Agent etiquette, comp titles and genre promises

Two things today: genre & agent etiquette, picking up some of your questions from this discussion on Townhouse.

I’ll deal with the etiquette stuff first. The questions / comments in bold below come from your Qs on that thread.

How long should a synopsis be? What does “one page” really mean?

Honestly? I think that agents are silly about this. They should say what they mean. For what it’s worth, “one page” is normally interpreted as normal margins, 1.5 spacing, and Times New Roman. But TNR is a lousy font and it’s silly to be too bullied by these things.

I’d say that if your synopsis runs to 400-500 words, you’re fine. If the way you lay that out runs to 1.5 pages, then no one except an idiot will get upset about it. The truth is that if an agent reads an intelligent query and the first page or two of the actual manuscript seems strong, they just won’t care whether you do / don’t match the exact letter of what they say.

When to nudge?

I said a nudge after 6 weeks is fine. I’m wrong about that. I’d meant to write 8, in fact, but the landscape has just got ever worse. It’s now just horribly normal for agents to say “if you haven’t heard from me within 8 / 10 / 12 weeks, just assume I’m not interested.” I think you can take those things at more or less face value. The fact is that I don’t think nudging really works UNLESS you have meaningful interest from another agent, in which case get nudging.

What does 50 pages mean?

Again, I think this doesn’t really matter and that agents are being silly at multiple levels.

Back in the day, the “first three chapters” idea arose because people were sending physical pages through the post. The notion was there to limit the size of packages coming into the mailroom. These days, it’s daft. Why not just tell people to email the whole damn book? I genuinely don’t know.

For what it’s worth, I think that it would be normal to send around 10,000 words which, in the layout I use, comes to around 25 pages. On that basis, 50 pages comes to more like 20,000 words which seems a lot.

Some agents still talk about the first three chapters, but in my case that would equate to just 10 pages / 3500 words, and that seems foolishly small to me. I would always send more than that and would, if need be, add a note to the effect that, “my chapters are short, so I have submitted around 10,000 words, rather than abiding strictly by the three chapter limit.”

Again, I’d remind you that no agent on earth will reject a strong submission because you’ve not followed their stupid rules. But, that said, I would follow their stupid rules – roughly – just so you don’t fret.

Should the title of the novel be in all caps or italicized?

EITHER or either. No one cares. I use italics.

Should the hook get a separate line in the query letter?

Yep, these days, probably. But it’s up to you. As long as the basic pitch is clear, you can play around with the rest.

How many words should the blurb be?

Well, not sure what you mean by blurb. That’s the term given to the text on the back of a book, and that’s not normally something you need for an agent. If you are writing a blurb, then just check actual back-cover text in your genre, but 80-100 words is broadly typical.

If you mean, how much text in your cover letter about the book – well, again, there’s no simple rule. A good paragraph is fine. Alternatively, you can convey your hook in one brief sentence or three, then add a little more discussion about what you are trying to achieve in subsequent paragraphs.

Overall, I don’t think a query letter (or, really, email) should run to more than about 300 words. If it’s less than that, that’s fine.

Should the personalization to an individual agent come before or after the blurb/before or after the comp titles?

Don’t mind. It’s however the thing flows most naturally. But it’s generally easier to say, “this is the book I’ve written and the reason I thought of you is X”. It’s harder to do the last part if the agent doesn’t yet know what the book is offering.

Should the comp titles come before or after the blurb?

Probably after, and for the same reason.

If the comp titles are quite well known, should you include the authors’ names or is this redundant?

You don’t have to do it.

Should you include details or analysis of why you chose particular comp titles?

This should flow quite naturally from the letter. This kind of thing:

“My book is about [kids’ fantasy adventure topic]. I hope it competes in the same broad territory as [Katherine Rundell and MG Leonard]. I especially admire those authors willingness to [do X, Y, Z] and hope that some of that ambition is reflected in my own work.”

It’s obviously important not to sound like an idiot when you make those comparisons. So the wording above says X & Y are inspirational, then expresses a hope (not a confidence) that you share some characteristics. Telling an agent that you are directly like Salman Rushdie or J.K Rowling is obviously just stupid.

On a query letter, there are routine bits that are expected – word count, genre, comps etc. What are people’s thoughts about: 1) Having these in the very first paragraph (‘I am seeking representation for XXX, a XX,XXX word XXX novel that will appeal to readers of…’). 2) Instead, opening with a hook so that you’re straight into something that grabs the agent’s attention.

