Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Friday!

We made it!

I like to use my Fridays as reading days. I enjoy reading and look forward to it, so it’s a nice, end-of-the-week treat. I read manuscripts and proposals by authors that I’m considering representing, but I also read proposals and manuscripts by my current clients. Some agents don’t bother to put in the time to read over a proposal before it’s submitted, but my reputation is on the line. I like to be sure that everything is in place so the project has the best chance of selling.

While I read, I’m looking for a clean manuscript with tight writing. For fiction, I also want a smooth, believable plot that interests me and is likely to have broad appeal in the market. A proposal must have a clear statement of what the hook of the book is and a detailed author bio (including details about why this writer is qualified to write the project).

In nonfiction proposals, I also like to see a marketing section and a market comparison section. The marketing section shows how the author plans to help to distribute the book. The market comparison section is a compare/contrast with other books that are on the same topic. It’s important to show how a nonfiction book is unique.

In novel proposals, I look for a synopsis that covers the beginning, middle and end of the story. Yes, I want to know how the story ends.

Happy Friday, everyone! Take some time this weekend to read, too!

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Thursdays are often spent making phone calls to editors, clients, and potential clients.

I always have at least one phone conversation with a potential client before I’ll represent him or her. So, yes, that means I’ll represent someone I’ve never met. (I still have about half of my clients to meet.) While a phone call isn’t as good as meeting in person, I can get a feel for an individual’s personality and how he or she works with others. This is also a good time to discuss expectations and dreams.

When I talk with my clients, we brainstorm together or discuss schedules for deadlines, releases, etc. Sometimes we put together a plan of action for the author’s future. In our agency, an agent will help an author to figure out how many books  he or she can produce and market while balancing life.  We’ll also direct an author toward ideas within his area of expertise that we believe we can sell to a publisher. And sometimes we need to advise a client as to which publishing house we think is a better fit for her book, if two or more are interested in purchasing the project. We bring insider knowledge about the marketing department, editors, contracts, ability to create an effective cover, level of interest in maintaining strong relationships with authors, and more that we balance to make a suggestion to a client. (Notice that the decision isn’t always about which publisher is offering the most money. We view that as a shortsighted reason to use solely in choosing a publisher.) All of this falls under “career counsel.”

When I talk with editors, I like to discuss what kinds of projects they are looking for. This is a great way for me to get up-to-date information for my clients, and I also use this information when I’m requesting projects from my query pile.  I’ll also talk with editors about concerns my client or I might have about a project in the works with that publishing house.

When agents have “phone days,” it does cause the rest of the work to pile up, but these calls are so important!

Yes, I had coffee today.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Wednesdays are usually the days when I do a little bit of everything, with coffee in hand, of course! The email box and query box are full (always), so I pop into both of those; I often have Wednesday phone calls; and I catch up on sending pitches and proposals.

Wednesday is also a good day for negotiating contracts and book offers because, if a phone call is required, most people are in the office on Wednesday. Phoning the contracts department is necessary if some wording in the contract isn’t clear or if the two parties can’t agree on a few points.Typically, negotiations are done via email attachments using the track changes feature and the comments feature in Word.

Negotiations are a major part of an agent’s job. It’s important for us to take the time to read and review the contracts multiple times. Many contracts are changing drastically these days as publishers respond to the perceived threats of electronic publishing and print on demand, so there’s no assuming that a publisher’s contract  is unchanged from the last time we negotiated with that house. Even a few words changed can make a significant difference to an author’s ability to live with what we’ve negotiated.

We pay special attention to the out-of-print clause, the subsidiary rights that are claimed by the publisher, and the e-book royalty rates, among other things. The advance and trade book royalty rates usually are agreed on before the contract is pulled together. That happens in the “offer stage” while the sale is being finalized.

Negotiating a contract can go quickly, taking only a few hours; but then some contracts cause shivers to run down an agent’s spine. Some really messy agreements can take weeks–or even months–to finalize. Thankfully, I work in an agency with three amazing agents who are willing to teach me everything they know about contracts! I’ve learned so much in the last four+ years.

Thank you Janet, Wendy, and Etta.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Tuesday morning started out much like Monday morning, but I managed to get a shower. Things are looking up!

With coffee in hand, I arrive in the office and survey the damage left during the few hours I was gone.

