Publishing/Writing Notes (from Jesse Petersen's Seminar)

So I went to a writing seminar a few days ago and took copious notes. I figured I should post them, just in case my hard drive explodes. This way I don't lose my notes. Yay!

Publishing/Writing Seminar Notes

1.)    Queries

a.       Paragraph Breakdown:

                                                               i.      First paragraph - introduce

1.       Taglines make good basis for introductions

                                                             ii.      Second paragraph - explain your book

1.       Highlight the major points of your novel

2.       Little snapshots of interest to intrigue the agent or editor

                                                            iii.      Third paragraph - credits paragraph

1.       Relevant life experiences

2.       Writing credits (contests, awards, anything)

3.       How long you've been writing

4.       What you've written

b.      Check the agent/publisher guidelines

                                                               i.      The agency or publishing company website should have them

c.       You can create a query template for each project, then alter based on who you're sending it to

2.)    Synopsis

a.       This can help you a lot

b.      Writing synopsis is a good skill to have

c.       Difference between a query and synopsis:

                                                               i.      Query: 2-3 paragraph blurb, like on the back of a book

                                                             ii.      Synopsis: basically a 5-10 minute summary including the ending

d.      No more than 7-10 pages

e.      Jesse recommends 2-6

f.        I (Ravyn) normally aim for 1-3 because that's usually what's asked for if you have to submit one (at least if you're a debut author)

g.       What do you include in your synopsis?

                                                               i.      The main story highlights

                                                             ii.      How you get to each point and then from that point to the next point

                                                            iii.      Don't get too detailed

h.      Practice is important

3.)    Sample pages

a.       When asked for sample pages, send the first few pages

                                                               i.      So if they ask for 5 pages, send the first 5 pages, not 5 random pages

b.      Make sure your opening is super-strong

4.)    Is hiring an agent a good idea?

a.       Yes!

b.      You get inside info on the market

                                                               i.      Is a publisher looking for a debut author to pair with a famous person for an anthology? Agent says, "Pick my author!"

c.       Can get a faster editor response

                                                               i.      Less likely your stuff ends up in the slush pile (where it could rot)

d.      Can get you a better editor

e.      You acquire an agent's rep by association

                                                               i.      So if you've got an agent known for representing good books, it works for you!

f.        Can help you with hard-to-understand contract stuff

                                                               i.      Legalese is not your friend =(

g.       Agent gets you inside info on opportunities too!

h.      Will keep their eye open for suddenly-free publishing slots

                                                               i.      If another author misses a deadline and you're on schedule, can get you published sooner or make the other person's screw-up work for you

5.)    How to get an agent

a.       The Blitz

                                                               i.      Sending out a lot of queries all at once

b.      The Modified Blitz

                                                               i.      Take a massive list

                                                             ii.      Break down into categories

1.       Perfect Fit

2.       Okay Fit

3.       Can See Myself With Them

4.       Etc.

c.       Send emails

d.      Jesse recommends the Modified Blitz

e.      DO YOUR HOMEWORK

                                                               i.      Compile a list of agents

1.       Try Association of Authors Representatives (AAR)

2.       Writing email-lists

3.       Writing message boards

4.       Writer's Market Online (paid subscription; $30)

                                                             ii.      Start with your own research

                                                            iii.      Then branch out with questions you can ask other people

                                                           iv.      Put agents' names into a search engine

f.        Don't settle; get an agent you can trust

g.       Pitch to agents rather than publishers

h.      Have more than 1 project

                                                               i.      Start your 2^nd book right after your first

1.       Gives you more options for querying later

2.       The more you write, the better you get

i.         Don't get stuck querying agents

                                                               i.      If you spend a year querying for the same project, time to reevaluate

j.        Keep track of what you send

6.)    Once you get an agent

a.       Celebrate!

                                                               i.      Jump up and down!

                                                             ii.      Scream like a girl!

                                                            iii.      Go out to dinner!

b.      Ask questions and take notes

                                                               i.      Ask questions of OTHER people as well as the agent

                                                             ii.      When I got my offer from Kara and Caren, I talked it over with Vicki (my SEP mentor)

c.       It's okay to ask for time to think over the offer

d.      Do more homework on the agent

e.      If you've queried other agents who haven't responded and you get an offer, let the other agents know

                                                               i.      It will make them respond faster

                                                             ii.      It will make them give you a second look

f.        Go with your gut

g.       No agent is better than a bad agent!

7.)    Once you accept an agent

a.       Agents will sometimes edit the first novel of an unpublished author a little

b.      Agents will pitch your book to editors

c.       Agents work as a sounding board and a support system

d.      Agents should:

                                                               i.      Inform you of who they're sending your work to

1.       Kara totally did that for Their Forever Family; she didn't just give names, she talked a little about each publisher

                                                             ii.      Inform you of rejections from those they've sent to

                                                            iii.      Sometimes will talk about the rejection so you can learn from it

1.       If they don't bring it up, you should ask

e.      Agents should never:

                                                               i.      Charge you money before your book is sold

                                                             ii.      "Bulk-send" your book with a bunch of other books to an editor

                                                            iii.      Give the okay on something that YOU have NOT okayed yourself

8.)    READ THE CONTRACT!!!

a.       Make sure you lay out a reasonable amount of time to terminate the contract if things aren't going how you feel they should

b.      Contact publishers when you've fired your agent

                                                               i.      Good reason to keep track of send-outs and rejections

9.)    Publishing without an agent in the traditional sense is possible, but difficult

10.) What do publishers do?

a.       Evaluate books for marketability

                                                               i.      Self-publishing is good for niche markets

                                                             ii.      traditional publishing is good for mainstream

b.      Large publishers approve everything by committee

                                                               i.      The acquisition editor you're working with has to pass your book by the committee before they take it

                                                             ii.      Editors have to justify purchase of manuscript

c.       Offer revisions and suggestions

d.      Create looks for covers and other publicity material

                                                               i.      Do the rest of the publicity stuff

                                                             ii.      Work on distribution details and whatnot

e.      Most (if not all) traditional publishers offer a monetary advance

                                                               i.      6-8% royalty rate on a mass market paperback (the books that are about the size of an index card)

                                                             ii.      Large presses = more sale opportunities, bigger advances

                                                            iii.      eBooks are always a good bet

1.       eBooks offer no advance

2.       eBooks offer 30-50% royalty rate

3.       Popularity is your friend, here

                                                           iv.      Small presses are good for niche markets, but much smaller advances

f.        Publishers buy what sells

g.       A good way to see how the money thing works: "Show Me the Money" with Brenda Hiatt (you can Google it)

h.      Making money as an author is hard

                                                               i.      Boo…

11.) Hypothetical Payment Plan:

a.       Author gets a call

b.      $1000 for a 1-book deal

c.       There's a period of contract negotiation before money

d.      First half of payment comes after contract is signed

                                                               i.      Split check - publisher sends the appropriate funds to agent AND author

                                                             ii.      Agent commission is anywhere between 10-15%

                                                            iii.      Gotta hold taxes back yourself; publisher doesn't do it for you

e.      Second check comes after the novel is actually accepted

                                                               i.      The publisher will sign you and then make revisions and such to your book

                                                             ii.      Usually takes a year between acceptance and publication

f.        Gotta earn your advance back in sales before you start getting royalties

                                                               i.      Bookstores hold back the cash from publishers in case they have paperback copies returned

g.       Getting paid is a long process

h.      Making a living as an author is hard

i.         Keep an eye on contracts to monitor advances and royalties and such

12.) If writing is your career, ask yourself, what do I want from my career?

a.       To write a LOT

b.      To make a difference with my books

c.       To be considered epic

d.      To be famous

e.      To make a living

13.) When dealing with publishers

a.       Check how publishers treat authors

                                                               i.      A bad publisher often means bad publicity

                                                             ii.      Check to see if publishers support their authors (ALL their authors, not just the big boppers) on their social networking sites

                                                            iii.      Watch out for rudeness in their emails; indicates how they'll treat you if you sign with them

b.      If author careers are doing well, the publishers are probably good publishers

c.       Consider your options based on what you write

                                                               i.      In case a publisher has a genre specialty, like Roc (the original publishers of Black Jewel Series)

14.) Self-Publishing

a.       A lot of NY Times and USA Today authors are self-published or started out that way

                                                               i.      Self-publishing is still hard though

                                                             ii.      Getting famous doing it is still hard, too

b.      You are responsible for the editorial content

                                                               i.      Research freelance editors like you do agents

                                                             ii.      Do not throw out rough drafts

1.       Copyright purposes

c.       Smashwords!

                                                               i.      It opens you up to the Nook, Barnes & Noble, and the eReader

d.      Formatting is difficult (and a pain in the butt)

e.      Cover art

                                                               i.      Good art can sell you, bad art can kill you

                                                             ii.      Don't do cheap designs

f.        Back blurbies are still important

g.       Last minute details are you problem too

h.      Self-publishing is a TIMESUCK!!

i.         You're responsible for your own publicity

                                                               i.      Gotta be aggressive

                                                             ii.      It's a lot of work

                                                            iii.      Gotta build a platform

15.) Promotion

a.       Promoting, whether self-published or traditionally published, is IMPORTANT

                                                               i.      Editors who see you working to promote will help you

b.      Analyze your audience

                                                               i.      Who are you promoting to?

c.       Promote books AND yourself

d.      Promote to librarians

                                                               i.      ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies) are important

                                                             ii.      You can send them out to book reviewers, too

e.      Websites can be really important

                                                               i.      Author websites - usually www.penname.com (so www.LAKnight.com or whatever)

f.        I wrote "details about yourself" but I don't remember why…

g.       A newsletter or e-newsletter can help

h.      Interviews and guest blogs are helpful

i.         Social networking is important

                                                               i.      Build good relationships with your followers

j.        Book signings and speaking engagements are helpful, too

k.       Stay in your comfort zones and do what you like

l.         Finances obviously affect your promotion abilities

16.) Have fun when the book is out!

WWC WK8: The Rat Prince

Author's Note: this was my first attempt at one of the HarperCollins/Inkpop writing contests. I won second place for their Weekly Writer's Challenge #9, the revisited fairytale contest. This story incorporates "The Pied Piper," "Cinderella," "Rapunzel," "Beauty and the Beast," and "Snow White." I'd forgotten all about this story, actually, until I was going through my Inkpop/Figment account. I remember the girl who beat me did a great retelling of "Cinderella" that was just amazing, called "Frailty."

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It wasn’t murder.

When my father told me what he intended to do, the knowledge hit me with the surety of the sunrise: of course I would have to kill him. But it wouldn't be murder. It would be justice. I wasn’t the murderer in this family; he was.

He killed my mother. They don't tell you that in the story, do they? Who planted the tree for her? Who tended it, watered it, pruned its branches? I did.

Who allowed my mother to drink a goblet of wine sprinkled with ground-up glass? He did.

Glass has always been the bane of my existence. The wood of my mother's tree, planted at the head of her grave when I was a little girl, would be the end of my father's. I wouldn't let him murder Rafe without consequence.

There was no way I could stop him, of course, for I was just the servant girl and the town wanted to see Rafe dead. My love was only a rat, after all. My father was a lord of men.

And who am I? You should know me by now: the girl in the fireplace, the ash-girl—Cinderella.

The morning of my father's death, I pressed my cheek against the smooth bark of my mother's tree. It had given me so much... and taken so much away. It had given me a prince... then taken away my love. It had been my father's excuse to steal the one who meant the most; it was the means by which I would avenge him.

Wind whistled through the flute I would give my father. A simple tune, sweet and clear—a sound like angels singing—breathed through my mind from the plain wooden instrument. Thank God I wasn't the one the song was intended for, or I would've thrown myself from the cliffs near my home and plummet to my death.

That was the fate my father intended for Rafe.

My stepsisters cried the day I confessed my father's plans, because they knew they would lose everything. The stories say my sisters despised me, that my stepmother forced me to be her slave. The tellers of the tales have never met my father. They never took the time to learn the cruelties of silken courtiers and sweet-tongued noblemen.

"Is this it?" My younger stepsister, Rose, asked me softly. The swish of her dress whispered over the dying scrub grass behind our house. The branches of my mother's tree cast shadow claws over her face.

Soon Rose, whom all called Beauty, would have her own claws to deal with—her Beast was still combing the world for her, intent on saving her from my father.

"Yes."

"Snow is ready for you," Rose whispered. "She and Mother have finished."

"You sound like a conspirator," I said to my fair-haired younger sister, reaching out to take her hand in mine. People mistook us often for true sisters, because of our similar looks and because of our closeness. "Why are you whispering?"

"Are you sure it will work?"

"Yes," I said, meeting her leaf green eyes with my blue ones. "Rafe will die, then my father will die, and then I will no longer be the ash-girl in the fireplace."

"I'm going to miss you."

I didn't respond. What was there to say? I would miss her, too.

ᴥᴥᴥ

In Snow's room, where countless mirrors hung and her potted apple tree sapling stretched its bird-like limbs toward the open window, my stepmother varnished the flute. The polished wood gleamed in the light. Beside my stepmother, with her bloodless skin and ebony hair, sat Snow, the daughter in her exact image.

