Authors often worry that their query or submission did not reach the agent or editor to whom they were submitting, but they are afraid to call and check out of concern that it will annoy the agent or editor and lead to a rejection.
While I don’t think any agent or editor would reject you just for that, there are many ways to help make sure your mail gets to where it’s going or to confirm it got there. Here are a few:
1. Use Delivery Confirmation. The US Postal Service offers different forms of this and one doesn't require a signature. Use this one for submissions of chapters or manuscripts and you can check online to see that your package was delivered. Granted, this likely means to the mailbox or front door and not the actual agent, but at least you know it got to the right location.
2. Use UPS or FedEx Ground, both of which let you track things online. Be sure your agent hasn't posted somewhere that they don't want you to use those services. Some agents don’t want to be sent anything requiring a signature, especially Certified Mail. Not every agency is that large and sometimes everyone (or the one) is out to lunch when the delivery guy or mail carrier shows up. Nothing is more annoying than those "Sorry We Missed You; Your Certified Mail is at the Post Office" slips. Schlepping to the PO and waiting in line to get a sample chapter is an annoying waste of time for any agent. And I think Certified Mail is just a waste of money for a query or submission.
3. If you are doing a lot with the US Mail, you might want to consider a few things:
a. Do you know your actual address? I know, this seems like a bonehead question, but it's for real. Many, many publishers do not know their own addresses, at least the ones the US Postal Service uses. Go to USPS.com and the Find Zip Code page. Put in your street address and zip code. What will come back is the USPS-approved version of your address. Use that one as your address, always, to help ensure mail reaches you.
b. Are you mailing it to the right place? Many of the websites that steal info from agents' sites or guidebooks have outdated information. Many of the guidebooks may also have outdated information. It is a good idea to check addresses directly on the agent's website before mailing anything off. Then run that address through the USPS system also, as the agent may not know his or her correct USPS address.
c. If you are mailing A LOT, it may make sense to sign up for a service like Stamps.com, which checks each address to which you are mailing against the USPS system and corrects it. It also puts the correct USPS bar code on your mail, which results in your mail getting their faster, because the bar codes let it zip through the system.
d. Don't want to do any of that? TYPE YOUR LABELS OR ENVELOPES in all caps, in Arial or Courier typeface. The OCR software at the USPS will read the destination Zip Code more easily and your mail will get their faster.
Coach Andy
Friday, February 29, 2008
Worried Your Query or Submission Didn't Get There?
A Few Questions Answered...
Yesterday an author asked me if Author Coach had “contacts at publishers or with agents and would we recommend her to them.”
Every author coach is a veteran editor from a major New York publishing house, so of course they all have editorial and agent contacts. But Author Coach will never lead you on and promise to put your work in their hands. That’s a personal decision made by each author coach and is very subjective. What your author coach can do is help you get your work in the best possible shape so that the editors and agents who do receive it recognize it as a professional-looking submission and can focus on the important elements of your work, such as plot, character, subject, and, above everything else, writing. And, of course, beyond the simple mechanics of preparing your work to look its best, your author coach will work with you on all of those other elements, to coach you and guide you and educate you, so that, no matter what, you are a better writer in the end and your manuscript is a better work.
Another author asked me what genres our author coaches cover. The answer is, generally speaking, all of them. But here’s a partial list:
- Fiction
- Nonfiction
- Women’s Fiction
- Romance
- Historical Romance
- Historical Fiction
- Mystery
- Thrillers
- Science Fiction
- Fantasy
- African-American Fiction
- Military Fiction
- Biography
- Memoir
- Narrative Nonfiction
- Self-help
- History
- Travel
- Lifestyle
- Sports
- Pregnancy/Parenting
- Health & Fitness
- Military Nonfiction
- Military History
Here are just a few ways Author Coach can help you:
- Manuscript Editing, including concept editing and line-editing;
- Brainstorming your concept and helping you figure out the market (and if there’s a market);
- Writing a query letter;
- Preparing a submission list to agents and editors;
- Being a writing mentor, who can have weekly or monthly telephone check-ins to help keep you on track;
- Guiding you in your writing career.
Think of your Author Coach a bit like a personal trainer, but instead of getting your body in shape, your coach helps get your writing in shape and your writing career on track.
When you are trying to get a book published or find your literary agent, the hurdles are many. It’s one reason I constantly refer to the process of becoming a published author as being like training for a big race—no, a marathon.
Becoming a published writer is a long and difficult process for most authors. Most authors start out with an idea for either a novel or a nonfiction book. And many just sit down and start hammering away at their word-processor. But that’s not really the best way to go. You need to plan your book. And that almost always starts with an outline, regardless of whether or not you are writing fiction or nonfiction.
