PS: One of the things the author complains about is awful cover-art. If that’s a problem for you, I’d recommend offering to pay a feelance illustrator (like Emily or Laura Dollie or Aguaplano or anyone that strikes your fancy here) to quickly do another version of the cover. The publisher might not actually end up using it, but I feel like it’d give you a good chance to undo a potentially costly mistake. (The faster the publisher sees the art, the easier it will be to use). Who knows, maybe even the publisher will comp you the $300-500.
 

The New York Times has a piece on encouraging novel-reading among boys.  As a child, I was really down on fiction because it felt very juvenile to me.  Almost all of the novels I read after turning ~9 were exclusively about adults doing adult things (frequently with firearms and axes).  Admittedly, my sample size of one is extremely small and idiosyncratic, but I just loathed young characters.

Some thoughts for parents trying to encourage their sons to read:

• When your son(s) pick out video games or movies, how often do they reach for ones starring characters around their age?
• If they tend to prefer adult protagonists in other media, why wouldn’t they prefer adult protagonists in books as well?
• If your son is very literate but isn’t enthusiastic about novels with young characters, I’d recommend leaving some adult novels lying around.
• Nonfiction is totally fine, too!  Some readers (particularly guys, I’ve noticed) are not particularly interested in fiction. That’s not a problem at all.  Extremely few educational and career paths require an enthusiasm for fiction.

• “brilliantly defies categorization” –>”not even the author has an idea what he’s written.”
• “continues in the proud tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien” –>”this book has a dwarf in it.”
• “edgy” –> “contains no adult voices of reason.”
• “wildly imaginative” –> “author was high on mescaline.”
• “ripped from the headlines” –> “no original plot content.”

• “As a general rule, we find that while the strongest market is usually the writer’s home market, it’s roughly equivalent to the rest of the world. And increasingly, what’s important is getting the rest of the world right. Fifty percent of American writers’ sales should be outside the U.S. That’s vital.”  [Fun fact: Superhero Nation's audience is ~40% international].
• “We try to avoid people who can’t write. You can usually spot them from the first sentence, or from the cover letter. It’s a little like sitting in the audience at Carnegie Hall and watching someone walk up to a piano. If you’re trained, you can tell the difference between someone who knows how to play and someone who doesn’t. Of course, sometimes you want to work with people who have a significant achievement, which is not writing, and so that usually requires closer editing, and ghostwriting. Heads of state are not always the best writers.”
• “Things are generally tough and getting tougher across the industry. In the U.S., publishers are continuing to pay advances at pretty much the same level as five years ago, but they’ve reduced the number of high bets they’re making… Each house has a large number of titles to publish, and with a difficult economy, fewer people to handle the publications. But publishers need to become smaller, leaner, and they will have to learn new disciplines.”  [Note: Having fewer editors per title gives publishers less flexibility to publish manuscripts that will require a lot of editing, so your manuscript is pretty much dead on arrival if it's not proofread carefully, unless you're a head of state or something].

*An accountant and an alligator saving the world from a deranged cosmeticist… with a Heisman Trophy!  While playing Clue!  IN SPACE!

Two things jump out at me here.  First, the author’s royalty is proportionally much larger with e-books than hardcovers (20-25% compared to 15%, and even lower for paperbacks).  Second, since distributing an e-book is cheaper, the cost to consumers should drop considerably.

Picture taken from the New York Times.  Full article here.  This statistic caught my eye: “The industry is based on the understanding that as much as 70 percent of the books published will make little or no money at all for the publisher once costs are paid.”

The good news is that agents and editors are very understanding of amateurishness.  After all, everybody starts out as an amateur through no fault of their own.  You’re safe as long as you’re remotely friendly and professional.  If your submission is poorly formatted, the agent or editor may even direct you to a submission guide and ask you to resubmit.

If you’re trying to get a novel or graphic novel published, follow these two steps and you won’t look like an idiot.

1.  Please pay attention to the submission guidelines on the website of the publisher or agent.

2.  Please don’t be a total jackass.

Seventy-two minutes after sending out a query to an agent, one author sent this e-mail…

Subject line: For those liiterary agents who do not even look at the work (sic)
Body: I am still writing 4 more books you will keep getting these queries about every 2-3 months block this email address I will use another one

Anyway, the good news is that whatever alleged hangups you have about your writing obviously pale next to that. And, if they don’t, could I recommend trying a different career path?  Preferably one that doesn’t involve people.

