How Did I Find My Clients?

I read a forum post this morning quizzing agented authors on where they found their agents. The authors were very nicely answering, but most of the answers were the same: "I did my research and then sent a query letter."

Why was this the most likely way they answered? Because it's the most likely way to get an agent.  It just IS. I know the myth is that you have to "know somebody" but that really isn't true. Which got me to thinking about how my clients found ME (or, vice-versa). And I decided to bust out the chart-making tools again because I know you like that.

So let's break it down:

56% of my clients came to me because of straight up query letters, from the slush. They didn't know anybody, they didn't drop names, they weren't published before, they didn't go to conferences, they didn't meet me first - some of them I still haven't met in person, because they live thousands of miles away!

24% of my clients were people that I'd met somewhere before they queried me. These are people I met at conferences, in a couple of cases, or published authors that I met in my capacity as a bookseller. (There's also a former co-worker in the mix, an SCBWI RA, and one of my neighbors. What can I say, she's a great writer!). The thing is: All these people STILL HAD TO QUERY. It's not like I said, oh, I know you, so sure... they still had to show me something I thought I could sell.

16% of my clients were referrals. This means that somebody I really trust - like an editor who knows my taste, or an existing client - thought this would be a good fit for me, and e-introduced us. But, you guessed it: These people STILL HAD TO QUERY, and show me something I thought I could sell.

4% of my clients were inherited from other agents at my agency. They actually are the only people who were kinda "grandfathered in," and did not have to show me something new to be taken on. However, I also trusted that they could write, that they had great stories in them, and that we'd gel well - and we spoke before I took them on. Still, this does not always work out, so I feel very lucky that these have!

Moral of this story? 

96% OF AUTHORS NEED TO 

WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER.

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How Similar is TOO Similar in the Great Agent Hunt?

Research agents for even a short while and you're almost sure to come up with two competing bits of wisdom: 

LOOK FOR AGENTS WHO REP THE BOOKS MOST LIKE YOUR OWN!

vs

AGENTS WON'T TAKE ON WORK TOO SIMILAR TO WHAT THEY ALREADY REP.

Guess what? BOTH these contradictory statements are true! ....Yayyy??

Of course you want to pick an agent who does the kind of books you do, and hopefully reps some authors you admire. . . but yep, that agent will likely decline if the books are too similar. I wrote a post way back in 2011 about WHY agents can't take on work that competes with what they already rep. It's all still true, so I won't rehash it here. We know the WHY. But how can you tell if your book falls into this problematic area?

A quick way to decide if your book might be too close to what an agent already reps: If you break your book and the comparable book(s) down into general CATEGORY, TONE and THEME - TWO of these can match. But if all three overlap, it's probably too close.

In other words: 

I could rep two funny picture books ... but not two funny picture books about Ninjas. I could rep two picture books about Ninjas, if one was funny, while the other was non-fiction/factual. I could rep two funny Ninja books... if one was a picture book and one was a middle grade. (That isn't to say that there isn't room IN THE WORLD for multiple funny picture books about Ninjas, btw... just that I personally would feel uncomfortable repping all of them!)

In the case of something like "heartfelt middle grade fiction about girls growing up" - where there are certainly lots of great books that seem to overlap... the differences might be more subtle. I rep both Linda Urban and Kate Messner, for example - two great authors, both sometimes writing in a similar space - but you wouldn't confuse CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT with BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. You just wouldn't. On the surface there are similarities, but there's a difference at the bone. 

So if you're researching an agent who reps what you write... and you've thought about the chart and you see the surface similarities but you still think YOUR difference is different enough... you might as well try querying the agent... why not, right? Nothing to lose. Nobody is going to be mad at you - the worst that can happen is, you get a rejection, and that isn't anything to lose sleep over.

Does this make sense? Helpful, or have I muddied the waters even further?

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Story Structure from South Park

This has been ALL over social media in the past couple days, but it is really smart plotting advice from Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of "South Park" and "Book of Mormon." Like... REALLY smart and simple advice, not just for film but also very much applicable to children's book writers. Take two minutes and watch!

If you've ever gotten a critique that your picture book "read like a series of lists" or "was more like a vignette/series of vignettes" . . .  or perhaps your novel was "too episodic" . . .  THIS is what those critiquers probably meant, and how to fix it.

Get More: www.mtvu.com

What do you think?

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Spamvertisements Are Not Your Friend

What the heck are spamvertisements? They are that thing where a totally random "marketing guru" or "social media creative" - or just intrepid author with boundary issues - starts spamming people they don't know with advertisements about their or their poor client's latest book/project. The people being spammed AT are people who are big in that specific field (like in the case of books, they would be agents and editors) -- or just generally famous, like obviously Neil Gaiman, Veronica Roth, Stephen Fry, etc. -- or are huge "professional readers", popular bloggers and the like. If you look at their timeline it will probably look something like this:

Yeah. 

Don't do that.

I don't mind if my friends text me or call me up on the phone. . . or even if somebody I don't know well emails me to tell me something important. I don't even mind ads, when I run across them in the wild. However, I mind VERY MUCH if telemarketers call me specifically and interrupt dinner. You get the distinction?

BUT I WAS TOLD I HAD TO GO ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND PROMOTE MY BOOK!!!

Social Media of all kinds, including/especially Twitter, is all about. . . well, being SOCIAL. It's about connecting with people on a human level - not about YOUR BOOK YOUR BOOK YOUR BOOK - but about, like, how your dog caught an opossum or you are worried because your fire alarm seems to be haunted by poltergeists, or you need to find the best Chinese restaurant in rural New York. When, in the course of talking about mundane things, you also mention YOUR BOOK, it doesn't come across as sleazy - just as a part of your life, which it is. People are significantly (like scientifically 100000%) more likely to want to support you if you come across as a genuine, cool human being who also writes books, rather than a spam-machine-robot.

When you start a twitter account from scratch, it's almost like you are standing alone on an overturned apple crate in the park and speaking into a home-made paper megaphone. You have no audience yet -- you are just a lone soul standing around talking to the air. If you're lucky, you have a few real life friends that will start hanging around you. If you're entertaining, you'll get a few more, and they'll stick around. Soon you've got a nice little crowd going. Awesome! You get off the crate and start interacting. Now it's not you being a nutbar and talking to the clouds - it's you engaging with your group, having real conversations, cracking jokes, sharing ideas about things ranging from celebrity-silly to philosophically important - and occasionally one of you whips out the old paper-megaphone again to talk about a pet project or something, and nobody really minds, because hey, you all know where each other are coming from. Wheee!

If, instead, you use your crate as a platform from which to throw garbage at people . . . well they are REALLY UNLIKELY to want to stick around for that. If you start targeting people specifically -- that means you @mention their names and barrage them with advertising even though you don't know them -- they are likely to report you for spam and your platform will get taken away altogether. 

And it should go without saying - don't HIRE somebody to do this on your behalf, either. It's a waste of your money, and it will give you a black eye with the potential readers and bigmouths you probably want to impress.

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