Running a Book through the Marketing Wringer

[Image: found it here, at the “family tree” site of a gentleman in a
much better position than myself to identify everyone involved.]

I haven’t talked much of Seems to Fit here since announcing a few months ago, rather deliriously, that I imagined it to be “done.” Whatever else this meant, of course, it meant that the book was about to set forth on an awkward journey, drifting — mostly becalmed — between two ports: the author’s desk and an unknown reader’s hands. If you’re at all familiar with the process, you probably know some of the intermediate destinations I may be stopping at along the way. I promise to report on the trip once the guy up in the crow’s nest glimpses the mainland coast (and convinces the skipper he’s not imagining things).

In the meantime, I’ve had a couple of developments I thought I’d share. These aren’t “marketing” developments, strictly speaking, but they should help me when the moment arises.

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First up: the matter of the query letter. (And for anyone uncertain what that is, it’s a very brief letter or email of introduction to the book, meant for the eyes of an agent or editor and — so hopes the writer — meant to persuade such a reader of the book’s worthiness.) The Web may offer more advice about query letters, from more writers, agents, editors, and miscellaneous opinionated bystanders, than it offers (say) advice about how a voter should cast his or her ballot. The advice’s tone ranges from gentle to strident, and its substance, from authoritative to delusional. No recipe for querying success ever seems to agree in every particular with any other.

I’m not about to offer my own suggestions on how a query “ought” or “ought not” to go about its business. But I will share my own query with you, which its writer developed after treading water for probably way too long in the sea of advice. [Note to self: back off on the maritime metaphors, you non-swimmer, you.] Note that I’m not here soliciting feedback about it, just offering it up as the way one author is dealing with the question.

(And if you’re concerned that it might contain spoilers, it does so only slightly: it’s more or less written like something you might read on the back jacket of a book before deciding to crack it open. If you’re still worried, though, clicking on this link will jump you down to a point below the query letter’s contents.)

So — the query:

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A few months ago, I was obsessively re-reading — as one does — my book’s first chapter. I didn’t exactly hate it, but I didn’t love it, either — especially the first couple of sections, which introduced my main characters. The writing was good enough but (ah, my old nemesis!) the storytelling wasn’t. Particularly, it introduced those main characters by showing them through the eyes of a character who appeared nowhere else in the book. I worried about this for maybe a week before I remembered I had a ready-made peripheral character who already appeared at various points throughout the storyline. I threw out the extraneous point of view and recast those first two sections as one. It’s definitely better now (and a thousand words shorter). Every now and then I think of another little change I might make, and then make it, but that’s just picking at lint.

(I’m still trying to make up my mind about the very first few sentences. Seems to me — to part of me, anyhow — that I need a sentence or two before them. Haven’t convinced myself one way or the other, though. Not yet.)

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Most agents and editors open to queries try to cut down on the chaff they’ve got to sort through by laying out, in one medium or another, the materials that they’d like to see in the query’s company before asking to see the entire novel. One wants to see the first five pages; one, the first fifty; another, the first five chapters; still another, just the first page; and so on.

And every now and then, one says that he or she wants to see not just the query and sample, but also a synopsis of the entire book. (Most ask for a general synopsis, no more than a couple-three pages in length; some few want a chapter-by-chapter blow-by-blow.)

I’ve resisted writing a synopsis. In the first place, not everyone wants to read one. Wasted effort, right? But the main reason I think I’ve resisted writing one is the main real reason for writing one, the reason which has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with the quality of the story: writing a synopsis may expose structural flaws (and strengths!) not obvious while one is simply swimming along in the prose, or even in retrospect… especially when one is himself the writer of the prose (and hence alternately in love with his own voice and sick of it).

I could lie to myself, of course, and insist that I had other, purer or at least more practical motives for avoiding the synopsis. So much work, my time is valuable, blah blah blah. Well, no, strike that: I did lie to myself that way.

And then this week I was looking at the Web site of (as it happens) a highly respected literary agent whose name I had never encountered before. His query policy asked for a relatively generous fifty-page sample… and a two-page synopsis. Why? Because, he said, he just wants to know what you’ve done with the story after that first, presumably well-polished big chunk. It struck me as a fair request — a fair trade, of sorts: I’ll commit to read a substantial opening portion of your novel, if you’ll tell me what happens over the rest of it.

And then, at last, I suddenly realized the real reason I’d been ducking it all along. You lazy galoot!, I admonished myself. (Adopting a jocular voice in one’s self-admonitions is one way to soften their sting.)

Here’s how I’m going about it: I’m writing the detailed, chapter-by-chapter synopsis first. (Seems to Fit consists of fifty-one chapters, broken into four parts.) From that, I’ll distill everything down to the simpler and more general two-page version. And then, finally — once I’m honestly satisfied about those structural matters — I’ll add Agent X to my list… and be ready for any others. And my conscience will be clear, my lazy-galootness behind me. (At least, until I remember the next corner I cut.)

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Postscript: All of this with the book, and simultaneously trying to fiddle with new work, has been taking place against a backdrop of a summer’s worth of flat-out intense day-jobness. That pace, alas, will continue into September, during which time I’ll probably continue to post a couple times here and visit your own places, too. I really miss making what I still think of as my usual rounds of them. (You lazy galoot!)