Agents and #MSWL

Copyright © 2017 Steven E. Houchin. All rights reserved.

I ran across the MS Wish List website the other day while searching for more agents to query. It looks like a great resource. An author can select a genre and see a list of agents/editors/pubishers who are interested in that genre. And, the genre selections are numerous. After choosing a few candidate agents, I poked around a bit more on the site.

From what I can tell, this site is a filter for various Twitter hashtags related to agents/editors/publishers. The one I used to select agents by genre was #MSWL. A selection menu along the top chooses other hashtags, such as #AskAgent, #Querytip and #Pubtip, and various hashtags giving reasons why queries are accepted or rejected. I'm not sure how it all works, but I suspect the agents, etc. register on the site and then their hashtagged tweets are snagged and displayed in the proper category.

One disconcerting thing is the tweets come with no context, especially the query tweets. It gets confusing. I suppose you have to navigate to the original tweeter site to see more. Another thing: looking at the tweets shows lots of other interesting hashtags related to writing and querying (#amwriting, #amreading, #amquerying, #QueryMe).

One exciting thing I saw on the raw #MSWL Twitter site was that February 8, 2017 was proclaimed as "MSWL Day" on the site. I gather it means agents/editors/publishers were tweeting like mad what they're looking for. I was quite interested to see what it looked like, and found several leads for sending out queries.  I also saw trends that I need to keep in mind for future projects, such as women protagonists or characters/heroes from "underrepresented groups."

PNWA Author Panel: Poisoned Pen Press

Copyright © 2011, Steven E. Houchin. All rights reserved.

Last month, I attended the September member meeting of the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association. The program consisted of a five-person panel of authors who have published books with Poisoned Pen Press of Scottsdale, AZ, which is an independent publisher of various mystery genres. According to the panelists, the editors are Barbara Peters and Annette Rogers. Unlike the big New York publishers, they take unagented submissions. They accept works between 60,000 and 90,000 words.

The panelists raved about how the editors spent a lot of time with them to get their book just right. In general, they recommend that authors start out querying small, independent presses because the author has a good chance of receiving good feedback on their work, even if rejected. Like any other publisher or agent, 99% of submissions will be rejected; they receive a lot of poorly-written submissions.

Poisoned Pen’s advances aren’t large: about $1000. But, there isn’t a lot of deadline pressure, and they won’t necessarily drop you as an author because of poor sales. After your book’s first print run, they utilize Print On Demand for subsequent orders, and distribute through Ingram Publisher Services. This means your book never goes out of print. From day one, your book is published in hardcover, trade paperback, audiobook, and large print.

On the subject of marketing your book, the panelists emphasized the importance of sending out advance, pre-publication review copies to the big industry reviewers, such as Library Journal or Booklist. Poisoned Pen will send out the review copies. Once the book is published, these reviewers will not look at the book. They only review advance copies. Unfortunately, most newspspers no longer review books. Ones that do: LA Times, Seattle Times, Washington Post.

Also attending the meeting was a man (I didn’t get his name) from New Libri Press, a small publisher in Mercer island, WA.

So, Ya Wanna Get Published?

Copyright © 2007, Steven E. Houchin
( Originally written 6 December 2007 )

Last month I heard new local author speak at Third Place Books. In addition to telling us about his novel, he spoke bitterly about the process of getting published. His experience was so frustrating that he stated he has no desire to write another book.

After dozens and dozens of rejections, he put the book away for a few years. It was ultimately published due to a chance meeting with a book critic who spoke at the UW bookstore. The critic read his manuscript and put him in touch with someone he knew in the publishing business. Eventually, the author signed with a small, on-demand publisher who put out his book in paperback. “On-demand” means that the publisher can print his book in units of ones and twos if needed, rather than traditional publishers who must print thousands at a time. Getting published had taken five long years, which he was told is about average.

With book in hand, he visited a local Barnes & Noble, ready with his best speech to convince them to stock his book. The B&N person turned to the inside back page and examined the bar code, then promptly told him they couldn’t accept it. The code contains an identifier that shows it was print-on-demand, and they have a corporate policy to not handle them. Same story with Borders. Why? Because they can’t return the unsold extras to on-demand publishers, who don’t carry inventory. So, to market his book, he can only count on independent bookstores and online sellers.

I suppose this is something else we need to add to our list of Bewares for the industry.