Articles Tagged with literary agent

Submissions Update

It’s the Season of the Witch, and pumpkins abound. As do, unfortunately, book bans. Penguin Random House has created a wonderful resource for anyone interested in joining the resistance to these bans, click here.

For those of you following my submission stats, I’ve officially narrowed the inbox down to full requests. I opened to submissions for three months this past spring and had 1,850 submissions. I ended up requesting 19 full manuscripts and so far have made 3 offers of representation.

Now that I’ve caught up on queries, I’m opening to submissions for the remainder of the year and will likely close again in the new year to catch up, as settling in at the new agency and this little one is keeping me busy.

Mary C. MooreSeptember 11, 2023

One of my favorite independent publishers is hosting an auction. Levine Querido is doing amazing work in the kidlit publishing space, so I’m happy to support them with a donation of two query letter + five page critique. To bid on one of my critiques click here! (If I have already reviewed a submission of yours, you can still bid.)

Or check out the rest of their amazing offerings at the auction here.

Agency Change

This summer has flown by, but is mellowing as the baked California earth and fattened wildlife slows to a simmering laziness around me. School has started, putting the family back on a consistent schedule and the baby is now officially toddling. We picked ten pounds of blueberries to catch the last sweetness of the season, but are still waiting on the tomatoes and dahlias, due to a chilly June.

Speaking of waiting, thank you to all you authors who have been patiently waiting for a response to your submission. I’m behind schedule, currently narrowing the list down to full requests. The delay is due to a change on my end, I have joined the team at Aevitas Creative Management. I am thrilled for this new journey and excited to see where it will take me and my clients.

I am grateful to the amazing people at Kimberley Cameron & Associates. My experience at KC&A has allowed me to be poised for more growth and success in this next journey. I am proud of what we accomplished during my time there, and they have been incredibly supportive of this transition.

If you have a submission waiting with me, please note it may be a bit longer while I settle in at my new agency. If you wish to withdraw, you may do so at anytime and if you change your mind you can resubmit at a later date.

In the middle of all this, I did make it to NYC for a whirlwind trip. So delighted I could catch one of my client’s launch parties, Yume Kitasei and her debut The Deep Sky from Flatiron, Macmillan.

Wonking Out on Query Stats

I will be closing to submissions at the end of the month to catch up. For those of you who like to wonk out on #querystats (thank you Patrick for the easy to access stats on QueryManager), this post is for you.

I opened at the end of March and have already received nearly 1500 queries. Although the largest amount came in on the first few days of opening, it’s since averaged out to about 20 a day. If the trend continues, when I shut down my query box on May 31, I will have received over 2,000 queries.