Submit us to Stumble!

Unfortunately, it’s not that useful for jobs with comics publishers.  I’ll have more thoughts about how to get comic book jobs in the weeks to come, but until then I would recommend checking the job pages for Marvel, Image, Dark Horse and DC regularly.  Also, if you’re interested in unpaid internships in New York City, Marvel has more than a few of them.

9.  Getting published is really, really hard. Publisher’s assistants at major publishers go through hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts a week. Out of every thousand or so manuscripts, they’ll probably send on around five to an editor for further consideration. That means PAs reject about 99.5% of manuscripts. Of the five surviving manuscripts, usually one or two will eventually be offered contracts.

10. Publisher’s assistants do not have the time to pore through each manuscript. They are not on your side. They have to get through hundreds of manuscripts each week and the only way to do that is to throw out manuscripts as fast as possible. Most manuscripts do not survive to page two. If something does not make sense on page one, they will throw away the manuscript long before you’ve explained what is going on. The story absolutely needs to be clear and engaging from page one.

11. SPELLING, PUNCTUATION AND GRAMMAR ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.  They are the difference between conveying that “I am a polished writer that will be easy to publish” and “I am not familiar with basic writing craft.” If your writing has more than a few typos, you are dead on arrival. Even one typo per page would raise eyebrows. Remember, around 99.9% of unsolicited manuscripts get rejected. Don’t give the publisher any reason to drop the guillotine.

12. Publishers select what they think will sell. If you look like you could sell ten thousand copies with a minimum of editing work, they will probably make you an offer. It depends on the work and publisher, but most publishers need to sell between five and ten thousand copies to break even.

13. It is really helpful to establish an audience before you try to get published. For example, if you’ve established a blog that has hundreds of thousands of readers, it will seem more plausible that your book can sell tens of thousands of copies. If your writing is not yet good enough to attract a hundred thousand free readers, it may help to practice more before you try selling thousands of copies. Alternately, get some professional writing experience with a newspaper, a magazine or any other company that needs writers. (Most large companies have communications offices).

14. You need to know who your target audience is. That will make it much easier for an editor to visualize selling ten thousand copies of your book. Preferably it’s an audience his publisher works with frequently. The most important audience attributes are gender and age. It’s usually easiest (but obviously not mandatory) to aim at readers that are the same gender as the main character and 0-3 years younger. (Why 0-3 years younger? Because they’d find the character old enough to be cool but young enough to be relatable).

15. Even after you get published, your publisher won’t do all that much to publicize you. Selling the book is mainly your job.  Starting a website is a good first step. For example, you only encountered my writing today because I started a website about how to get published. If you aren’t quite tech-savvy enough to handle your own website, try making a page on Facebook. Just make sure that you update it regularly.

16. Websites are great, but you’ll still probably have to promote your book in person after you get published. Identify accessible sites where you can talk about something interesting, preferably something related to your book. Depending on your target audience, college campuses within driving distance might be a good place to start. If you’re writing a superhero novel, ask any comic book stores near you if they’d let you do a promotional event. You might also find conventions devoted to comic books, fantasy, science fiction or horror helpful.

Did this article help? Submit us to Stumble!

“After years as a slush reader in various aspects of the industry, I am quick to recognize and dispatch; I can often tell within the first sentence if a query will be any good, and I am now so ruthlessly efficient that I can blow through an inbox of 50 e-mails in half an hour, sometimes rejecting submissions within moments of their arrival…

…

Rendered in a labyrinthine and frequently unintelligible grammar, the truly awful query is often notable for its length, its torrid verbosity, and the mechanical specificity of its sex scenes, which tend to read like appliance-repair manuals in their exhaustive and emotionless depictions of moving parts. The bad query’s sentence sometimes resembles a battlefield wherein subjects hack it out desperately with adjectives, perennially besieged by legions of unwieldy adverbs. Apostrophes go on suicide missions and commas appear at random. Formatting tends to be interpretive; it is not uncommon to find e-mails that are 50 pages long, are bright pink, contain pictures of the author on vacation, or are written in Papyrus.”

I think that every prospective author should know about the process through which his work will be evaluated, whether he’s writing about superheroes or space slugs.  However, please don’t let exotic failure stories and the generally unforgiving nature of the business scare you away.  Here are a few brief rules of thumb to keep your query letter on track.

1. You are writing a business letter to a skeptical, time-strapped professional.  For more thoughts about communicating with them, see this.

