Bartography

Last week’s comment by Pam and my own recent exchanges with literary agents have got me to thinking.

The question I used to ask myself about agents was “Do I want one?” That’s now easy for me to answer — yes. The question that’s replaced it — “Why do I want one?” — is trickier, but this week I’m going to try my best to answer it. Tonight’s installment is:

I used to pride myself on the database I’d set up for keeping track of publishers, the editors who work there, the books they’ve produced, etc. As these things go, I thought it was pretty comprehensive, well organized, and useful.

Now, it just strikes me as a necessary evil, drudgery, and something I’d dearly love to not have to keep up with anymore. When I take a look at the file, my lack of enthusiasm shows. Here’s a sample:

Ms. Jamie Michalak Associate Editor at 2002 SCBWI Spring Thing — SHE’S GONE (PC 7/04); xxxxxxxxx@candlewick.com; 10 others listed; sent Day-Glo MS to Hilary Cameron; Executive Editor Mary Lee Donovan (CW 8/02); Sarah Ketchersid, Editor, coming to Austin 10/04; Deborah Wayshak, editor of PB and YA (also a writer of YA fantasies; likes picture books with longer texts and more sophisticated plots, says xxxxxxxx after DFW conference 9/04); Marc Aronson is buying young-adult novels, PW 7/8/04; Monica Perez has left for Houghton, PC 5.05

Clearly, some pruning is in order. But the problem is not just that I need to clear out some old contact names. What I notice most is the limited usefulness of this document. I have information that might help me get a manuscript to a receptive editor, but all the database fields in the world won’t allow me to know these people the way a good agent knows them.

Keeping this database helped me learn the business a few years back. Now, I’ve learned it well enough to know that there are limits on the insight I’ll be able to glean from Publisher’s Weekly, the Purple Crayon, and the occasional conference. And so I’m looking for an agent who inhabits the same world as the editors I want to read my manuscripts, and who can help me retire from the publishers-database business.

Next: It’s about the time, not the money

Bleah. I just finished watching the children’s-book-contest episode of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. What a grim, unpleasant way to spend the hour. The folks at Random House came off all right — Anne Schwartz smartly seized the opportunity to pooh-pooh the sing-songy rhyme used in the losing team’s effort (and in so many celebrity-written books, though she didn’t say so) — but I really don’t see how the publisher benefits by being involved in such tawdry proceedings.

It is possible, though, that I underestimate the book-buying public’s hunger for an aquatic retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk written by an eight-member collective going by the name “Primarius” and illustrated by… by…

Uh, well, they didn’t say. Thanks, Madonna.

In far better news today, I received an e-mail from the agent I’d corresponded with last week. It was just a quick note to tell me that she’d received the package of manuscripts I’d sent her. What a gracious thing for her to do. And completely out of the ordinary, in my experience. You have no idea how many points that earned her in my book. And it took, what, a minute of her time? Two minutes? Why is that sort of gesture so uncommon in this business?

Meanwhile, there was more to do with The Day-Glo Brothers, including a lunchtime phone interview with a source for the second time in as many days. (Didn’t I say that “finished” is a relative term?) For a while, I was unnerved that one source was referring to something as a type of fabric and another was referring to it as a resinous material (yes, we are getting this nitpicky), but then I realized that they’re both talking about cellulose acetate. It’s a fabric, it’s a resin, it’s a plastic, and so much more!

Oh, and there’s a Category 5 hurricane barreling toward the Texas coast, with vast amounts of wetness expected to reach up here to us in Austin on Saturday. In the meantime, it’s supposed to be 101 degrees tomorrow. Happy autumn, y’all.

For a while I’ve thought that one of the lamest moves a writer — or anyone — can make is to send a follow-up e-mail to “make sure” someone (an editor, for example) received a previous letter or e-mail. It’s a move that carries a whiff of desperation: “If they didn’t respond to that one, maybe they’ll respond to this one.”

Yesterday, I sent just such an e-mail (cloaked as an “update”), and boy, am I glad I did. In mid-May I’d queried an agent regarding various of my manuscripts — six or seven in all — and as the months passed, I stewed over the lack of response. I’d mailed the query, along with a synopsis and chapter outline for my novel, but I deliberately did not send an SASE, so as to encourage a response via e-mail. Finally, yesterday, quite suddenly, I decided it was time to follow up.

By mid-day, I’d heard back from this agent. Not only had she received my query, etc., but she had already replied. She’d replied in mid-June with an e-mail — just as I’d hoped — inviting me to send her every manuscript I’d mentioned in my query. For whatever reason, I never got that e-mail.

And it’s not as if it’s the first time this has happened. A couple of years ago, I’d e-mailed a Big-Name Editor with a picture book biography manuscript (not The Day-Glo Brothers), on the recommendation of one of her published authors. Months went by, and I heard nothing. Finally, I went for the “just making sure” gambit and heard quickly from this Big-Name Editor that she’d mailed a request for a rewrite — along with two recently published picture-book biographies to serve as guideposts — a few months earlier. Her package had never arrived.

In that case, the Big-Name Editor resent the books, I rewrote my manuscript three times, and in the end, nothing came of our efforts. But the relationship and the improved manuscript that resulted from my following up on that original e-mail sure made up for any self-perceived lameness for following up.

The other day Jane Yolen touched on the frustration of not having other professionals in this business reply to calls, letters, and e-mails in a timely fashion. It’s worth remembering that the postal service or its online and even voice-mail equivalents may possibly be at fault, and that any editor or agent who would spurn you just because you followed up on a previous missive is probably not someone you’d want to work with, anyway.