Yesterday, I posted about this awesome online writing conference going on RIGHT NOW (until Thursday!).
My favorite part of this online conference so far are the live chats. Although I didn’t watch and participate live, I caught up on the transcript later….can I just say again how very convenient this conference is for us working girls? Love it.
Anyway, I wanted to do a small recap of one of the live chats from yesterday with Literary Agent, Suzie Townsend who works at FinePrint Literary Management (photo from their website). You can find the entire transcript here.
Here are some highlights from the chat:
Shannon, one of Write On Con’s organizers asked: How much revision help do you generally give your clients, on average?
Suzie responded: Ah yes, I’m probably classified as very editorial. I don’t go on submission with projects until I feel like I’ve done everything I can with the author to perfect it first. That means overarching editorial notes, line edits, copy edits, and second reads (or third or fourth reads). This is part of my philosophy because projects sell faster and for higher advances this way (at least in my experience)
Participant Jason asked: Along with the question about agents doing research into writers, is it a good idea to include a link to a blog if we have one in a query?
Suzie responded: Yes, definitely. If I’m interested in the writer, I love to read their blog.
Participant Jason asked: What specifically do you look for in a query? What catches your attention and makes you request a partial or full?
Suzie responded: Voice. It’s the same thing as what I’m looking for in your manuscript. Obviously it needs a cool character and a plot, but queries that have a voice that stands out immediately catch my attention. One of my clients, when she queried me about a manuscript with a girl who is getting text messages from her dead boyfriend, mentioned that the main character goes on a road trip to find out who’s sending her the texts “mostly so she can punch that jerk in the face” which told me in that one line how much I liked the character.
Participant Crystal asked: What is your biggest piece of advice as to what not to do when submitting to an agent?Suzie responded: Don’t email several times to be like “oh wait, I fixed this can I send you the updated version” – it’s frustrating and confusing. Wait, be patient. Take a day or two to do a read through and make sure everything is ok first.
I’m learning so much from these live chats! The questions that are coming through are super intelligent and things I’m sure many aspiring authors are very interested in.
Have you been following along with Write On Con? What have you learned so far?
Thanks for sharing those pieces of the chat, Jess! Glad to know agents like to see blogs mentioned in queries… I'd actually been wondering about that.