Tucker. “I’ve reached a point in my life where I can write pretty much what comes into my mind and not worry about grocery day at Publix.”

In the exclusive online extras below, King shares the horror classic his mom read to him as a child and his views on gun control, a subject he also addresses in the Kindle Single essay Guns. Be sure to check out this weekend’s issue of PARADE for the full story.

Most Comprehensive Study Ever of How Self-Published Authors Are Doing in the Marketplace

This must-read study was posted on Smashwords on May 8th. If you want to find out what the best price for an ebook is, if long books sell better than short books, how many book sell well, and what the average word count for the 60 bestselling Smashwords romance books is - go HERE.

New Smashwords Survey Helps Authors Sell More eBooks

May 8, 2013

"Last year at the 2012 RT Booklovers in Chicago, I released a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed indie ebook sales data.  Our goal was to identify potential factors that could help authors sell more ebooks.

Last week at the 2013 RT Booklovers convention in Kansas City, I shared new, updated data in a session titled, Money, Money, Money — Facts & Figures for Financial Payoff.  Now I'm sharing this data and my findings with you.

Some of the results were surprising, some were silly, and some I expect will inform smarter pricing and publishing decisions in the year ahead.

For the study this year, we analyzed over $12 million in sales for a collection of 120,000 Smashwords ebooks from May 1, 2012 through March 31, 2013.  We aggregated our sales data from across our retail distribution network, which includes the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Amazon (only about 200 of our 200,000 titles are at Amazon).  As the world's largest indie ebook distributor, I think our study represents the most comprehensive analysis ever of how ebooks from self-published authors and small independent presses are behaving in the marketplace."

Read more ...

"If you don't know what's impossible, it's easier to do it." ~Neil Gaiman's words of inspiration.

For all young - and old - writers, wherever you are, watch this. Neil Gaiman has it down.
"Whatever you do, you have one thing that is unique. You have the ability to make art.

When things get tough ... make good art.

Husband runs off with a politician ... make good art.

Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor ... make good art.

IRS on your trail ... make good art.

Cat exploded ... make good art.

Someone on the internet thinks what you are doing is stupid, or evil, or it's all  been done before ... make good art.

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice. Your mind. Your story. Your vision."