What Literary Agents Want

excerpts from a panel discussion at the 2009 Backspace Writers Conference (www.backspacewritersconference.com)

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Colleen Lindsay
• Alexandra Machinist
• Mattlew Mahoney

[chocolatekdk]

@TheAlexander356 (The last part of my response) Writing is not a hard industry to break into but you must know you craft, be dedicated, and persistent. Not only will finishing high school be beneficial, but going to college and majoring in Marketing. This way you will understand how to market your book, how to use various outlets to make sure your book gets noticed and attention. This leads to sales and eventually a "career" in writing.

[chocolatekdk]

@TheAlexander356 (sorry got cut off) I hate to be the one to break it to you, but those big name authors represent about 10% of writers. Most writers dont make that much money. You can make enough money to live off of, if you continue to write (you need more than one trilogy). And even then it takes about 5 years. Self publishing is cool, but like Dogbyte009 said the sucess ratio is low. Editors on average only accept about 5% of all submissions.

[chocolatekdk]

I know I'm late, I just saw this thread but do want to chime in. @TheAlexander356. Writing is much more than writing. It is a full process that includes, writing (and being good at it. Knowing more than just grammar, but how to structure a story, make your characters 3 dimensional, keep the plot moving, good pacing, no sagging middle, and a whole bunch of other things that you will learn in HS and beyond), then there is editing, then there is marketing. Yes marketing is part of writing.

[Dogbyte009]

@TheAlexander356 Rule 1, if you're any good as a writer you don't need to pay to get published. For every self-publishing "success" story there are 100 writers who will never sell enough books to recover their costs. Why? Because there's no quality control, a self-publishing company will print anything you give them whether or not it's any good.

Rule 2, writing and publishing is a marathon not a sprint. Many authors never publish their first book, it's a stepping stone to writing a better one.

[TheAlexander356]

@sarajhenry I'm glad I have someone to talk to about this. I would have plenty of time for revision, etc if I could write 1,000 words per hour and write 10 hours a day I could be done a 900,000 word trilogy in 90 days. Check out a publisher called "Infinity Publishing". They are basically a more authentic way of self-publishing, I don't think I would take 5 years to get published with them, and I should also mention that I have upwards of 3,000 dollars to spend publishing, etc.

[sarajhenry]

@TheAlexander356 Yes, Alex (if I can call you that), but if you end up with a brilliant trilogy in two years that doesn't sell for, say, 5 years, you will have 5 years working at a burger joint - while if you had a HS diploma, you could maybe get a slightly better job to pay bills while you're waiting for your book to sell. I got an agent quickly and sold my novel quickly, but it STILL took nearly a year to get the first check. (And you didn't factor in time for revision, test readers, etc.)

[Theo2kitty]

Agents and Publishers don't care if you have a high school diploma or an English degree, they only want the book, they don't care if you have straight A's! they only want a query letter talking about what your book is about, it isn't like they want a whole background story of "YOU". Trust me, I asked this question to my creative writing teacher-who is an author, and an agent that came to my school.

.Editing 100 times

.having peers read it

.finding agents

.queries

.publishing

etc...

[TheAlexander356]

@wheezus thanks for your input! I worked out some calculations in my head and, if I dropped out of school, I could write 11 hrs a day 7 days a wk which, in total, works out to about + or - 4,000 hours in one yr. I'm 16 and I would have a little over 2 yrs to write this trilogy that I'm planning so, I think, if I could just somehow get proper marketing for it than I could make a living off of it. Do you agree and, if so, how would you market an either self-published or author-originated book?

[TheAlexander356]

@sara thanks for your input! I worked out some calculations in my head and, if I dropped out of school, I could write 11 hrs a day 7 days a wk which, in total, works out to about + or - 4,000 hours in one yr. I'm 16 and I would have a little over 2 yrs to write this trilogy that I'm planning so, I think, if I could just somehow get proper marketing for it than I could make a living off of it. Do you agree and, if so, how would you market an either self-published or author-originated book?

[TheAlexander356]

ok, thanks for the replies guys!