How refreshing, at last, to hear such a candid, easy-to-take-in rundown of the do s and don't s. Such clarity deserves submissions that can comply with Piers Blofeld's welcome tips. An immense help. Thank you.
I think I've watched every one of your videos. I've enjoyed them all and appreciate the great advice. I hope that you'll find time to make more. It is wonderful to get great advice from someone in the industry.
Thanks for that, Piers - short, concise and to the point, excellent! The best point of your presentation was for me, point 11 - in the final conclusion, whether the novel is published or not, whether it sells well or not, the whole point of writing is to express yourself in the best way possible. If you feel you have done that, then for you it IS a great novel.
Treat me like a doctor! Best bit of advice I've read ever. We can all relate. We all go to the doctor's. Thank you for that great piece of take away advice.
This is what your kind agency prefers, or what you are! Many things do not apply anymore in 2020 - just like those job interviews that used to impose a proper smart suit to be considered nowadays are completely the opposite! Probably an old-school agency still selects based on many "set-in-stone" rules and beguile-me mentality because there are simply too many manuscripts they receive but I do consider it's rather subjective (an younger, still famous literary agent if there's something he likes about your email or your work he tells you to go grab a beer and chat it over!)
Thanks, sir. But for those of you watching, I hope you do realize some of this is subjective. I just today read another agent's query tips and she said not to spoil the ending for her in the query. Some of the tips here, I'm sure, are universal for agents--don't brag, etc.--but some are really individual preferences. By the way, sir, I just completed a 400K-word novel, written in couplets like Tartuffe, about a man with chronic priapism. What starts as a curse, he realizes to be a blessing. There's one particularly beautiful 37-page passage detailing his stay at a Mexican convent. In the end he dies of dehydration in the broom closet of a secretarial school, but his final soliloquy is a triumph. It's seriously a thousand times better than anything Shakespeare ever did. Would you sign me please? And I'm going to need an advance rather quickly if that's not a problem. Cheers.
thanks so much. I'm glad you said that bit about comparing your book to classics. I'm so busy selling my book, that it never occurred to me I might be overselling it.
Number 11"Write a great novel. It's easy." Well unless you can put together a good introductory letter and synopsis, it would seem that your 'Great Novel,' won't even be read. Shame you can fall at the first hurdle without anyone even reading your book.
That word count? The reluctant fundamentalist was of literary genre and was hardly of 25,000 words and got published (it is brilliant by the way). Is there any different word count rule to literary fiction?
I really liked this, sensible, practical, and put across in a reasonable way. Not high and mighty, like some agents, more like a friend. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that those who don’t manage the letter or synopsis well, have not written a worthwhile book. Many good writers are like other artists, poor at business. That said, I will watch all of your videos, Piers. Many thanks!
Watching your videos tends to make me feel excited and want to write more. Thanks for always giving honest insight into your business! I have to say, I am a bit disappointed that agents wouldn't be interested in publishing novellas. I had heard they were gaining popularity recently. Is fiction not allowed to be short or something? Not profitable enough?
Thanks so much for doing these videos. These are very helpful. I'm glad you don't like comparisons... Star Wars meets Moby Dick kind of stuff. That doesn't feel right to me either. Seems like a silly bit from a bad movie.
I wish there were agents to write the query for me. I've had beta readers tell me my novel is good, but with my memory issues etc, I find creating the query letters to be very difficult.
Thank you for your videos, I appreciate the open and honest insights you give! I will never understand why some people in the comments react so aggressively. You're just stating the realities of your daily work life, one of them being that you have limited time, so you have to make quick judgements about authors and their work. I would rather know what mistakes not to make so I can avoid being rejected for lack of research and avoidable mistakes... Or that I can make the informed decision to self publish. Anyway, thank you! I hope you'll make more videos!
