While I make this transition, I’ll be briefly closing to queries, August 22-September 30 (exceptions: true referrals & if I have met you at a conference and said “hey send me your query”–please note that in the subject if it’s the case for you).

Happy end of summer to you all, and more soon from the left coast!

First and foremost, for this one moment as your friend’s book wings its way into the world, repeat: this is not about me.

If the person is truly your friend and you value them, it is worth it to find some way to celebrate with them no matter what your emotions about the release. If you’re a writer at any stage of the journey, and your friend’s book is coming out, it’s natural you would have an emotional response to watching that process, but look for ways to turn those feelings into inspiration rather than competition. And if your book already came out, or has yet to come out and you’re anxious, don’t torture yourself with comparisons of buzz or Amazon rankings or whatever. Your book is yours and your friend’s book is not.

That said, offer the kind of help that seems natural to you. Faking it so hard you crack only adds a ton of pressure to what is already a weird and intense time. Maybe it’s as small as a retweet or as big as hosting a party. Spreading the word on FB, baking cupcakes, reading reviews for your friend and only reporting back about the good ones. Maybe it’s a sweet, thoughtful card. Whatever it is, do what you can honestly do with love for your friend.

It probably sounds obvious, but any heart-of-darkness shenanigans you feel a need to indulge in (reading and relishing the bad reviews, asking around to find any tidbit of weakness) should really not be passive-aggressively revealed to the author, tweeted, posted to an “anonymous” Tumblr, or even made fodder for epic gChat marathons with your other friends. One mercury-in-retrograde slip of the “forward” key and you’ve nuked your friendship over something really petty. If you can’t be even a little genuinely happy for someone, are you really friends?

Consider saving your “Why The Book Is Obsolete And Irrelevant” or “Why Only Shmucks and Sell-Outs Get Book Deals” or “Hey I Am A Huge Fan of Piracy” oration for a point other than your friend’s release party.

Don’t helpfully tell the author all about the scathing, three-page-long screed some pseudonymous person posted on Goodreads and how it has forty-seven comments and then say “But don’t worry, I read it so you don’t have to.” Cats and release-week authors have similar levels of curiosity and comparably pleasant outcomes.

Take your friend out and talk about something, anything, that has nothing to do with B&N placement, Kirkus, Twitter, or books. Watch stuff explode at the movies. Eat Indian food so scorching your friend literally cannot talk about who (other than them) got a starred review in PW. Remind your friend by your presence that s/he has value and worth beyond anything Bookscan can track.

And then, when it’s your release day? Your friend will have a shining example of how to make your pub day just as wonderful.

Members of my client list, do not take it upon yourselves to prove this untrue, but—I LOVE THAT.

If you’re a bit scared of a book, I usually think it means you’re on the brink of something big. A breakthrough, the book you should’ve written two false starts ago, the story that is going to take off when it hits editors’ desks. The book that makes me go, “Oh, I guess I like horror/vampires/boy action-adventure/whatever I thought I didn’t, now.”

But in part, I think I’m so stoked to get “you might hate this” emails because like anyone else who is immersed in books for a living, I crave novelty. Jadedness can come up on you so easily. If anything, it’s harder for you if at first glance your book seems to be another been-there-done-that dystopovampilove story (or, if paranormal’s not your thing, book about the bullied girl, or the contemporary romance with a movie star hero in hiding, or the women’s fiction about a cheating husband and the wife moving on)–my natural inclination, in these hibernation-inducing days of winter, is to channel Bad Willow and go straight to “Bored now.”

Don’t get me wrong, I still have to be able to describe it, shelve it in a bookstore, tell an editor what to compare it to. But here is what 2011 is not about for me: Chasing trends. Trying to jump in on something while the market-check’s kiting, cashing in on as much as I can get before everyone wakes up to realize middle grade weremonkeys or whatever actually weren’t the wave of the future. Nuh-uh. I want something that will endure, a book we’ll be toasting to in three, five, fifteen years. And those are very rarely the books that seemed easy.

So dance with the scary idea. See where it takes you. Even if it isn’t the one that Does The Trick (whatever the trick is for you), I bet it’ll make you a more interesting writer. The same is true for me—I know I’ve got something good when I have to breathe deep and ask, “Am I agent enough for this book?” New challenges keep you fresh, and that’s good for us all.

