Laura Novak
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Sanctimonious Snivelling

3/20/2012

 
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I received an interesting comment on my latest blog post about Her Largeness, the uber agent who lured me in, had me revise my novel to her specifications for 8 months, then tossed me aside at 4:55pm on a Friday night with the phrase:  You didn’t rise to the top of the pack.

Nathan Bransford, a former (note former) literary agent in San Francisco expressed empathy at my “rejection” but also took umbrage at my “anger.” He intimated that I had misplaced it at the well-meaning but over worked good guys in the traditional publishing model. And he suggested that I don’t take it personally.
Okay. Where to start?

First of all, Nathan, I am old enough to be your mother. I worked at the top of one of the toughest industries on the planet for more than 25 years. I don’t suffer sanctimonious tripe or the fools that spout it easily. The literary landscape is littered with charlatans, poseurs, patronizing putzes, and frauds. Neither I nor my readers need advice on our emotions or where to posit them.

For reading comprehension purposes let me repeat that the agent, who by the way eats people like you for breakfast, did not reject me. She used me for eight months while pumping air into her life raft. Her actions were unconscionable and unprofessional. She earned that 75% drop in income. I’m actually amazed to see her still spout her drivel on Twitter.

For the record, I queried fewer than a dozen agents about my novel before I turned 50 and took my life into my own hands. Some of those ten agents and I became friends and have stayed friends. I have no issue with someone not wanting to represent (the very fun five star) Finding Clarity: A Mom, A Dwarf and a Posh Private School in the People's Republic of Berkeley. It’s their call and I respect it.

No what I’m talking about is…well, now you’ve gone and done it. You shook the tree and now my stories have simply got to tumble out like rotted coconuts that I'd long forgotten.

I’ll start with you. 

Here’s what I remember about your days as a literary agent: you wrote a kick-ass blog. You sounded incredibly important and impressed a lot of people. In fact you wrote a lot every day. I could not for the life of me figure out how you managed to fight for your clients and give them 11%, excuse me, 110% every day when you were blogging up a storm and advising the rest of the world who then gave you more clicks and amplified your Google Analytics when you yourself were looking for a book deal. But being as young as you are, I figured you were far better than I could ever be at multi-tasking.

Still, wide-eyed sucker that I was, I dove in with the rest of your fans and read your FAQs on how to approach you for management. Your requirements and specifications were so, well, tight, that I was almost afraid to attempt to pen the correct query letter to you. But I screwed up my courage and wrote one. I followed your format to a T. You might not like my book, fair enough, but you’d likely read my query and not reject it like you said you would just because it wasn’t written to your precise, precious, and pretentious specifications.

But I know you don’t remember me. Do you know why? You don’t remember me because minutes - no exaggeration - fewer than four minutes after I sent my query, I received an email back rejecting my work. I can still see the time stamp on the internal info of those emails. There was quite literally zero chance that my synopsis and first chapter had been read by you. My query flew back to me like a mailer daemon, so swift that no person could have possibly interacted with it. No human eye would have been capable of perusing even the first graf, let alone the perfect structure and the voluminous material included within, written to satisfy your demands.

You didn’t reject me: your software rejected my incoming. (Or maybe you did, without reading a word, though what were the odds of you sitting at your desk at that moment?) And probably many, many more like mine. (That email is confidential, by the way, because I included material that I might use for a future book.)

Not long after the sting of your righteous rejection had faded, I read that you were getting out of the business. Your life raft was by then plumped up, or rather, you had a deal for your own book (odd coincidence.) You were leaving behind your clients who had impressed you with their queries, and who had a book you felt 10% about. No, I mean 110%, or something.

Honestly, if I had been one of your clients, I would really have wondered how the heck you found the time to fight for me and to blog so damn much. But I might also not have understood that you weren’t really culling through all those pesky queries, were you?

