The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) monitors both the number and type of books published per
country per year. In 2005, the US shelved 172,000 new books. We only
came in second to the UK, which printed a total of 206,000.
With numbers like that it's no surprise to anyone -- especially
struggling writers -- that landing a book deal, or even just scoring an
agent, has gotten harder than debuting a number one pop single without ever having released a record.
It helps if you're as cute as Lily Allen. But most
unpublished fiction writers we know (ourselves included) are
perpetually exhaustinated, malnourished, and pasty. We avoid contact
with fresh air and sunshine and other humans in favor of the warm glow
MS Word v. 6.0 emits on our laptop. Just livin life, ya'll.
Since we're always staring at a computer screen, we were thrilled to
learn via handy press release that the relationship of writers to
publishers is being TRANSFORMED by a little thang called electronic
mail. The release, courtesy Publishersandagents.net:
"At one time, a new book author had to go through an agent to sell a
book to a major publisher. But now with e-mails and a compelling query,
writers with a good story have been able to break through and achieve
major deals...It's an approach that has been changing the relationship
between writers and publishers, connecting them directly or helping
writers find agents to close the deal with already interested
publishers."
That was a convulted way of saying that P&A.net is one of many
companies that sends out mass email pitch queries to agents and
publishers for a subscription fee. They also offer special tools and
tricks to beefing up your query letter and getting your manuscript read
and reviewed, rather than tossed in to the slush pile or trashed as
spam. Well, we used to work in publishing, and the other assistant in
our office would sometimes forward us horrible pitch letters that we
would giggle over during our five second lunch break. So it's true that
a smart query can make a difference in getting treated like a
professional -- even if your actual manuscript is terrible. There are
horrible books being published every day. We know. We read them in
airports and buy them at the supermarket for kitch value.
If you head over to P&A.net's extremely meta website that looks
like something out of AOL's Hometown Member pages circa 1997 (who needs
spell-checker when you've got 15 pt Tahoma fonts?), you can read
testimonials from over 150 clients who claim to have either found a
publisher or gained an agent from this service.
NANOWRIMO is four months
away, and like we do every year, we torture ourselves into thinking
we're actually going to give it a shot come November
1st. Realistically speaking we'll probably just wind up
trying to send out a short story or two so that we can collect the
rejection letters in a shoebox to show our grandchildren when we want
to prove we were once exciting and creative in our youth. Bottom line,
though, is we want to be published. We're also poor as hell and
can't afford P&A's subscription-only magic. Plus, we like
masochistic, large projects that consume vast quantities of our time.
So we've decided to compile a list of free resources that'll have
you on your merry way to proofing galleys at the local coffee shop.
Those trustafarians scribbling in their painstakingly decorated
journal-notebooks are so gonna wish they were you. Oh,
and leave a comment if you think we're missing something
important, because there's a shitton out there and we're still new at
this, too.
1. Poets & Writer's Magazine:
Links to 429 literary magazines where you can send poems and short
stories, as well as 156 small presses that are likelier to entertain
unsolicited pitches from unknown or unpublished authors.
2. The Council of Literary Magazines and Small Presses (CLMP).
3. New Pages' handy Guide to Literary Magazines.
Read as many as you can, and send your work to those that share the
aesthetic of your voice, your subject, and your style. They're all
looking for something different, which means you should tailor your
submissions to the magazines that want exactly what you've already done.
4. Better yet, New Pages' Guide to Online Literary Magazines.
Start here and work your way up to print -- online lit mags are
well-respected and just as widely read (if not more so -- free
content?!) as print mags. And many of them submit to Best Of
collections -- which means, if an online mag prints your work, you're
in the running.
5. Grub Street:
More links to literary and press guides, as well as info on New England
writer's residences, local mags calling for submissions, and upcoming
contests. The fall class schedule at Grub St. should be up in a few
weeks here.
6. Good god, we heart Ploughshares,
Emerson College's esteemed literary journal. They're tough to crack,
but if you're a local, you've got to send here. They might even get
back to you with a personalized rejection letter (seriously, that's
cool). Or, they could accept your work, which would give you enormous
bragging rights forever and ever and ever.
7. And holy shit we're totally obsessed with Zoetrope: All-Story, too. Reach for your dreams!
8. Keeping up with Publisher's Weekly,
the industry's trade magazine standard for news and pre-pub reviews, is
a great way to find out more about current literary trends in case
you're sitting on something you can tailor to the demands. It's not
necessarily worth the subscription fee, but the Web Exclusives still
allows you to access most reviews, as well as the PWJobZone. Working in
the industry can only help you learn the ins and outs of how to get
published.
9. So You Wanna: Publish a Book, Publish a Short Story, Publish a Poem: Obvious yet simple. Step-by-step instructions to doing each of these things.
10. Subscribe to Publisher's Lunch (run by Publisher's Marketplace), a daily e-mail newsletter that publishes deal news, trends, job opportunities, and industry coups: PublishersLunch-subscribe@topica.com
11. Atlantic Monthly's
comprehensive list of Boston publishers and media is a good resource
for local publishers to pitch to, not to mention internship
opportunities if you're still in school.
12. Neil Gaiman runs a much beloved author blog, and he has some wise suggestions and a bevy of links on this post, which answered a reader's query last January.
13. MediaBistro:
Excellent, heavily updated content on everything that has anything to
do with publishing -- media, books, the works. And you don't need to be
an AvantGuild member to learn.
14. Don't count on Craig's List: $850 for a short story? Is this f'reals?
15. Start a blog, get a book deal. We'll be waiting for that phone call.