June 03, 2009
Now it can be told
The contract’s been signed and returned. I’m writing a book. The project that started out as the “Reader’s Almanac,” changed to “Writers 365,” will now be — unless it changes again — “Writers Gone Wild: Feuds, Frauds and Frolics from the World’s Greatest Writers.”
Yeah, I can’t quite believe it either, but by Nov. 15, I need to have 60,000 mined, refined and rewritten words that someone would be willing to pay good money for or there’d be hell to pay from everyone.
It's scary, but in a good way. This is unexplored territory. I’ve been through the writing-and-rejecting part many times. Getting a call from an agent who likes the work and wants to represent it left me flatfooted.
Now, it’s gone beyond that, to finding an editor who likes the work just as much, who was able to convince a publisher to actually make an offer for it. And, instead of throwing together a bunch of words to put up on the website, I have to sit down and make it all work.
But before I move ahead, I’ll look back briefly, for those of you who want to get where I am and wonder how I got here. It’ll be quick, because the advice is already out there:
- Write something an agent wants to read.
- Follow the procedures to send it to an agent who wants to read it.
- If an editor likes the idea but wants changes, consider changing it.
That’s really it. But if you want more, here’s some of the details.
Ready?
* Write and rewrite the proposal: Nonfiction is different from fiction in that you can sell a project with a proposal. I got a couple of books out of the library (Write the Perfect Book Proposal: 10 That Sold and Why
was especially useful. It also helped when author Jonathan Maberry appeared at last year’s Pennwriter’s conference and offered to share his proposals. I also bought Get Known Before The Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform
and mined that for ideas on promoting the finished product.* To get an agent, follow the rules: I spent a lot of time on this. I got the latest guidebooks and mined the lists for agents who might be interested in a collection of 366 stories about writers, each tied to a day. That meant I had to understand just what kind of book I wanted to write. What category? Literary? Humor? Reference? Pop culture?
Taking Lynn (Paperback Writer) Viehl’s advice (at least, I think it came from her), I went to a couple bookstores and paid attention to where they shelved the books. I tried to imagine where mine would fit in. I saw right off the bat that Humor books were usually closer to the front of the store; reference tucked in the back. I like me some snark in my soup, so I needed to emphasize the book’s humor and the funny and weird stories. I also noted if there were any other books that were similar in subject or range with mine. There was one: Mass Historia: 365 Days of Historical Facts and (Mostly) Fictions
. I noted it for the section in the proposal that dealt with the competition.Back to the agents. I made up the list and made it as exclusive as possible. If the agent didn’t want Humor or Pop Culture, they went off the list. No point wasting my postage and their time. Then I went online to double-check the information. Some agents went out of business. Some no longer took clients. Some were not no longer interested in my categories. Of those left, I checked to see what they wanted:
- Some wanted just the pitch letter.
- Some wanted the proposal.
- Some wanted a truncated form of a proposal.
- Some accepted e-mail, some didn’t.
- Some wanted me to fill out a form on their website.
By now, the process became an assembly line. Mail the material. Wait for answers. Rinse, lather and repeat. Following the advice on Miss Snark’s website, I was going to try 100 agents, the theory being that, by that time, you should have a pretty good idea of the quality of your proposal.
And that’s pretty much it. From start to finish, the process took nearly nine months.
Am I excited? At times. I’m happy to get this project off the ground, and really happy with the people I’m working with. They’re smart, passionate about the work, and they have great taste in writers!
But, mostly, I’m focusing on the work: collecting the information, organizing the material, writing and rewriting the entries. I want it to be good, because a lot of good people are behind me. I don’t want to disappoint them.
Enjoy this post? Share it with others.