Look, let me say this again because you clearly didn’t understand the first time:  Any legitimate agent who rejected me, my work, my book, however you want to phrase it, had every right to. I have maintained friendships with some of those who did. I respect their decisions and value their expertise. Who knows, my book might bite/suck/be bad. And you might all be brilliant business people for dodging the bullet known as Finding Clarity.

But enough with the “we care so much and are so busy” meme - or at least enough of that from the agents who care enough about their clients and are good enough at their jobs to still be in business.

Writers don’t always take it personally. We simply see through the charade of so many who hung out a shingle without the slightest idea how to be an actual business person. (Cue the bad review to appear in 3, 2, 1....)

I feel sort of feisty about that because it reminds me too much of another Bay Area agent who attended the San Francisco Writers Conference last year. She sat on the stage, big as life, bold as ever, her eyelids at half mast out of sheer boredom, telling a ball room packed with sycophantic writers what she was looking for in them and their book. Bored Agent then took her place in a smaller ballroom during the speed dating sessions. She allowed people to line up and nervously pitch to her, using the three minutes they had paid big money for to try and impress her enough to like them and possibly entertain their project.

But guess what? Another agent whom I like immensely, even though she rejected Finding Clarity, and who was extricating herself from the business (we still hug each other every time we meet) leaned in to me for the kill:  “She’s no longer in business,” she whispered of the gal on the stage dictating her terms to the masses. “The office is closing next week. Her stuff is already moved out.”  Wonder how that 111% effort worked out for her.  

This is precisely why I admire Passive Guy and his blog so much. He's calling out the frauds, one at a time.

More agent stories to come! Thanks for prompting me Nathan! How can anyone be angry at that?


Barbara Alfaro link
3/20/2012 02:32:40 am

“Neither I nor my readers need advice on our emotions or where to posit them” – thank you for highlighting what was so patronizing in Nathan Bransford’ response to your “Top of the Pack” blog. I found the former agent’s use of the word “aggression” peculiar and “misplaced.” Individuals being fed up with ongoing rudeness, arrogance, and sloppy business practices is simply individuals being fed up. I would be disingenuous if I said I wouldn’t love a book deal with a traditional publishing house, bringing buckets of money my way, but should that not happen I am more than pleased with self-publishing especially Amazon’s support of indie authors. And by the way, thank goodness for feisty journalist/novelists like you, Laura!

Ottoline
3/20/2012 03:23:10 am

AND: ". . . should that not happen [book purchase by major publisher] . . . " you are almost guaranteed to make a lot MORE money and get BETTER exposure for your book via indie means (plus retain copyright and control). IMHO. Unless you are someone for whom traditional publishers are willing to set out the red carpet (big NYT ad, interviews on major shows) -- but unless you are a Bill Clinton, I think 11% is all you can expect. These days.

(Actually, I wish someone would hypothesize the case where Bill Clinton went the indie route -- sure, paid for a good flak, too. I bet he would have made double the $, even if we assume fewer sales.)

Barbara Alfaro link
3/20/2012 04:15:52 am

Self-publishing has definitely been a learn as you go experience for me. Supposedly, my memoir would not sell because I'm not a celebrity, no "name recognition," etc. Sales have not been spectacular but they are steady and, at times, surprisingly good. So much for conventional wisdom.

Conscious at last!
3/20/2012 02:47:14 am

Hmmm.. this is veeerry interesting Laura. You are opening my eyes.
Thanks!

FrostyAK
3/20/2012 03:38:07 am

Interesting to the extreme. It sounds as if most 'literary agents' are clones of politicians. They make promises they can't keep; they make unearthly demands of those who try to avail themselves of a service; they make their dinero on the backs of those they 'represent'; and are about as honest and hard working as carnival hucksters.

This series of blog posts has gone a long way toward making 'literary agents' and extinct species, methinks. Thank you, Laura.

hedgewytch
3/20/2012 03:52:06 am

I've been attempting to cultivate my writing for about 10 years now. I've gotten a few articles published, a few pieces in a few books. I am now ready to try to publish my own book. I will be attending a writer's conference this summer - paying big bucks for my speed dating opportunity as pointed out above. I had been wondering about the "need" for an agent, and this post has confirmed my conclusion that I don't need an agent, they are a waste of money and time.

