Comments on Wylie-Merrick Literary Agency: Untrendy Trends

I find your opinions to be more rude than helpful....

2008-10-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

I find your opinions to be more rude than helpful. You are an agency, so it's not a matter of whether you like a novel, but a matter of the audience that is out there for that story. I hate cheesy romance novels, but they obviously sell. Why? Because there's a market for it.

BK: I can relate to the query letter issue, big ti...

2008-08-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

BK: I can relate to the query letter issue, big time. In the last year I sent around 20 submission packages (query letter, synopsis, 2-3 chapters) to sci-fi agents in the UK, and got mildly polite rejections. Having used up most of the available pool of agents, I finally decided to get my submission package reviewed by a professional literary consultancy. They told me my writing was okay (good in fact, and that it had commercial value), but that my query letter and synopsis were a total disaster, and they would be surprised if agents got to the chapters. They gave me some hints, and after 20 re-drafts, I sent it out again. I now have an agent.

“How many times do you see a great ten page that h...

2008-08-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

“How many times do you see a great ten page that have been polished until it shined only to get more pages and have the writing fall apart?”

You’re right that this could happen if there was enough great writing in those first ten pages. Most times, though, I only have to read a page or so and don’t order more. Many times I don’t get to the reading because of problems in the query letter—problems like low word count, something that’s low on my priority list, the audience is too narrow, something I have too many of already, a genre that I don’t handle. Things like that. Also, sometimes writers don’t send the first ten pages but send something from the middle of the book, and I can’t tell anything from that.

But to fully answer your question, yes, I have ordered works that fall apart after ten pages or even past that point. Many authors can write beautiful opening but cannot transition into middle novel. Books, of course, even dry up after that because some authors tried to pad a novel to make it longer and it’s quite obvious they should have stopped at the short story or novella stage. One pitfall I see is that many writers have taken the advice to polish the first three chapters to heart, but they stop there. So they will get requests for chapters, but after chapter three or four, it becomes a whole different world because the writing is much rougher. The whole novel should shine, not just parts of it, and those novels are hard to find.

On the issue of commercial appeal, only: Some boo...

2008-08-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

On the issue of commercial appeal, only: Some books might appeal to only teens or older adults, just men or just women. Another word for commercial appeal is broad appeal but even beyond that, a book with high commercial appeal would mean that a novel can go beyond the novel, like into being a movie, a television series, have appeal in an English speaking foreign country, after translation, spawn a video game, coin new words, start a new trend in fashion or even formulate a different way of looking at things.

In regard to popularity, think of it in terms of timing. We need books that have broad appeal before the market becomes saturated with books of that type. So a book needs to be in a popular area, but not in one that is so glutted editors are only reviewing work from the top five authors in that genre. Publishing is cyclical and finding material that people want to read but doing so before a 1000 other authors (some hyperbole for ya there) fill editors’ lists for that trend is the key. Think of Harry Potter. There was only going to be one Harry Potter, yet every publisher wanted one and every writer wanted to create the next popular boy wizard. You are always going to have readers who like Harry Potter and wanted the same kind of story, but maybe with a different setting or different characters. Publishers responded to that need and so did writers. The market for books about boy wizards or just mid-grade fantasy in general overflowed with knock-offs and so commercial appeal disappeared when readers decided they wanted something new. Only those authors who established themselves at the beginning of the “let’s copy Harry” craze are still writing something. The others faded out because there just wasn’t a need anymore.

Hope this helps.

Just curious how many times do you see a great ten...

2008-08-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

Just curious how many times do you see a great ten pages that has been polished until it shined only to get more pages and have the writing fall apart?

I hear what you're saying, but would like more ela...

2008-08-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

I hear what you're saying, but would like more elaboration on "commercial appeal". You seem to be saying it needs to be popular but mustn't be popular.