Honestly? I think the opening sentence needs to tell the agent why they’re here. Give the basic co-ordinates first (title, word count, rough genre definition.) Then go into the rest. That way, the agent reads the hook knowing the context and therefore understanding it better. With most query letter things, I’m pretty relaxed: there’s more than one way to do these things. But on this specific question, I think it’s almost always vital to offer the co-ordinates first.

The best thing to do is read each agent’s submission guidelines very carefully and follow them to the letter. One submission package won’t do for all.

That’s sort of true, but I have to say that personally I’d be annoyed at having to tailor everything to the last dot and comma. My own approach would be more like, “Here’s a perfectly professional package that conforms closely, but not precisely, to your stated needs. Live with it, buddy.”

I would suggest you do not include that phrasing in your query letter.

The invisible context to “It only takes one yes” is that the one yes is usually preceded by dozens of “almosts.” When you are within striking distance of “yes,” you start getting promising feedback. You rack up a few close-but-not-quites.

Damn right. If you send your stuff out to 12 agents and hear nothing back, or only form rejections, then your manuscript is almost certainly not yet strong enough. That’s where you need forceful, honest input from a third party.

Ideally, you use a Jericho Writers editor (because our guys are proper pros and they’re trained not to go easy on you), but it’s whatever you can afford.

If you are getting close but can’t get beyond the ‘not quite’, you’d be nuts not to get that editorial input. That’s where one or two key insights can take you over the line.

Do you think you should query the agents that are the best match first or last? Is it best to practise on those who aren’t a good match, I wonder?

Personally, I’d use a mix. My own preference would be to send out a small batch of 6 submissions, in the hope that I got something back that gave me a clue as to where I was / was not on target. I’d use a couple of top favourite agents in that 6 and about 4 who were fine but not top-of-the-top.

But honestly, this is a matter of personal preference. There are no rights or wrongs here.

If an agent is interested in a query letter and synopsis, do they do an internet search on the author to find out more about them such as previous writing experience, background, age, social media presence? Or don’t they bother as they are far too busy?

I think no agent would do this until they’re on the edge of offering representation. If they’re not serious about you, why waste the time?

And that brings us neatly enough to genre.

One of the things that I do think is critical is thinking about your book from an agent’s perspective. And an agent is selling to an editor whose first thought will be, “How do we actually market this book?”

If your novel is bang in line with genre, then the answer is pretty easy. If you’re writing standard-issue crime, then your novel will be sold like every other crime novel – and that’s a good thing, from your authorial perspective, not a bad one. You want to swim in the mainstream.

If your novel is less genre-defined than, say crime or kids fantasy or genre-romance, you still need to understand the tropes you need to live by. So let’s say your book lives in commercial book-club territory dealing with female loneliness via a gently comic / romantic approach.

Clearly that’s not a precisely defined genre – you won’t find shelves in a bookshop with that title above them – but it’s also defined enough. Any agent worth their salt will be looking for your book to establish, quickly, several things:

1. The Book-club style Big Issue which is to be explored (here, female loneliness.)
2. Humour
3. A romantic thread which doesn’t have to start out huge, but which needs to be present enough that its importance can be felt.
4. A cast of characters which is clearly going to be the cast you’re mostly working with: work colleagues, an aunt, an awkward neighbour – whoever.
5. The absence of anything violently in conflict with these things. So a major terrorist attack and pages spent with the harrowing aftermath effectively destroys the premise. You can’t easily step from there to the gently comic but romantic story you want to tell. (You can have a terrorist attack, but you need to handle it in a way consistent with your broader direction.)

You MUST deliver those things or your book will fail – and should fail – because you’re not giving the agent (or ultimately, the publisher) a way to market your book.

So with that book-club / female-loneliness / rom-commy sort of book we’ve been discussing, you and I could perfectly well come up with a cover quite fast. That cover would need to convey (i) intelligent-ish, (ii) more female than male, (iii) gentle and funny. If you threw in a massive, bloodily described terrorist attack, we’d have no hope of creating a cover that worked.

So: before you book goes to agents, make damn sure you understand its genre (however vague the boundaries of that genre might be.) Then meet your genre obligations, in full. Don’t skimp.

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Genre promise

Give me 250 words from early in your book that start to deliver genre-promise. Give us some background here. Give title, genre and context – including where your extract is taken from. Is it first page? First chapter? What? I just want to see early evidence that you understand your genre and are in the process of delivering it. When it’s ready post in the forum here on Townhouse (our free online writing community).

Til soon.

Harry