August 9, 2006
I suggest you click over to the Murderati blog and read today's entry. Interesting thoughts on the questionability of all this publishing advice floating around on the Internet, some thoughts made by Laura Lippman on the subject and others.

It reminded me of a book on screenwriting and the movie industry by William Goldman, where part of the underlying theme is: Nobody Knows Anything.

I essentially agree with the Murderati blog today in that, although there's a lot of publishing and writing advice out here on blogs and websites, and an awful lot of it is useful, not all of it is useful, not all of it is correct and not all of it is advisable.

For example: I think Joe Konrath's blog and website is a veritable fount (or is that font?) of terrific advice about writing and publishing.

Joe also gives an example of the query letter he used to snag his agent and it was very much a high-concept advertising kind of concept that read like a sales pitch.

Nothing wrong with that. But I pretty much get chills--and I suspect a lot of agents do too--at the thought of a thousand aspiring writers looking for agents now mimicking Joe's used-car-salesman-on-speed sales approach in their query letters. One in a thousand can attract their attention. A thousand people doing it and agents will be discarding the letters even faster than the DEAR AGENT, I NOW IVE GOT A BESTSE$$$LLAR CAUSE MY MOM SAYS MY BUCK REMINDS HER OF JON GRISHUMS.

In terms of how-to publishing advice, I've always been a big fan of Michael Crichton's, which essentially was, "I don't give out advice. What worked for me wasn't typical and might not work for you."

The majority of sales come about this way. Write a good novel. Write a good businesslike query letter to an agent who decides to take you on as a client after reading the manuscript, sending it to an editor who thinks they can publish it and turn a buck.

That's the simple truth there. How to write a good novel? What's a good businesslike query letter? What are agents looking for? How do you find an agent who's taking on new clients?

Hey, these are complicated. It's a numbers game and a quality game. And NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING. Or more accurately, NOBODY KNOWS EVERYTHING.

Do I?

Hell no. Oh hell no. Does my agent? I'd like to think so, but she tells me she doesn't know what editors want all the time and admits she probably shouldn't admit that to a client. Hell, editors seem to pick up manuscripts on chicken bones and tea leaves, some unpredictable combination of gut instincts, experience, current publishing list, what's hot, what they like, what they don't like, what their boss has suggested they look for, what the New York Times and Publishers Weekly suggests might be a trend (written by some freelance writer who's desperate to make a mortgate payment probably), what has taken off in the industry and what has tanked recently and some X factor like liking the author's name, the title of the book, or the input of their spouse, siblings, dog, cat or guinea pig.

I'm convinced of a couple things. Quality and persistence are the two most important factors in getting published. Learn to write well and keep on marketing.

Neither will guarantee success in the marketplace. Doesn't that suck?

Best,
Mark Terry