Get Published, Part 8 – Put On Your Selling Shoes

(Check out my guest post today – Tuesday – on Copyblogger, about blogs and book deals, including mine.)

Earlier today someone accused me of sounding like a car salesman lately.  Which is perfect for today’s post, because at some point in the publishing process you’ll have to do the same thing.   But without the car or a pack of Marlboros in your pocket.

Which lets me off the hook, by the way, since a) I’ve never sold cars, and b) I’ve never had a pack of Marlboros or any such carcinogenic product on my person in my entire life.

But I digress. 

All this talk about jacking the quality of your story to the requisite level over the past seven posts in this series… you may be impatient for something about the process of selling your masterpiece. 

Which it just may indeed be if you’ve been paying attention over the aforementioned seven posts.

Okay then.  Let’s do this.  Now that you know what the most important part of the process is – writing an irresistible story – let’s get you published. 

Allow me to take the mystery out of the getting published process. 

The most effective and reliable step you can take, after you’ve written the very best story you have in you, can be summed up with three simple words:

Get an agent.

I know, that smacks a bit like the last time you were on a car lot and the super-duper friendly sales guy wanted to introduce you to his boss.

But here’s the deal.  For every 100 novels published by established New York-based major league publishers, last year, next year or in the next decade – admit it, this is your heart’s desire – well over 99 percent of them were, and will be, submitted through agents.

And then, to make this even scarier, the 80-20 rule dominates here – 80 percent of those were sold by the top 20% of established agents.  Which, if you are a new-to-the-game writer, are almost impossible to land.

If you’re selling a screenplay, make that 100 out of 100 scripts sold were submitted by agents.   This is a system that cannot be circumvented unless your mother runs a movie studio or your uncle has an Oscar nomination.

If your target is a small press publisher, the numbers change radically.  Because – newsflash – agents aren’t interested in submitting to them, which in this case means your only option is to sell the thing yourself.

Which involves the identical process used to land an agent.  So keep reading.

If you’re considering P.O.D. (Publish On Demand), congratulations, your manuscript has just been accepted.  Because anybody can publish their own book in that manner, and you can sell it online and elsewhere as you please. 

So let’s get real here.  If you want a legitimate big time publishing deal, you need an agent.

How do you get one?

That can be summed up with only one word:

Somehow.

The Most Effective Technique to Land an Agent

The best way to land an agent is to be referred to one by a credible source. 

By credible, that means a writer represented by the agent you are targeting, one who likes your stuff and is willing to put in a word for you.  If the referring writer has been successfully published, so much the better, because your pal in your critique group who just signed with an agent isn’t about to risk her credibility by recommending you or anyone else.

A less direct approach is a referral from someone, a non-writer/client, who simply knows the agent and also happens to know you and likes your work enough to take this risk.  Which it is.

In 2003, a writer you’d never heard of came out of nowhere to become a household name… for about three months.  The book was Derailed, and frankly it wasn’t very good.  Neither was the movie they made out of it starring Jennifer Aniston.

So how did that happen?  How did this book get published in the first place, and how did it then score a half million dollar promotional budget from Warner Books (very much one of those major league New York outfits), which is precisely why it appeared in the front window of every major chain bookstore in the land?

Answer: the author ran the advertising agency that handled the Warner Books account.   A lot of lunches and martinis had gone under this bridge.

We’ve never heard of, or from, James Siegel again, by the way.

It’s that simple.  Sure, the publisher – the Big Cheese with the Big Desk – loved the book enough to do it, but rest assured, it was as much about those lunches and martinis as anything else.

Frankly, I don’t even know if an agent was involved in that one, but it makes my point.  People do business with people they know, or people within their network.  The higher up that chain you enter the process, the better your chances.

Don’t know any agents personally?  Don’t know anyone who does?  Don’t know any published authors with an agent who are willing to a) read your book, and then b) love it, and then c) take a risk with their agent and actually recommend it to them?

Didn’t think so.  So now what?

The Next Best Technique to Land an Agent

Two words this time: writing conferences.

Many major writing conferences invite agents to attend and hear pitches.  This process is simple: first you enroll for the conference, then you schedule a series of 10-minute dates with destiny. 

It’s a production line, to be sure.  Each agent hears literally dozens of pitches over the course of the weekend, and while they arrive with the secret hope of finding the next Lovely Bones, they can be pretty picky and cynical about what they hear.

Also, you won’t find The William Morris Agency or ICM at many of these conferences, and if you do you can rest assured that the person in attendance doesn’t occupy an office on the top floor.  But you will meet a lot of smaller agency principles at these venues, as well as owners of regional agencies, which are viable because they usually have the relationships required to get your book a look-see.

Got your appointment?  Okay, this is gut-check time.  You have ten minutes to sell this heard-it-all-before agent on your story.   One shot.

You better know every dark nook and cranny of your story, and you better know how to package it into a pitch.

If they like what they hear, they’ll ask you to tell them more.  If they still like what they hear – and this does happen a lot… they have to justify their expense account one way or the other – they’ll ask you to submit a partial, usually three chapters or so, no more than about 50 pages.

And then you wait.  Sometimes for months.

If they like what they’ve read – and it’s perfectly okay to remind them after you feel enough time has gone by – they’ll ask to see the completed work.

And yes, if two or more agents ask for a partial – good for you, by the way, bravo – you DO it. 

The Most Common and Least Effective Way to Land an Agent

You find their address, then you submit a query letter.

Not all agents will consider queries from unpublished writers who are unknown to them, and when this is the case it is usually stated clearly, because hearing from you is the last thing they want.

And again, it is perfectly okay to query more than one agent at a time. 

That’s how you get published.  In a nutshell.

Now lets crack those nuts open and bake ourselves a nice pecan publishing pie.

In Part 9 of this series I’ll address the issue of pitching your story effectively, either at a conference agent sit-down, a cocktail party or in an elevator, should you be so lucky.

Then in Part 10, I’ll discuss query letters.  Specifically, how to make them rock, and how to write a “one-sheet” story pitch that works.  With a proven sample.

The one I’ll show you – the one I used to find a new agent two years ago – received 11 invitations to submit the entire manuscript out of 13 queries sent.  (The book based on that one-sheet, by the way, will be published in two months.)

And then I ended up signing with another agent altogether, one I found — insert soft throat clearing here — through a referral from another writer.

I’m just sayin’.

Got agent stories of your own?

If you’ve pitched to agents at conferences, or have anything to share about the query process or getting published in general, then please share it here.

And by the way, I do have a slick little ’91 Buick for sale, if you’re interested.

Just in… my ebook,  Story Structure – Demystified, was just named as the #2 entry on writing critic and book promotion guru Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s ”1o Best Books of 2009″ list.  That list, among many other Top 10 lists from established reviewers, can be found at MyShelf.com.

Too car salesy?  Sorry.

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