Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Location: Books & Such Central Valley Office, CA
This week I’ve been talking about the things I look for in a new client. Things like being knowledgeable and invested. And writing books that have commercial appeal. And offering fresh ideas and a fresh voice.
I also look for a writer who is realistic and prepared for the long-haul. When I get a query that insists I look at the “next bestseller,” I toss it in the round file. Yes, there are a number of debut books that became overnight successes. Just like there are lottery winners who recently won hundreds of millions of dollars. But does that mean if you buy a lottery ticket you’ll win millions?
We can’t plan a career around hoping for a miracle. Many fine, fine published books go virtually unnoticed every year. Reaching bestseller status is a convoluted combination of hard work, writing skill, word-of-mouth and that unpredictable combination of events that take an author to the tipping point.
I’m looking for writers who are realistic– knowing that they are going to have to pay their dues, possibly with very little return in terms of attention and money for the first few years. A writer must work hard at building his readership. Success comes when that readership builds with every book. It’s when a writer has a number of books in print, regular royalty checks, new book contracts and a growing readership that a successful writing career is born. One bestselling writer once told me that it took eleven years until she broke the six-figure income barrier.
So I’m looking for writers who are prepared financially for the long haul. A while ago I wrote Kiss of Death: Quitting the Day Job that addressed this issue. When we have clients who are desperate to make money we have a problem. This industry is not like a job. The money is sporadic and never guaranteed. A writer needs to be able to support himself while he builds his career. Or else you need a “patron of the arts,” as one writer describes her spouse.
Building a writing career is not so different from starting any business. If you were going to buy a Subway franchise, say, you’d need the money to purchase the business; money to buy food, materials and supplies; and you’d need money to live until the business hits the break-even point. Why do we believe writing will be any different?
Financial desperation leads to all kinds of short term decisions that sabotage a career. We’ve all heard of writers who take on too many projects because they need the money and end up missing deadlines, turning in shoddy work and losing the respect of their publishers. And a writer who is worried about money cannot be creative. The book always suffers.
I’m also looking for writers who are emotionally equipped for the long haul. Writing is a tough business. It can break your heart. The market is fickle and the odds are stacked against us. Writers need to be able to take rejection, critique, tough reviews and sometimes a stalled career. Too-fragile writers will crumble under the pressure. All that said, there is nothing else quite so satisfying. I look for resilient writers.
I also look for writers who have enough years to build a career. As agents, we pour ourselves into our clients. The first several years we may see precious little return on our investment. That’s okay, that’s our part of the financial long haul. If we believe in a writer we’ll work like crazy with absolutely no return in the early years if necessary. But if a debut writer who is seventy-five years old comes to me, I need to be positively bowled over by her book because, even if she writes for ten years, it’s barely enough time to really get a career launched. Of course that’s not to say I wouldn’t take her on if I loved that one book. I’ve done it more than once.
I look for settled writers. If a writer tells me he’s going to be moving to Sri Lanka for a period of five years I have to wonder how we can build a career with an inaccessible author. Writers who take “writing breaks” to raise children, to care for parents, or to “find themselves” usually find themselves with a stalled career. Writing is like any other business, the commitment needs to be there.
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As you can imagine, things come up in any writer’s life. We can’t plan for everything but I promised you the inside track this week. These are some of the things I chew on when seriously considering a new client.
Interesting, especially points four and five. The question that jumped out at me here was this: do you hesitate to take on an author in her twenties, who has no children as of yet but who might possibly start the writing-break-for-family soon, considering her “perfect” age for it?
Then again, there probably aren’t too many writers ready to be published in their (early) twenties because they need to hone their writing skills. Or not? I have never read/found anything on the numbers of “young” published authors, but I imagine there aren’t that many Christopher Paolinis around.
You are correct in saying that this process can break your heart. I have recently been submitting my work to agencies and I have been receiving rejection letters. The first couple were hard on me but now I have learned to appreciate the feedback. I know that I have it in me to write. I love to write and I love telling stories that I feel need to be told. However, writing it just like learning a new job or learning the ropes in college. The more you study and the harder you work the better you become.
By the way, your blogs are phenominal! I love everyone at your agency for taking time out of your busy schedule to encourage and teach! It means a lot to me and I am sure to many others as well!
Great information here. I appreciate your frankness.
I work in online book promotion, and one of the hardest things to cope with is unrealistic expectations. There have been clients expecting their virtual book tours (VBTs) to put them in touch with Oprah. There have been clients who expected no negative reviews. There have been clients who said they needed to sell books or they would be homeless.
VBTs, like any marketing tool, create exposure for your work, but they don’t guarantee sales. It takes a real commitment to get the sales moving.
My first children’s picture book came out in August of last year. Since its release, I have spent almost every day blogging at a blog dedicated solely to the book. I went on a two-and-a-half month VBT, and am following that up with another VBT this month. I also had a local book signing, and was interviewed by our local paper.
Sales have been good so far, but there is still so much that needs to be done to promote the book while I am also working on finalizing my query for the next book that a publisher expressed interest in.
