The Predators Who Prey on Authors

Occasionally I'll get a call from an author predator. It begins like this. Yeah hey this Mike from Doowop Press and we really love your work and want to talk to you. Mike will then precede to tell me how much he loves my books and they would love to publish my work...for a  small fee. Usually 5 grand is where it starts. I don't return these calls but they stay on you. I haven't heard from you...are you ok? Eventually I block the number.

But many authors fall prey to these predators. Unpublished authors are looking for validation and unfortunately these companies know this. And they make their money off of authors who are desperate to get their work out there and then five or ten grand later the book dies a silent death but they are already on to their next victim. It gets even worse with the movie predators.

Hey William we read your novel and think it would make a great movie. Usually two people work in tandem. One is a person who initially contacts you and then they bring in the big gun agent who is not an agent at all. We can get your book in front of top line producers and they will make it into a movie...for a fee. Again it is in the thousands. The word Hollywood is Christmas for most authors and so this is a strong play and unfortunately many authors get fleeced finding out too late they have no contacts at all and worse they never read your book.

Publishers are supposed to pay authors not the other way around, Movie producers are supposed to pay authors. Agents are supposed to work on commission. But just hearing that someone loves your book is a tonic to the gin of years of struggle and it is that drunkenness of perceived success these predators bank on. 

The Words You Should Hear From Your Agent: I Love Your Book!

I love your book! If you don't hear that then move on. I have heard everything from you are going to make a million dollars to  keep writing baby. I have heard agents say they like my work they can sell my work they see my work as highly marketable. But those three words I love your book are really what you are looking for. Why? Because if an agent doesn't love  your book then they will not do what it takes in a very tough market.

It is a litmus. A bad agent is worse than no agent at all. Because you sit around waiting to hear and a lot of times you are waiting for nothing. Many agents have lots of clients and you could be way down on the food chain. That means they are not pushing your book and that means you should move on. But many authors don't and their work suffers.

So you really want to hold out until you get those three words. I love your book. You probably want an exclamation point after that sentence. You really want someone who loves your book almost as much as you do.  And that is someone hard to find but worth the wait.

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher

Literary Agents and Hollywood

I was watching The Word last night. A familiar plot of struggling writer takes an old manuscript for his own and becomes famous. But the scene that ceases to amaze me is the agent scene. It as if Hollywood has not been updated since about 1945. First the agent looks like a professor with donnish spectacles...a greying dignified figure behind a desk who looks more like Max Perkins than the rough and tumble agent of today. But lets hold on that.

So the author is discovered by the agent and he gets a call. In The Word the struggling writer submits his phony manuscript and the agent is on the horn. I must see you. Ok. First canard. Agents no longer call anyone. You get an email. But alright lets roll with it. The writer goes into the very large office of the uber successful agent who sits behind his desk more befitting a CEO than a literary agent. He crows about the manuscript and then produces an enormous contract. Second canard. The contract.
Agents don't require contracts. Sure. A few still will get you to sign but it is really a gentleman's agreement. If you want to leave you leave. But if there is a contract it  is one page. Then the agent sells the book instantly in The Word. Boom. Done.

So lets take all of this together and put forth the modern literary agent. Many have an office but many do not. Many work at home. The agents office is small and very nonliterary. The laptop is the office. They do not look like Max Perkins. They look like anyone trying to sell something in a cyberbased economy. Harried. Disheveled. My one agent who was extremely distinguished looked more like a punk rocker and preferred a room with a very old couch fit for a fraternity.

But more than all that the call to the author is an email saying I will give this a shot. I like it and want to represent it. I will let you know. That's it. Nobody flies to New York. Apologies to all authors who fly to NY to meet their agent. But mostly you never meet. Even after they sell your book. It is not that they don't want to meet you it is just they are too busy. And you are usually too broke.

So that's the very unglamorous picture. But I did enjoy The Word. The way the author skyrocketed to the top like a movie star. The agent who sold his book the second he took it on. The Max Perkins world of author and agent. So nice. So gone.

Rocket Man...the Catcher in the Rye of the suburbs

Agent Etiquette or the agony of Waiting

There is such a thing as agent etiquette. Most writers get their first agent and the relationship goes wrong very quickly. This is because no one knows the ground rules and there are ground rules. You finally get an agent and you are ready for the next step, getting a publisher or selling your next book. Since agents have taken on the role of editor in fiction  you spend a lot of time working with your agent getting your book ready. Then it is ready and this is when the agent does  his or her thing. ]And you...wait.

