Proposal

The fascination of
words and writing

Selling to the New Age Market

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Okay, I’m not really as lazy as the last couple of posts may make you think: but it seems that the past week for some reason has been filled with brilliant advice from colleagues that I just have to share. Here I’m quoting a post verbatim from one of my brothers in the National Writers Union (which, bizarrely enough, is also Local 49 of the UAW, but that’s a story for another time). Randy Peyser, who runs Author One Stop, has some advice for anyone out there who thinks she or he has the perfect manuscript on Wicca, astrology, the Tarot, or dowsing:

I run a national publishing consulting firm and shop manuscripts to all of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Here’s what I can tell you about them:

While it is possible to shop directly to a publisher, you MUST have a very strong book proposal to accompany your manuscript — and, like anything, it helps if you have connections to people within that publishing house, especially to the acquisitions editors.

Here is more information you should know:

You must have a unique twist to your subject matter. No publisher is looking for material that has already been covered, and so much of the New Age thought/philosophy/techniques have been covered. That’s why Harper Collins, who used to be a major publisher of New Age books, rarely publishes them anymore. It wasn’t until The Secret that the MBS publishers started to really “rev” up again. Now there are a flood of Law of Attraction knock-offs on the market, but that phase will probably wear thin soon.

You had better have a very strong promotional plan and be out there promoting PRIOR to sending them your manuscript, because publishers are interested in authors who have eyeballs — in other words, those authors who are out in front of audiences where they are being seen continually. Likewise, the competition section of your proposal had better be strong, because otherwise publishers will know you didn’t do your homework.

I know the majority, if not all, of the Mind/Body/Spirit publishers. Never tell a publisher that you know you have a bestseller or that you know Oprah will want to interview you. They will see both of these statements as signs of an amateur.

While you don’t necessarily need an agent to approach many of the MBS publishers, you will want an agent or someone at the NWU to help you with your contract. I used an NWU contract advisor for my first book, which was published by a New Age publisher. That advisor was superb. She gave me eight hours of her time and went through every single detail, telling me what I should fight for and what rights I should not give away. That being said, if I had to do it over again, I would have hired a literary agent to negotiate the contract at an hourly rate, because I didn’t have the clout to get everything I wanted as a first-time author. If I’d had an agent working with me, I could have at least doubled my advance.

So, who are the few agents out there who accept New Age books? Anyone ever hear of Eckhert Tolle? I consistently shop manuscripts to Eckhert Tolle’s agent. So far, this agent has been willing to consider every client I’ve sent to him. My reputation is always on the line when I send something out, so a book has to be polished and a book proposal has to be exemplary before I will ever send it out to someone who can command the kind of advance that Tolle’s agent can command.

Then there’s Sylvia Brown’s agent, but she only takes manuscripts that she believes will get a high six or seven figure advance and you had better have the promotional plan in place to prove it.

There are a few other agents I work with who shop to MBS publishers and there are still other agents I hire to negotiate contracts when I’ve found a publisher for one of my clients. They will negotiate a contract for $50/hour and
have taken about five hours to do contracts for me in the past.

So, there you have it. I hope this letter does not come across as self-serving. It is truly my intention to provide information that helps those who publish in the Mind/Body/Spirit genre to have the success they desire.

Much of this is good advice that transcends genres. As you know, putting together the best possible book proposal and brilliant query letter, having a platform, and having a terrific manuscript are the keys to getting published anywhere, though perhaps particularly so in this niche area. Follow his advice and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

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To Be Edited … or Not To Be Edited?

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

Okay, so here’s the thing. No one likes being edited. Any author, any writer who tells you that he or she enjoys the process, is lying. That’s all that there is to it.

Second truth: everyone needs to be edited. Everyone. Every writer has idiosyncracies at best and errors at worst, and there is no way that the writer can be aware of them all. The fact is that one editor probably won’t be aware of them all, either, but he or she has a lot better chance of it than does the writer.

So where does that leave you?

You’ve written your book. You’re about to embark on a search for an agent or publisher. You decide that the first thing to do is to get it — your masterpiece, that is — professionally edited. Right?

Wrong.

I’m not saying that your book doesn’t need editing; au contraire, I’m quite willing to bet that it needs a lot of editing. But that same amount of editing is also going to be very expensive, and it may not be the best use of your funds at this time.

Instead, consider this: what you really want to do is capture the attention and interest of a literary agent or of a publisher. That’s your real goal here, not having a picture-perfect manuscript.

What will you be sending out in your quest for arousing that interest? Certainly not the entire manuscript! Instead, you’ll be sending out a proposal, which will include — at most — three chapters of the manuscript. It will also include other essentials, such as a synopsis, an analysis of competing books already in the marketplace, a statement of your platform, an outline, and other components.

You’re starting to get the idea: I can tell. Your first order of business is to make this proposal the best proposal it can possibly be. So by all means have it edited — and have those first three chapters edited, also — and hold off on the whole manuscript until someone has asked you to send it to them.

You can have someone write the proposal — it’s one of the things that I do for clients — but that’s relatively expensive. Consider writing your own and then sending it to a top-notch editor. You’ll pay up to a couple thousand dollars, but you won’t be in for too much; and if no one asks for it (perish the thought!), you’ll still be able to pay next month’s rent!

And then you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Posted in About Writing, Editing, Editors, Getting Published, Proposal, Publishers, Submissions | No Comments »

Tolkien, Editors, and the Faerie People

Monday, October 15th, 2007

All right, it’s not going to sound like this article has very much to do with language, but bear with me. I’ll try to twist it aound there before I’m finished. Maybe.

The truth is, my mind is filled with swirling colors and haunting music. I’m in Philadelphia this weekend at FaerieCon, a gathering for all things and beings magical, mystical, and downright strange. There are Good Fairies and Bad Fairies (you can probably guess which I find more interesting), Green Men and satyrs, even a dragon or two … and it’s all fabulous good fun.

Saturday morning I sat and listened to a lecture by Tolkien illustrator Ted Nasmith, and afterward my stepdaughter Anastasia brought up what she calls Tolkien’s ability to multitask, writing and lecturing and, in the midst of it all, managing to create several complete languages.

And they are extraordinary. A list barely scratches the surface of the riches and complexeties of languages invented for a race that exists only in one’s mind, yet whose history, sociology, and psychology are so clearly understood and articulated that, to many and for all these years after his death, they seem real. It’s not just a gift, though I’ll never argue that Tolkien wasn’t gifted; it’s also an enormous undertaking that could only be done from some sort of passion in the soul.

And for those of you who look to this column for practical advice, I had a nice long talk with Kerry Estevez, the editor over at Medallion Press, who noted that many, many more books would be accepted if writers (and, for that matter, literary agents) would just read the submission guidelines and follow them. Doesn’t sound that difficult, folks. She’s currently looking for historical fiction/fantasy, and if there’s some romance woven in, so much the better!

So pay attention to guidelines for the good of your publications list, and pay attention to the fairies for the good of your heart. And you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!

Posted in Books, Editors, Fiction, Getting Published, Proposal, Submissions, Words | No Comments »