People act aggressively because they are from the 'I want it and I want it now' generation. i.e. Don't you dare tell me my book has to be over 70,000 words, or well-written, or that I need to produce a compelling query letter (ANY author worth his or her salt should be able to drum up a half-reasonable letter if they can write a book. It's not a different skill-set at all) to interest you. How dare you! The arrogance! It's people like you that forced me to self-publish my 'Memoirs of an Accountant'. Self-belief is a healthy thing, but there is such a thing as too much self-belief with no talent to back it up. But try telling them that. Sheesh. I wonder how many of them, in the position, would treat every single submission as potential gold-dust, gently sifting through each and every one, reading every word, despite a crappy self-aggrandizing letter.
@@andrewmacleod4218 I agree with everything you said except I don't think it's a generational problem ;). I'm 27 and I don't think this way at all. I guess it's a question of character.
Thanks for the video. I have written two books for a large fantasy series that will easily span over at least five books. The amount of characters within the story are vast, and a short synopsis is nearly impossible to create. I have printed the first two books professionally, in paperback form, color covers and done extensive editing. To keep this short, I will get straight to my question. Do literary agents have any issues if an author wants to mail them hard copies of their books? I feel that my story is better represented when it is presented in its entirety, in the form I envision it to be on book sellers shelves. Any response is appreciated. Thanks again.
Hi Warren! I'm not an agent, but I'm in the middle of querying now, so I thought I'd reply to you! So we're on the same page, I've also written a fantasy novel, and just like yours, it's going to span five books. But agents don't really want to know what. LIke, once you've signed with one, tell them that you have a series planned and they'll be happy to hear that, but in your query letter, stick to the first book and only the first! In terms of a short synopsis not being possible, that's going to be a huge problem, because you're going to both a blurb (for your query) and a synopsis detailing the events of the novel! If you can't write one, you might have to edit the book again, cut out characters or chapters until you have a cohesive narrative. And I would stick to an agents guidelines, as he mentions in the video. Most submissions are through email nowadays, some agents asking only for a query and a few pages. If you don't want an agent, then you should start looking at indie publishers, or even self publishing, if you think you'll find an audience for your book!
This post is from two years ago but George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones was published three years after he sent his query letter, so I'm going ahead. George RR Martin is synonymous with enormous casts, and his query letter is online. Here's how he decided to sell it to Harper Collins. “All three books will feature a complex mosaic of intercutting points of view among various of my large and diverse cast of players. The cast will not always remain the same. Old characters will die, and new ones will be introduced. Some of the fatalities will include sympathetic. . . characters. I want the reader to feel that no one is ever completely safe, not even the characters who seem to be the heroes. The suspense always ratchets up a notch when you know that any character can die at any time.” He outlined a general overview of the characters who most directly impacted the plot and their relation to one another in the long term, far more than the particulars of their journeys. If Martin can make a general synopsis for where he plans the characters to go forward, then you can write up something close.
I'm an American. May I say "Cheers" in the salutation or the closing of the letter to a UK agent or is that off-putting or too familiar? "Dear Sir" or "Sincerely" doesn't seem attention-grabbing enough.
Love your videos! I am currently working on my first novel (in the editing phase at the moment) but I cannot for the life of me find a title for it that I like. Do I have to have a title for my novel before I send it to a publisher or agent? I wouldn't want to put anyone off with a bad title!
Hi Melanie: I'd say you should give your manuscript a title of some kind... A bad title won't put an agent off you project, because together we can come up with a great title for your work if it's something I love... So if your novel is a romantic story, then try something like. 'For You I'd Give My Last Breath' - if it's a thriller. Then how about something like. 'My Darkest Hour' or 'If Only I'd Known Truth' but please keep the title short and to the point.Long and over run titles and tiring and boring. A sharp title will say a lot about your project. And if I like something right off the bat, and I want to show it around my office. Then I'd hate to call it 'The book' or Melanie's book' and if I drop it and it gets mixed up I've then lost it forever. I do hope this helps you.Best of luck. From Sammy Jones.
