(Part one – Traditional Publishing)

Researching Agents, Book Summaries, and Marketing

What should you do while your manuscript is being edited? Once you’ve handed your manuscript to a copy/line editor, it’s really important that you don’t touch it again until the manuscript is returned back to you. Having multiple versions of a manuscript in play gets extremely confusing, and needs to be avoided wherever possible.

However, there are some things you can be doing while your manuscript is with your editor. I’ve outlined some suggestions below – and these will be different, depending on whether you are hoping to secure a traditional publishing contract or are going to self-publish.

If you are intending to self-publish, please see Part two – Self Publishing.

If you want to go down the traditional publishing route, there are several things you can do now to help with the process of securing an agent.

Most of the larger publishing houses do not take direct submissions – and everything needs to come through an agent. Smaller, independent publishers will often accept direct submissions (straight from the author, not via an agent). But either way, the query letter process is basically the same – whether you are querying an agent, or contacting a small publishing house direct.

Research Agents

It sounds obvious, but it’s important to send your manuscript to the right agents. Don’t send a romance novel to an agent who specialises in science fiction – it’s wasting everyone’s time. Do your research – look for agents who specialise in novels in your genre (and, preferably, your sub-genre).

Once you’ve got a list of agents, have a look at their websites. Find out the individual names of the agents (never address a query letter to Dear Sir or Dear Agent). See what they are interested in – if you’ve set your novel in France, do any of them have a connection with France? If you find an agent you are particularly interested in, check whether they are currently taking submissions.

Have they appeared on any podcasts, are they active on social media, or will they be speaking at any conferences soon? If you’ve heard them speak, or have had a meaningful interaction with them on social media, this might give you a head start with your agent query letter.

Agent Requirements

Once you’ve got a shortlist of favoured agents, have a proper look at their submission criteria. Their criteria are likely to be very similar. Most of them will ask for an extract, and most of them will want to know about your comparison titles (also known as competitive titles).

Comp titles help an agent to visualise where your book might sit in a bookshop. To work out the right comp titles for your book, you need to think of a few popular, successful titles that are similar to yours, from within the last 10 years (preferably within the last 5 years).

A lot of authors find this really hard, so it’s worth putting in some time now to get this right. Providing comp titles will help an agent with their selection process.

Book Summary

Most agents will expect you to provide a summary of your book. This can vary in length, and they should state this on their websites. Again, many authors find this really hard, so it’s a good idea to make a start on your summary now.

See my blog post about Agent Query Letters.

Marketing

Many authors feel compelled to secure a traditional publishing contract because they just don’t like marketing. They are an author. They want to write books. They aren’t into marketing and would like someone else to handle it. It’s true that – if you secure a traditional publishing contract – a publishing house will invest in marketing your book. But unless you are a really big name, or already have a really big following, this marketing is likely to be minimal. If you want your book to succeed then you may very well have to do a fair amount of marketing yourself.

On a recent podcast, I heard one author describe her successful book as being 10% about the writing, and 90% about the marketing.

With this in mind, your marketing really needs to be happening already – before you’ve finished preparing the book for publication. Building a mailing list will be part of this, as will growing your social media presence.

This is, effectively, building your author brand. You need to find a way to connect with your readers – to demonstrate to them why they should buy your amazing book, rather than the amazing book written by someone else. What about you, as an author, will give you an edge?

One way to do this is to work out why you’ve written this particular book. If you can say your novel is based on something that actually happened to you, in places you’ve actually visited, straight away you are forming a personal connection.

Clearly with some genres (such as science fiction and fantasy), it’s unlikely that you have personally experienced many of the events in your novel, or visited many of the places. But did you base any of the characters on family or friends? Did you write it because you wanted to encourage your son to read more books?

When you approach agents, or smaller indie presses who accept direct submissions, they will want to know whether you already have an author brand. If you can tell them that you have a substantial mailing list, and a significant social media presence, you are more likely to secure a traditional publishing deal.

Once you have created your message – the one that explains why readers should buy your book – you can also incorporate it into your agent query letter.

These are all suggestions for things to be getting on with, while your manuscript is away with your editor. Of course, you should also take some time to sit back, relax and pat yourself on the back. Many many authors don’t make it this far!