Here is the first place where things go bad. The writer is axnious naturally. Years have gone into your book and now you are just going to sit and wait? A week passes. Another week passes. You are going crazy. The third week passes and you call or email. The agent lets you know that there have been a few rejections but he or she will press on. You wait. A week passes. Another week passes. Another week passes. This time you pick up the phone to get to the bottom of what the hell is going on.

Your agent tells you that yes there have been a few passes and you make some suggestions and call the editors idiots and begin to doubt your agent. You email suggestions. A week passes and you call again. Your agent doesn't take your call this time. Now you freak. You call and call and call. He or she  gets fed up with you and you get fed up with them. You are done.

Agent etiquette can be summed up in one simple sentence: grace under pressure. Or;  never let them see you sweat. Your agent will let you know when he or she sells your book. Believe me. Until then you just have to put it out of your mind and let them do their thing. Unless you are ready to switch. Like a marriage a lot of times the relationship goes bad. But when you find a good one, then leave them alone.

http://www.billhazelgrove.conm/

Should a Writer Live in New York?

The conventional wisdom is that in the age of the Internet you can live anywhere. No longer do writers have to live in literary centers to be part of the world of publishing and agents and deals and other writers. It helps of course, but it really isn't necessary. Authors live all over the place and even the ones who live in New York have houses in other places. The successful ones that is.

Of course there is a nagging little caveat to all of this. Take Chad Harbachs novel The Art of Fielding. I read the Vanity Fair piece written by his buddy who started the literary magazine N1. He basically describes the process in which Harbachs novel was discovered by Michael Pietch. There is the usual rejected by many component and Harbach slaved away for ten years and people were beginning to worry. But then his friend from the lit magazine who had a book published, put the manuscript in front of the right agent and then the right publisher. Harbach was discovered.

And if you go down the literary heavyweight list of Jonathan Franzen type big novels it does seem a lot of these authors live in New York. Lets face it networking is part of life and being where publishing is centered (at least for now) is probably a good thing. People do business with people they know and if you are bouncing around New York you might bump into agents and publishers and authors who could help you. To say nothing of the wealth of material living in a large city like New York generates.

I...like a lot of writers, thought about moving to the Big Apple. Living in Chicago did seem at times like a second city, but I doubted my ability to find time to write in NY. Chicago just seemed friendlier. And sometimes I think I should have gone. You never know what can happen just by moving to a bigger pond. Probably this question has no answer except that you go where you can survive and write.

Still, living in New York as a writer.....city of dreams, right?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Mid-List

Writers don't like to talk about the Mid-list. Mostly it is only know to writers agents publishers. But it is a graveyard of writers who exist in the shadowy world of great reviews, awards, accolades up the wazoo, but poor sales. The last one is the kicker that puts you into the Mid list. You can have the awards and reviews and all the gravy that goes with it but if you sell then you opt out of Mid-list land. Think of it as genteel poverty. You have a great family history dating back to Jefferson and Washington but grandad invested in a flying machine, the wrong flying machine it turns out and bankrupted the family. Welcome to the Mid-list, high on pedigree low on buckos.

Used to be the Mid-list was a respectable altitude to fly in. You could set your course and publishers would nudge you along as you navigated the vagaries of laudatory reviews, blurbs by respected authors, awards upon awards and the sales that started out small but were expected to grow with every book. Think of Charlie Browns Christmas tree that you want to grow into a big strapping Frazier Fir. No pun intended. So everyone was willing to wait for this very respectable career arc. Then published imploded.

Suddenly all those Mid-list planes began to sputter and spiral to earth. There just isn't enough oxygen anymore for all those authors buzzing around with good books but lousy sales. So they began to crash and burn and there were no more planes to follow. Like the Middle-Class the Mid-list is becoming extinct.  Like the Middle-Class publishing is becoming incredibly sectored between mega sellers and small literary authors who shoulder saying something that matters and starving. The Mid-list authors are becoming extinct.

Economics washes out most things sooner or later and the buying public might just not read reviews anymore. Think of the competition. No don't think of it you are doing it right now. You are reading this on your computer your phone your IPAD. You are not looking for that next great book reviewed by the New York Times. You are buying that book that popped up in one of your twitters, YouTube, Facebook, eBay or maybe you just wanted to read the book after seeing the movie. This is not economics as much as technology.

