Stop Waiting by the Phone

I got an anxious phone call from a writer who had already spoken to me twice in the past month. (He had been referred by an editor I like and respect with a literary novel - he called to make sure I received the ms. Don't do this. We get thousands.)

This call was to ask what I thought he should do about the editor at a major New York house who has had his mansucript since December 7th and hadn't made a decision yet, even though the editor had requested the manuscript.

I wanted to ask him if he was taking medication that made him think he was the center of the universe, but then I remembered that this is what happens whenever you write something.

I told him to write a polite email saying he was anxious to hear what he thought of the manuscipt when he was finished. I explained to him that senior editors (which this guy was) have many many authors under contrat who are delivering on time, and that they take priority. I explained to him that none of us in this business read during office hours. I reminded him that the publisher was closed between Christmas and New Year's. And that if he pushed him to make a decision, the editor would most likely decide that he didn't want to deal with an author who couldn't wait.

You just can't imagine the workload we are under. I have 77 clients, most of whom write at least one book, if not two, a year. I read 200 manuscripts a year. I allow myself to read 12 published books a year (I'll explain that in another post - I'm reading Blood Sucking Fiends by Christopher Moore now, and loving it, even though I'm about a decade late). I have no super-powers when it comes to reading (but I can type 110 wpm), so it takes me six hours to read a 300 page manuscript. I read for about 10 hours a week. It's the same for editors. That's why it takes us so long to get back to you.

Changes in the Business and Working from Home

I'm having a lot of work done on my home, which in it's own way, is impacting on my office, because I work from home. But if I didn't work from home, I'd have to take time off and work from home as best I could, to supervise the work in my apartment.

I've been an agent for 20 years, and a lot has changed in the way we do business over those two decades. When I started in 1987, there were only a handful of people who could type well enough to finish a 300-page manuscript, so there were so many fewer query letters. Now, everyone with a computer thinks they can type a book. We used to get 2000 to 3000 query letters a year. Now, we get 30,000 (this is a true amout - half via emai and half via snail mail).

With the advent of the internet, I've seen the business tranformed from a paper business to an electronic one. Where once I had entire bookcases of finished manuscripts littering my office (I just cleaned out the last of them), now I just have discs.

A recent correspondence with an editor made me realize just how much things have changed.

I have just submitted an exciting two-novel series, which is well over 600 papges. I'm pretty sure I've got something really special and expect it to sell quickly (I'm actually surprised I have't sold it already, but it does take editors time to read, and then they have to have their colleagues read for approval). There's an editor I've done a lot of business with, whom I'm particularly fond of, at this one publishing company, so I assumed she'd want to see the books, but it turns out she's just not that fond of one of the books' elements, so she recommended another editor. I don't know her, but I know of her, so I called and left a message about the novels. She called back and said she wanted to see them, but that she didn't accept electronic submissions.

That gave me pause. The books were already being read at the other houses. I hadn't printed out mansucripts and made copies in years. When I did, I made it the author's responsibility, but my author was out of the country. It would be days before the copied masnucripts arrived on the editor's desk. I called her back and explained that I understood her position, but that I no longer submit manuscripts via snail mail. And I sent the book electronically to another editor at that house.

In this day and age, when you're selling at least 100 books a year, it is truly a waste of time, money and paper to do things the old-fashinoned way.

I can hear you now. What about agents who insist upon full manuscripts? I think most of us are moving toward the electonic age, but you have to be the judge of how badly you want that agent to read the ms. Weigh it like I did. For me, I'm established and there are many other editors who could read that book at that house.