Midwest Writers Workshop- Agent Speak

Today's workshop began with an agent panel with Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of Nancy Coffey Literary and Media Representation and Diane Freed of Fine Print Literary Management. Both were very helpful and interesting to talk to.

Diane Freed emphasized the importance of finding a good match between writer and agent.

Joanna Stampel-Volpe named 3 resources for researching the right agent for you:

AgentQuery
QueryTracker
GLA (the link to the GLA blog is already on this site)

Contrary to some of the debates out there, both admitted a willingness to look at and even represent self-published works (Diane has successfully represented 2 already), though Joanna said that she would be more interested in seeing the newest work by an author who already has a successful self-published novel to his or her credit, as opposed to representing the already-published work.

Hollywood Book Festival- Entering Contests

When taking any book- self-published or traditionally published- one has to throw lines out in many directions to try to see what takes hold, especially new authors.

So this blog began as my arena to vent the trials and tribulations, and glean encouragement and advice from others, for my significant other and I as we journeyed toward trying to take his self-published work and make it, and him, successful in the literary world.

Today we learned of one success in our efforts. I've written before about entering contests, and we entered his book in a handful.

Today we learned that his novel, Winter Games, was the Grand Prize winner in the 2009 Hollywood Book Festival. This week he will be flown out to receive his award in Hollywood at a ceremony concluding the festival.

Hopefully this opportunity will lead to connections and contacts that can land him an agent and other publishing opportunities. We shall see . . .

This week in writing and publishing . . .

Writing:

Check out JA Konrath's latest blog, with 7 pieces of advice for writers. Great ideas- thanks JA!

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/05/advice-for-professional-writers.html


Publishing:

Agents' blogs are all abuzz (and off-kilter) this week due to the BEA (Book Expo America) conferences. The blog that I have found the most pertinent in terms of real, applicable advice for writers comes from Agent Kristin of Pub Rants. Check out her blog for advice on how to get agents to keep reading your writing and what makes them stop reading.

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2009/05/number-one-thing.html

Selling Foreign Rights?

So, the latest thing I'm interested in learning about writing is the question of selling foreign rights for self-published books. Has anyone gone about doing it before or have any advice/ agent names to contribute? Post a comment!

Rejection Letters and So Forth . . .

Today we got another rejection letter, but I will say that this one stood out from the rest. It was from an agent who had loved what she saw, but her agency was divided on the manuscript and needed unanimous approval to take on a new client. Nonetheless, she took the time to explain it and point out what she thought were two of the novel's positive points- the likable protagonist and the smooth prose. I'm trying to focus on that for encouragement for future possibilities. :)