As far a self-publishing is concerned, I'll look at that as a potential last resort. Are they really as lucrative as you suggested? I had thought self-publishing was something that wouldn't get you a whole lot of exposure unless you advertised it a lot yourself and were very lucky.

Ottoline
3/20/2012 04:08:23 am

It is my understanding that self-publishing is like getting a phone number: there is the separate job of getting the number out to people, and getting them to ring you up. Therefore the reviews, appearances, speeches, signings with accompanying local newspaper articles, web page and blogging, being connected to special-interest groups that would want one's book, and any other creative attention-booster one can think of. Most writers (like me) have little interest in this, but then most publishers don't do much of this either for any but their fave writers. Pls correct me if I'm wrong. (Oh, yeah, word of mouth, going viral, etc.: one WISHES. But something has to kick-start that.)

Ottoline
3/20/2012 03:59:17 am

I always like to see the amazon rank of a book, and here are Nathan's, for his two books, and Laura's "Clarity . . .":

Nathan: amazon rank / books sold per foner*
379,000 --> 2 books per week
673,000 --> 1 book every 2 weeks

Laura (Clarity; kindle only):amazon rank / books sold per foner*
103,000 --> 10 books per week
______
*Not sure how accurate foner's chart is; I use it for ball-park info only (Laura, based on your inside info re Clairty, is the foner chart "ball-parkian"?:
http://www.fonerbooks.com/surfing.htm

A.Beth link
5/22/2012 06:01:48 am

I am not Ms. Novak, but do have a few things on Amazon -- you need to watch the ranks for a few days, because something can jump between the 300Ks and 100Ks pretty quickly if it gets a sale that day.

Ottoline
3/20/2012 04:21:02 am

Also too, here's Nathan's take on indie vs. trad pub re income:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/03/self-publishing-vs-traditional.html

I see from his profile that he is "currently working in the tech industry," so his day job is tech writer pounding out documentation (my guess)?

B
3/20/2012 04:23:24 am

Love your picture. Saw a Banksy exhibit in Bristol. Still laughing.

longtime reader
3/20/2012 04:46:50 am

I've known a many agents in my 20+ years as a published author. In my experience, they fall into two categories: wonderful people who love books and work selflessly for those authors they take on, and egomaniacal jerks who would slit their own mother's throats for money and/or prestige. Unfortunately, it sounds as if you've run into more than your fair share of the latter.

The publishing business these days is hard. I have an agent friend who receives literally thousands of queries a year. Of those she asks to see 350-400 partials. Of those, she asks for 2-3 manuscripts. In the end, she takes on perhaps 1-2 new clients a year. She can go many years without ever selling a new client's work. This is a nasty, heartbreaking business from which everyone with any sense should run far, far away.

If you've had thousands of downloads of your ebook, you've done very well. My NY editor told me the other day that most of their titles average ebook sales of 2-3,000. And then there are people like Nora Roberts who sell a million ebooks...

Ottoline
3/20/2012 05:32:17 am

Want to make a small fortune in publishing? Start with a large fortune.

Laura Novak
3/20/2012 06:36:24 am

Long time reader: I fully agree that there are honorable and serious agents out there who love dearly and fight hard for their clients. A few of them are my friends who elected not to represent Finding Clarity. As I said, I have no hard feelings and respect their decision.

But I also know that they have zero time to blog or lead people on. They work 80 hours a week and barely sell four books a year. What was objectionable to Large Agent was her attitude and practices. Not that she elected not to take my book all the way.

As my husband has pointed out: I've probably now sold more books on my own than I would have through a publisher who would own my rights and possibly stop printing my book. There is something to be said for that.