Email box full? Check!

Query box full? Check! (How is this even fair? I spent yesterday clearing it.)

Stack of mail at least two feet high? Check! (I really need to get to that reading.)

Calendar? It’s possible that I have a phone call or two.

The main agenda for today involves sending out my authors’ projects to editors. This starts as research. I look at my list of projects and my lists of editors, and I decide which editors I should send projects to. Sometimes I pop onto Publishersmarketplace.com to do a little research. I can look at recent deals made by editors to see what interests them. I then send the pitches  to editors if they haven’t already requested to see a certain project. When the project is requested either through a meeting, a query, or our web page, I send the proposal or manuscript out right away. I also spend some Tuesday time writing pitches for projects and editing proposals.

Throughout the day I answer important messages in my inbox as well.

That’s usually enough to fill any Tuesday.

I think I’ll go out to a restaurant for dinner tonight. It’s my birthday!

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

An agent’s Monday starts out much like yours, I bet, but you tell me. Here’s a typical Rachel Monday:

The alarm clock rings, and I hit snooze. This process repeats itself until I know that if I don’t get out of bed, I’m going to be seriously late to work. I already sacrificed the time for my shower two or three snoozes ago. Good thing the people at work understand and also usually look a little rumpled on Monday.

I get ready for work and grab the most important meal of any Monday–my coffee–then it’s off to the office.

On arrival, I take a quick inventory of my workload.

Email box full? Check!

Query box full? Check!

Stack of mail at least two feet high? Check!

My calendar is pretty clear today. Personally, I don”t like having Monday phone calls because I need Mondays to get revved up for the week. If there’s an emergency or if there is no other day that could work for a call, I’ll of course have a Monday call, but if I can avoid ‘em I do.

I typically spend my Mondays clearing queries. At Books & Such, this used to involve hours of sending individual replies to each author. This last year we made a change; we now inform authors on our website and with an auto-reply that we’ll only reply to the queries that seem to be a good fit for our agency and that intrigue us enough to ask to see more. This was a necessary step because queries were eating away our work time (we can’t earn a living just by reading queries), and it has really freed us. Now query review is as simple as reading queries and sorting them into the appropriate email folders. If I see something I like, I send a request for a proposal. If the book isn’t a proper fit for our agency, we put it in a sub-folder marked with the current month and year. The time we save by using the standard reply allows us to read the letters we receive more thoroughly, too.

I also spend time on Monday answering emails from the authors I represent. Their notes are very important to me, and I try to answer them as quickly as possible.

By the time 5 pm rolls around, Ive worked up an appetite and am ready for dinner.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Two days ago, Kristen brought up a hard-to-answer question about series romance. To view her comment click here. Her question left me thinking about who’s really in control of what’s being published. Here are my free-for-all questions:

Does the market really reflect what readers want to read, or are readers only being fed what publishers want readers to read?

How do you see the newish era of e-books affecting the future market? I wonder, in twenty years will there still be fads like Vampire and Amish, or will everyone separate out into small reader circles because of the ability to publish anything online?

I look forward to reading your thoughts! Thanks so much for your great comments this week.

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

Yesterday Gina brought up an excellent reason for why some multi-published authors might end up writing the “same” story more than once. She pointed out that authors often write on contracted deadlines. The books are to be written and turned into the publisher by a certain date. This does leave much less time for the rewriting and editing that can eliminate the “ruts.” (Thank you, Gina.)

An author’s first book isn’t usually written on a deadline. An author can take years to work over the manuscript. Then the book is published, does well, and the author is offered a new contract based on a synopsis and the first few chapters of a story. The new contract comes with a due date for the complete manuscript. Suddenly there’s pressure! Without a doubt the shortened amount of writing time can cause lower quality work.

Then there’s the “P” word. PROCRASTINATION! I’m guilty of it, are you? I’ve heard of many an author waiting until the last month before the deadline to write the contracted book. The publisher allotted the author 6 months to a year (typically) to write the book, but the author didn’t start until the last minute. Imagine what would happen if the author got sick during that month! Life happens, and it seems to “happen” all the more when you procrastinate. So, while writing on a deadline can affect the quality of an author’s work, procrastination always results in a rush job.

