Reprising a Theme: Querying as Fiction
Back when I was hawking my first book, GenderQueer (at that time with working title The Story of Q), I decided after a long run of querying it as a memoir with no serious nibbles to try selling it as a work of fiction. "Consider Rubyfruit Jungle", I'd say to people. "It's categorized as fiction but it's pretty clearly Rita Mae Brown's own story. Or my colleague Noretta Koertge's book Who Was that Masked Woman?, featuring a main character named Tretona Getroek -- pretty obviously herself. So why not?"
So I'm again at that stage. Within the Box is a well-written entertaining tale (I have sufficient feedback to feel confident saying so). But nary a single lit agent has expressed interest.
Here are the pro and con arguments for repositioning it as a work of fiction:
IN FAVOR: Most lit agencies and agents divide the lit world up into fiction and nonfiction, and memoirs fall into the latter. And nonfiction authors are constantly being told "you need to have a platform, an already-existing audience of people who pay attention to what you say in your field". Which makes a certain amount of sense if your nonfiction piece is about climate change, or the boom and bust cycles of the stock market, or the extensive searches for remnant populations of ivory-billed woodpeckers and thylacines and other presumed-extinct animals.
And I suppose it also makes sense if your nonfiction offering is a memoir about your experience as an already-known public figure. Where that's going to be one of its selling points, that it's about a person that folks have heard of in the news or whatever.
But Within the Box is only incidentally a true story. Nobody has heard of me and hence nobody is going to buy my book because of who I am, but it's an engrossing suspense tale.
Lots of fiction authors write engrossing suspense tales and they aren't instructed to describe their platform of reputation and expertise that makes them qualified to write what they wrote.
AGAINST: I always figured a strong selling point of one's actual story is that it is, in fact, someone's actual story, that it actually happened. And I'd be tossing that away in order to market the book as fiction.
My companion-partner mentioned that if I query it as fiction, I run the risk of some lit agent wanting to change parts of the plot, insert an element into the storyline that didn't really happen or change the personality and behavior of myself as main character. Which I suppose is true, but it's not like I'm forced to go along with that.
The truth is, I have no freaking idea what makes my book more likely to appeal to these folks. I've done my reading and I've participated in message boards for authors and I'm still in the dark.
But since I can keep querying it as nonfiction while also querying it as fiction to other lit agents, I see no downside to having a go at it.
Current querying stats:
TOTAL queries to lit agents: 307
Rejections: 250
Outstanding: 56
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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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So I'm again at that stage. Within the Box is a well-written entertaining tale (I have sufficient feedback to feel confident saying so). But nary a single lit agent has expressed interest.
Here are the pro and con arguments for repositioning it as a work of fiction:
IN FAVOR: Most lit agencies and agents divide the lit world up into fiction and nonfiction, and memoirs fall into the latter. And nonfiction authors are constantly being told "you need to have a platform, an already-existing audience of people who pay attention to what you say in your field". Which makes a certain amount of sense if your nonfiction piece is about climate change, or the boom and bust cycles of the stock market, or the extensive searches for remnant populations of ivory-billed woodpeckers and thylacines and other presumed-extinct animals.
And I suppose it also makes sense if your nonfiction offering is a memoir about your experience as an already-known public figure. Where that's going to be one of its selling points, that it's about a person that folks have heard of in the news or whatever.
But Within the Box is only incidentally a true story. Nobody has heard of me and hence nobody is going to buy my book because of who I am, but it's an engrossing suspense tale.
Lots of fiction authors write engrossing suspense tales and they aren't instructed to describe their platform of reputation and expertise that makes them qualified to write what they wrote.
AGAINST: I always figured a strong selling point of one's actual story is that it is, in fact, someone's actual story, that it actually happened. And I'd be tossing that away in order to market the book as fiction.
My companion-partner mentioned that if I query it as fiction, I run the risk of some lit agent wanting to change parts of the plot, insert an element into the storyline that didn't really happen or change the personality and behavior of myself as main character. Which I suppose is true, but it's not like I'm forced to go along with that.
The truth is, I have no freaking idea what makes my book more likely to appeal to these folks. I've done my reading and I've participated in message boards for authors and I'm still in the dark.
But since I can keep querying it as nonfiction while also querying it as fiction to other lit agents, I see no downside to having a go at it.
Current querying stats:
TOTAL queries to lit agents: 307
Rejections: 250
Outstanding: 56
-----
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