A line of green lamps

All agents have passions. At our Festival once – late at night and after plenty of wine – one agent started listing hers. I know there were sharks on her list and haunted houses, and child killers, and twins, and (I think) anything Victorian, and definitely mistaken identity, and… the list went on. Somewhere out there, a perfect novel exists for her with all those things in one beautifully weird melange.

But? Mostly agents want surprise. They want that sense of, ‘Gosh, I had no idea I’d want something like this, but now that it’s in front of me, I really, really do.’

Pitch

I wrote a week or two ago about how the ghost of an elevator pitch needs to glimmer in your query letter. And it does. The ingredients for a compelling story need to be present. The agent needs to feel that intrigue from the very start.

Because I plappered (my daughter’s chosen verb) about that recently, I’ll say no more now.

Good writing / instant authority

Agents say they want a distinctive voice; of course they do. But if you try to analyse what that really means, I think it comes down to this. Agents want to read the first page of a manuscript and just know that the writer is in perfect control – of their sentences, their characters, their story.

That control will, most of the time, come with a voice that sounds like that specific author, and nobody else – simply because you don’t normally get that level of control in over text, without putting your own personality into it.

But does John Grisham, say, really sound so distinctive? Or Stephen King? I’m not sure they do. They are masters of their craft, of course, but it’s not really their voice that you’d want to pick out.

So, I’d focus less on voice, and more on authority. Can a professional reader tell from the first page or two that you are in control, and that good things lie in wait? The answer needs to be yes.

A plausible story

Most agents will regard your synopsis as the least important part of your submission package – which is just as well, because synopses are tedious to write and tedious to read.

That said, synopses can be massive time savers. Let’s say I were a busy agent. I’ve read a query letter and I’m intrigued. I’ve read the opening page or two, and I feel the authority of the writing.

So now what? I read 200 pages, only to find that the story massively disappoints 2/3 of the way into the book? Or discover that the basic theme is simply not marketable?

Well, I should say that the clues given from the query letter and opening pages are generally more solid than that. Those authority-clues are powerful and they don’t often lie. But still. It takes four hours to read a book. It takes five minutes to read a synopsis.

So an agent will mostly want to sense-check that synopsis for the basic story shape. The question is essentially: does this feel like a novel? Could this story fill out an 80,000 word book?

An avenue to market

But also, through all of the above, any agent will be asking themselves the one key question that will determine their decision: can I imagine how a publisher would market this?

What kind of cover? What kind of pitch? What sales messaging to the putative retailer? What comparable books?

Now, for clarity, you don’t have to be a marketing expert and you don’t need to come up with solutions. Or rather: it may be an asset if you can supply those solutions, but it’s not really your job to do so. (And if you do want to do so, then do so with tact, ‘In the vein of recent bestsellers, such as Robin Banks’s The Greatest Heist and Lottie Lightfingers’ The Wallet That Wandered...’)

But the agent is a professional salesperson, and therefore also a marketing expert. They’re a saleswoman (or man) whose job is selling to editors. Those editors will then have the task of selling your manuscript to their team and then, if they’re successful, selling your book to retailers and, through them, to the public. In fact, the number of successful sales needed is significant:

• Sale #1: You to your agent
• Sale #2: Your agent to an editor
• Sale #3: Your editor to their acquisitions committee
• Sale #4: your publisher’s sales team to retailers
• Sale #5: Your publisher’s marketing team to the public.

Your agent knows your book only succeeds if all those lamps are shining green. It’s that sense of commercial potential which will, almost certainly, define the response you get back.

A line of green lamps

And for you to achieve that line of green lamps? Well, by the time you’ve written your book, you’re kind of stuck with it.

But the advice never really changes. It all comes down to:

1. Knowing your market. You need to be deeply involved, as a reader, in the market you want to end up writing for. That knowledge will insert itself into your text. It’ll ensure that you write for the market as it is today, not as you want it to be.
2. A great pitch. I hammer away at elevator pitch a lot, because that pitch is just crucial. A so-so written book with a great pitch? That’ll sell. Most really big bestsellers are moderately written but with great pitches. If your pitch is weak, even great writing may not save you.
3. Good or excellent writing. Great pitch + good, competent writing: that’ll work. Adequate pitch + genius levels of writing: that’ll work. Any sort of pitch + clumsy writing? That’s a fail, every time, as it jolly well ought to be.

But that’s what we’re here for, right? To help you get to the point of pitching to agents, or self-publishing, with confidence.

This thing that you want? It ain’t easy, but it is doable. And we’re here to help.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Another slightly left-field task this week. (Though I realise this is a sporting terminology, I don’t really understand. I mean, in cricket, we’d normally say leg-side, except that you’d need to say off-side if the batter was left-handed. And since bowlers bowl quite happily to left-handed and right-handed batters, there’s no big difference between a legside ball and an offside one. So left-field or right-field? I don’t get it.)

Anyway. Here’s a different sort of task.

1. Give me the pitch from your book, in any form you like (super-short / short / 2-3 sentences.)

2. Find two or three books which are recent, successful and comparable. Give me the pitches from at least one of them.

That’s an ouchy task: demanding to do. But if you can do it, and your book sits happily amidst your chosen company, then you have a marketable work on your hands.

As soon as you’re ready, log into Townhouse and post your work here.

***

I’m writing this email on Tuesday. It’s my birthday today, one that I share with my wife.

The kids are being… not horrible. There is sunshine and there are tulips and much tea. Tulips are maybe my absolute favourite flower, except that I do have a soft spot for dog roses, and I’ve got enough of Wales in my blood that I am easily seduced by a daffodil.

And cherry blossom? Hmm. But I think tree-flowers need a different category, no?

Til soon,

Harry.