2. Your goal is to convince him or her that your book is awesome enough to sell thousands of copies.

3. They’ve heard every possible variation of “I’ve just written an awesome book” and rejected at least 99% of them. Telling them your book is awesome is not good enough.  You need THEM to decide the book sounds awesome.  Show, don’t tell.  Lay out your plot in a way that they want to keep reading.  “John Lee is a detective investigating a murder” sounds cliche and boring. “John Lee is a poisoned detective that has two days to solve his own murder” sounds a lot more interesting.  Give enough information to intrigue them.

4. Different publishers have different tastes.  Make sure you submit to publishers that are well-suited to your manuscript.

1.  The only goal of your submission is to convince a publishing professional that your novel or comic book is likely to sell thousands of copies. Nothing else matters.

2.  Follow the instructions on their website. Most agents and publishers will have submissions pages that lay out what they want to see.  In most cases, it’s best to provide just what’s on the list and nothing else.  (Exception: if you’re submitting a comic book script, consider submitting some inked or colored pages even if they aren’t required– these pages will help the editor decide very quickly whether your proposal is serious).

3.  Check your spelling, punctuation and grammar. Trying to impress a publishing professional without clean writing is like trying to run a filthy restaurant.  It really doesn’t matter how good the cooking is–customers will run out screaming anyway.  Proofread or perish.  Not many publishing professionals would bet tens of thousands of dollars on an unpolished writer.

4.  A first-time novelist MUST finish the manuscript before submitting it for publication. An experienced author can pitch a concept, but an unpublished novelist can’t.  Don’t bother trying to write to publishers or agents until your manuscript and synopsis are ready.  Comic book writers, you probably need the script and series synopsis for the first issue finished before you can submit.  Each publisher has different requirements, though, so check first.  For example, Image requires illustrated sample pages but no scripts.  In contrast, Dark Horse requires only the first eight pages scripted for a series and a synopsis, but no art.

5.  This is a business proposal, so be as specific about your target audience as possible. What is the age of your ideal reader?  Gender?  Are there any other significant demographic traits?  (Note: comic book writers, be aware that most comic book buyers are males between 15-30 years old– publishers may be leery about working with significantly different demographics).  Many authors are leery about giving themselves a target audience because they feel like it’ll limit the appeal.  “If I say my novel’s audience is guys between 8 and 13, what if it turns out that high school girls also want to read it?”  Don’t worry about it.  Stating your target audience is primarily important so that the publisher/agent can evaluate whether you have a realistic idea of who your main audience is.  This is what Image Comics says about target audiences:  “Tell us who the target audience is (‘Everyone’ is NOT realistic — there’s no single book on the market today that everybody buys).”  The same goes for novels as well–perhaps two novels out of a million have an almost universal appeal, like Harry Potter.  If an author just seems to assume that his book is one of them, he will probably seem clueless.

6.  When you’re describing your story, focus on what matters…

• Interesting traits about main characters (like personality and important background details)
• Goals of main character(s)
• Critical choices of main character(s)
• Obstacles/antagonists
• Character development arc(s)– how do the main characters change over the course of the book or series?

7.  …and DON’T focus on inconsequential details.

• Minor demographic traits (typically height, weight, eye color and hair color, etc).
• Side-characters.  As much as possible, focus on the mains.  If the sides are more interesting than the mains, you have a problem.
• Unnecessary world-building details.  If your fantasy world has six castes, please don’t tell us what all six are.  Focus on what we need to understand the thrust of the story (perhaps just the caste of the main character and the villain?).
• Superpowers.  They’re not nearly as interesting or important as the goal(s) the hero will use them to attain.  I wouldn’t recommend spending more than 1-2 sentences on a superhero’s powers.

8.  Please don’t bother telling them how much your friends/family love your writing. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter.  Publishing professionals are a lot more experienced in this field than your friends.  Otherwise you’d probably be submitting to your friends.

9.  Always behave professionally. Here are some common mistakes.

• Do not call editors or agents unless they have expressly asked you to.
• Most editors and agents will Google you before offering you a contract, so make sure that you’re representing yourself professionally online.  (For example, if an author repeatedly complains on a blog about how awful the publishing industry is or how inept a negative review is, that suggests the author may hard to work with).
• Please do not give your readers more information than they need to know.  In particular, please do not share your medical/psychiatric or criminal history with strangers unless it’s highly relevant to the project.  Double-fail: when writers erroneously suggest they have psychiatric or criminal issues.