So the Mid-list authors that were fairly obscure before are now invisible. Publishing is adjusting as fast as it can to this new paradyme and I suspect authors will adjust or get used to the new altitude. Of course I believe that a great story will still upset this very smug applecart I just created. Mid-list Bottom-list, Top-list...if you write it they will come.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man should blast off soon

Getting my First Agent

I had been working a real job that took all my time and I felt my literary career slipping further and further away from any sort of reality. I was at a crossroads when I decided I had to do something or I would lose sight of my dream of being a novelist altogether. I had written several novels that continued to gather rejection letters from publishing houses and I became convinced my problem was that I didn't have an agent. I had sent my partials to many agents and received the same rejection letters that publishers were sending with just a different letter head. But sending out more manuscripts seemed futile. Somehow I had to break through the wall of New York publishing. There was only one thing to do, go to New York.

I arranged to stay with a friend in Brooklyn and gave myself two weeks. It was my vacation time and so I went to New York in the beginning of December. I brought forty partials of my two novels and and my thick WRITERS MARKET listing all the agents. I flew in and settled myself in my friends apartment and readied my attack. The next morning I took the subway into Manhattan. The day was cold and overcast. I got off the subway in lower Manhattan and began to walk with my heavy backpack. I went to the first address I had pulled out of WRITERS MARKET. A very harassed man answered the door in a small office. I explained who I was and handed him partials of my manuscript. He stared down at the pages like something strange and foreign. Well I've never had anyone come too my door and hand me a manuscript he said, staring at me.  He shrugged. Thank you. I'll look at it.

This then was my plan. To drop off my partial manuscripts and synopsis all over Manhattan. To literally walk to every agent I could find. That first day I hit ten agents and returned to Brooklyn with blisters on my ankles. The second day I headed out in tennis shoes and worked my way into Mid Town. The agents were in small office, large offices, apartments, high rises, bungalows, basement apartments. Some of them were nice and invited me in. Most of the agents just took my manuscripts and smiled for the doomed. One harassed man in a small office overflowing with manuscripts cried out, this isn't done this way. Another agent sold me a book he had written. Another agent working out of his apartment said he was getting out of the business because fiction was too hard to sell.

I ran out of manuscripts on the third day and ran off forty more copies. At the end of two weeks I had hit every agent I could find and had no more manuscripts. I flew back to Chicago to wait for the fruit of my labor. Kind letters came back from the big apple and silence. I never did get an agent from that trip to New York, but a month later I quit my job and started writing full time. I landed an agent later that year. He was one of the ones I had missed.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Kindle Download of Rocket Man

"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." - James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

The funniest serious novel since Richard Russo’s Straight Man, rich with the epic levity of John Irving and salted with the perversion of Updike." - Chicago Sun Times

Writer in Residence for the Ernest Hemingway Foundation William Hazelgrove's third novel is "a charming tale of fatherhood, family, and the American Dream." (Midwest Book Review).

"This critically insightful diatribe against conformity is recommended." - Library Journal

The Delicate Dance of Agents and Authors

It is a marriage. You have a courtship then a honeymoon then a working marriage and then at some point a divorce. You never like to think of getting divorced when you are married but it happens. But lets back up to the courtship. You are a writer and they are an agent. You have something they want and they have something you want. It should be symbiotic and so you start out by courting them. You send out your manuscript until an agent accepts and you go on a date.

Usually the first phone call is all hugs and kisses. They love your work and you love them because they promise a way to the promised land. The phone calls are all feel good and you get off feeling like you could leap tall buildings. Then you enter the honeymoon. They are submitting your work to editors. This is unbelievable. You have just jumped ahead ninety percent of other authors. You have a conduit to that mysterious world of publishing. Now is when you have your first quarrel usually. The rejections start coming in and you question the agent. Why did you submit it to them/ How about this person? This is a minor quarrel and you roll on.

Now here is the first fork in the road. The agent does or does not hit pay dirt. If he does not find a home for your book then you are looking at a quickie divorce. You might drag on a while but lets face it the bloom is off the rose and agents are in business to make money and if they can't make money off you then those calls will not be returned and those emails will go un-answered. You simply fall out of love. It happens. But if the agent sells your book then you go to the next level.

Now your are in a thriving working marriage. You have made the agent money and you have made money. Everyone is happy. This could last a very long time especially if your book does well. Maybe a lifetime. But, unfortunately, a lot of times the contract is paid off and the royalties dwindle and the followup book might not pan and then you enter that declining era in the marriage where no one is happy. You feel like you are not getting enough attention and the agent doesn't want to wast time on projects that won't pan out. So you divorce.

As an author you have to be very attuned to this cycle in author/agent relations. You want it to all work out the best but you don't want to be delusional either. If it feels like a bad marriage it probably is and you best be on your way to divorce court. There is nothing worse than thinking someone is doing something on your behalf when they aren't. So go get a divorce, then jump right back in the saddle and start dating again.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/