FAQ

Q. I have this really great non­fic­tion book idea. Now what?

A. The well-worn path to pub­li­ca­tion goes like this: You check the com­pe­ti­tion to see if any­one has pub­lished any­thing too much like yours. (www.Amazon.com) You develop your con­cept into a pro­posal that is really clear and mar­ketable. Then you write one heck of a great query email and send it to agents who meet two cri­te­ria: they HAVE sold and ARE cur­rently sell­ing books like yours. (For instance, this agency rejects at least 100 fic­tion queries a month because we never, ever han­dle fic­tion).  If you get an agent inter­ested, we’ll take it from there, guid­ing you the rest of the way.

Q. Can I send my idea straight to the publishers?

A.  Yes and no.  The tiny mom-and-pop pub­lish­ers may or may not look at your sub­mis­sion if you send it in. But the big houses most cer­tainly will NOT, due to time and legal issues. Agents are the gate­keep­ers of the pub­lish­ing indus­try. We serve pub­lish­ers by screen­ing out the junk and the wackos. We serve authors by get­ting your stuff read by the best pub­lish­ers for it, and then help­ing you get the best pos­si­ble deal. So many times, authors get con­fused. They report they tried to sell their self-help book to a pub­lisher who turned out to only do busi­ness books, or their illus­trated children’s book to some­one who does adult health and well­ness books.  It’s hard for you to know who does what and why.  Agents work for their 15% com­mis­sion — and are worth every penny. That’s why every best sell­ing author has rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Q. I researched lots of lit­er­ary agents. You look like exactly the right firm for me.  Why do you keep reject­ing my idea?

A. We reject more than 500 projects every sin­gle month! The del­uge of con­tent would make you think we’re just not pay­ing atten­tion, but actu­ally we care­fully con­sider every­thing non­fic­tion that comes our way.  If we’re turn­ing you down, it means that in our opin­ion, your book is highly unlikely to sell for much money.  Since all rep­utable agents work on 100% straight com­mis­sion, we don’t take care­less risks. If we say yes, we believe we can sell it. If we say no, we believe not only that we can­not sell it but that it can­not be sold at this time by any agent.

Q. Ouch! That’s really cruel!  You’re miss­ing the big pic­ture. If you get me a good pub­lisher, I just know my book will be a best seller!

A.  If we had a nickel for every time an author whose book never sold told us that! Here’s the stark real­ity of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing at this time in his­tory: if you as an author don’t have a plat­form for your topic (media expo­sure, lots of speak­ing engage­ments, huge inter­net pres­ence, major cor­po­ra­tion behind you, pre­vi­ous book sold a lot of copies, etc.) your chances of get­ting a good deal with a major pub­lisher are micro­scopic.  We strongly rec­om­mend you build your plat­form and THEN sell your book. We can HELP YOU build a mar­ket­ing plat­form that grows your pres­ence on your topic, makes you money and increases your vis­i­bil­ity.  Call 800–278-8706 for help OR click here to get help now.

Q. Why don’t you sell fic­tion, Chris­t­ian, juve­nile, illus­trated, poetry, true crime and other cat­e­gories of books? My stuff is really, really good! You should be more open-minded!

A. An agency nur­tures and cul­ti­vates extremely valu­able rela­tion­ships with key edi­tors.  Our senior agent Wendy Keller has been “doing lunch” with impor­tant New York edi­tors since 1989. The edi­tors we work with spe­cial­ize in the same kinds of books we sell. Ask­ing a non­fic­tion agent to rep­re­sent a children’s book or fic­tion is sort of like ask­ing your den­tist to take a look at your ingrown toe­nail. Totally dif­fer­ent spe­cial­ties.