I am trying to get an 80,000-word novel published now (in the U.S.). Five rejections thus far and several agents not responding. Could I possibly get you to critique my query letter?
I write mainly for children so the books are not long because children don't want long books yet looking at your vlogs, you tend to reject books that are only 50-60 pages long. what I tend to do is to offer two books as a package, and that way, although the stories are only shortish, their are two of them to be wrapped up as one package. twice the value, twice the excitement for one overall package. do you think that this is a good idea, or am I doomed to the never never land of endless rejections?
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (46,118 words) The Giver by Lois Lowry (43,617 words) The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (52,000 words) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (46,333 words) So, you're telling me you would have rejected these novels based off of word count alone... Do you have any idea how incredibly arrogant that makes you look?
great point! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (30,644) or Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (36,363) according to this video these books should have never seen the light of day. Searching for literary agent and then seeing this video just put me off of contacting this one
aside from Nicholas Sparks, none of those were debut novels. And Hitchhiker started out as a radio show, so it already had a following. Sure it's a little disheartening to be rejected on the basis of your word count, but you need to understand that for a debut you'll have to play it safe. Once you've established yourself as an author you can publish whatever you want in any length, as long as you have an audience.
Maybe he will. Agency is a business, ultimately it boils down to wheter he thinks it will sell. Think of it like you are in a fansy restuarant, and you find a delicious dish on the menu but it costs a ton which you don't have. Now, you may like it,but still you won't buy it, will you?
And Birdbox by Josh Malerman (bestsellerlist in New York Times for weeks and a Netflix-movie) was about 68.000 words, edited down from 113.000 words. To say that a book need to have at least 80.000 words is very strange
Making the claim that an author isn't in control of their own story because they can't condense it down into three or four sentences is really absurd. Can you do that with King's IT? No, of course not. Not properly enough to get a grasp of the story's arch. It's too long. So if that turns you off, you're going to be missing out on a lot of potentially great novels and equally great writers. All an agent should care about is whether the writer will be professional enough to work with, and whether or not he/she has the goods. Everything else is irrelevant.
Imagine all the manuscripts that are gold mines worth millions that could have been sold, but because of a not so impressive pitch letter, cover letter, query letter the work didn't get any attention. Literary agents need to stop acting like they are holding the keys to the kingdom and expecting authors to impress them. I call such lit.agents "vanity agents" They need to come down from their pedestal a few notches. They need to stop focusing on the query letters. Read the damn story instead and not just the first few chapters to see if the story is marketable. This issue is why many good authors left the whole idea of finding an lit.agent and went on instead to become their own agent and were successful.
Did you watch the video? How on Earth could they ever have time to read the whole story for every submission they receive? A good submission tells a good agent whether or not the author can write or not.
"Treat me like a doctor." Single best piece of advice I have heard, after listening to WAY TOO MANY of these people. Bravo, Cheers, Namaste, etc.
One of the best videos I've seen for helping a budding writer draft their covering letter. Thank you!!
How refreshing, at last, to hear such a candid, easy-to-take-in rundown of the do s and don't s. Such clarity deserves submissions that can comply with Piers Blofeld's welcome tips. An immense help. Thank you.
I think I've watched every one of your videos. I've enjoyed them all and appreciate the great advice. I hope that you'll find time to make more. It is wonderful to get great advice from someone in the industry.
The way this man talks is a clue to how one should write a cover letter and a submission. Thanks :)
Thanks for that, Piers - short, concise and to the point, excellent! The best point of your presentation was for me, point 11 - in the final conclusion, whether the novel is published or not, whether it sells well or not, the whole point of writing is to express yourself in the best way possible. If you feel you have done that, then for you it IS a great novel.
Treat me like a doctor! Best bit of advice I've read ever. We can all relate. We all go to the doctor's. Thank you for that great piece of take away advice.