If they are so spendy, why do them? The best way to get people to be passionate about a book is to let them read it. Thus, ARCs, designed to make sure the people who make purchasing decisions get to experience the book far enough out from when orders are placed. Ideally, that pays off like this: Bookstore Buyer X, who is responsible for deciding if his or her store will carry a title and how many to order if so, reads an ARC, falls for it, and orders twice as many copies as Store would normally order for a book of that type. Or Librarian Y encounters a deeply special but maybe not splashy novel and begins beating the drums for it, leading to other librarians discovering it and to a solid performance in the institutional markets. Everyone wins, hooray!

ARCs were once pretty much only available to trade publication and mass media reviewers, booksellers, librarians, and others who, in order to achieve the desired outcome, had to read the book before publication. But over the last few years ARCs have taken on another role—tool in creating the intangible thing known as “buzz.”

“Buzz” is lovely but only insofar as it translates to sales—this is after all a business. And here’s where I warp into Mayor McCranky. Because remembering from above that the goal of an ARC is to create a stronger entry for the book in the marketplace—why do we now have an ARC culture where people collect them like trading cards, or display them like spoils of war after a trade show, or go online to sell & buy them on eBay, or pass them person to person so everyone on the internet with even a passing interest has read the book two months before it even hits shelves?

This stuff is hard to talk about, because I don’t want to sound like I am dogging on fans, or bloggers, or Twitterers, or any other group of people who love books and want a piece of them as soon as possible. I love that passion. But I don’t love the sense that an author “owes” their fans a freebie, or that waiting however long for a book to publish is torture beyond the pale that justifies the effort of seeking out a galley when you don’t fall into one of the must-receive categories above. There’s a lot of entitlement around ARCs that I find honestly baffling when you consider they are a business marketing tool.

Sometimes I see posts that aren’t much more than “Look, I have it and you don’t!” (Honestly, this is one of the things that concern me about book-world social media overall—the risk of creating The Insider Club You’re Not In Gee If You Were Awesomer You Would Have ARCs Too.  Not true! Or at ALL the point!) Or I’ll see a site run a giveaway of a book that came out five months ago and do a giveaway of the ARC. Where’s the “Advance” in that? Give away a real copy if you feel like you have to do a giveaway, or just do a review. After all, the reason the ARC came through in the first place was in hopes your words would introduce people to a title they’d want to buy. Are the words you create powerful enough to sell someone on a book? If you’re really an influencer, a key part of the bookselling ecosystem for which ARCs were designed, they should be.

I’m a huge fan of e-galleys because they seem to circumvent some of these undesirable uses of ARCs. An e-galley gets the book into the hands of people who need to read it—and then when the book publishes, it expires. Not languishes in a stack for three years. Not gets sold on ebay. Not whirls off to fourteen friends (I’m not anti-book-loaning—you buy it, you can do whatever—but it’s sort of antithetical to the point of ARCs).

If you’re someone who does get ARCs on a regular basis, you have the potential to be a force for the success of the books you loved, and that’s fabulous. All I’m asking is that you think of how you use your galleys, relative to the bookseller who decides to carry a title she might have initially planned to skip or the librarian who starts an institutional push. The publisher’s return on investment in those scenarios (One galley yielding, say, 10 or 20 or 200 additional sales) is looking pretty good. If you’re getting your hands on ARCs, what does the publisher’s return on investment look like for you?

Ways you can use your galley access for good:

• Spread the word, not the galley.
• If the publisher asks for it, give feedback! Let them know if a book resonated particularly well with you. Let them know if you’re spreading the word, and how.
• You won’t love every title, and you don’t have to. No need to be the Reader Who Cried Five-Stars. Save your enthusiasm for the titles you’re truly passionate about and people will listen.
• When you do speak, make it count. The internet is great, but there are other ways to advocate for a book. Request it with your librarian. Ask if your local bookseller will stock it and tell them why it’s so wonderful.
• Continue to contribute to the book economy in whatever way you are able. Buy debuts too, not just Book 6 in the mega-series (because there wasn’t an ARC so you didn’t get it free). Donate $20 to a teacher to add to the class library, or for the kid who might not have the cash to participate when the Scholastic fair comes through your local school. If you love books, support them at whatever level you are able.

I’d love to hear what you think about the subject as well in the comments. How have you seen ARCs used for good? What do you think of e-galleys? Should I see if there’s a vacancy in Oscar’s trash can because I too am a grouch?

But if you’re sitting at your computer, Amazon author account in hand, wondering why exactly you’re huge in Raleigh, you might be wondering how you can make it work for you. A few ideas:

Don’t overanalyze.

