Mark Gilroy

Bringing Books to Life!

Books

Mark has been a book man since he learned to read. Why did he get in trouble in elementary school? Because he was reading a book when he should have been doing his math. Mark shares insights on questions you might have. How are books written? How do books get edited? How do books get published and distributed? And what are some great books that have something unique and compelling to say?

Do I Need An Agent to Sell My Book Proposal?

Q: Do I Need An Agent to Sell My Book Proposal?

A: It depends.

Do I need an agent to get a book project sold?

Do I need an agent?!

This is almost like me asking you if I need a realtor to sell my house. Okay, in light of the current housing market, that might not be a very nice parallel. But then again, a quick look at the publishing industry might make that comparison even more apt. But back to the question and topic.

In the “old days” of publishing, let’s say prior to 1990, there was a common publishing phrase that referred to an unsolicited manuscript that was sent to a publisher as something that “came in over the transom.” (A transom is literally a hinged window over a door. Think of the book return slot at a library.) In other words, a writer sent in his or her manuscript to a mail drop, which then ended up in one of several 4-foot high stacks in a junior editor’s office, and which after six or seven months of collecting dust was either rejected with a form letter – or voila, it got discovered and published. One way many publishing companies handled submissions that came over the transom was to hire college interns to sift through hundreds or thousands of manuscripts over summer break and separate the winners from the losers.

Many publishers were still leery of agents in the mid-90s. (Many still are.) Since acquisitions is the lifeblood of publishing, they preferred to take the initiative and go find someone with a marketing platform to promote their own work; if that person couldn’t write, the publisher would help them write it with a ghost writer or collaborator. If an author didn’t have a platform but had exceptional verifiable credentials – for example a professor at a university with a reputation for expertise in a particular discipline – the publisher would still take the initiative. Both of these and many other scenarios still happen all the time but even when the publisher is responsible for basic ideation, it is more common to work deals through an agent. And next to never over the transom.

The worry for publishers back in the “old days” was that once an agent was involved, he or she would demand too much money up front as an advance and too much in royalty rates and thus damage the economies of publishing. (Okay, the publishers were right on this point for many deals.) But even with that concern, sometime in the mid and late 90s, agents went from being a luxury for big name authors who wanted to sell projects to one of the big publishing companies, to a near necessity for almost all writers interested in placing a project with almost any size publishing house.

Today, many publishers will no longer receive unsolicited manuscripts from authors. They prefer and require agent involvement. In a sense, the agent, for many publishing companies, has become a way to streamline the acquisitions process – and maybe even reduce head count. (In other words, the agent has become the primary acquisitions editor for a lot of publishers.) The hardcore, full time, certified agent – and yes, there are many former editors and other publishing staffers who moonlight at agenting – earns his or her commission (more often 15%, up from 10% even a decade ago), along with a trustworthy reputation that opens doors to a variety of acquisitions editors and publishers, by carefully screening authors and projects and vouching to the publisher that the author can deliver both great material and can help market it.

What does this mean for the aspiring author? It means that finding an agent who will represent your work can feel – and be – as hard as selling the project.

So, do you need an agent? The answer is YES, if …

1. You don’t have inside connections with one or more publishers who are already disposed to buying a project from you.

2. You haven’t been approached by a publisher to write a project, which is a dream come true for anyone who has toiled with speculative work (you still might be better off with an agent if the deal seems fishy in some way).

3. You don’t have a large established platform (connection to a well defined audience that is motivated to buy from you) whereby you can guarantee a certain number of sales. (Some publishers will make a deal with this kind of author if the author commits to buying X number of copies, which becomes part of the contract. Some authors, particularly if they speak to large audiences, will then determine that they’ll make more money self-publishing.)

4. You want to be with a larger publisher (not necessarily the right option for every author or project) that will present your work to bookstores and other retailers. (I have a friend who has sold more than 1 million copies of his self-published book. He still feels dissatisfaction because the books he published with big time publishers did not do well in the trade.)

5. You have a big idea and a big audience that loves you, but don’t know the first thing about book publishing and aren’t really fond of writing.

That list isn’t close to being exhaustive and even if you can turn each point around and answer it conversely, you still may not need or want an agent. And acquiring the services of a well connected agent who really believes in your work is no guarantee that your work will be purchased by a publisher at all, much less at terms that feel reasonable to you. Plus, today there are many more professional quality self-publishing options available to the aspiring author. (Click here for my blog on whether self-publishing is for you.)

So do you need an agent? Unless you have the ways and means to sell a self-published work or have incredible connections within the publishing community, the answer is undoubtedly yes.

Q: Why Won’t a Publisher Read My Manuscript in a Timely Fashion?!

Q: Why won’t a publisher read my manuscript in a timely fashion?!

A: A better question might be this: Why should he or she give two or three hours in his or busy schedule to pore over what you’ve written in the first place?

Let’s start with the simple reality that most of the publishing world is situated in a low demand, high supply section of the supply-demand curve. That means publishers must deal with the fact that we publish more books than there are interested readers. You, the writer, are likewise part of a supply group that is sending more manuscripts than a publisher has demand for in his or her world of limited open slots.


Note that the third variable in the SD Curve is Price. High supply + low demand = low price. Price, for you the aspiring author, is the publisher’s motivation to read your manuscript. Don’t get mad that the price you can charge is low, just understand it and do what you can to change something on the graph. Incidentally, I know a lot of publishers and acquisitions editors who are very nice people and would love nothing more than to encourage and help you. Those who spend a lot of time doing this, however, tend to be ex-publishers and ex-acquisitions editors. It doesn’t pay the bills nor justify the salary.