And as Barbara Alfaro said: yes, we ALL wish we had a NY Editor and publisher. So I'm pleased for you that you do and I hope it's a great relationship and that you get the respect and attention that you deserve. Thank you for weighing in!

Laura Novak
3/20/2012 06:47:11 am

Ottoline, Thanks for checking those figures. I'm not sure where they come from, but they are a little off.

Four days ago I was at 23,000 in Amazon. I've been as low as the top 100 books. If I am today at 100K plus, it's probably due to sales.

I've sold more than a THOUSAND books in a MONTH and at the beginning, I sold fewer than that to be sure. So, I can't comment on his sales.

But there are so many benefits to doing this yourself. It might not be anyone's first choice for their life, but it's not a bad choice all things considered.

Ottoline
3/20/2012 08:11:19 am

Thanks for your better info. I took the numbers off amazon as I was writing. Yes the numbers have a LOT of variation, esp when there's a large-order moment (like maybe from a chain?). So as I say it's just a v rough indicator, and your actual numbers show us that. My interest is usually "is this book amazon-ranked below several hundred thousand? or 3 millionth?" I'm thrilled that you've sold so many.

Laura Novak
3/20/2012 06:51:42 am

Hedgewytch: Don't let me discourage you. Just go out there and fight for your book with the knowledge that there are a lot of phonies pretending to have your best interests at heart. If an agent portrays themselves as being tops in their field, but they are spending an inordinate amount of time blogging, then they are not tops in their field.

As Longtime reader pointed out: There are some reputable agents out there. You might just find one. You might just be "the one" they are all looking for.

Don't give up. But don't give up your skepticism. Hold true to who you are and what you value. And if you DO end up pubbing on Amazon, I'll tell you that it's a great experience. In so many ways. Keep asking me anything. I'll be glad to share. Best of luck and thank you for writing.

Maddies_Mom
3/20/2012 07:13:24 am

Hey Nathan, where'd you go?

Laura Novak
3/20/2012 08:02:21 am

Conscious and Frosty: thanks for checking in. Always great to see you both here. And B., funny I should find this photo. We have a documentary we are about to watch on Banksy. My son has a book of his work. I see graffiti so differently now.

On another note: Ennealogic tweeted me the other day: "Just finished reading Finding Clarity - terrific, compact, and fun!" It was great to hear from her.

CD Coffelt link
3/20/2012 09:01:03 pm

In only a few words, you gave a shout out to all the writers who struggle against this system.
Thank you.

Laura Novak
3/21/2012 02:16:01 am

Thanks, CD, and I'm glad you visited. I hope your experiences with agents, if you have any, have gone well.

I want to point out that I thanked two agents in the acknowledgements of my book. They chose not to represent me, but their friendship and respect for my work are what I remember most. They clearly are not among the folks I am writing about in these posts.

And yes, Ottoline. The numbers vary widely and are probably not too dependable, but FC has done very well! As someone pointed out, better than it might ever have done with a publisher who did no heavy lifting in the marketing department for me.

Laura Novak
3/21/2012 03:53:16 am

Ottoline: I'm at 80K in Amazon right now. See how wildly things change? Next I'll be at 2,000 and then back up. If I sell 5 books a day, or ten, the number changes drastically. Greater minds than mine at work I suppose.

Ottoline
3/21/2012 04:53:15 am

Not greater minds, just a computer recalculation of always-changing data, because like anything else (including climate change), things do not change in an even upward- or downward-trending line unless one looks at a long-enough average of those ups and downs: number of book sales per minute, or hour, or day, is a jagged line, just like for the stock market. A VERY jagged line, if recalculated at every change, will give these big fluctuations. And I understand amazon to recalc it often, perhaps daily or hourly, even.

So, once again: ball-parkian* only. And you are clearly in a v healthy neighborhood re book sales, according to both your own info and the harder-to-interpret amazon-rank number.

