Status Update -- Querying WITHIN THE BOX
I've overhauled my nonfiction proposal somewhat -- mostly on my own, but I did finally, belatedly, receive comments from the nonfiction author's association, courtesy of lit agent Jennifer Chen Tran. Most of these were highlighter boxes around individual words and phrases with suggested changes, and I mostly didn't understand why the suggested versions were better than the original wording.
As with query letters and the entire querying process, it all comes across to me as paradoxical: "Please submit your description of your book in a format that exactly meets our expectations of how an author who writes successful books in today's market would do it, but we're not going to specify what our expectations are. Emphasize how your book is different from what's already out there, but show us how it fits conveniently into an existing niche in the established market. Be original. Don't try to hand us anything we don't already know how to market to publishers. Please take time to write us a personal query that shows you bothered to familiarize yourself with our interests and track record, and why you picked us as a literary agency, but also be aware that we look at hundreds of these things very rapidly and reject nearly every one of them, so strip it down to just the facts, ma'am."
I do not think I would enjoy being a literary agent. Maybe I'm wrong about that but it looks utterly dismal from the outside. I like finding a fascinating book that takes me somewhere unexpected, and it's no more likely to have been written in the last couple years than to have been written twenty or thirty years ago. I think I'd hate to have to plow through a gigantic slush pile of query letters and proposals and first three chapter excerpts, looking not merely for a gem that hits my sweet spot as a reader but also one that I can get some market-driven publisher to consider.
You familiar with Stephen King's book Misery? Where the main character is an author being held hostage by a demented fan of his own book series' main character, and she keeps him prisoner until he writes a sequel that she likes? Well, maybe there's a market for a horror tale in which a frustrated unpublished author kidnaps a literary agent and ties them to a chair and makes them read their manuscript...
ANYWAY, as of today, Within the Box now has been the subject of 265 query letters, of which 228 have resulted in rejections or 3-month timeouts. The remaining 37 are still outstanding and could theoretically result in some type of positive response. Nary a single nibble yet, not a request for additional chapters or a full or anything else.
For the sake of comparison, for my first book GenderQueer I sent forth 1474 query letters to lit agents before I switched to querying small independent presses and hybrid publishers instead. I did get some interested responses, although never got offered a lit agency contract.
For all the subscribers and fans and regular readers of my blog who wonder why my blogging pace has dropped off from the once-a-week schedule I maintained until around October of last year, I apologize. And to both of you, I should explain that I started this blog because of all the advice telling me that an author trying to get published, especially a nonfiction author, really needs a platform. Meaning a base of already-attentive audience members who would be likely to go out and purchase a book by that author if one were to be published. But I think I only have a certain threshold tolerance for how much I can write and push out into the world and watch it not being seen and read. And right now I'm querying and it is soul-destroying enough without also writing blog posts that nobody reads.
I left Twitter nearly a year ago, never was on TikTok or Instagram or any of those other social-media critters, and I'm increasingly tempted to leave Facebook. I just don't find the short-attention-span popup-notification world to overlap much with what I regard as communication.
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My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
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This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts
As with query letters and the entire querying process, it all comes across to me as paradoxical: "Please submit your description of your book in a format that exactly meets our expectations of how an author who writes successful books in today's market would do it, but we're not going to specify what our expectations are. Emphasize how your book is different from what's already out there, but show us how it fits conveniently into an existing niche in the established market. Be original. Don't try to hand us anything we don't already know how to market to publishers. Please take time to write us a personal query that shows you bothered to familiarize yourself with our interests and track record, and why you picked us as a literary agency, but also be aware that we look at hundreds of these things very rapidly and reject nearly every one of them, so strip it down to just the facts, ma'am."
I do not think I would enjoy being a literary agent. Maybe I'm wrong about that but it looks utterly dismal from the outside. I like finding a fascinating book that takes me somewhere unexpected, and it's no more likely to have been written in the last couple years than to have been written twenty or thirty years ago. I think I'd hate to have to plow through a gigantic slush pile of query letters and proposals and first three chapter excerpts, looking not merely for a gem that hits my sweet spot as a reader but also one that I can get some market-driven publisher to consider.
You familiar with Stephen King's book Misery? Where the main character is an author being held hostage by a demented fan of his own book series' main character, and she keeps him prisoner until he writes a sequel that she likes? Well, maybe there's a market for a horror tale in which a frustrated unpublished author kidnaps a literary agent and ties them to a chair and makes them read their manuscript...
ANYWAY, as of today, Within the Box now has been the subject of 265 query letters, of which 228 have resulted in rejections or 3-month timeouts. The remaining 37 are still outstanding and could theoretically result in some type of positive response. Nary a single nibble yet, not a request for additional chapters or a full or anything else.
For the sake of comparison, for my first book GenderQueer I sent forth 1474 query letters to lit agents before I switched to querying small independent presses and hybrid publishers instead. I did get some interested responses, although never got offered a lit agency contract.
For all the subscribers and fans and regular readers of my blog who wonder why my blogging pace has dropped off from the once-a-week schedule I maintained until around October of last year, I apologize. And to both of you, I should explain that I started this blog because of all the advice telling me that an author trying to get published, especially a nonfiction author, really needs a platform. Meaning a base of already-attentive audience members who would be likely to go out and purchase a book by that author if one were to be published. But I think I only have a certain threshold tolerance for how much I can write and push out into the world and watch it not being seen and read. And right now I'm querying and it is soul-destroying enough without also writing blog posts that nobody reads.
I left Twitter nearly a year ago, never was on TikTok or Instagram or any of those other social-media critters, and I'm increasingly tempted to leave Facebook. I just don't find the short-attention-span popup-notification world to overlap much with what I regard as communication.
-----
My first book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, is published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback, hardback, and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, has also now been published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It is available on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
I have started querying my third book, Within the Box, and I'm still seeking advance readers for reviews and feedback. It is set in a psychiatric/rehab facility and is focused on self-determination and identity. Chronologically, it fits between the events in GenderQueer and those described in Guy in Women's Studies; unlike the other two, it is narrowly focused on events in a one-month timeframe and is more of a suspense thriller, although like the other two is also a nonfiction memoir. Contact me if you're interested.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page, for both published books.
-------
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts