Q&A Thursday

A gift for everyone

Hi!

It was my birthday this week, so I’m sending today’s Q&A Thursday to everyone. YAY! A gift to all of us. (If you aren’t a paid subscriber and you like what you see and want to ask a question, sign up here!)

K asks: If you want to use a pen name for reasons of privacy (yes, assuming you get published in the first place, etc.) can you approach agents with that instead of your real name, do you have to use your real name first or use both, or is the pen name something you really do with agent/editor AFTER you've scored and agent and/or publisher? Wondering because so many agents want a bio upfront in fiction and while many authors completely leverage their platforms or the pen name is easily seen through, some strive for complete anonymity.

I’ve encountered this question a lot. First off, you can trust an agent (and your editor down the line) with your anonymity, even at the query stage. If you would prefer not to reveal your real name at the query stage, it is perfectly acceptable for your bio to say Albermarle Westchester is my pen name. I am a plumber in the midwest. This applies more to fiction rather than non-fiction, because non-fiction relies so heavily on the author’s platform for sales. If it is unsafe or otherwise impossible to use your real name for your non-fiction book, this is a special case you can discuss with an agent at the right time. If it is not obvious from the content of your query, you can say something like for safety concerns, I’m using a pen name. You will likely want to and/or need to reveal your real identity to your agent eventually, at the very least for contract and tax purposes, but again, you can trust them with you anonymity regardless. If it is NOT dire and you want to use a pen name for funsies, I would suggest querying under your real name and saying for this book, I plan to use the pen name Pimlico Birtwistle.

Do consider, however, the heavy load of a pen name that’s just for funsies. Are you going to maintain two, or more, social media platforms? Will it be an open secret? Do you want to field tweets like omg are you Pimlico Birtwistle??? for real???? I love their books and had NO idea!!!!!!! for the next 7 years? Lots of people use pen names everyday, so it’s not a huge issue on the publishing end. But it should be done for a real reason (of which there are many, like privacy, or pivoting to a new genre or audience, or writing for a franchise) because it can be a needless hassle otherwise.

B asks: If an agent doesn't have specific instructions about queries (like no attachments, or include the first 20 pages or 50 pages in the body of the email) is it better to just send a query letter with no sample pages, or to attach a word doc with pages just in case? And if it's worth attaching sample pages, is there a good number that won't overwhelm the agent? Like 20 or 50?

Here’s what I like to suggest in these situations: paste a few pages (3-5) under your query letter in the body of your email. Keep the number small so the email doesn’t become unwieldly. Make the formatting clean, but don’t worry about it looking exactly like your manuscript pages. Agents understand the limits and peccadilloes of email formatting. Then, attach the very first and no other combination of pages, say 20 of them, as an attachment. .Doc preferred, unless your book is illustrated (graphic novelists I will cover what to do for your work in a whole ‘nother newsletter!), then a PDF is ok. If your chapter 1 ends on page 23, it is ok to include 23 pages. Consider what it would be like to read your work, from scratch, with no other information than your query letter, and make your best judgement from there. I don’t feel that there is anything too overwhelming about more pages in an email attachment (they don’t get significantly bigger or harder to send, if there are no illustrations) but 20ish pages is common and acceptable. (And if your book doesn’t get good until page 35 then you might want to consider why page 35 is not page 1.) This approach—with text in the body and an attachment—covers all your bases without going too far over the line. And if they bounce you because they don’t accept attachments and they don’t tell you that on their website then that’s their fault and not yours. I’m sorry it’s so annoying that we don’t all just do the same thing.

L asks: Early last year, an editor with a publishing house in Australia reached out to me to ask if I'd like to write a book. She found my essays online, about perimenopause/menopause/midlife. I was thrilled, and after lots of email and Zoom, I made it through the first acquisitions meeting with some ideas to flesh out. The second (decisive) acquisitions meeting came on the very day (of course) that a national lockdown was imposed in Australia and the team decided that it would be too difficult to market me globally in a pandemic, and therefore said ‘no thank you.' The very nice and supportive editor said, please let me know if you finish this, perhaps after the pandemic, etc.

Fast forward a year, during which I tucked the project away in a plague-inspired sad spiral, and I'm noticing that EVERYONE is writing about my thing and I have lots to add. Now, the question: I would like to find an agent, but haven't actually written the book. I have maybe a half-book's worth of essays, lots of notes and ideas, but am in need of motivation/inspiration. Should I (can I?) query agents with this half-project that has already generated interest, or do I need to have a finished manuscript (essay collection) in hand before I query? Is it ever an agent's job to hold a client's feet to the fire to get the job finished, or to help locate a vision, a sense of shape, for the final product? 

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I’m so sorry. That must have been so disappointing!!! I don’t blame you at all for going into a plague-inspired sad spiral, for that ON TOP of the plague. Anyone would have in this situation. I’m glad now though that you’re ready to dust yourself and your book off and get moving. The best part is—you do not have to write the whole book!! You just need to write a book proposal and here’s everything you need to know about it!! Get to it! You can do it!!

But also, an agent can help motivate and inspire a client to get it done. Some of you reading this have gotten cheerleader-y emails from me! But, they have to be your agent first. I would not suggest sending a query that is basically hi this is all the stuff I have and I really think it’s good can you help me make it a book? You might get an agent who has the time and resources (mental space and/or otherwise) to help you mold your book like clay, BUT it is much more likely you will get nibbles on your proposal if you spend the time now shaping it into a cohesive proposal representing what YOU want the book to be. (And remember, a proposal is not a whole but, but it represents the whole book, which is slightly easier than writing the whole book.) Don’t worry about being “right.” Make it the book you want it to be and an agent can help you mold it into something more refined from there. You don’t want to hand an agent a mount of pages and say fix it please, at least before they are your agent. Again, the goal isn’t just to make a proposal an agent likes. You want to find the agent who likes your proposal, and work together to refine it from there.

Don’t rely on our agent, however, to force you to finish your book. We can help. We can encourage and cheer-lead and tell you how wonderful and brilliant you are. But you have to find the wherewithal to cross the finish line yourself, for this book and the next and next and next. I know it is hard. I know it is harder now than ever before. But you can do it! I know you can.

Thanks for reading friends. Thanks for sharing the newsletter with others. Thanks for getting your shots if you can and encouraging others to do the same. It’s safe and effective.

OXOXOXO,

Kate