Four Years of Agents & Books

Looking ahead, and back

Hey Friends,

Thanks for hanging in with me while posting was light over the holiday break. I intended to be back last week but got leveled with a cold/sinus infection thing (hoooo boy it got me) and I’m just getting back on my feet. Blargh. I hope you and yours have been as healthy as possible in this Time of Germs.

While I was in bed looking at Instagram for the last 8 days, the fourth anniversary of this newsletter passed. FOURTH! FOUR YEARS! I mean, I am nothing if not dedicated to a bit so I’m not wholly surprised we’re still going here. I have much more trouble quitting things than I do starting things. But also, I like this place. I like talking about writing and books and publishing. I like answering your questions. I like that I’ve trained you not to email me when you see typos (thank you, from the bottom of my dyslexic heart). I like using Mr. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to explain why publishing is what it is.

So I’m going to keep doing all of that. The difficulty comes in meeting you where you are. Everyday people sign up here at the start of their journey. They’re desperate to know the secret to query letters or how to get an agent or how to crack the whole publishing system. (Sorry, there is no way to crack it.) I could talk about query letters for hours. The content is endless (but also probably exhausting if you’re not querying). And others are here because they’re about to embark on their second book and oh god how do you do that? Or because they don’t know how to talk to their agent or because some other author told them this thing but it can’t really be true, right?? I hate that publishing is so opaque, but of course, if it was clearer, I wouldn’t be here, lol.

Publishing is not opaque to keep people out. (I mean, there are other unjust issues that keep people out but it’s not because people are withholding the user manual from you.) It’s because every single book is different. It is really, really, really true. What you should aim for here, what I should aim for, too, is to study the little tidbits we talk about, and tuck them away in case you might need them later. You may need them, or you may not. You aren’t going to be quizzed on this stuff, over your career. You just want to be like wait, I’ve heard about that before. Let me go look it up. (If you click on the masthead, it’ll give you an Archive link under it. Then you can search old posts.)

I have probably talked about most publishing issues at this point. It’s probably time to go back and revisit some advice. You are always welcome to email me or post a comment about what you’d like to read about, because what hasn’t changed over the years is that my whole goal here is to get you information about publishing, the best way I can. Maybe this is a little State of the Newsletter post. The state is: still here. Still excited to talk to you about this little world I love of agents and books and publishing and words. But it’s also to say thank you, for reading, for asking questions, and for telling your friends about this newsletter. Thank you for hanging out with me.

XOXOXOOX,

Kate