Q. How can an author from out­side the USA become suc­cess­ful inside the USA?

A. The Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing mar­ket is the largest in the world. If you have a plat­form already in the USA and you can make your man­u­script avail­able in Eng­lish AND if you can com­mit to spend­ing at least 6 months in the USA timed around the release of your book so you can do appro­pri­ate pro­mo­tion, we may be able to help you. If you do NOT have a plat­form in the USA, we CAN help you begin to build one.  Click here xxxx.com to begin. Note: we can read your first draft in Span­ish, French or Ital­ian, but you’ll need at least some of it trans­lated before we can sell it.

Q. What’s a query? I already wrote the book.  Why do I need to write a query now?

A. A query is a con­cise, clear descrip­tion of your book and its ben­e­fits, its mar­ket and your cre­den­tials.  Like most agents, we pre­fer get­ting queries by email.  Never send any agent an unso­licited man­u­script by email or sur­face mail.  A query let­ter is manda­tory, so just sit your­self down and cre­ate one. If pub­lish­ing is a game, this is one of the rules.

Q. What’s a pro­posal?  The book is done. Why do I need to write a pro­posal now?

A. A pro­posal is the tool agents use to sell books to pub­lish­ers.  It is a spe­cific, honed, well-written mar­ket­ing doc­u­ment that proves to the pub­lisher that you have the right cre­den­tials, your book is needed and timely and that there are lots of peo­ple who will buy it once it is printed. To find out how to write a suc­cess­ful pro­posal, click here.

Q. How can I prove you’re a real agent, not one of those scam fly-by-nights they warned me about at the writer’s con­fer­ence I attended?

A. Go to our sold list. Write down the titles of any five books you see there.  Then go to the book­store and look at (or prefer­ably BUY) each one. Read the Acknowl­edge­ments page.  That’s where almost every one of our dear, respected clients praises how instru­men­tal we were in their suc­cess. Also, note that this agency will never ask you for money to read your work or rep­re­sent you.  On the contrary, if your book is good, we’ll soon be send­ing money to you!

Q. You make the saucy remark that you don’t han­dle “books by incar­cer­ated per­sons, chan­neled by dead peo­ple or first per­son med­ical mem­oirs.” Why?

A. You may not like the truth, but every query we’ve ever got­ten from an inmate tells in explicit, graphic detail the crime they claim they did not com­mit.  Seems a lit­tle fishy, doesn’t it?  We get hun­dreds of queries a year allegedly directly from or chan­neled by Mother Teresa, Jesus, Bud­dha, Allah, Princess Diana, Gandhi, the newest dead celebrity, Moses, Elvis and so on.  Gosh, I guess if we han­dled all those famous names, we’d be the num­ber one agency in the coun­try!  Either that or we’d be the laugh­ing­stock.  And as for med­ical mem­oirs, the end­less flood of books on how a per­son over­came cancer/mental illness/muscular dystrophy/HIV or what­ever add up to about 25% of every­thing we get offered in a month.  (That’s a LOT of books!)  It’s our hum­ble opin­ion that just writ­ing these has already served a great pur­pose by allow­ing the author to process on paper all the tragic stuff that has occurred.  We rec­om­mend an excel­lent sub­sidy pub­lisher: www.GreenleafBookGroup.com to assist you in get­ting this sort of book pub­lished.  If you sell more than 5,000 copies in less than a year, please con­tact us again and we’ll be inter­ested then. Promise.

Q. Why is get­ting an agent so hard?

A. If you were to go back and read between the lines, you’d see that we are always hun­gry and hunt­ing for good stuff.  It’s rare that any agency finds some­thing won­der­ful, and you’d be sur­prised how fiercely we all fight for any­thing good that comes to us simul­ta­ne­ously. If you have cre­den­tials on your topic, a good idea and a large, grow­ing platform, we’ll be thrilled to talk to you.  Oth­er­wise, you’re right: it IS hard to get the agency’s atten­tion.  Con­sider refram­ing the way you look at pub­lish­ing.  Like the inten­tion­ally mis­quoted mil­i­tary recruit­ment slo­gan our founder Wendy Keller always tells new authors,  “Pub­lish­ing is not just an adventure…it’s a job!“