Now you've had time to digest the query letter tips ...

Let's play a game! Or something.

In the past I have invited readers to submit their query letters so I can delicately pick through them to give feedback. This feedback is published on the blog, along with the query letter. So, in a way, it's advance advertising for your manuscript (unless your query letter is no good, in which case you may wish to hang your head in shame).

Now, even though the last two weeks before Christmas are by no means slow in agent land - what with the frantic reading of all the submissions that have banked up over the past few months weeks - I have decided to throw myself into this query letter fray again and invite readers of the blog to submit query letters.

I'll take the first ten letters by email. There is no prize other than me giving you feedback.

One woman's treasure is another woman's ...

I am the lucky gold star recipient for the QL you analysed in your 17th January blog (QL #11, "A Heat Of The Moment Thing"). I was absolutely thrilled that it had passed muster, but have just received feedback from RWAmerica's Great Expectations contest that pretty much slammed the identical QL! This is what was said:

'Query is nicely written but I am not seeing a hint of a story, goal, motivation, major conflict, hurdles. This seems more like a description of two or so chapters. What does Becky want to achieve? What’s her goal? How is it impeded? What are some of the psychological reasons Becky doesn’t do relationships, or even a hint of one, e.g., "burned by boys in high school, young..."'

Now, I understand that judges are generally not agents or editors! And I understand that one person's idea of a great QL isn't necessarily another's. But I thought I'd hinted at enough to whet an agent/editor's appetite. Now I'm left wondering if this is something I should be trying to address in a more specific way - or whether it's a US vs Downunder thing - or whether it's just one of those best-ignored quirky judges' comments.

Any thoughts you have on this would be greatly appreciated.

This a perfect example of why it's so hard for authors to be able to guess what's right for the agent, publisher or competition they're submitting to: everyone's different, and you can't please all of the people all of the time. All any of us 'industry professionals' can do is try to provide some general guidelines, but in the end it all comes down to the expectations and taste of the person who's reading your query.

For me, your query letter was pretty much perfect. I loved your tone; the amount of detail you gave was great, and the hook was great too. I don't know what the RWAmerica guidelines were but it seems as though these judges had certain expectations that weren't met. The amount of detail requested by the judges - the detail they're saying you didn't provide - is probably more detail than agents/publishers would want. I don't need you to tell me about the character's psychological background in the query letter - I expect to find that out when I read the manuscript.

So perhaps this is just a matter of different submission guidelines and different expectations, and romance is quite specific about what's expected (I'm not an expert in it). Perhaps the lesson out of it is: read the submission guidelines carefully.

However, I thought you wrote a great query letter. So why not test it 'in the wild' - send it out, see what happens? If you're concerned, only send it to a couple of agents and see what the response is. If you're getting rejected, then look at tweaking it and maybe consult with some members of the romance writing community - it's very vibrant and, from what I've seen, collegial.

The rules and whether or not to bend them

I recently submitted my first novel to a writing competition. The competition rules specify that the novel should not currently be under consideration by other publishers, or sent to other publishers pending the outcome of the competition. They do not mention agents. Should I wait for the outcome of the competition before approaching an agent about the manuscript, or would it be okay to begin approaching agents now?

I was convinced I'd answered this question, but apparently not ... Apologies to the person who sent it in as it's taken exactly a month for me to answer!

You could, technically, send the manuscript to agents but then what will an agent do if she wants to take it on? She can't send it anywhere until the competition outcome is announced. And if you win the competition, then she can't send your manuscript anywhere anyway, nor can she do much for you, as the conditions of your entry into the competition were no doubt set in stone and there's no room to negotiate them. Conclusion: wait until you find out what happens.

Submissions and competitions

Can I enter a manuscript into a contest if a publisher is already considering it? Would the contest folks and/or the publisher dislike me doing this?

There is no publisher I know of who has a rule saying you can't send your manuscript elsewhere - including into competitions - while they're considering it. However, it's quite possible that the competition will have rules about what you can do with your manuscript so you would need to check those. If the rules say you can't have the manuscript under consideration anywhere else, you can then decide whether or not it's worth it to restrict yourself this way. (I've made my feelings on this subject clear elsewhere.)

