Repositioning
On August 25, I got yet another one of those "your platform isn't good enough" responses to a query letter:
> Thank you for the opportunity to review your project. While I
> appreciate that you thought of me for your work of nonfiction, I'm not
> sure that your author platform is quite at the level necessary to
> launch a book. I suggest that you continue to establish and grow your
> platform so that you will be in a stronger position to pursue a book
> deal.
>
>
>
> Thank you again, and best of luck with your work.
So after a few melodramatic fantasies of creating a platform by kidnapping an array of author's agents and thus getting myself covered in the news cycle, I decided it was time to question one of the earliest decisions that I faced when it came to trying to get this book into print: fiction or nonfiction?
The first batch of query letters actually didn't specifically position the work one way or the other: "The names have been changed and it could be treated and marketed as either fiction or nonfiction". But that's not how the agent-querying business works. And when I decided last year to attend the NY Writer's Pitch Conference, I had to pick nonfiction or fiction; autobiographies and memoirs are definitely listed as nonfiction (whereas no subcategory of fiction sounded quite right) and at the conference itself I was told "Yes, definitely you should market it as nonfiction, you've got a memoir, that's powerful, authentic, comes from real experience" and so on, so that's what I've been doing.
But in the back of my mind, I kept remembering that Rita Mae Brown's RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE was technically marketed as fiction (fooling no one), as was Marilyn French's THE WOMEN'S ROOM (I think most of us figured that Mira was either entirely or mostly Marilyn French), and so was the far more blatant WHO WAS THAT MASKED WOMAN? by Noretta Koertge, in which the supposedly fictional Tretona Getroek's adventures are told.
So I sat down and wrote a new query letter, describing my book as a work of fiction. (Oh yeah, the same issue of no obvious subcategory of fiction again presented itself. It turns out that it would apparently be "literary fiction", which is everything that isn't "genre fiction", the latter of which comprising your basic mysteries, romances, sci fi, thriller action-adventure stories, vampire gothics, and so on).
And, because fiction queries are sent off with a synopsis, not a proposal as nonfiction is, I wrote up a synopsis.
Early end result: in the first week of querying it as a fiction book, I got a request to see a 30 page sample of the manuscript. For comparision, I have exactly two agents who have requested additional material after receiving the nonfiction query and that's after a year of querying.
I'm going to continue querying it as nonfiction but will definitely send at least 50 % of each week's queries as fiction queries.
I will post my fiction query letter and synopsis in subsequent blogposts.
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> Thank you for the opportunity to review your project. While I
> appreciate that you thought of me for your work of nonfiction, I'm not
> sure that your author platform is quite at the level necessary to
> launch a book. I suggest that you continue to establish and grow your
> platform so that you will be in a stronger position to pursue a book
> deal.
>
>
>
> Thank you again, and best of luck with your work.
So after a few melodramatic fantasies of creating a platform by kidnapping an array of author's agents and thus getting myself covered in the news cycle, I decided it was time to question one of the earliest decisions that I faced when it came to trying to get this book into print: fiction or nonfiction?
The first batch of query letters actually didn't specifically position the work one way or the other: "The names have been changed and it could be treated and marketed as either fiction or nonfiction". But that's not how the agent-querying business works. And when I decided last year to attend the NY Writer's Pitch Conference, I had to pick nonfiction or fiction; autobiographies and memoirs are definitely listed as nonfiction (whereas no subcategory of fiction sounded quite right) and at the conference itself I was told "Yes, definitely you should market it as nonfiction, you've got a memoir, that's powerful, authentic, comes from real experience" and so on, so that's what I've been doing.
But in the back of my mind, I kept remembering that Rita Mae Brown's RUBYFRUIT JUNGLE was technically marketed as fiction (fooling no one), as was Marilyn French's THE WOMEN'S ROOM (I think most of us figured that Mira was either entirely or mostly Marilyn French), and so was the far more blatant WHO WAS THAT MASKED WOMAN? by Noretta Koertge, in which the supposedly fictional Tretona Getroek's adventures are told.
So I sat down and wrote a new query letter, describing my book as a work of fiction. (Oh yeah, the same issue of no obvious subcategory of fiction again presented itself. It turns out that it would apparently be "literary fiction", which is everything that isn't "genre fiction", the latter of which comprising your basic mysteries, romances, sci fi, thriller action-adventure stories, vampire gothics, and so on).
And, because fiction queries are sent off with a synopsis, not a proposal as nonfiction is, I wrote up a synopsis.
Early end result: in the first week of querying it as a fiction book, I got a request to see a 30 page sample of the manuscript. For comparision, I have exactly two agents who have requested additional material after receiving the nonfiction query and that's after a year of querying.
I'm going to continue querying it as nonfiction but will definitely send at least 50 % of each week's queries as fiction queries.
I will post my fiction query letter and synopsis in subsequent blogposts.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts