Saturday, August 30, 2008

I'm Out of Questions to Answer.

Otherwise there would be more posts this weekend.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's your name? ;)

Sarah Laurenson said...

LOL. Great question, anon.

Vodka Mom said...

I sent my picture book to several publishers, and 4 months later am still waiting. (Sydney Brooks Loves Show and Tell.) Were you one of them?

ha- that's one way to figure out who you are...but you KNOW I wouldn't tell. no how, no way.

Unknown said...

Hi EA,
I have friends (agented and unagented) who sold their first book and then received 10+ page editor revision notes, while others have revised more than once for an editor before they received their contract. How does an editor decide when to offer a contract to a new writer? Why would an editor offer, and sales, marketing, publisher, etc., approve that offer if they know they are going to ask the author to overhaul most of their book?
Thanks,
jill

Anonymous said...

What kind of manuscripts would make you sit up and take notice? Humor? Emotional impact? Character driven novels? Unusual situations? All of the above? Anything you are tired of seeing and want writers to avoid?

Anonymous said...

How do publishers come up with a specific advance figure? I.e., how do they decide, "Okay, we can pay $10K but not $11K," when that's such a small percentage of the total cost of producing the book?

Susan at Stony River said...

Well here's my question:

Are you having a restful, peaceful, enjoyable Labor Day weekend without questions?

(Don't have to answer...)
;-)

Anonymous said...

Since you are out of questions . . .

I still can’t figure out what’s wrong with the opening line of my Best/Worst Pitch Contest submission. I’m not asking you to offer advice on it, but the whole query aspect of writing is overwhelming me. Instead of sending manuscripts out like my other writer friends, I just sit here like a dunce collecting them. What is my problem? One silly letter and you’d think I was attempting to write the equation for Einstein’s theory of relativity.

And right now I’m stressing out over whether or not the commas in my post reply were correctly placed.

Anonymous said...

I've been given an opportunity to pitch an editor over the phone. I'm finding that deciding what to say is even harder than deciding what to write in a query. Any pitch advice?

Anonymous said...

In On Writing by Stephen King, he mentions having sold the paperback rights to Carrie for 400K. Do publishers still sell paperback rights, and if they do, can they still get 400K or anything near that much? Speaking of subs rights, which ones are the most lucrative?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for asking us to ask.

I've been a good doobee and joined SCBWI, gone to conferences, joined critique groups, gotten an MFA in Writing for Children, read tons, written reams, edited, edited and edited. Yet all I get is rejected, rejected, rejected.

What am I doing wrong?

anon

Anonymous said...

What is your opinion on the current market for historicals? Is a writer more apt to attract a publisher or an agent with a historical novel?

Anonymous said...

Dear EA,
I received several nice personal rejects, then some forms. At that point I became gunshy, and afraid to send things out. How do you know if you need to revise after receiving a personal, or if you just need to try again and hope someone else likes it better? I got comments like "well constructed plot", "adorable character", "made me laugh out loud", but not quite right.

Revise or submit? Either's got to be better than being paralyzed.

Thanks if you have any words for me. I understand if you don't.

Scaredy cat

Anonymous said...

When constructing the query letter for my YA murder mystery, should I mention that hubby's a sheriff's deputy and/or that I've used bits of real life mystery from our county? (with artistic liscense to protect those involved)

a reader

Anonymous said...

I've got a question--

On his blog, Nathan Bransford once said that he can often tell when someone will almost positively never be published from their query letters. It seems likely that most of these people have no sense of this, as they are continuing to query.

The next logical step in this self-destructive thinking pattern is that I may be one of these people myself.

So my question is, when should an author give up? Is there any way to tell if I'm just a crap writer and it's never going to happen?

I know you'll say you shouldn't be doing this if you don't love it, etc. But in reality, although I enjoy writing, I don't love editing and revising and all that jazz. If I knew I'd never get published I'd just give up on that bit and stick to blogging and leaving comments on blogs to fulfill my need to communicate with the world.

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