SORTING THROUGH ALL THE ADVICE

Everywhere you turn online and in various writing communities—and even on certain illustrious agent’s blogs—there’s advice to be had. Open any writing magazine, such as Writer’s Digest or The Romance Writers Report and there’s yet more advice. I’m sure over at http://www.romancedivas.com/ you’ll find even more input on how to succeed. How to Be Published. How to Land an Agent. How to, how to, how to, and on it goes. So how do you winnow through the multitude of conflicting opinions and form your own?

I would say that my, ahem, advice on the matter would be to follow your instincts. For instance, I saw somewhere recently where a writer posted that I had said paranormals were hot, but then this same author heard a guest on an RWA-sponsored pro loop say paranormals were already past their prime and not selling anymore. The poster remarking on my RWC comments then said, “What am I to believe? Who am I to believe?”

Well, in the immortal words of my man Spock, what would logic dictate? I would think that any examination of what’s currently selling would be clear on this point. I don’t mean just in the bookstores and on the bestseller lists, but also by glancing at any of the daily deal reports. Further, if an agent who is in the trenches day after day says paranormals are selling, common sense would say to follow the agent. Not because they’re super human or omniscient, but for the simple fact that they’re in the more objective, informed position with the least at stake in forming (and promulgating) an incorrect opinion. The same sort of reasoning goes with any other kind of advice: you give it a listen, or a read, and place it against its most logical context and backdrop, and then reach your own conclusion.

Like this month’s RWR, for instance. There’s an article by Jennifer Crusie, who is a wonderful author and a tremendous encourager to aspiring writers, but whose opinion on New York agents I don’t happen to agree with. Her position is that a writer needs an agent based in New York City in order to be successful. Well, she’s a hugely successful author, surely she knows, right? I say take a look around in the publishing market and you will see that the “New York Agent” theory is based on an antiquated model of doing business. In the old days, deals were brokered mostly over lunch and you had to be in the city to keep your ear to the ground. But we’re living in the Internet age, where agents all over the world know what’s selling the moment it’s posted online, or often long before. Using our agency as an example, we trade many emails a day with NYC. We get faxes, make phone calls and regularly visit the city (we’re going next week as a matter of fact.)

So then why does Jennifer Crusie say otherwise? I’m not entirely sure, but I would imagine, for one thing, her advice comes from her own experience. It is also the traditionally held opinion on the matter. However, one look around the market these days and you will realize that her advice simply doesn’t jive with the track records of the countless incredibly successful agents who are based all over this country. I’m on an agent loop called The Agent Cartel. We have some amazing ladies as part of our group—our own Pamela Harty and Nephele Tempest, as well as Kristin Nelson, Helen Breitweister, Pam Ahearn, Pam Hopkins, Pattie Steele-Perkins, Roberta Browne and others. Many of the ladies on our loop are based outside of NYC. They also consistently make major impacts on the publishing marketplace. For instance, this week Pam Ahearn (based in New Orleans) has a #13 bestselling author on the NY TIMES. Last week Kristin Nelson (based in Denver) had a huge pre-emptive bid from Hyperion on a first-time YA author (this was a very large six figure deal.) In the past month I placed both Diana Peterfreund at auction for a “major” six figure deal to Bantam Dell and Shannon McKelden as a launch chick lit author with Tor (just two of many sales I’ve made this month.) All of these agents have had authors on major lists, in big deals and the like.

Beyond that small circle, I can easily think of many other successful agents who thrive outside of New York—Jody Rein, Michael Larson and Elizabeth Pomada, Ashley and Carolyn Grayson, Jan Miller, David Hale Smith, Whitney Lee, Amy Rennert, Helen Heller, Sandra Dijkstra, Danielle Egan-Miller, Elaine English, to name only a small number. Big sales, major deals, bestselling authors—all outside the Big Apple. For anyone to state unequivocally that an author needs a NYC-based agent flies in the face of logic. And yet, this advice recurs repeatedly and from people who one might consider expert in the matter. So that’s where I’d urge you to return to the process of filtering opinions and ultimately arriving at your own conclusions. If you know that massive deals are going down on a regular basis and that there are A-list agencies all over this country, then you can reason that the advice to “only go with a NY agent” is inherently flawed.

And on that note let’s turn to another kind of advice--what of your good friend who has just been through the submission process at a big house or agency where you’d like to land and has “all the inside knowledge”? This one gets to me in particular because the operating assumption behind this advice is that all writers (and writing careers) are created equal. I would liken an author trying to “hitch a ride” on the career advice of another author or their agent as being akin to self-diagnosis based on a doctor’s medical advice to someone else. Would you really want to take a Tylenol for a minor headache if you actually had a brain tumor? Or would you want to decide you were terminally ill if you really just needed a massage?

As you can see, in the end I’m offering yet more advice—which only serves to prove my point. Those of us “on the inside” seem to have a hankering to advise would-be authors, and perhaps it all drives out of the need to help. But at the end of the day, you must be true to yourself and arrive at your own conclusions. Take whatever you hear with a grain of salt, know your own career and strengths, and most of all, this is the primary reason to find an agent—a good one—who you can listen to and follow with implicit trust.

Just like everything else in life, it’s about balance.

Deidre