For any big-bucks person who might wish to manipulate that amazon rank (like a Murdoch re SP's 1st book or a papa Joe Kennedy, were he managing the success of JFK's book right now), I would think you'd want to know "how many books must be sold per hour to remain #1 50% of the time? 80%? 99%?" Or maybe being higher than 10th 75% of time?" And then one would buy books at that rate on a daily or hourly basis, whatever works with the amazon algorithm. These are the books you'd buy to later give away for free, tax-deductible, to the church groups, etc., or sell (at a tax ded loss) to the 1 cent dealers. If it was important to have x weeks as number one. I bet someone has figured out the cost (after the eventual tax adjustments) of buying these books vs the extra sales generated from being #1 or close. So an initial big buy might be well worth it to prime the pump, and you'd know the sweet spot, and when cost exceeds utility, so you'd know when to stop. Esp if you are a 1%er with money to burn and goals hard to reach in legit ways.

This is hypothetical on my part. I wish anyone with real-world experience re this would write in and clarify.

_______
*I once passed by a knot of intelligent-looking men talking quietly, seriously in a posh lobby, and among them was a startlingly different-looking man, a man who looked like Santa Claus -- fat, huge white beard, odd clothes [colorful suspenders!], red face. As I walked by, the quiet mumble of their earnest discussion leaked out only the following phrase I could understand, by the Santa Claus man, who all but shouted "Yes, but is it BALL-PARKIAN?!?"

Ottoline
3/21/2012 01:17:05 pm

OMG -- the whole reason we are here is LYING. The Palin Hoax is the lie we are addressing. But it's basically just plain lying.

So here is Rachel Maddow on LYING. Romney lying. But lying. One of her best (starts a little slow, as usual):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#46816690

Conscious at last!
3/22/2012 01:40:44 am

Yup- that's why I don't take most of the politicos and the talking heads seriously. It's a show put together to respond to the issue of the moment.

Laura Novak
3/22/2012 01:50:12 am

Otto and CAL: one of the reasons I don't read anything on RS, for example, is because I don't want to feed "clicks" to the online source. He will peter out, so to speak. He is intellectually bankrupt. So I tell my husband to stop clicking and feeding the beast that feeds these nut jobs. The talking heads are as bad as those they talk about. And while I respect RM, her truth makes me so crazy. I know we have to change things, but just thinking about these nuts is like responding all the time to the bully at school or in the family. I'm at a loss, which is why I've got a new Tao post up. Trying to find my center.

V ictoria link
3/31/2012 09:23:57 pm

The whole publishing industry is very, very difficult. My co-author and I were represented by one of the best agencies for nearly a decade, and all we got was a tiny sale in Greece. We were close at one publisher, recommended by the chief editor but lost it in committee; we had a teleconference at another major publisher with another editor - but she quit a month later; we were asked for a rewrite at a third publisher by an editor who admitted she could not stop reading but nevertheless declined the manuscript.

It was very, very frustrating, but during that decade our writing became much better. And with ebooks today at least our manuscripts are not gathering dust on our hard drives but are being enjoyed by a few people, making it into some classes and universities, and even into some book clubs. (For more click on my name.)

Barbara Alfaro link
4/1/2012 12:52:02 am

Victoria, Your recalling an editor who quit nudged a memory of mine from decades ago. An editor at a major publishing house was enthusiastic about one of my children’s stories and we were at the assigning an illustrator stage when he left the publisher. The latter would not give me the editor’s forwarding address. I never located him. If this happened now, I’d simply Google him.

I did click on your name to visit your website and I purchased a copy of Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus (Tapestry of Bronze). I remember reading an extremely positive review of your book a while ago but don’t remember where.

Is there a reason you give Barnes & Noble’s Nook precedence over Amazon’s Kindle? I exited your website and logged on to Amazon to buy my Kindle edition. Or, is Amazon on your website and I just missed where it is located?

suzanne rosenwasser
4/8/2012 09:01:05 pm

The internet IS the agent for indie writers. We represent ourselves there. Not all writers can forge ahead through the process of working for a book after it's finished. It's a painstaking task. According to Self-Publishing for Dummies, one needs to become her own billboard. For instance, it suggests an author include the name of her book in blog commentary, like this:
Suzanne McLain Rosenwasser
MANHASSET STORIES: A Baby Boomer Looks Back.

