Before I made the transition to writing full-time, I worked
as the radio producer for a news show. It was a crazy, wild, interesting job
where I learned a lot and never took lunch,* and after I left, I realized a lot
of the skills gained at that job were super helpful in querying.
See, as the producer, I had a big role in deciding what we
covered or who went on the air. Generally, I got between 50-100 emails a day,
the vast majority of which were pitches for our show.** I had to decide, often
in a glance, whether or not a pitch was right for me,*** and it gave me a weird
insight into the kind of email onslaught that agents deal with on a regular
basis.
Here are some of the best things I learned:
1. Know where you’re
pitching – Our show was primarily
economics/finance/politics-based, but the pitches were across the board. Telling
me something is “perfect” for my show when you don’t even know the name of the
show? De-le-ted.
For querying, that means… Research the agent you’re contacting.
You might have an amazing book, but if she’s not the right one to sell it, she
won’t care. Make yourself familiar with her list, what books she’s sold, and
where her interests lie.
2. Adapt your pitches
– We’d also look at a variety of different topics if they were especially
topical. This is where a good PR person who understands her list is vital. Got
an author with a history of gay rights AND the president has come out in favor
of gay marriage? That’s practically doing my job for me.
For querying, that means… Take a look at what else is on the
market. Get your comp titles down, and make sure they accurately reflect the
novel you’re pitching and represent something that people want to read. Give the agent a clear image about where your book
might fit on the market and how she might be able to sell it to editors.
3. Common courtesy!
– Spell check. Check the spelling of my name. I have a gender-ambiguous name
and would often get emails as “Mr.”, which didn’t bother me except when I’d
meet someone in person and they’d say “You’re
Kendall?!” Stay polite, courteous, and professional.
For querying, that means… Spell check. Check the spelling of
the agent’s name. Stay polite, courteous, and professional.
4. Don’t make
promises you can’t keep –Occasionally we’d book an author with the
understanding they’d talk about a specific topic, only to get them in front of
the mic have them admit they knew nothing about that topic. Usually this
happened because either the PR person didn’t know the author well or the author
just really wanted to get on radio, but it’s bad news for everyone. The author
sounds like an idiot on air, the PR person can’t be trusted, and the radio
producer gets slammed for booking a bad segment.
For querying, that means… Don’t query a project that isn’t done
yet. Don’t query a project where the query doesn’t accurately reflect the story
or the level of writing. Don’t think you can slide by with a query because the
agent will fall in love with your novel as soon as they see it. Honesty really is the best policy.
5. No phone calls,
please – Although I’m in my twenties, I have nothing against talking on the
phone. But email was made for pitches. Email would let me clearly see what you have
to say and forward it to my host if I liked it. If I had questions, maybe a
phone call would be better, but every time someone tried to cold call me, I’d
say the same thing: “Put it in an email.”
For querying, that means… I shouldn’t even have to tell you
that agents hate phone calls—absolutely
do not call unless the agent personally invites you to. Not only is it
annoying, it’s ineffective. I found it incredibly difficult to go from focusing
on one thing to having to think about someone’s pitches. It’s much easier to
see something in an email and think about it on your own time.
6. Keep in touch– We often repeated guests, and the guests that
were most-frequently rebooked were the ones who kept in touch, either
personally or through great PR people. Truth is, it's hard sometimes to remember that the great guy from last month would also be good to talk about another subject. Stay in touch, stay in our heads.
For querying, that means… Let’s talk about what it doesn’t mean first. It doesn’t mean
bombard the agent with queries. It doesn’t mean if an agent doesn’t get back to
you immediately to resend a million queries. What it does mean: build a
relationship, if you can. If you get a form reject, a reply isn’t necessarily
(and often unwanted), but if an agent rejects pages, write a quick “thank you
for your consideration.” Sometimes agents will ask you to get back in touch
with them, but when I was querying, if an agent requested pages and I knew what
my next project was, I would reply back to a rejection with “Thank you for your
consideration! I’m currently working on another project, a novel that’s X meets
Y. Would you be interested in taking a look when it’s completed?” Sometimes
they’d say thanks, but that’s not right for me. Sometimes they wouldn’t
respond. But more often than not, they’d say something like “Sounds
interesting! Yes, please query me when it’s ready.” That means you get to write
that magic sentence at the top of the next query: “I mentioned that I was
working on this novel, and you asked me to get in touch with you when it was
completed.” It’s a nice way to stick out in someone’s mind and build a
relationship.
7. No response means
no – With all the pitches I got every day, I admit that I only responded to
those I was interested in. At first I tried replying with a boilerplate “I’m
sorry, but I don’t think this pitch is the best for our show,” and nine times
out of ten I’d get a response asking why. It’s not my job to tell you how to
pitch me. The best PR people understood that I read every email carefully and
didn’t get annoyed if I didn’t respond.
For querying, that means… I have a lot of respect for agents
who respond to every query. Frankly, I don’t know how they do it. I often hear
writers complain about agents who don’t respond, and I understand—it’s annoying
to feel like your query is out there in the void. But agents don’t really owe
writers a response and they certainly don’t owe writers a reason for a
rejection. Remember: figuring out how to pitch your novel is your job.
8. An amazing pitch
can make up for a lot of mistakes – Did we book guests whose pitches were
terrible? Who had misspellings or wrote in colored text or included photos?
Yes. Because sometimes an amazing pitch would trump other misgivings. Very,
very rarely—and it’s not something I would encourage—but when the right idea
came along at the right time, I was pretty happy to overlook that someone
misspelled my name.
For querying, that means… Your pitch is everything. You can
follow all these rules and still end up with a stack of rejections if your
pitch isn’t great. Although I would recommend following the rules and having a great pitch, ultimately all
the other stuff is window dressing. It’s a sign that you can be professional,
follow rules, and pay attention to the market, but none of that matters if the
book itself isn’t great.
I hope this helps any queriers out there! If you have any
questions, leave them in the comments!
*But I still have stress dreams about it! Last night I
dreamed that I was coming back from vacation and my fill-in producer hadn’t
booked any guests for the show, so when I sat down for our morning pitch
meeting, I had six blank spots on my guest list. I can’t believe I left this
job two years ago and it’s still
taking a psychological toll…
**Fun story! One time I went on vacation for a week and
didn’t check my work email. I came home and booted up the iPod app that had my
email account. It could only load 50 emails at once, so as I kept pressing
refresh, I asked the then-fiancé how many emails he thought I would get. 300!
400! 500? Not even close. I got 800 emails in
a week where everyone in my office knew I was gone. When you send a pitch,
that’s what you’re up against.
***Approximate time it took to decide? Less than ten seconds. Seriously, I could read the first sentence and know immediately if it was right or not. Most often--not.
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