It’s the life of a writer, but I love it.
Thanks so much for sharing your insights this week. I look forward to your next article.
Cheryl
This is a fantastic post, Wendy. I appreciate the long term view you’ve painted. It really is like building a business from the ground up. I’m still in the early years of building (one published book) and can attest to the long hours with little to no pay in these first years. It’s emotionally and physically draining at times. But I’m thankful that it’s something I absolutely love doing. That makes all the work worth it!
Thanks Wendy for your wonderful posts this week. The information is great. I think it’s important for a writer to look at publishing as a job and a career. It’s going to take work, you probably won’t be famous, and if that’s why your pursuing publishing, you should stop. It won’t make you rich, like you said, if you’re in it for the money, wrong reason.
But if you love writing and books and feel it’s your calling in life, then it’s worth it. I’ve been practicing my craft for ten years without a pay check. I know I can do it with children, a day job, and other obligations.
I guess it boils down to nothing worth having in life comes easy.
Thanks!
Don’t forget the other thing: glory writers tend to grow bitter and resentful because instant success hasn’t arrived. I look at it like a journey. No rejection letter is wasted. No rejected story is wasted. Every step taken has been unregrettable.
I had opportunities as a teenager to get published in Marion Zimmer Magazine and had no follow through. Instead of rewriting and submitting to them again, I put it on my desk and like homework, put it off.
Older, and hopefully wiser, I have explored my writing, learned from it, and began to take serious an online platform and the hours it takes to keep readership growing. Not to mention, learning how to connect with people online and finding myself caring for them.
I may not have earned any money from my writing, but I have found new friendships and learned ALOT all these years.
Great post!
Wow, great article! I liked the point you made about the need for money killing creativity. 🙂
“Or else you need a ‘patron of the arts,’ as one writer describes her spouse.”
I love this description! I’ll thank my husband for his contribution to the arts when he gets home tonight. 🙂
Thanks for the great posts this week! I appreciate the peek into your thought process when choosing clients…very informative and helpful.
Thanks Wendy.
We can always count on y’all for the straight scoop! 🙂
I’ve been blessed with a writing career that got off the ground fairly quickly, mainly because I’ve tended to find the gap in the non-fiction market and write to that. My husband says that for me it’s not a case of ‘a pill for every ill, but a book for every situation!’I’ve needed it, not been able to find it and so I’ve written it. You know what they say about ‘fools rushing in!’ I may not have had qualifications in every area I wrote about but I knew people who knew people! But picking up on your comments re. distance and age. When – and where – does a writer go to retire, and if she lives in another land, does that rule her out?
“I also look for writers who have enough years to build a career.”
What about age 59 and hoping to retire in 6 years, 11 months, and 18 days?
I may not be what you call a “traditional writer” (yet) but as a technical writer I am lucky that I am able to make my living now by my writings. I don’t necessarily think the need for money kills creativity. In my case it changed the direction of my goals and career and therefore changed my creativity in ways that I could not imagine.
Interesting info – and strangely I meet all of the criteria here, I think, save one: I don’t have a submission-ready novel.
Back to revisionland for me! No more blog-reading procrastination.
Thanks!
Another post that is both encouraging to me (I’m working on some of the right things! Yay!) and a wealth of information.
One aspect about this waiting (growing, learning) period that I am thankful for is that I can hopefully use this building period as an example to my children of “delayed results.” Writing is most definitely a field where results and success are not instant (as you have explained). Much effort has to be exerted before progress can be seen. That’s an essential lesson for anyone in this time and society.
I think of King David after he was anointed as king. He was anointed young, but then spent many more years in the fields as a shepherd before he came into his calling as a king. Were those years wasted? Absolutely not. He learned life skills, perseverance, and – most important – faith (without the need to “see” instant results).
Thank you again for all of these amazing posts this week (and every week).
Pia, you asked if I would hesitate to take on a writer who may need to take a break to have a family in the future. If she were a fabulous writer I’d not hesitate at all. I had a meeting this morning with a client who is coming back after taking a break for two children who are now both in preschool. Her proposed book is amazing– nothing like it. I can’t wait to start shopping it. The break only honed her abilities.
Don’t forget, when we write blog posts we’re talking in gneralities. If an 88-year-old Helen Hooven Santmyer came to with the book, And Ladies of the Club (my all-time favorite book, finished when the author was an octogenarian), I’d sign her in a minute.
Marion, with our connectivity on internet distance is less a problem than it used to be. Publishers have realized that in-store signings and the like are not the most effective way of promoting books.
You cross the pond often so it doesn’t feel like you are out of pocket at all.
Not that anyone’s counting, David. 🙂
I’d urge you not to wait for retirement but to get started now. If you stay fresh, God willing, you could have a twenty-year writing career. It’s not age as much as it is attitude, I guess.
On the writer side, a little bit of desperation helps me to keep writing. I’m one of the goofy writers who loves a due date. I love to sit down and figure out how many pages I need to average a day to meet a deadline. Nanowrimo – LOVE IT!