Rainbow’s ploy to get me to stop working.
  • I’m usually able to filter out about eighty percent within a few days:
    • Most aren’t ready for me, about 10-14 or ~sixty percent of daily submissions
      • Often the pitch is not focused. It relies on vague rhetorical questions for tension or makes grandiose statements like “this will be an instant bestseller” or it’s just confusing. Whether it’s due to a lack of resources, inexperience, or laziness, I know these authors aren’t in a place for me to partner with, and when I give the sample a quick glance, this is confirmed. But as these authors are often vulnerable first-timers, any feedback I give may do unintentional harm, so these get a form pass.
      • Sometimes the pitch is fine or even great, but the sample isn’t quite there. These will get a note that says the concept intrigued me, but the sample didn’t pull me in as I had hoped. The tricky thing about this response, is I hope it inspires the writer to keep going, polishing and honing their craft, not discourage them. So I try to use it when I think the writer can handle the response, i.e. has a bit of experience, they are about to level up, or would appreciate knowing their sample isn’t quite working.
    • 2 to 4 are not my taste or not in my wheelhouse, ~fifteen percent of daily submissions
      • These are most often picture books (PB). There is understandably confusion about this, as I do represent authors who write PBs. But I only sign projects in the upper age range, and sometimes said clients also write picture books. So 99% of PBs will be quickly passed on.
      • Sometimes these are nonfiction proposals. I’m newly exploring the idea of representing nonfiction, again because I have clients who write in the fiction space and are crossing over. But I’m extremely selective and will either pass the submission on to one of the agents at KC&A who do a lot of nonfiction, or will send a form rejection as I’m not comfortable enough in the genre to give feedback.
      • Sometimes the sub is simply something I’m not interested in. There is no way for the submitting author to know this, and if I state it, an author may interpret it as a professional take, i.e. how the market is leaning. But I don’t represent the entire market and there are other agents that will feel differently, so these get a quick form pass from me as well.
    • 1 or 2 are inauthentic, ~five percent of daily submissions
      • Writers who exaggerate their resume to an extreme, falsely claiming to have had best-sellers, big name support for their book, film and multiple agents interested. They are more interested in being famous than writing. Form pass.
      • Market chasers, writing in a genre because they think it’s easy money, not because they love and know the genre. Form pass.
      • Writers attempting a take that requires nuanced experience they don’t have, i.e. someone writing magical realism without understanding the cultural significance behind the genre. These are tricky and tend to take more time to review, but they also get a form pass.
  • That leaves twenty percent that stay in my inbox, which at this point is 250 submissions and if things stay on track, 400 submissions when I close at the end of the month. This is not yet my maybe pile even. For now I’ve kept them for one of the following reasons:
    • the writer intrigued me
    • the concept/pitch intrigued me
    • the sample writing caught me
  • A submission has to hit all three of those factors to go into the maybe pile, and the rest will be passed on, hopefully with an encouraging note, but not guaranteed (timing-wise, on average, one of these passes requires the same amount of time filtering the ~14 quick passes does). This stage will leave about ten percent of the submissions in my inbox, ~200. Half of these will be further narrowed down:
    • Too close to something I already represent
    • Passed on to colleagues
    • Upon further reading the sample doesn’t hold up as well as it did in the beginning
    • The promise of the pitch ultimately isn’t met in the actual manuscript
    • I know the manuscript needs work, but have no vision on how to steer the editorial
    • I don’t have a clear picture on who the target audience is, comp titles, how to pitch it to publishers, and it didn’t gut-punch me enough to take a chance on it anyway
    • The author gets an offer of representation, I tend to step aside on those because I don’t want to rush my decision
    • The author gets an offer of publication from a smaller press, I tend to step aside on those or pass them on to my colleagues
  • That still leaves ~5 percent, which in this case is around 100 submissions, whew. Wish me luck!

Skimming vs Deep Reading Submissions

I quietly opened to queries ten days ago for the first time in over two years. I was closed for so long mainly because my clients were turning in multiple manuscripts regularly. It was averaging 30 manuscripts a year, which meant there was no time nor room in my head for deep-reading fulls in my submission pile. And the idea of opening up to queries was daunting, I’d been hearing from others how there’s been a surge in submissions since lockdown. But a few things aligned that pushed me forward. Most important, I caught up with my clients. On top of that my baby is now posed to enter toddlerhood, so the newborn days are a foggy memory. And lastly we revamped the website at the agency (check out the new Kimberley Cameron & Associates site, it is lovely, professional, and friendly in my totally biased opinion).

My cat Rainbow has a sixth sense for when I’m reading on my tablet.

Once I made the decision to seek new clients, I realized I was ready, keen even, to read subs. When over a hundred submissions rolled in that first weekend, I was surprised, but not overwhelmed, jumping in late at night, as the baby slept curled against me. I tweaked my submission form a few days later to find the quickest way to work through them thoughtfully, and plowed on in the odd hour I could find here or there. I skimmed through some fantastic pitches and lovely samples, all of them had potential, but only a few I set aside for further consideration. This is the easy part, the scanning, skimming, flicking through text. If this was all there was to it, writers would never have to wait long for a response.

But of course that’s not how it works. Many of you probably have partials or fulls that have been with an agent for months, even a year. Sure enough, five hundred submissions later, I’m slowing down. The maybe pile is growing. As eager as I am to find a new client or two, I’m not going to rush this part. Although I can enjoy a quick read, see potential in a few sentences, I’ve learned from experience that I have to truly sit with and deeply read a manuscript in order to absorb it, to have an editorial vision for it, to know if the connection I feel will be enough to champion it through the ups and downs. And that is a must before I take on that manuscript for representation. To find that vision, I have to be in that “Deep Reading” space. There’s a fantastic interview by Ezra Klein with literary scholar Maryanne Wolf on the difference between scanning and deep reading.

Both methods are valid, and indeed necessary when I’m considering submissions, but a deep read is the final step before I would offer representation, and it’s the most difficult to achieve. The research done by Wolf and others of the neuroscience behind the different ways we absorb information, is fascinating and enlightening and helped me further define how I want to work. It has also meant clarifying something I had already sensed, that I was going to take longer than ever to read and consider fulls for representation. But I have to be okay with that, and I hope after reading this, writers will choose to query me (or not) with this deeper understanding of my process.

