Ask Agent Ayesha: Advice for Aspiring Authors

My question is a bit different. I have a crime thriller series published in ebook format via a small publishing house along with short stories, a novella and a mystery novella co-written w/my sister due for release (in print). All books have gotten rave reviews and I’d like to take the next step to a larger publisher. At this time all publishers have been smaller presses that are growing steadily and I do have unpublished manuscripts. My question is at this point would it be appropriate to approach an agent with the unpublished manuscripts and would an agent be interested in my level of publishing experience? It seems that agents are mostly interested in unpublished authors rather than those with some real experience.
Thanks.

Hi, thanks for doing this! My question is about genre.

My (already written) story: girl meets boy, boy is an ass, girl ends up with worse boy, first boy works really hard to win her back, girl marries boy. (I promise, it’s a little more involved than that.) Girl is 19 going on 20, and much of the action takes place in and around a university.

I’m divided between romance and YA, or rather the post-YA category I’ve heard whispers about. I’m leaning towards romance because it’s from the heroine’s point of view, the plot is primarily a love story, and we’ve got the HEA (happily ever after). However, both a book seller and a former intern at a publishing house said YA almost immediately. What do you think? Is there yet a category for Post-YA Romance? I’d love to be a trail blazer and write the first one, but I gather a new author has a better chance of getting published if they are in an established genre.

And if this is post-YA, can that be a longer story than YA, say closer to 80k than 60k?

Thank you!
Deb

Hey Agent Awesome!
I was wondering what a good agent contract (or a fair contract) for a first time author would look like. From what I’ve researched the percentages vary with the agent, some take more while others take much less. What is your opinion?

Am I ever nervous about asking this question!

I would like to know, how do you and other agents feel about repeat submissions? For example, if an author sent a query letter to you before, but was rejected, and the author fixes up their story a bit and sends it in again, is that a no-no? Does it result in an automatic re-rejection? Does it look bad?

I hope you are taking more questions! My sister just got a contract from a boutique publisher that offered no advance, but 50% royalties on sales of her children’s book. We both are wondering if a) is this normal? and b) would it be worth signing?

Thanks for everything!

I have a completed memoir which I am submitting to multiple agents. I have been told that “Memoir” is a different kind of genre in that it is non-fiction but is treated like fiction by agents. So when submitting to agents, do I follow the guidelines for fiction or non-fiction? Thanks.

Hi David,

You’re right, a memoir is judged by some of the same criteria as fiction. How strong is the writing? Are the characters fully fleshed out? Does it have effective pacing? Is there a narrative arc? However, memoirs are submitted to editors on the basis of a proposal, just like other nonfiction projects. That means agents won’t need to see the entire manuscript, just two or three really strong sample chapters.

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Ayesha

Ayesha,

First, thank you for blogging all of this valuable information and offering this opportunity to us would-be writers.

My main question is: what advice would you give to a non-published aspiring author, writing a multi-book series? I am in the early stages of a 3 book series that is a new project, but is not my first novel.

Is it enough to have just the initial book completed before approaching an agent?

And also, is it wise to start out with a multi-series project instead of a single book?

Thank you very kindly,

Rain

I have a YA Contemporary novel with three character perspectives: a girl who is cutter, a teenage male known as a loser and a teenage girl with low self esteem. One teen dies from suicide during the climax leaving two points of view.
In my query to agents, do I focus on all three perspectives or just one? Also, do I tell which teen dies? How should one write a query about such edgy depressing but real topics? How did Patricia McCormick broach the subject for CUT?

Thanks,
Lisa

Hi. I don’t know whether you’re still answering questions, but it won’t hurt to ask. This is about queries. When you (and a gazillion other agents) ask for five sample pages of my book, I go at my Microsoft Word document and select the first five pages to copy into the email. But I write my stories single-spaced. If I double-spaced my document, this selection would become the first ten pages! Plus, when this is copied into the body of the email, my paragraph indention will vanish, and then I want to add an extra space between paragraphs, which would change the size of the writing selection again. What spacing are agents thinking of when they ask for a certain number of pages?

Hi, thank you for your question. I can’t speak for other agents, but in my twenty years’ of experience in the publishing industry, almost everything was submitted double-spaced. It makes material so much easier to read! And I know it’s tough to format in an email, so you may have to re-enter the indents and line spaces after you paste in the material. Hope this helps. Ayesha