Publishers aren’t looking for more manuscripts to review but we’ve got to publish something, so unless we have a strong cadre of proven authors signed to long term deals we do want to read the right ones. (See my blog on whether you need an agent to round this discussion out.) What makes a manuscript the right manuscript? Bottom line: It offers something unique and compelling to a well defined audience. If you can’t articulate in a sentence or two what makes your book special for a group of readers that the publisher has some history or means of reaching, then an acquisition specialist probably won’t sort through your material to help develop your “elevator speech” with you. Let’s break down the components of the sentence that is set in bold face.

1. Articulate: Is your sales pitch as well articulated as your manuscript? (Both are well written, right?)

2. In a sentence or two: When you skim book shelves or magazine contents or advertisements or any other message, how long do you give it to catch your attention? Five seconds? I doubt it. Why would you expect a publisher to be any different than you, particularly since he or she knows that the finished book will have the same requirement to nab attention in a second or two put on it by consumers. Hint: There’s something that goes on the cover of a book that serves as the best sales pitch available. (I’ll address titling and subtitling in a future blog.)

3. What makes your book special: If you have quoted someone else’s work in every chapter, there’s a good chance your book is not needed. If you haven’t created something with a new angle, a new discovery, a new application, a new character, a new anything that is important and compelling – why bother?

4. For a group of readers: Chances are your book idea will not appeal to everybody. So bold assertions that millions will want to pick up this book is a real turn off and indication you haven’t thought through who will actually take the time to look your book over and purchase it. Better to be honest about the size of the group that your book appeals to.

5. That the publisher has some history or means of reaching: Textbook publishers don’t effectively market to fiction readers and fiction publishers don’t do a good job of marketing to preachers and ministry publishers don’t tend to reach romance enthusiasts and so on! When you determine who to send your manuscript to, make sure that the publisher has published comparable titles.

This Q/A is as philosophical as it is practical. It’s about helping you measure your expectations and understand why the process is frustrating without getting to frustrated. I’ll come back to the major points of a good book publishing proposal (because whether or not you hire an agent, you’re going to be the one who has to write it!), which will have significant overlap.

Okay, back on topic. Why won’t a publisher just read your manuscript and proposal? Don’t blame him or her. You haven’t yet articulated a concise and compelling reason to do so.

Q: My Book Has Not Sold Many Copies. Can I Get Rights Reverted Based on Poor Sales?

Q: My book has not sold many copies. Can I get rights reverted based on poor sales?

A. If that is not stipulated in the contract (and it rarely is), then not without some help. Take a look at your publishing agreement to see if there are sales performance requirements written into the terms. But if you don’t find a suitable condition, you can still ask your publisher nicely.

How can I get publishing rights to my book back?

My book didn’t sell many copies – and it’s going downhill from there!

Most publishing agreements have several provisions that allow you to get your publishing rights back.

For example, most agreements have a time frame within which the publisher must publish your work after acquiring it. Eighteen months is not atypical. In other words, a publisher can’t buy your book and just sit on it. Now, if you turned in your manuscript late or it has not yet been made acceptable through the editing process or there are some other extenuating circumstances, they (the publisher) are probably protected from surrendering rights back to you.

Another example of a rights reversion clause is most agreements have an in-print provision. If your book is not available for purchase and you bring it to the publisher’s attention – in writing – with a specific request to rectify this by reprinting the book, the publisher must send the book back to press within a defined period of time or return publishing rights to you. Just to repeat, the onus is usually on you to initiate the process in writing.

This has increasingly become a point of contention between authors and publishers in the digital age. Why? In many agreements, offering a book in a downloadable e-book form is all that is needed for a book to be considered in-print. And further, digital publishing means that the publisher can economically transition from offset printing to print on demand. In other words, your book will technically never be out of print even if nothing much is currently happening in the area of sales and marketing.

Third, a few agreements have qualifiers like a set time period for publishing rights or a minimum number of annualized sales or the requirement that it be included in a printed catalog. If you don’t remember this coming up when you were negotiating a contract, then this probably doesn’t apply to your agreement!

My book was printed on time and is still in print. It just isn’t selling like I thought it would. This is so disappointing.

Even if none of the conditions apply, go ahead and ask to have your publishing rights reverted, but don’t be surprised if the answer is no. Or if the publisher encourages you to do some marketing activities that will help rekindle demand for your book in the marketplace.

Now, if sales of your book have steadily waned to next to nothing, if you have earned out your advance against royalties (or you are willing to pay back unearned advances against royalties), if inventory levels are low (and especially if you’re willing to buy the remaining copies in stock), and if there isn’t sufficient demand to warrant an offset print run (let’s say about 1,500 copies), then your publisher just might shrug his or her shoulders and say sure, you can have your publishing rights back. Often, the publishing agreement specifies that in such cases the publisher will let you have any plates, films, and files free or at publisher’s actual cost to retrieve them. With plates and films basically being obsolete there is usually no or little cost associated with retrieving the electronic files. (Though that doesn’t mean anyone can easily put their hands on the most up-to-date print-ready iteration.)

But again, even if all the circumstances of the previous paragraph are present, many publishers (self included) are loathe to return rights. Why? They (we) have invested a lot of money into publishing your work and as distribution technology changes and morphs into podcasts, e-books, print-on-demand solutions, and more, they don’t want to lose opportunities to recoup their investment through new means of exploiting your work.

And one final question for you to ask yourself. What can you do to promote sales that the publisher hasn’t done or won’t do? If the answer is “a whole lot more” then get busy and drive sales without the manufacturing and inventory hassles. Or, if you have an iron-clad way to sell your own books directly, like a speaking schedule, ask nicely for your rights to be reverted and hope for a yes answer.