Putting Your Best Book Forward: Stephen Barbara, Part I

[rj_anderson]

Last weekend I attended the SCBWI Canada East conference, a one-day event featuring agent Stephen Barbara of the Donald Maass Literary Agency and authors Alma Fullerton and Jo Ellen Bogart. Unfortunately my pen died early in the afternoon, so Jo Ellen's talk has been lost to posterity. But I took detailed notes in the morning sessions, and got the

Comments

[timeheldinsepia]

Thank you for posting these!

[superversive]

Authorial voice, suspense, conflict, compelling characters, in a one-page document that is NOT a narrative?

Sorry, that’s just asking the impossible. The legendary Miss Snark, who has made a second career out of publicly dissecting query letters and showing ways to improve them, has said that she cannot imagine how any agent can make an intelligent decision about a writer based on a query alone. Her submission guidelines require a (short) synopsis and sample, separate from the letter. That allows her to actually get a useful taste of the author’s voice, suspense, conflict, characters, etc.

If you can show your quality as a fiction writer in the roughly 300 words of pure nonfiction that can be fitted into a one-page business letter in standard format, there can’t be very much quality to show. As the old saw has it, if it can be put in a nutshell, it probably belongs there.

[rj_anderson]

Of course, most agents (including Mr. Barbara) do require a synopsis and/or sample to be included with the query, and make their final judgment based on that. But if the query letter is dull, rambling and/or unprofessional, and the concept for the novel is so poorly expressed that it does the book a disservice, that is going to affect the agent's judgment of the writing sample which follows

[superversive]

I phrased that the way I did partly out of personal frustration, having tried to deal with certain agents who want only a query letter and no sample at all. I fail to see how anyone could sell a novel based on nothing but a letter.

In effect, the purpose of this policy can only be to make the agent appear open to unsolicited submissions, without the risk of giving him any actual slush to read. It affords the maximum number of rejections for the minimum amount of work - at the cost of making acceptances virtually impossible.

It’s like dealing with a bureaucracy. The bottom layer of bureaucrats have the sole function of saying no to people, cutting down the workload of the people higher up with the authority to say yes.

[rj_anderson]

having tried to deal with certain agents who want only a query letter and no sample at all.

Agreed, that's very short-sighted. I'm also not impressed with agents who maintain the policy of only responding to queries that interest them.

[shellebelle93]

Oooh, thanks for this! I'm looking forward to part two.

[jmprince]

Thanks so much for sharing these!

[olmue]

Thanks for sharing!