And planning your book also involves knowing the publishing marketplace. I recently had an author pitch me an historical saga following a family through the years, as it becomes more and more involved in organized crime. I said it sounded great, but a bit old-fashioned. Look at the best-seller list. What do you see? No, your book need not be exactly like everything else on the best-seller list, but certainly there are publishing trends and you need to pay attention to them. Spend a lot of time in your local bookstore and chat up the clerks on what’s selling. Whether you’re interested in writing romance, science fiction, or historical fiction, your local bookseller can be an invaluable help when it comes to figuring out what kind of romance, science fiction, or historical fiction titles are selling. Maybe military science fiction is selling better than hard science fiction. Maybe Regency romances are selling better than other historical romances. Maybe books set during the Civil War are selling better than books set during WWI. Are books with female protagonists selling better than books with male protagonists?
These are but a few of the questions an author should be asking before sitting down to write a book. And your author coach can help you answer those. From concept to finished manuscript, from proposal to published book, from query letter to cover copy, Author Coach can help you. At Author Coach, we help writers reach the finish line!™ So what are you waiting for?
Coach Andy
...Monkeys Can't Type
Welcome to the Author Coach blog. You may have found this through AuthorCoach.com or another site. However you did, welcome.
Author Coach, LLC is a full-service firm offering editorial services, coaching, and guidance to authors of all genres of fiction and nonfiction. A full description of our services can be found at the AuthorCoach.com website.
I’ve titled this blog “For What It’s Worth,” because publishing overall is a highly subjective business. Put three editors or agents in a room and ask a question and you may very well get three different answers. But over time certain consistencies do show themselves. Each coach working for Author Coach has a wealth of experience working inside publishing houses, generally in New York City, but sometimes Boston or elsewhere. What they bring to the table is their experience working in those publishing houses and what you, the author, get from them is a chance to work with them one-on-one and receive personalized guidance.
I’m always amazed when I attend writers’ conferences and find than an author has paid $50-$100 for the opportunity to have a five-, ten-, or fifteen-minute chat with an agent or editor. I understand this is how conferences pay the bills, but what can that agent or editor really tell you in such a short period of time? How much of your book can that editor or agent read sitting there with you? Very little, I assure you. But for not a lot more than the cost of attending a writers’ conference or taking a Writing 101 class at a community college, you can develop a relationship with a personal Author Coach who can take the time to give you substantive feedback. And if that’s something you want, then please use the information request form at AuthorCoach.com to contact us.
Okay, that’s the end of the sales pitch. Here’s some free advice:
There’s an old theory that if you put enough monkeys in front of typewriters, eventually one of them would write a Shakespearean play. However, after intensive research at the San Diego Zoo, I’ve found several issues with that theory:
Near as I can tell, monkeys can’t type;
Even if they could type, there’s nowhere to plug in the typewriter;
Even if you got them a manual typewriter, they don’t have any paper;
Even if you got them paper, it would soon be unreadable because of the banana bits;
Thus, it seems highly unlikely that monkeys could ever write Shakespearean plays.
People, on the other hand, may have a bit too much access to computers, typewriters, paper, printers, etc. Unfortunately, many of them also can’t type. And what surprises me is how many of them, obviously not knowing how to type (or at least type well), don’t take more advantage of the many tools that are available to them, primarily spell-checking and grammar-checking programs.
Allow me to give every aspiring author out there a bit of free advice: There are three things any author can do to make their book better:
1. Spell-check often and over and over before submitting your work. Open up Microsoft Word’s options when you have finished and reset the spelling checker and check it all again. Keep an actual dictionary handy and when you come across a word that trips you up, actually look it up and make sure you aren’t just guessing. Word’s spelling feature is great, but it’s not the human brain. You are smarter. So use that brain to double-check what Word tells you.
2. Eliminate the passive voice from your work. This is a crutch. Using it lets you write more quickly, but not better. Don’t say “Billy was running through the door when the phone rang.” Try “As Billy ran through the door, the phone rang.” Tiny difference, but more active and a better choice. Now repeat often.
3. Use a “vanilla” font and don’t try to desktop publish your book. I like Dark Courier, which you can download from the HP website for free. Just click here. Now there are many reasons to use such a font, but let me give you the simplest one: It lets agents and editors focus on your words, without a lot of distractions.
For more free advice, check back her often. For personalized Author Coaching, please visit AuthorCoach.com and contact us using the information request form.
Coach Andy
