Vote early, vote often

Thanks to a kind reader, this blog has been nominated as a Sydney Writers Centre Best Australian Blog 2011. If you would like to vote in the People's Choice Award - for this blog or for anyone else's - please go here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/australianbestblogs2011-peopleschoice

And if you do vote for me, thanks in advance - it's a crowded field and I have absolutely no expectation of winning anything, but if I do the prizes will be offered to readers of the blog ...

No, I can't help you turn your website into a book

Continuing a theme from the previous post ...

More and more I'm being sent submissions that aren't really submissions. Rather, they are letters or emails that say, 'I've been doing X and I've made a website. Can you please give me advice on what I should do next?' or 'Can you please tell me how to turn it into a book?'

I've probably said it before but just so we're clear: agents aren't a general advisory service for writers. If I'm not getting letters like this then I'm seeing things like, 'I want to write a novel but I really don't know how. What advice can you give me?'

Well, none. I'm not running a public service. Having said that, I would love to have the resources and time to give this type of advice, if only so that ultimately fewer and fewer people will be in the dark, but luckily I don't have to: writers centres (or writers' centres, depending on whether or not you think it's a centre for writers or a centre possessed by writers) already offer this service.

No doubt agents seem like logical people to ask for advice about writing, but the parameters of our jobs are fairly clear: we work with authors who have already written something (well, most of the time). There is enough information available on the internets for fledgling writers - I'm fairly sure none of that information suggests that agents are the go-to people when you are first thinking about writing something or pre-thinking about writing something. And every one of these letters and emails that asks for advice has to be answered, meaning my submission-reading time gets squeezed (hence this ranty-type post).

So, please, if you are ever tempted to ask an agent for some general career advice and they're not already your agent: don't. There are writers/writers' centres to help you. And the Australian Society of Authors. They're all helpful people. They would love to help you turn your website into a manuscript. And then you can contact me and any other agent you wish.

Thirtysomething is not just a TV show

I’m one of those folks who grew up telling myself that one day, I’d write a book. I’m almost 30 now, and while I don’t seem to hold any of those ‘big birthday’ reservations that many of my friends went through, getting a book published was the one thing that niggled at me. I soon realised that fiction isn’t my forte. So I put together a concept based on my approach to impending thirty-dom and I am currently six months into it. I’m diarising through a blog (a rough first draft, I guess) and am starting to wonder how this is going to translate into a memoir when I have completed the year.

My main question is – and I’m pre-emptively shielding myself for your response - is it too early to approach agents with the idea? I know it’s a cardinal sin to send a first draft of anything, let alone an unfinished one. But a friend who has dabbled in this stuff suggested that there was no harm in sussing out the market, particularly as an interested agent may have ideas on how to ‘steer’ it. A couple of the things I’ve experienced while doing this project have already generated some media interest in the form of radio interviews, and I want to know if I can use this to my advantage at this early stage.

[I have removed details of the author's project to protect her idea - AS]

The part of your message that leapt out at me was: 'am starting to wonder how this is going to translate into a memoir when I have completed the year'. That's exactly what I would wonder, too, if you sent me a submission about it.

It's one thing to be an expert or almost-expert in a subject that has been established to have general appeal to the public, to then write a proposal about a book on this subject and try to find a publisher. That's what journalists, academics and Ben Cousins get to do. But it's another thing altogether to be attempting to find a publisher without these elements behind you.

You can get away with it under the following conditions:

IF

Your idea is strong and different (not original - there's no such thing, really). The idea you sent me was interesting but not that different.

THEN

Your writing needs to be great. Thus whatever is on the blog can't be your rough first draft - it has to be the draft as that's what you'll be asking a publisher/agent to look at. And it needs to be so great that the agent/publisher would be prepared to overlook the fact that your story isn't finished and may, in fact, never be finished. There's a risk that you won't complete your mission, you see. Not a big risk, but a risk. You could lose interest. Or die. (That's NOT morbid - the mortality rate is still 100% so it's a viable risk, and it's a risk that's written into publishing contracts.)

The radio interviews are nice but they're not useful yet unless they can promise you coverage at the time of publication. Also, there may be harm in sussing out the market too early - you can really only submit with that kind of thing once, unless an agent loves the idea enough to say 'come back and see me when you have more'.

So if your idea is great or your writing is great (I'm not presuming you'll have both - you don't necessarily need both) then go ahead and give it a try. But don't be surprised if an agent says, 'Come back and see me when you're finished'. And, really, why can't you wait until then? This probably sounds tough but it's less tough than having your heart broken by querying people at the wrong time. You're likely to think it means that your project has no merit and it will probably just be the case that is was the wrong time.

Also just to clarify a little point: agents aren't here to steer unless you're already our client or we think you're a genius who just needs a little reining in. Quite often I'm sent submissions by people which consist of them saying they have an idea and what they really need is for me to tell them what to do in order to write up the idea and get it published. Regrettably, I don't have the time. The good news is, though, that writers' centres can help you with this and there are links to them there somewhere -------------->

Blogs to books

I'm interested in how agents would treat submissions from a blogging author? To explain further, I have had some success with two previously self-published works mainly due to my determination to exploit the marketing opportunities that have arisen as a result of the internet. Readers of my previous works are taking a keen interest in my newest project so I have posted some early draft chapters on a blog, asked for feedback, all to get them interested and engaged in the process. I have read so many varying opinions on how this would be considered by agents and publishers come submission time from: "if it helps sell more books then why not", to concerns over copyright and whether the ms would be deemed already published. I'm interested in your view on this.

I don't think there's one rule for this; it really depends on what you're writing about. If your content is amazing and can be adapted for a book, the blog should be no hindrance - and possibly no help either. But if the content isn't amazing then the blog won't help it become a book.

However ... I don't know if you're writing a novel or non-fiction. If it's a novel, I wouldn't advise you put the whole thing on the blog because then there's not as much reason for people to buy your book. If it's non-fiction, it's likely it will change form once it goes into a book. The trick is to not give away too much on the blog, for either type of manuscript, because presumably you want some of your blog readers to buy your book just as you want to capture a bigger readership.

As a general thing, I do believe it's important for authors to have a web presence, whether it's a blog or a standard website, but a blog is preferable because RSS feeds run on blogs and not on HTML sites. Plus, most blogs are free. The whole blog-to-book thing is still relatively new, though, so it's likely that what I've said above may not apply in a year's time. My own gut feeling is that it always comes down to the writing, regardless of where the writing comes from.