I'll let you know if it's the least bit effective. :0)

Helen Black
4/11/2012 02:22:04 am

"The internet IS the agent for indie writers:" Amen! That industry has been doing the rearranging-the-deck-chairs thing for several years now. As for us--well, we're just gonna keep providing creative content. Now THAT has value!

Livia Blackburne link
5/22/2012 01:10:17 pm

Hi Laura,

I found your blog post through passive guy. As I mentioned in the comments over there, I disagreed with a great deal of your post. I hope you don't mind if I present some counterarguments/responses. I don't mean them in an antagonistic way, but if you do find my responses to be out of line, please let me know.

"For reading comprehension purposes let me repeat that the agent, who by the way eats people like you for breakfast, did not reject me. She used me for eight months while pumping air into her life raft."

I'm confused by this. In what way did she use you? This implies that she derived some kind of benefit from having you do revisions and stringing you along, but I don't see how this could've helped her at all. Don't get me wrong. I do think her behavior was unprofessional, though, rather than attributing it to arrogance and overall evilness, it seems to me it's more likely that she was overwhelmed by the changes in the industry (given that her income has gone down 75%) and was scrambling to keep up. Not that it matters either way -- she's obviously not a good agent to have.

"Your requirements and specifications were so, well, tight, that I was almost afraid to attempt to pen the correct query letter to you. "

As far as I remember, Nathan's requirements were pretty much industry standard. A brief personalized greeting, a short synopsis/pitch, and a biographical sketch. The synopsis/pitch is something that you have to write regardless of whether you're going traditional or indie (since it's very similar to back cover copy). So that leaves the biographical sketch and the personalized greeting which in my experience, takes about 10 -15 minutes per agent to write.

"Do you know why? You don’t remember me because minutes - no exaggeration - fewer than four minutes after I sent my query, I received an email back rejecting my work. I can still see the time stamp on the internal info of those emails. There was quite literally zero chance that my synopsis and first chapter had been read by you. "

I disagree. I mean, how long does it really take to read the back cover copy of a book? I just took a book off my shelf and read the cover copy outloud. It took 40s. It'll be faster if I read it silently, and I'm not even a professional slush reader. You're right that he didn't read your synopsis and first chapter, but what's the point if he could tell from the pitch that it wasn't right for him? Would you blame an Amazon customer for not downloading a free sample of your book if he didn't like the cover blurb?

"You didn’t reject me: your software rejected my incoming. (Or maybe you did, without reading a word, though what were the odds of you sitting at your desk at that moment?)"

I sit at my desk most of the day with my e-mail open. I know my agent does the same. Whenever I send him e-mails, I often get an instantaneous reply. Especially if you queried during the workday, it's highly possible that Nathan had his e-mail open when he received it. And I'm willing to bet that if you ask around, you will find writers who received a full manuscript request from Nathan within 5 minutes of sending their query.

On the other hand, I find it highly unlikely that he would have some kind of nefarious software program to turn around queries with an automatic rejection. I mean, what's the point?

"But I might also not have understood that you weren’t really culling through all those pesky queries, were you?"

So this whole, "pesky query" thing again confuses me. I'm curious as to why you think and agent would be open to queries if he thinks they are pesky. It's perfectly possible and acceptable to be closed to queries. So what kind of motives are you ascribing to him? Does he open himself to queries an so that he can secretly reject them without reading them and get a cheap thrill out of rejecting writers? Does he do it to get on writers' good sides? (Ha!) Does he do it to appear in control of everything? Personally, I think it's much more likely that he reads them.

Anyways, just my thoughts. Again, I don't mean to be antagonistic here. Just trying to present an alternate point of view.

Livia

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    Laura Novak

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