I could never understand how strawberry blond Rose could be Snow's twin. They were complete opposites—Snow, with her jet curls and ivory skin, and Rose, crimson-tinted blond with a healthy blush in her cheeks. I could never understand how they could love me so completely, when my own father despised me.

"When he plays, he'll die, Crystal," my stepmother told me absently, her mind occupied with coating the flute with poison. "It won't be right away—I have nothing poisonous enough for that. But he will die."

"Rafe and I have talked about it," I whispered, staring at my reflection in one of Snow's mirrors—my soot-smudged face, the eyes as blue as glass, my silvery blond hair tied up under its kerchief, my dirty work dress. "We've accepted it."

"The apple," my stepmother said, nodding towards the scarlet fruit glinting on the nightstand beside Snow's bed. "I don't know why I've agreed to this."

She had been saying that since I'd outlined my plan, but it wasn't true. I knew why she'd agreed to create the poison for me: she knew what it was to lose the only one you'd ever loved. Rose and Snow's father had been murdered by their grandmother, his eyes gouged out and his heart pierced by a rose thorn. If not for the twins, she would've done exactly as I planned to do.

"I finished these just in time, I guess," Snow murmured, looking everywhere but at me. She lifted an ebony box from beside the poisonous apple and popped the lid so I could see inside. Within lay a key, white as bone, on a thin silver chain. A ruby hung from the chain beside the key.

"What's this?"

"The last gift," Snow said. A tear rolled down her cheek. I felt wetness on my face, and reached out to hug her.

ᴥᴥᴥ

The key belonged to Snow's hope chest. Lightly tracing my fingers over the gold inlay, the leaves and flowering vines and trees on the lid, I thought of Snow, felt the tears begin to burn. I forced them back and opened the trunk.

Inside, I found a letter from my stepmother, Aurora, and wedding garments—a white dress, a diamond comb, diamond earrings and necklace, and slippers that glittered like crystal. The pendant made me laugh. It was a 14 karat pumpkin.

I memorized the letter. Then I folded everything neatly and put it back inside.

A single teardrop splashed the lid of my sister's hope chest.

ᴥᴥᴥ

Because I have never known agony, because I have never known the all-consuming grief of true loss, and because I had made a promise, I watched that afternoon as my father raised the poison flute to his lips and began to play.

Then the rats came.

From all over Hamlin, the rats came, a river of black-furred bodies heaving with the effort of racing towards that music, that beautiful melody—a sound like angels singing. First the sewer rats and barn rats and river rats and forest rats...and then the rats who were not rats began to stumble towards the cliffs near our house.

I saw Rafe, my sweetheart, the man who had asked me only a week ago to marry him, trying to resist. He kept his eyes on my window, where I had promised to stay, to bear witness...but his feet dragged onward.

In the last few years, Hamlin had begun to systematically wipe out the faeries. After the last Elf had been drowned, the humans turned their thoughts towards the shape shifters. The rats came first.

My father was the executioner. His actions would bring a slaughter down on the mortals of Hamlin, because Rafe was prince of the shifters. War would come, violent and bloody. The humans would die, thrown from the very cliffs the rat shifters now leapt from.

And before the bloodbath to come, my father would receive the payment I knew the city would deny him.

Aurora, Rose and Snow would be safe—they were witches, all. I would've been safe, but I would not live without Rafe.

High above the world in my tower room, I watched, tears rolling down my cheeks, as Rafe lifted his hand in farewell and walked off the edge of the cliffs. He disappeared in seconds, with not even a scream or yelp to mark his passing.

I screamed for both of us. Screamed until my father began to convulse; screamed until Aurora rushed from the house and plunged her knitting needles deep into his heart; screamed until Rose and Snow began hacking at him with the wood axe and the carving knife.

I bit into the apple.

In a white wedding dress, wearing a poisoned diamond comb, diamond earrings, and a diamond pumpkin pendant, I fell to the ground as a haze slipped across my eyes and sudden weakness flooded my limbs.

I knew I was dying. I welcomed it. Soon I would be with Rafe, and my long-dead mother. I would be free of my father's hate. My stepmother and stepsisters would bury me in a glass coffin.

The air eased from my lungs. The last thing I heard was the tinkling of shattering glass as my slippers crashed to the floor. The apple lay amongst the glass, poison among the pain.