But, I also understand that there is a difference between a liitle desperation and loosing my home if I don’t get published.
I’m very fortunate to be a stay-home mom and I just turned 4 … 4 … I can’t write it. Any money from writing would be a nice bonus, but we already have everything we need.
Oh, I’m working on it, Wendy. Just can’t seem to crack the paper ceiling–or is it a hardcover ceiling?
It’s nice to read through your list and not be scared away by any of the ‘qualifications’!
I’m a corporate/freelance writer by day so know how fickle this corner of the world can be. But I’ve also learned that most downturns come back around if you wait long enough. If I keep holding onto the dream and doing my part, God will take that and use it however He wants.
Great insights this week, Wendy. Thanks for sharing!
At age 60, I’m planning on 25 more years of writing!!
“A patron of the arts.”
My husband will love that title. 🙂
By the way, great posts this week, Wendy.
Thanks Wendy, that’s good to know! 🙂
Thank you also for taking the time to post such enlightening articles and then even answering everybody’s questions so thoroughly. I really appreciate it!
I’m also in for the long haul, as I’ve been writing for a lot of years (in my mother tongue, in English only ten years, and I started with screenplays).
I think I’m going to self-publish in one genre (fantasy, because I’m too original in that to go with the trad.pub./agents lot), and try trad.pub. and agents in another – historical fiction (and no, you didn’t deter me in your other post, I “specialize” in the Middle Ages! ;-)). By the time I’m ready to submit my first historical novel (to Mrs.Wilson, as I have already mentioned it to her), I’ll be almost 46. Will that be too late to start a trad.pub.career? I know I can find other stories in our (well, mostly the European, in my case) history to continue that trend if it goes well, but it certainly takes me longer (because of the obvious research needed) to write an historical novel than a fantasy in a world that I already created 20 years ago! 🙂 Being a compulsive writer, it doesn’t really bother me, though… I know I’ll never run out of ideas. And keep the Day Job until I can support myself with my fiction!
Thank you for this great series!
Barb
I knew all these things counted. Still, it helped to see them put together in a fresh, clear, attention-grabbing way.
Which is what my own patron of the arts AKA husband does in his sermons and what we strive to do in our books.
Thanks, Wendy!
Once again very helpful, Wendy. I will pass this one on to our christian writers in The Word Guild in Canada. It is very easy for us to be delusional about our writing, and what it will take to bring all the pieces together, including the marketing piece. Your sound advice may help drag well-meaning writers out of their ‘denial of reality’ stuckness.
Ed Hird+
http://edhird.wordpress.com
Great week of posts, Wendy. Loads of good information for all writers.
I’m at the beginning of the long haul and I get so many comments from friends and family. “How’s the book coming?” “Have you heard anything about your book?” “When can I buy a copy?”
I’ve just finished my first manuscript and I’m beginning to query agents now.
It’s funny how people assume you write a book and then it pops out on the shelf in the same month. I think I’ve spent so much time explaining to friends how long this process will take, that I’ve managed to drill it into my own head too.
I look forward to the day I receive “the call.” Meanwhile, I’m gleaning all I can about craft. I write with expectation and joy. And I’ll keep explaining to those who ask . . . It’s a long process. Really long. But I’m planning to write for a long time, so that works for me.
I have been following Books and Such’s blogs for several months and find them to be very informative and helpful. Your series this week has been one of the best and I find it very encouraging and helpful as I jump into the adventure of writing. Thanks Wendy and all the great commentors for your words and questions of wisdom.
Jennifer, I understand completely. People don’t realize that this takes a lot of time. I gace into the pressure and queried too soon on my first manuscript. Although I got some good feedback I wish now I had stopped and taken a breath first. I lived and learned! Now to take a step back and do it right. 🙂 We all wish that it was so easy to get published but in reality it is a long process!
Thanks for the great post! I found myself checking off points 1,2,3, yes! Then I got to point 4 and winced–until I saw you set the “imaginary” bar at 75. I’ve got a decade to go! Besides if you’re only as old as you feel, I’ve got three decades to go. And chutzpah besides…
I know my husband will lol when he hears he’s been a “patron of the arts” for the last twenty some years. But, come to think of it, it’s often been the laughter that has kept us going! That, and comments from readers about changes in their lives that came after reading my work. I think it was the day I received a cheque for $1.25 for my first published poem that I realized, hmmmm … guess the kids’ college fund is going to have to come from somewhere else. I’ve given up caring about making money in this business. That moment came when I received a call from a mom whose daughter had been raped as a teenager. After reading my novel she told her mother, “I finally believe that God does love me in spite of it all.” That’s payment enough.
Great post! Thanks for the insight and wisdom. Wondering if it is better to start by self-publishing and then trying to connect with an agency or come directly to you ;o) Thinking, thinking, thinking . . . . . and writing along the way, too! Nina @ Ruby for Women
I came over from Joanne Sher’s blog. I appreciate this candid advice. Thank you!
Your comment about looking for writers who have enough years to build a career is astute and a bit sobering. The corollary is I want to find an agent who was enough years to last for my career!
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