Fiction that Sells in Todays Marketplace

Andrea Hurst – Crafting Fiction that Sells in Today’s Marketplace
(From an Agents POV)
2010 Willamette Writers Conference
Assistant agent – Gordon Warnock

(No Fantasy; No genre fiction)

Craft: Leap into going into business. Publishing climate changing rapidly. Even year to year. The more you educate yourself the better off you are. There are less publishers buying less books and with e-books, there is less money.

First: line, paragraph, page and first 50 pages have to be perfect.

Need your platform now. (First step).
1) Agents care about this.
2) What bookshelf at Barnes and Nobles your book will go on – category/subcategory.
a. One only
b. Be able to tell them.
c. Especially for first time authors.
3) What’s selling? (Commercial fiction?)
4) Need great plot, characters, and a strong theme.
5) Genre – Need protagonist to be in same age range of audience.

Gordon: Takes literary fiction with commercial edge. More character than plot.
Andrea: Wants well-written polished form of writing with enough plot to make it commercial.
(Literary fiction with a commercial edge).


6) Title – Crucial
a. First selling point to people who are looking at book
b. What makes people look at front and back cover
i. But publishers or agents may change it
7) Page or Word Count
a. Common – 80,000 to 100,000 words.
i. Page Count doesn’t matter
1. Word count is everything
Aside: This isn’t true for fantasy. Fantasy can be much longer.
b. First time authors need to go by this
c. Also, book must be edited before you send it in
i. Double-spaced
8) Not the marketplace to be an exception
a. Especially first-time authors


She’s into comparable titles in one-line pitches:
1) If you don’t have authors for exact match with your type of book, you can mix up combinations of authors and books.
a. Bring in your audience.
i. Bigger audiences the more money.
1. Best-selling books, movies and authors.

NOTE: Paranormal big right now.

Things that do/don’t work:
1) Don’t start with backstory.
a. Grab the reader by starting in the present, in the moment. In the action.
2) Agent won’t do editing.
a. Have 99% done when send it to them.
3) Books need a beginning, a middle and an end. Need all 3.
4) Self-publishing no longer has stigma it used to have
a. Dorchester (small publisher) has just gone all digital.
5) Author Blog:
a. Who writes this type of book
i. (Post on each others’ blogs)?

Back Cover Copy: (Some writer back cover first)
1) Words will walk book up to cash register or back to shelf.
a. Invitation for readers to purchase it – sell, sell, sell
i. Focus of Book
ii. Queries?
iii. Pitch
iv. Publishers


Do:
1) Compare with others in same genre
2) Work on backcover
3) Blog
a. Problem – more bloggers than blog readers

Aside: Mentions pennywarren.com