Writers are from Venus, editors are from Mars... in between are agents

Sandra Parshall


Writers live in their own insular worlds – located mostly inside their heads – and editors live in the bustling world of commerce, where a book is a product that must justify its presence on a shelf. Straddling both worlds, always trying to bridge the gap, are those wondrous creatures called agents. If a writer wants to be published by a big New York imprint these days, having an agent to get your manuscript on editors’ desks is a must. Most New York editors won’t look at work that hasn’t first been vetted by an agent they respect.

Agents are in the ideal position to judge the current turmoil in the publishing business and predict the future, so I was eager to hear from the panel of agents who spoke at the Malice Domestic conference last weekend. Because the phenomenal Anne Perry was being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Malice organizers were able to lure both her US agent, Donald Maass, and her British agent, Meg Davis, to the conference and to seats on the panel. Joining them were Ellen Pepus of the Signature Literary Agency, Janet Reid of the Fine Print Agency, and Meg Ruley of the Jane Rotrosen Agency.

They tackled the toughest question first: Is publishing dead, or dying?

Ruley – whose clients include Julia Spencer-Fleming, Dorothy Cannell, Rhys Bowen, Cathy Pickens, and other equally talented mystery writers – believes this is a “watershed moment” in the history of publishing, with great movement and change as people discover new ways to read. Books are still selling, but the printed form is no longer the only way to enjoy a book.

Davis agreed and pointed to the internet and other “channels we haven’t seen before” that allow authors to prove to publishers that an audience exists for what they’re writing. Reid – who represents Dana Cameron, among other well-regarded mystery and thriller writers – said that publishing is certainly changing, but writers shouldn’t worry about it. “The one thing that will not change is the hunger for storytelling.” She advises writers to “just write really, really well” and leave the business worries to others.

Don Maass, who looks far too young to be the legend he is (clients include a long string of award winners and NY Times bestselling authors), believes that e-publishing is taking hold, although it now represents a “microscopic” percentage of book sales. Audiobooks, Maass said, account for 10% of publishing profits, and eventually e-publishing will equal that.

So what’s selling? What’s hot and what’s not?

These five agents may be markedly different in their personal styles, but they all played variations on the same theme: they want to see superior writing and storytelling ability. They aren’t interested in shallow books that are basically more of the “same old same old.”

“People want something that engages their minds in an intelligent way,” Meg Davis said. “They want books with weight.”

While admitting there’s still a strong market for vampire books, Ellen Pepus said she’s looking for “deeper” books that delve into the psychology of the characters.

Reid finds thrillers easiest to sell, but she said that a “compelling, fresh voice” is essential even in escapist fiction.

Ruley doesn’t believe it's worthwhile to think in terms of trends, but she snaps to attention when a book written in a “fresh and distinctive voice” lands on her desk.

Maass spoke rather disdainfully of “hook-y” books and said there are now more mysteries featuring Jane Austen as a character than books actually written by Austen. Those novels, he said, are “nice but shallow.” He’ll consider representing only “the best paranormal” – novels that create a rich, layered story world. What he most admires are literary mysteries with deep character development and great storytelling that works on many levels. He looks for “micro-tension” in a novel – every sentence must be so strongly crafted that it compels the reader forward. No flab, no utilitarian prose.

With so many writers jumping from genre to genre these days, I was especially interested in these agents’ views on writers who want to try different things. Pepus said that if a writer can be successful in different genres, she’ll represent everything the author produces. But Maass and Ruley said it’s unlikely that a writer can master more than one genre. A writer should think about his or her long-range career and focus on one thing, Ruley advised. “The more focused you can be, the better.” Maass agreed, advising writers to stick with what they do best and cultivate the audience for that type of book.

How does a writer claim the attention of these agents? It is possible, however daunting it may seem. Maass pointed out that his agency (four agents, total sales of about 150 novels per year) launched the careers of half a dozen new writers in the past year. Those writers have one important thing in common, aside from their talent: they were willing to dig in and do major rewrites for the agency before the manuscripts were marketed, and they had the patience to take their time and bring their books as close to perfection as possible. He’ll read queries from unpublished writers, always looking for a voice so distinctive that it bowls him over, and he doesn’t ask for exclusives on manuscripts. Neither does Ruley.

Davis bemoaned the number of “mass mailings” she receives – queries broadcast to every agent in the world. Don’t send out stuff like that, she advised, and don’t send agents money, candy, cookies, or nude photos of yourself either. Most writers, the agents agreed, say too much in their queries. It takes “so much less” to engage an agent’s attention than writers believe, Maass said. Brevity is best. If your work is special, you’ll be able to convey that in one paragraph.

Reid said she prefers to make sales herself, rather than being approached by writers who have contracts in hand and just want an agent to do the fine-tuning on the deal.