If the competition rules don't preclude you having the manuscript under consideration at another publisher, the polite thing to do would be to send a letter to the publisher who's considering it saying that you're planning to enter the manuscript into the competition. That way there are no surprises if they decide they want to make you an offer.

Competitions and world rights

A writing competition (for novels) that I'm thinking of entering offers a cash prize plus publication. I notice in the small print however that the publishers reserve all world-wide publishing rights to the winning manuscript and all shortlisted manuscripts. Is this good or bad? Would the winner still get royalties on such things as foreign, movie or electronic rights?

There's a growing number of competitions in our island's publishing industry, so your question is timely and important.

It is customary for publishers to take worldwide rights for competition winners - okay, yeah, they have the writers over a barrel, so what can you do? But I have real problems with shortlisted writers (a) being told they can't submit elsewhere until the publishing company has decided whether they want to publish the novel or not and (b) being made to give up these rights while their status is in limbo, and even if it's not.

Foreign rights is a specialised area of the industry. I don't always advise my authors to hold onto their foreign rights so I can do something with them - sometimes the publisher will have a much better chance of placing the book overseas, and I'll tell the author that. It all depends on who we know and who publishes what, and it's important to do what's best for the book. So I'm not saying that publishers who take world rights in these competitions are inherently bad, because it may be good for the author if the publisher handles those rights. For example, if the author doesn't have an agent who can manage those rights for them, how are they going to exploit them otherwise? And for the winning manuscript, I can see why the publisher wants them: they've invested time in the competition, they've chosen a winner and now they're going to invest time and money in them. Thus, they want to have the opportunity to make back some of that money by selling foreign rights.

However, for the shortlisted writers this is not the case. The competition has served to bring their manuscripts to the publisher's attention, nothing more. They have not won; they will not automatically get an advance. The publisher is using the competition to find new talent, and that's fair enough, but the shortlisted writers should not then be subject to the same conditions as the winning manuscript. They should also be free to submit elsewhere. The Vogel Award, for example, is not an award for One Really Good Novel and Four Close Calls. It's an award for one novel alone. Once the winner is announced, the others should either be set free immediately or given a (short) time frame within which the publisher has exclusivity.

As for the royalties you mention, the author gets those - well, any money earned on sales of foreign rights or movie rights etc go against the advance, so you see royalties if you've earned out your advance. Any publishing contract that tells you that you're not entitled to a royalty on subsidiary rights (translation, movie and so on) is a contract you shouldn't sign.

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition

I recently entered an American writing contest called the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition. In short, it took the first 5000 eligible entries, gave the first 5000 words of each of those (which hadn’t been disqualified for contravening pedantic rules about pagination, margins, spacings, page breaks, word limits etc) to (unpaid) Amazon top reviewers and Amazon Editors to whittle down to a maximum of 1000. Those entries go to Publishers Weekly for a review of the full manuscripts, and then voting is open to the public from Jan 15, 2008 (the public sees an excerpt plus all reviews on a book page set up on Amazon). Penguin USA reviews the reviews and votes (not the submissions), and chooses the top ten between March 3 and March 31. Amazon customers then have one vote to choose the winning novel & an expert panel from the writing industry provides “insight and feedback” on the 10 finalists’ submissions while Amazon customers vote. The winner is published by Penguin USA with a $25,000 advance, and promotion from Penguin and Amazon, along with a suite of products from Hewlett Packard.

Is this competition being followed at all in Australia by the publishing industry? Is it just an experimental business strategy, or a genuine writing competition? Or both? Is it the way of the future?

I didn't even know about this competition so my answer to your first question would be 'no'. And to answer the others, I'd say it's a combination of business strategy and genuine writing competition, as well as an opportunity for NaNoWriMo writers to do something with their new manuscripts. I doubt it's the entire way of the future - the amount of resources needed to pull it off is extraordinary, so I can't even imagine that they'll do it every year - but it's good customer- and brand-building for both Amazon and Penguin (we help unpublished writers!). All publishers want to get their hands on great new talent, but this is a laborious way to go about it considering that they'll probably find it hard to find 1000 good manuscripts out of 5000. As a guide, I request full manuscripts from no more than 5% of the people who send submissions to the agency; they're hoping for a 20% strike rate.