This is what your kind agency prefers, or what you are! Many things do not apply anymore in 2020 - just like those job interviews that used to impose a proper smart suit to be considered nowadays are completely the opposite! Probably an old-school agency still selects based on many "set-in-stone" rules and beguile-me mentality because there are simply too many manuscripts they receive but I do consider it's rather subjective (an younger, still famous literary agent if there's something he likes about your email or your work he tells you to go grab a beer and chat it over!)
Really helpful and strangely, really encouraging!
Thanks, sir. But for those of you watching, I hope you do realize some of this is subjective. I just today read another agent's query tips and she said not to spoil the ending for her in the query. Some of the tips here, I'm sure, are universal for agents--don't brag, etc.--but some are really individual preferences. By the way, sir, I just completed a 400K-word novel, written in couplets like Tartuffe, about a man with chronic priapism. What starts as a curse, he realizes to be a blessing. There's one particularly beautiful 37-page passage detailing his stay at a Mexican convent. In the end he dies of dehydration in the broom closet of a secretarial school, but his final soliloquy is a triumph. It's seriously a thousand times better than anything Shakespeare ever did. Would you sign me please? And I'm going to need an advance rather quickly if that's not a problem. Cheers.
Cheers lol can tell u r a talented writer from that comment alone
Cool Raymond :
Great satire.
thanks so much. I'm glad you said that bit about comparing your book to classics. I'm so busy selling my book, that it never occurred to me I might be overselling it.
Many thanks! I enjoy your humor.
Thanks Piers, the noise cuts both ways no doubt so it's good to get a clear understanding of the basics.
Wonderful to have another vid from you. Thank you for the tips.
A lot of literary agents say they want the letter to include a 'blurb' of around 3 paragraphs but it sounds as if that would put you off.
Thank you for the good advice. I plan to rewrite my query and see if it helps.
Great to see you back again. Love the videos!
I really enjoy and appreciate your videos. This is another great one :)
I'm listening. Thanks for being clear!
This was interesting and very helpful, thank you.
Number 11"Write a great novel. It's easy." Well unless you can put together a good introductory letter and synopsis, it would seem that your 'Great Novel,' won't even be read. Shame you can fall at the first hurdle without anyone even reading your book.
Quite a cordial presentation. Thank you very much.
Your videos are helpful, thank you. (Also, very funny!)
Thank you for the valuable advice.
That word count? The reluctant fundamentalist was of literary genre and was hardly of 25,000 words and got published (it is brilliant by the way). Is there any different word count rule to literary fiction?
LOVE IT!!!! Brilliant!
I really liked this, sensible, practical, and put across in a reasonable way. Not high and mighty, like some agents, more like a friend. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that those who don’t manage the letter or synopsis well, have not written a worthwhile book. Many good writers are like other artists, poor at business. That said, I will watch all of your videos, Piers. Many thanks!
After. Checking all videos on you tube, I think I'm going to get my mystery novel printed . I love my mystery novel and can t wUt to see it in print
Watching your videos tends to make me feel excited and want to write more. Thanks for always giving honest insight into your business! I have to say, I am a bit disappointed that agents wouldn't be interested in publishing novellas. I had heard they were gaining popularity recently. Is fiction not allowed to be short or something? Not profitable enough?
Thanks so much for doing these videos. These are very helpful. I'm glad you don't like comparisons... Star Wars meets Moby Dick kind of stuff. That doesn't feel right to me either. Seems like a silly bit from a bad movie.
I wish there were agents to write the query for me. I've had beta readers tell me my novel is good, but with my memory issues etc, I find creating the query letters to be very difficult.
Helpful, but does leave you thinking, winning the Grand National on a lame Shetland pony would be easier.
So many people ask for a comparison, it's this meets this, and say it's absolutely necessary?
Excellent videos.
Number 11:Write a great novel. You'll get an agent no trouble. I enjoy your videos and hope you can keep them coming.
O mighty agent how else can we prostrate ourselves before thee.