I’ve seen authors dive into the numbers with an almost forensic glee. “200 total? But I sold 42 at my signing on Saturday…would that be this week’s numbers or next week’s reporting period? And then my aunt sent out an email, and that’s 14 in Region 4…carry the 2…” I often tell authors that with Bookscan, the one thing you can count on is that you sold at least that many. And if that’s all you’re able to take away, so be it. If you’re the kind of person who will be spurred on by this, or reality checked into making more reasonable business decisions as a result of having numbers, then this service will be great for you. If you’re a tea-leaf-reader personality, maybe not.

Use it to determine what promo efforts to put your money/time into.

Did your blog tour move the dial? Want proof that in-store co-op still works? Here’s some data to help you divine. Remember that often it’s a combination of efforts rather than one sole thing, but you can watch for trends, and draw gentle extrapolations. By the same token, if you spend a ton of cash or time on a promotion that results in no uptick over a month of sales, you can probably retool or retire that particular strategy. Count this one a solid advantage of having access.

Remember which pool you’re swimming in.

A Bookscan report of 500 copies a week can be a giant floptastic failure or a raging success, depending on the book you’re talking about. If you value your sanity, focus on your numbers and your numbers only—not your Twitter friend’s, your same-pub-day frenemy’s, etc. Your agent should be able to contextualize this for you (once—not every day or every week, please) with a sense of your print and ship numbers and help you craft reasonable expectations based upon those.

Kindness and discretion will never come back to haunt you.

Quite frankly? Any data gleaned from this service is no one’s business but yours, your publisher, and your agent. Don’t feel compelled to talk about the intricacies of your reports with others. Or even look at it, for that matter, just because everyone else is.

Don’t let the number defeat you.

There are a million different ways for a successful book to become successful. Some books take off right out of the gate then drop off. Other books sell a steady quantity over the life of the edition. Still others start slow and gain momentum as word of mouth or some other force kicks in. It can be really frustrating to see a number that’s not what you hoped (even if that number is empirically good!) but this is the very definition of things that are beyond your control. I really, really hate when an author pleads for these numbers, then upon seeing them throws up their hands and quits promoting entirely. Don’t drop out or give up. Just change your approach, adapt, evolve. Don’t let one subset of data be the boss of you.

Don’t let the number define you.

Your worth as a writer and, more importantly, as a human is not measurable at point of sale. While your future advances might be based in part on Bookscan, it cannot become the driving force behind your writer-self. If you’re someone whose writer-self and business-self are inseparable, consider whether the information to be had there is worth the emotional processing costs to you. Only you can be the judge of that, and it’s the one part of the whole sales thing you can control—your own actions.

Jason Pinter is a literary agent with the Waxman Agency, and the bestselling author of the Henry Parker thriller series, as well as the upcoming Zeke Bartholomew series for Middle Grade readers and the Great Divide trilogy for Young Adults. You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/jasonpinter

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After my last post about closing to queries, I wanted to thank you all for going along with this kooky adventure. I was shocked by a couple of things:

• How well the vast majority of people honored the request. I deleted maybe 30 emails a week, which is a bit less than a tenth of the queries I’d usually be getting.
• How extremely rejuvenating it was, but not for the reason I expected. Yes, it was nice to not have an extra to-do at the end of the work day, but it is also really lovely to not have to tell people, many of whom have done everything exactly right, “thanks but no thanks” 300x a week.
• How much it helped me get caught up (or at least something like swinging distance to caught up).

But I’m open again now, and although my list is of a satisfying size and shape, I think it’s important to be open as much as I possibly can because so many of my wonderful clients did come to me first via query.

I’m not requesting as much right now–out of the 400 or so that came in between Tues and Friday I made 4 requests–which means I’m also acutely aware that I’m declining to see likely-publishable projects that are just not the right complement to what I do best. Good queries, probably good books, just not right for me right now, which means the response is still a no. I know it’s hard out there on the receiving end of those letters, and with so much talk about “rejection” on the internet, I sometimes wish that we could talk in terms of “decline” rather than “reject.” There’s no moral judgment here, just an opportunity I won’t be part of.

More soon as fall kicks into gear. Also since last I posted, we’ve added a new agent here, and although you can find him elsewhere online, maybe I can rope him into joining us here too.

I’m not interpreting “sabbatical” in the literal sense of a year, but I (Holly) am going to take a query sabbatical. I have found so many of my wonderful authors through queries and I am a huge believer in keeping those channels open. But I also know that rest is restorative, and so in the interest of catching up, getting a clean slate for Fall, and preventing query burnout, I am going to be closed to queries from July 15—September 6.

If you’re waiting to hear from me on a partial or full, the goal is to reply to everyone by Sept 6^th–and if you haven’t heard from me on requested materials (full or partial manuscripts I specifically requested, not queries) by Aug 15, please check in!