Now, if you’re one of our readers in the 13-18 range, you’re probably thinking “whoa, that’s way more money than I’ve ever made before!”  Probably true, but when you have to cover your own rent and food and transportation and school loans, you will discover that $5000 is wholly inadequate for at least half a year worth of work.  By comparison, a 22-year-old college graduate  working for the US government starts at a GS-5 (~$35,000 a year and benefits) and moves up to GS-7 after two years.   Also, the government guy doesn’t have to pay an agent 10-15%.  (Indeed, if a government employee started giving agents money, it would probably prompt a federal investigation).   

I don’t have any magic bullets to the problem that authors get paid so little starting out.  However, here are some suggestions. 

1. Get a day job.  Do not consider giving up your day-job until you’ve sold at least a few books and make more by writing than you do at your day job. 
2. Get an audience.  Anything that improves your bargaining position will enhance your odds of getting published and your expected payday.  So, start writing for a newspaper or magazine or whatever– it will sharpen your writing skills and help build up a devoted following that will buy your book.  Blogging is another great tool. 
3. I’d recommend against getting a Masters in Fine Arts, at least right out of college.   Try to pay down some of your student debt first.  (See #1).  This will also help you get more life experience, which will contribute to your writing skills. 
4. Network!  Network!  Network!  In particular, you want to become friends with people that are good at writing or editing… or work for a publisher… or are skilled at marketing… or can sell a lot of books (like librarians, bookstore employees, teachers, etc)… or web-savvy…  or good create a simple writing website… or are good at art.  There are so many kinds of people that can help you later on.  The good news is that you probably already know a lot of these people already.  You just need to develop your relationship enough that they’d feel comfortable providing a bit of help when you need it (and of course you’d have to be comfortable enough to ask).   For me, it was as easy as volunteering to help engineering and business students pass their required literature classes.  Alternately, if you already have a job, you can exchange business cards with people and offer to help them on whatever.  If you offer to help them, they will often reciprocate. 

But what began with Harry and Hogwarts has grown into something more. Teen literature is hot. Estimates suggest the category will generate $744.3 million in revenues for U.S. publishers this year, up 13% from $659.1 million in 2008. In comparison, book retailing in general is slumping, with revenue expected to fall nearly 5% from a year ago.

Instead of trying to grab kids’ eyes as they rush past the book stacks toward the movies and music, Borders is creating an in-store boutique called Borders Ink, featuring graphic novels, manga (Japan’s homegrown style of comics), vampires, and, of course, wizards. It hopes to have as many as 90% of its superstores featuring the teen reading section by the end of the month.

This is encouraging. First, more readers generally means that publishers will have more room to take on more authors in this field. Second, diversifying comic book sales beyond comic-book stores is extremely important.  That’s especially true if you want to write for demographics that are far more likely to visit a bookstore than a comic-book store– like women, children/parents, first-time comic book readers, etc.

To our credit, we readers did give every single submission, no matter how ludicrous, a fair and honest appraisal. During my reign as slush handler, a few projects garnered further consideration from our editors; one was even published. [emphasis mine] …

The slush pile [is] a teeming smorgasbord of mediocrity sprinkled with healthy doses of the awful and the insane. Fair or not, there’s a kind of self-selection process that governs the pile, the perception being that good writers are the ones who manage to stay off of it in the first place. The job of our readers was to sift through the pile and find the exceptions to the rule. It was a Sisyphean task at best. Every day, boxes of self-help, pet-inspired wisdom and near-death experiences would cycle through my office to be read and rejected in what seemed a never-ending stream of futility. Being on the slush pile was the literary equivalent of being on death row…

It was the phone calls that were the bane of my existence. Most of those who called were probably hardworking folks who showed courage just by picking up the phone. By God, I hated them…

The callers who irked me most were those who hadn’t done their homework and were using me as some sort of research tool. They asked me how to publish a book, how to get an agent, what kinds of books we published. One gentleman inquired, “When you publish my book, how much will you pay me?*” Another wanted to know, “How many copies of a book do you usually print?**” (When I said it depended, he countered, “So, what then? Millions?”) I was astonished at these questions; I couldn’t imagine dialing the general number at Miramax and asking how to make a movie. There’s a place you can find this information, people. It’s called a bookstore. Look into it.

*– It depends, but Tobias Buckell found that the typical first-novel earns a cash advance of around $4000. Around $5500 if you have an agent.

**-Again it depends, but most novels get an initial print-run of a few thousand copies.