Thank you for your videos, I appreciate the open and honest insights you give! I will never understand why some people in the comments react so aggressively. You're just stating the realities of your daily work life, one of them being that you have limited time, so you have to make quick judgements about authors and their work. I would rather know what mistakes not to make so I can avoid being rejected for lack of research and avoidable mistakes... Or that I can make the informed decision to self publish. Anyway, thank you! I hope you'll make more videos!
People act aggressively because they are from the 'I want it and I want it now' generation. i.e. Don't you dare tell me my book has to be over 70,000 words, or well-written, or that I need to produce a compelling query letter (ANY author worth his or her salt should be able to drum up a half-reasonable letter if they can write a book. It's not a different skill-set at all) to interest you. How dare you! The arrogance! It's people like you that forced me to self-publish my 'Memoirs of an Accountant'. Self-belief is a healthy thing, but there is such a thing as too much self-belief with no talent to back it up. But try telling them that. Sheesh. I wonder how many of them, in the position, would treat every single submission as potential gold-dust, gently sifting through each and every one, reading every word, despite a crappy self-aggrandizing letter.
@@andrewmacleod4218 I agree with everything you said except I don't think it's a generational problem ;). I'm 27 and I don't think this way at all. I guess it's a question of character.
Thanks for the video. I have written two books for a large fantasy series that will easily span over at least five books. The amount of characters within the story are vast, and a short synopsis is nearly impossible to create. I have printed the first two books professionally, in paperback form, color covers and done extensive editing.
To keep this short, I will get straight to my question. Do literary agents have any issues if an author wants to mail them hard copies of their books? I feel that my story is better represented when it is presented in its entirety, in the form I envision it to be on book sellers shelves.
Any response is appreciated. Thanks again.
Hi Warren! I'm not an agent, but I'm in the middle of querying now, so I thought I'd reply to you! So we're on the same page, I've also written a fantasy novel, and just like yours, it's going to span five books. But agents don't really want to know what. LIke, once you've signed with one, tell them that you have a series planned and they'll be happy to hear that, but in your query letter, stick to the first book and only the first! In terms of a short synopsis not being possible, that's going to be a huge problem, because you're going to both a blurb (for your query) and a synopsis detailing the events of the novel! If you can't write one, you might have to edit the book again, cut out characters or chapters until you have a cohesive narrative. And I would stick to an agents guidelines, as he mentions in the video. Most submissions are through email nowadays, some agents asking only for a query and a few pages. If you don't want an agent, then you should start looking at indie publishers, or even self publishing, if you think you'll find an audience for your book!
This post is from two years ago but George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones was published three years after he sent his query letter, so I'm going ahead. George RR Martin is synonymous with enormous casts, and his query letter is online. Here's how he decided to sell it to Harper Collins.
“All three books will feature a complex mosaic of intercutting points of view among various of my large and diverse cast of players. The cast will not always remain the same. Old characters will die, and new ones will be introduced. Some of the fatalities will include sympathetic. . . characters. I want the reader to feel that no one is ever completely safe, not even the characters who seem to be the heroes. The suspense always ratchets up a notch when you know that any character can die at any time.”
He outlined a general overview of the characters who most directly impacted the plot and their relation to one another in the long term, far more than the particulars of their journeys. If Martin can make a general synopsis for where he plans the characters to go forward, then you can write up something close.
Number 11 is definitely the easiest to do
I'm an American. May I say "Cheers" in the salutation or the closing of the letter to a UK agent or is that off-putting or too familiar? "Dear Sir" or "Sincerely" doesn't seem attention-grabbing enough.
More great advice, so thanks.
Question: is a submission letter the same as a query letter or a pitch letter?
Great! Can you do. the same for non-fiction? Many thanks!
Love your videos! I am currently working on my first novel (in the editing phase at the moment) but I cannot for the life of me find a title for it that I like. Do I have to have a title for my novel before I send it to a publisher or agent? I wouldn't want to put anyone off with a bad title!