My advice to you: When writing on a deadline, set up a word count goal for each day or week and stick to it. Also leave a little time toward the end for feedback and revision. You owe it to your reader, your publisher and yourself to do your best!

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

A multi-published writer mentioned in conversation with another author that she always makes the heroes in her books look like actor Harrison Ford. You know, the ruggedly handsome, Indiana Jones-type. She claimed that her readers never noticed the look-alike heroes. She chose to continue in this “rut” purposefully because Harrison’s a good-looking guy and none of her readers had ever written to her to complain.

I believe this is a dangerous way to write. By intentionally reusing a “rut,” believing that nobody will notice, she’s underestimating her readers’ intelligence and that’s not a good idea. Plus, Harrison might not be everyone’s choice for a handsome hero. Variety is a good thing!

Reusing a “look” is probably not a huge mistake, but it’s the tip of the “rut-iceberg” for multi-published authors. When an author has written more than one book, he or she needs to be careful about what is being reused.

Have you ever read two books by the same author and after you finish the second book you realize that the two plots are essentially the same? The same thing can happen with nonfiction. A nonfiction author is usually an expert on one subject, and it’s easy for the author to accidentally write practically the same book twice. I’m sure you’ve heard it said that every author only has one good book in them; I know for a fact that that’s not true, but I’m pretty sure that the saying is around because of these seemingly mass-produced books. Change the character names and title or reorder the chapters, and you have a “new” book.

Are authors in too much of a hurry to produce books or is it laziness? Do editors want authors to write practically the same book again if the story sold well? Are readers too nice to point out to the author the strong similarities between plots?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I believe every author has a writing rut that he or she is inclined toward. Perhaps a certain topic close to the author’s heart leaks into every book, or maybe a word or a phrase the author says frequently in daily life becomes overused in his or her writing.

The author I wrote about yesterday–the one whose book was full of children–likely has a few young kids of her own. I bet her children frequently interrupt her while she’s writing with their silly, child-like antics that in turn infiltrate her books’ pages.

The other author–the one who always refers to young people as “youths”– likely calls young people “youths” in her real-life encounters with them so that seems normal to her while it’s strange to me.

Authors and editors often have to work hard to overcome these writing tendencies. The first step to stopping a “habit” that has become a writing rut is to acknowledge it. Go back to your project and read it to yourself. Reading large sections aloud can highlight your rut(s). Computer programs exist that will read your manuscript back to you as well. It’s amazing how ruts become obvious when you are listening to your manuscript rather than reading it.

You can also perform searches to see how often you use words and phrases. If you find that you do have a tendency toward overuse, you’ll be more aware the next time you start to fall into the habit.

What’s your writing rut? Do you lean toward a certain topic or phrase? Why do you think that’s your rut?

Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.

I was reading a non-work-related novel over the weekend and found that I was slowly being driven crazy by the continuous mention of CHILDREN! I love kids, don’t get me wrong, but this author allowed the main character to talk about her children nonstop. The plot was significantly hindered by the amount of time I had to spend reading about kids. This was not a parenting book! The author had unintentionally created a rut.

As I was discussing this book with my colleagues here at Books & Such, Michelle brought up another example of a rut. She’d read a book recently where the main character cooked chicken for dinner every night. This marked the passing of time, but did the reader really need to read about dinner prep more than once? Or was it even necessary to include dinner at all? And why chicken?

Janet read a book where eyes were the main focus. Emotions were described using eyes and an entire section of the novel listed in detail what each character’s eyes looked like at that moment. This might be a cool idea, but if it becomes the only descriptor for all the characters, it’s a writing rut.

Our attention was pulled away from the main points and plots of the books by an overused writing device.

I’ve also encountered authors who use the same words over and over again. One author I’ve read refers to young people as “youths” in nearly every book she’s written.  Another author refers to character complexions as “sugar and spice.” I’m not even sure what that means in reference to a complexion.

Writing ruts can occur in nonfiction as well as fiction. An engaging metaphor can be used as the foundation of the manuscript, but if the chapter titles, subheads, and illustrations all tie into that metaphor, the word picture becomes overused and pulled beyond its ability to stretch. The reader grows bored with the idea.

What writing ruts have you noticed in books you’ve read? No need to mention book or author, just describe the distracting element.