One of the most discouraging comments came from Pepus, who cautioned that “most first books don’t sell.” But if she loves a client’s writing, she’ll hang in there until something does sell.

Often it seems to writers who are wading through rejections that the last thing in the world agents are looking for is a new client, but no one who sat in on this panel could miss the enthusiasm – the love – that Davis, Pepus, Maass, Reid and Ruley feel for books and the people who write them. Ruley summed it up when she said “the most fun ever” is discovering a new writer whose work makes her “flip out.” Believe it or not, agents are in the business for the same reason writers are – because they are passionate about books.

(The agents in the photo above are Meg Davis, Ellen Pepus, Donald Maass, Janet Reid, and Meg Ruley.)

Life's not fair. Neither is publishing.

Sandra Parshall

I can’t recall a time when writers, myself included, weren’t complaining about the dire state of publishing – the difficulty of selling a book, the difficulty of staying published once you’ve broken in, the unfairness of it all.

The cries of doom have risen to fever pitch in the last week, with news of widespread layoffs and downsizing at some of the biggest publishing houses. When Timothy Egan’s column titled “Typing Without a Clue” appeared in the New York Times last Sunday, a lot of writers seized on it as the perfect expression of their own frustration with a business that chases bestsellers and spends money on books of little merit instead of nurturing real talent.

I have to admit I’m bemused when I see mystery writers praising Egan’s piece as if he has championed their own cause. While Egan raises valid questions – what can Joe the Plumber possibly have to say that warrants putting his thoughts between covers, and why would anything written by Sarah Palin be worth a $7 million advance? – I don’t think he's speaking for crime fiction writers. Like most people who rant on this subject, Egan seems angered by the lack of support for literary novels and, as he says, "extraordinary histories" and "riveting memoirs" as well as the works of foreign writers who “struggle to get past a censor’s gate.” I don't think he's upset by the difficulty of getting a new cozy mystery or police procedural published.

(Egan himself writes history, by the way, and he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His one work of fiction, a 2005 novel titled The Winemaker’s Daughter, was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “scattered, clumsy and overearnest.”)

Plenty of people would say that crime fiction is part of the problem in today’s publishing business. They look at all the mysteries and thrillers on the bestseller lists and denounce them as garbage with no lasting value. They deplore the big advances paid to authors like James Patterson, Patricia Cornwell, and David Baldaccci. Yet readers love those authors' books and buy them, literally, by the millions. Patterson often has two or three books on the bestseller lists simultaneously. Can anyone realistically expect the folks at Little, Brown to turn their backs on profits of that magnitude and concentrate on “small” books that might sell 3,000 copies each? Of course not. And to hold onto a writer like Patterson, the publisher has to plunk down a lot of money up front.

A Patterson book will earn back every cent of the advance and a lot more in profit for the publisher. An investment in such a proven commodity carries no risk. Publishers run into trouble, though, when they fork over million dollar advances for novels that don’t interest readers. It’s easy to see how it happens. A book has the elements of previous bestsellers, plus some unique attribute – it’s the same but different, just what publishers want – and several editors become convinced it will be The Next Sensation. In their determination to get it, they bid against one another until the advance reaches a ridiculous amount. Sometimes the book does well, everyone profits, and a new star is born. Often it either flops or has mediocre sales. Then the publisher is in trouble, and so is the writer.

Aside from the established stars of the genre, few crime fiction authors these days are naive enough to feel safe because they have publishing contracts. I know a lot of writers who have been dropped by their publishers in recent years, not because their series were outright failures but because they didn't “break out” and become bestsellers. Even imprints that don’t expect bestsellerdom for every author may, nevertheless, routinely discard a series after two or three books if sales don’t grow rapidly. As far as I can tell, the only people who feel bad about this are mystery writers themselves and mystery readers. Maybe Timothy Egan cares too, but I have my doubts.

Publishing is an old-fashioned business that can’t seem to catch up with the modern world. Online marketing, for example, remains largely unexplored territory for some houses. But the people who run publishing companies have recognized one sad fact about modern life: the number of people who love to read -- really READ -- and have time for it has declined drastically. For people who want a book-like product without the heavy work of thoughtful reading, they publish junk food for the mind that is quickly enjoyed and discarded. Good commercial fiction -- the category the best crime novels fall into -- is several cuts above that, but it is still primarily entertainment. A healthy market remains for commercial fiction, and that drives publishers to take insane gambles in the hope of a big payoff.

The latest round of layoffs and restructuring reduced the number of salaries publishers have to pay but apparently changed little about the way they do business. I’ve never known a time when publishing wasn’t in trouble. I probably never will. And I doubt there’s anything writers – or readers – can do to change a business that isn’t willing to fix itself.