Editing The Big Picture

The past year was indefinable in so many ways. I struggle to find the words, as I’m sure many of us do. Personally, politically, socially, spiritually it’s been. . . something. But the readers of this little blog are interested in my professional perspective. So: let’s talk about the publishing industry. Could it survive the pandemic, political upheaval, social unrest of 2020? (Reader, it did).

It made some questionable moves, with the acquisition of books like American Dirt, Apropos of Nothing, and Troubled Blood. There was a reckoning with the Black Lives Matter movement, which resulted in calls for more Black voices, but many argue and agree that the lack of diversity in publishing and the industry’s performative response to it, is a never-ending cyclical issue.

And closer to home, agent scandals erupted at a pace as if a global pandemic didn’t exist. Literary agents and agencies saw increasing demands for transparency and ethical behavior. Some may not survive in the industry as a result. Individual agents faced backlash on behalf of their clients. My peers publicly parted ways with established clients for problematic behavior such as sexual harassment, racism, and gaslighting.

Much of this was fast-moving, forgotten-after-the-next-controversy-broke, but the ripples had an effect. There has been an undeniable increase in anxiety seeping into all corners of the industry. Including into the already nerve-wracked minds of the hundreds of thousands of querying authors. How can you trust agents? How do you know an agent will be there for you long-term and won’t be at the center of some Twitterstorm/unearthed as a terrible professional/person? And how can you trust yourself that you are making good decisions and won’t find yourself facing the mob?

Since a tiny percentage of this group are readers of this blog, I’m sharing that you’re not alone. I can’t speak for all agents, but I do think a majority of us have felt the shift. This past year, I constantly re-examined my goals, my mission, my reason for doing what I do. I stumbled, more than once. How was I contributing to the conversation, positive and/or negative? I spiraled out and in, was off social media then back on, had highs of elation and lows of pessimism.

And then in late-August I came down with a moderate case of COVID-19 (link to an article that a local newspaper did on my experience). At the same time the largest wildfire in recent California history blanketed the sky with smoke, making the air hazardous to breathe for weeks. The personal overwhelmed the professional. I couldn’t work, I had no desire to be connected online and life, well it sucked. Physical recovery was about two months, emotional. . . I’ll let you know.

It did bring the importance of patience into sharp focus. The fast pace of social media conversations and industry scandals will not slow down. It’s important for me to keep track of it all, in order to have an understanding of the climate. But the choices I make as a literary agent (and perhaps you as an author) do not have to be at the same pace. We are caretakers of stories, one of the deepest aspects of the human psyche. This is not a fleeting mission.

So I remind myself:

  • decisions should be thoughtful
  • listen more than speak
  • resist the desire to be performative
  • take action when something feels problematic

This reminder further solidified something my clients already know. That despite my incredibly high expectations of them, I am not a shark (more like a gray whale I guess?). But I believe that the patience I continue to develop will support them in navigating the industry as strongly as a shark would. (Seriously, gray whales are awesome.)

This reminder is also for authors seeking literary agents. Take your time to choose who to query and who to accept an offer from, the more thoughtful the process, the less likely it’ll be a choice you regret (the same goes for what you post online).

I signed seven exciting new clients in 2020: R.B. Lemberg, Zipporah Smith, Jasmine Skye, Kristen Schmitt, Alex Crespo, Chelsea Catherine, and DaVaun Sanders, all of whom have something fresh, poignant, and interesting to say via their fiction. Many are undertaking massive rewrites with me, but I see the long-term potential and am looking forward to what the future holds for them.

At the close of the year I sold my client Rati Mehrotra’s sophomore project Night of the Raven, Dawn of the Dove to Macmillan. Her debut Markswoman (one of my first deals) sold in early 2016, marking nearly five years between announcements. I’m so proud of her, the persistence and patience paid off.

And I’m happy to report there seems to be no long-term side-effects from COVID (although increasing my vitamin levels was crucial for full-recovery). I’m still catching up professionally from the experience, so I expect to be closed to queries until March, if not longer. I’m resisting the urge to rush through this more subtle part of the healing process. It’s important that I maintain the balance of what I can do, with what I should do, in order to be a stable force for my clients.

So, I thank you for your patience.

Blog Post Image by Mary C. Moore

Examining the “I Just Didn’t Fall In Love” Rejection

As I gear up to open to submissions for the new year, I’m once again faced with the task of whittling down the remaining fulls in my query inbox. I’d love to get down to zero, a fresh start to 2020. I have less than ten manuscripts to consider. Should be easy right?