Hi Melanie: I'd say you should give your manuscript a title of some kind... A bad title won't put an agent off you project, because together we can come up with a great title for your work if it's something I love... So if your novel is a romantic story, then try something like. 'For You I'd Give My Last Breath' - if it's a thriller. Then how about something like. 'My Darkest Hour' or 'If Only I'd Known Truth' but please keep the title short and to the point.Long and over run titles and tiring and boring. A sharp title will say a lot about your project. And if I like something right off the bat, and I want to show it around my office. Then I'd hate to call it 'The book' or Melanie's book' and if I drop it and it gets mixed up I've then lost it forever. I do hope this helps you.Best of luck. From Sammy Jones.
+Melanie K Hey Melanie, I hope you read my message on here?
Thank you
This letter is the worst, I can handle the rejections and I love rewriting; the cover letter is killing me.
I am trying to get an 80,000-word novel published now (in the U.S.). Five rejections thus far and several agents not responding. Could I possibly get you to critique my query letter?
What do I do though if my genre is filled with supernatural romance when I write supernatural fiction :(
What do you mean by supernatural fiction?
I write mainly for children so the books are not long because children don't want long books yet looking at your vlogs, you tend to reject books that are only 50-60 pages long. what I tend to do is to offer two books as a package, and that way, although the stories are only shortish, their are two of them to be wrapped up as one package. twice the value, twice the excitement for one overall package. do you think that this is a good idea, or am I doomed to the never never land of endless rejections?
*there - was the word you were looking for. Maybe your command of the language is the source of your disappointment
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (46,118 words)
The Giver by Lois Lowry (43,617 words)
The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks (52,000 words)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (46,333 words)
So, you're telling me you would have rejected these novels based off of word count alone... Do you have any idea how incredibly arrogant that makes you look?
great point! Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (30,644) or Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (36,363) according to this video these books should have never seen the light of day. Searching for literary agent and then seeing this video just put me off of contacting this one
aside from Nicholas Sparks, none of those were debut novels. And Hitchhiker started out as a radio show, so it already had a following. Sure it's a little disheartening to be rejected on the basis of your word count, but you need to understand that for a debut you'll have to play it safe. Once you've established yourself as an author you can publish whatever you want in any length, as long as you have an audience.
Maybe he will. Agency is a business, ultimately it boils down to wheter he thinks it will sell. Think of it like you are in a fansy restuarant, and you find a delicious dish on the menu but it costs a ton which you don't have. Now, you may like it,but still you won't buy it, will you?
And Birdbox by Josh Malerman (bestsellerlist in New York Times for weeks and a Netflix-movie) was about 68.000 words, edited down from 113.000 words. To say that a book need to have at least 80.000 words is very strange
Making the claim that an author isn't in control of their own story because they can't condense it down into three or four sentences is really absurd. Can you do that with King's IT? No, of course not. Not properly enough to get a grasp of the story's arch. It's too long. So if that turns you off, you're going to be missing out on a lot of potentially great novels and equally great writers.
All an agent should care about is whether the writer will be professional enough to work with, and whether or not he/she has the goods. Everything else is irrelevant.
After this let's talk about 10 easy ways to put viewers off with bad audio.
You tell what not to do. Why not focus more on what to do in specifics, not generalities?
Because that would be far too difficult!
Imagine all the manuscripts that are gold mines worth millions that could have been sold, but because of a not so impressive pitch letter, cover letter, query letter the work didn't get any attention. Literary agents need to stop acting like they are holding the keys to the kingdom and expecting authors to impress them. I call such lit.agents "vanity agents" They need to come down from their pedestal a few notches. They need to stop focusing on the query letters. Read the damn story instead and not just the first few chapters to see if the story is marketable.
This issue is why many good authors left the whole idea of finding an lit.agent and went on instead to become their own agent and were successful.
Did you watch the video? How on Earth could they ever have time to read the whole story for every submission they receive? A good submission tells a good agent whether or not the author can write or not.
Or you could just read the manuscript
Yes. This. OR just read the first 2 or 3 pages.