If you’re waiting to query me, you can do so in the next week (if you’re ready) or I’ll look forward to hearing from you after Labor Day.

The rest of Team Waxman–Scott, Byrd, and Farley–remain open to queries. And because I adore you, blog readers, I even got the skinny on what they’re dying to see (or seeing too much of!) right. this. minute:

If you have a great thriller, Scott is very actively looking for them, so it’s a good time to try him.

Farley’s wish list right now includes natural history & science, humor and pop culture.

And Byrd is NOT looking to represent projects in SF/F, YA or children’s.

Submissions details for all three available here.

Have a wonderful summer!

Q. If an agent asks an author to tell her about herself without requesting pages, should author send pages anyway?

A. My guess would be that this would happen for nonfiction, where platform is key. If you have a good idea, but don’t have the credentials and/or visibility & access to your target audience (what we call platform), unfortunately it’s challenging to find a publisher. So I can imagine, if you were pitching a nonfiction book and the query focused on a really terrific idea but lacked info about who you are and why you are the perfect authority to write this book, asking to know more about you.

If it happened with a novel, then….your guess is as good as mine! When it comes to novelists, if you are brilliant and your book makes me cry, or laugh, or just feel a lot, I don’t necessarily need to know more.

Q. How do you transition from “Hi, my name is…” to your pitch when meeting an agent IRL (at a conference, for example)?

A. Depends on the setting. If you’re in a pitch appointment, where everyone involved has a limited window of time and the point is pitching, it’s perfectly fine to say, “Hi, I’m X. My current project is…” and just launch right in. I’m also fine with a little small talk before, I really try to follow the writer’s lead. It’s an unnatural situation, I know it feels very pressured, and I just want the person across the table to feel as comfortable as possible.

If it’s not a pitch session, if you are just kicking around the hotel bar and encounter an agent in the wild, as it were, then it’s like any other social setting–follow the lead of those around you. Sometimes by the end of the day we’re so fried that being “on” and putting back on the pitch-catcher’s mask feels like climbing a mountain. Other times I know I’ve started a convo with “what do you write” to get it out there so everyone can relax and not worry about if they should pitch. If it doesn’t come up, and you’re planning to query the person, definitely mention that you chatted at XYZ event. I had a writer execute this perfectly after last year’s RWA national conference. She ended up hanging out with a group I was in one evening and she was delightful–kept it casual, interacted as though we were just two new acquaintances (which we were, after all!). Eventually I asked what she wrote, and she told me. Her project wasn’t ready then, but a couple months later she queried me, and mentioned the event and a unique accessory I’d complimented. I instantly knew who she was and remembered her positively; though I didn’t end up taking the project on, you never know and perhaps the next thing will be perfect. Either way, it was a great example of how to navigate that slightly tricky “pitch or no pitch?” pass.

Q. About how many queries/rejections do you think you should have before shelving a project, even if it’s had full requests?

A. It depends. Are you getting strong feedback that indicates you’re very close but there’s one issue at work? If three people said that they fell out of the book after X plot point, for instance, there’s a good place to start. If you’re getting full requests, your query and probably your first chapters are working for people. Is there a tonal shift at work? I sometimes see very breezy engaging queries for books that are tough and intense–tough to adjust my expectations in that situation, for example. But if you’re just getting “not right for me” or “too similar to something else on my list” or those kinds of responses, then it’s also possible you simply haven’t found the right fit yet. Consider getting a new beta reader (one who is fresh to the material and can give you a clean read) and see if something bubbles up. This is a very tricky piece of the puzzle, I know–but you must be doing something right to be nabbing those full requests. Best case scenario–your perfect agent is the next one on your list.

I’m trying it out to see if it helps tighten up my response times on requested fulls & partials–it’ll take a bit of time for that to trickle down. If I am interested you’ll hear a response on your query within 2 weeks. And my goal is to be able to read your materials, should I request them, faster too.

And just for kicks, here’s my current wish list of fiction genres:

-Middle grade, all stripes

-YA (I like funny; if it’s going to be dark I tend to like more literary; open to paranormal, contemporary, you name it)

-Women’s fic, “book club” or very well executed commercial

I do rep romance, urban fantasy, and the occasional mystery. My bar for those is particularly high at the moment, but if in doubt, please do give me a try because I’m always happy to take a look at a query.

As always, thank you for sharing your queries with me–I take them very seriously, and have found (and still am finding!) great authors through queries, so it’s important to me to find ways to keep that line open.