Wrong.

As the pile of “maybes” gets smaller, the harder it is to make decisions on what to let go. There’s the young adult thriller I’ve had since spring, in which, although the plot is a mess, I’m in love with the narrative voice. The contemporary middle grade that’s been there since late summer, with the amazing concept and natural tension, but rough writing. The adult fantasy, just requested before shutting down my inbox, that is totally epic and totally up my alley, but perhaps not enough to break out in the smaller SFF market. The interesting women’s fiction from early fall, with the really cool author with lots of great experience and a huge platform, that doesn’t quite catch, but maybe could with some edits.

I can’t take on all of them. But there isn’t a good reason to reject them. So I start typing those dreaded words, “I just didn’t fall in love,” cringing because after months of considering a full manuscript, I know the author is going to be frustrated by this lame response. Sure I try to dress it up best I can, but the bottom line, is “it’s not you, it’s me.” I’ve gotten plenty of those types of responses from editors to know that wrapping it in a pretty ribbon of words isn’t going to make the seemingly arbitrary rejection any less baffling and/or disheartening.

How can I explain myself, and my cohort of literary agents across the country, for sending rejections we ourselves dread to receive?

So I emphasize once again, how in tune I must be with a manuscript and its author. My vision for what editorial the manuscript needs and who the target audience is should be crystal clear. Knowing those two factors, I can lay a path forward for myself and the author. My vision has to be strong, because that path will most definitely veer and fork and turn on itself. This business is a roller coaster at best and a human-eating monster at worst. As one of my favorite lit peeps Literary Agent DongWon Song pointed out in a recent Writing Excuses podcost:

Now, the thing is, publishing is a system that is designed to be extremely random. What makes a book work is highly unpredictable. What makes a book tank, also highly unpredictable. So when you’re thinking about this, there’s two things you need to keep in mind: always have a plan. But also be ready to throw that plan out the window at the drop of a hat. . . . You will go completely mad if you try to map the whole thing. So you pick your path, but then you’re ready to know, we can pivot wherever we need to. 

https://wetranscripts.dreamwidth.org/166134.html

So when I’m reading a particularly strong submission, I’m considering the biggest factor that will push me to make an offer: Is my vision for it strong and clear enough to survive through the inevitable roller coaster?

The writing may be excellent, the author may be fantastic, the story may be right up my alley, but could I take it the distance? If I give it more time, will my vision potentially solidify or should I let it go now?

The next time an agent hangs on to your manuscript for months and then all you get is a “I just didn’t fall in love” rejection, pat yourself on the back, you’re rising to the top of hundreds of thousands of submissions. It’s only a matter of time before you find someone who will “fall in love.”

And in the meantime, remember, it really wasn’t you, it was me.

Writer’s Digest Bootcamp is Back!

After a long hiatus, the agents of Kimberley Cameron & Associates are once again teaching a Writer’s Digest course. Sign up and you get to join an online forum where you have four hours over two days to ask me anything about publishing. I will be there in real time, and there are no stupid questions.

After the forum, I will critique your query letter and first ten pages (this does not count as a submission, it’s for you to improve your work, you can always submit to me officially at a later date after you’ve incorporated the feedback).

Even if you are not ready to query, you are welcome to join us and to get feedback on your rough draft.

Enroll here: https://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/courses/agent-one-on-one-how-to-craft-query-letters-other-submission-materials-that-get-noticed-boot-camp

*Note, although you will have access to all the KC&A discussions, whichever agent you are assigned to will be the one answering your questions on the forum and critiquing your work, so if you are looking to connect with one of us specifically, make sure you let WD know.

How To Query an Agent Workshop

I’m pleased to share that I’ll be heading an affordable and local workshop on how to query a literary agent this month! On Sunday, September 22, at 2pm during the Marin California Writers Club’s monthly meeting, I’ll be discussing the importance of the query, advising how to craft one, as well as answering questions and critiquing a few (anonymously) for the group (if you wish for yours to be critiqued, bring a print copy minus any identifying information).

The event will be held at Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera.

Although it is hosted by the CWC, non-members are welcome as well. At $10 a person ($5 for members) this is a really good deal, when you consider attending a conference or online workshop to get the same information would be at least 20 times this price.

I’m always keen to share what I wish I had learned back when I was a querying author, and am strongly aware of the lack of affordable resources for writers. So please feel welcome, even if you’re not ready to query yet. This is a great opportunity and I hope to meet more than a few local writers there!