Dear aspiring authors,
I’m delighted to tell you that I’m once again reading and responding to queries. While I am interested in a broad array of projects, I’m particularly eager to find women’s fiction, YA and thrillers. Strong writing and a good story are a must, of course, but beyond that I am also looking for stories that will surprise me, provide a glimpse of an unfamiliar world, reveal the unexpected, contain characters who I am compelled to get to know better.
Thank you in advance for including my agency in your submission. Please read my submission guidelines for details on what your query should contain.
Ayesha Pande
She’s gone and won another award for Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. This time it’s a big one: The PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize. Congratulations, Danielle!
Recently I was asked to speak to a group of graduating English majors about possible careers in publishing and as part of my talk to give an overview of the industry. Here’s an excerpt from what I told them. Do you agree?
“I’d like to start things off with a question. Who knows who Amanda Hocking is?
She’s a 26-year old author who very successfully self-published her novels on Amazon as digital downloads and e-books and ended up landing a four book deal with St. Martin’s Press for more than $2 million.
Here’s another question: Who has heard of Barry Eisler?
He is a best-selling thriller author who recently turned down a half million dollar deal (from the same company, no less) to self-publish his work. In several long blog posts he made what seems like a very convincing argument that he could end up, in the long run, making more money by self-publishing his work rather than going the traditional publishing route and in addition be in control of how his books are published.
These two events occurred in the same week. To me they epitomize what’s going in the industry right now. An author who self-published her work digitally, available only via download, was able to generate sufficent revenue to prompt a publisher to pay millions of dollars for the right to publish her next work. And an author whose books routinely hit the print bestseller list and who gets six-figure advances for his novels has decided he no longer needs a publisher. He’s decided he can publish, market and promote his books on his own and in the process retain control over his creative output. Five years ago no one in the industry would ever have imagined that this could have happened. Publishing is an industry going through seismic changes, which is both confusing and also exciting. It means that it’s an industry in upheaval. It means also that there are opportunity for people who are creative and willing to take risks and are not sentimentally attached to the old ways of doing business.
As you probably know, two years ago the industry all but collapsed. Editors were laid off in droves and budgets were being cut. Now, even though things have stabilized and many publishers are hiring again, the after-effects linger. Borders is in bankruptcy and is closing hundreds of stores; indie bookstores are continuing to close, from a high of over 4,000 stores nationwide to about 1500 today, and sales of print books are still declining. Barnes & Noble has transformed itself from a bookstore chain to a content provider and gift and stationery store. If you’ve walked into a Barnes & Noble lately, you’ll notice that front and center of each of their stores is a Nook boutique. Their inventory of gifts and games is growing while they’re carrying fewer and fewer books. And newspapers have shrunk or done away entirely with book reviews.
But there are most definitely bright spots on the horizon. Digital sales are exploding – in some genres they are surpassing print sales – along with sales of the devices that deliver reading experiences. The market for YA books, that is books targeted at readers in their teenage years, is extremely dynamic which is a wonderful and hopeful thing because it means those prophets of doom and gloom who have proclaimed that young people are no longer reading were wrong. And the internet is helping authors do their own marketing and to connect directly with their readers rather than having to depend on the marketing and publicity efforts of publishers. Authors are blogging and engaging in dialogs with readers on twitter and facebook along with a plethora of reading sites like Goodreads, shelfari and others. There has been a proliferation of book bloggers who have filled the gap left by the closing of the reviews. There are many lively discussions about books online. As a result vibrant communities of book and literature lovers have sprung up, as well as start-ups that are delivering content in many different ways. Some examples are Red Lemonade started by publishing renegade Richard Nash, in which he is seeking to entirely revolutionize publishing’s business model. Then there is The Awl, a quirky online magazine, which has befuddled everyone by drawing so many readers that it has been able to attract enough advertisers to generate millions in revenue. In short, The business model for publishing seems to be changing completely but no one yet has any idea how it will end up. As someone who embraces change and has long believed the industry was in dire need of it, I am excited about what the future holds and I intend to be a part of it.”
Yay! Congratulations, Lola! “Gripping…masterful..”
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives
Lola Shoneyin, Morrow, $23.99
Blind acceptance splinters a polygamous marriage in Shoneyin’s gripping debut set in modern-day Nigeria. Bolanle Alao, the newest and youngest of Baba Segi’s wives, threatens to upset the balance of power–she is educated and beautiful, though naïve about the relationship dynamics among the other three wives in the house. Raped at 15, Bolanle considers herself disgraced and unwanted until Baba Segi, an overweight, malodorous businessman welcomes her into his family, no questions asked, until it seems she cannot conceive. Like the other wives, she feels she has been saved by Baba Segi, who accepts all of them politely, but beyond brief mentions of his sexual encounters and visits to the toilet, Baba Segi is a peripheral character. When greedy Iya Segi and Iya Femi plot to run young, sweet Bolanle out of the family, the result is disaster. It is Bolanle’s unexpected submissiveness that leads her and her husband to uncover a secret that forces him to assert his control over the family. Shoneyin masterfully disentangles four distinct stories, only to subtly expose what is common among them. (July)
I’ve had conversation with several editors and publishers recently that made me scratch my head. I represent clients from all over the world and from many different cultures; it’s something I’m very proud of and feel passionate about. Plus, books about other cultures sell. So I’ve thought–until recently, when I was told that “multicultural is not working right now” and “readers are not really going for the ‘exotic’.” Before I get on my high horse and start holding forth on the merits of publishing books by authors from around the world that shine the light on different cultures, I wondered if this was true. Is “multi-culti” dead? An informal poll yielded similar responses. No, it’s not dead. But it’s no longer a fad, the way that, say, paranormal romance is a current fad. It used to be that simply having a foreign-sounding name was enough to get editors salivating. Now, a writer from Asia, Latin America or Africa is judged by the same standards as an American writer. In my mind, this is actually progress. Being “exotic” should confer no special advantage. But one editor told me that it has become, in her experience, increasingly a disadvantage — bookstores are ordering fewer copies of such books and readers are buying less. Could this really be true? What do you think?
