Category: Platform

How to get a literary agent for a self-published book

by Maria

how to get a traditional book deal if you've already self published

I hope you all had a chance to catch a few lessons from the Profitable Blogging Summit last week! I was following along from the beach in Punta Cana while working on new and experimental kinds of sun poisoning. (Seriously. My skin hates me right now. And yes, yes, I should know better. I have already given myself many demerits.)

I love answering questions at summits and conferences, but the difficult part is that I have to answer questions in 30-60 second spurts. And anyone who knows me knows that I do not excel at brevity. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything but a 6-part answer to a question.

But it’s not because I like to hear myself talk! (I actually very much think my voice sounds ridiculous when recorded.) It’s that publishing is very complex and has so many facets, exceptions, and tangents that there’s no way to provide an honest, hard-and-fast rule about anything.

So today I wanted to give you guys the long, 4-part answer to one of the questions Kirsten asked me: What does it take for a self-published author to get a traditional book deal?

When we chatted about this on camera, I grabbed my copy of The Joy of Less to illustrate a shining example of one author who successfully went from self-published to traditionally published.

The Joy of Less had sold 70,000 copies in just over 4 years by the time I took it on, so clearly Francine had created an incredibly successful and powerful book on her own. But she was ready to see her book in bookstores both nationwide and worldwide. And luckily, we were able to place the book with Chronicle, a wonderful publisher, as well as sell foreign rights in 17 countries.

And because I love ya, I’m going to be giving away 2 free copies of the book to 2 lucky readers today!

The joy of less francine jay book deal

The new edition is gorgeously redesigned, streamlined, and a great example of how a self-published book can live a whole new life with the help of a traditional publisher. I think you’ll love holding it, reading it, and sharing it with other clutterbugs in your life!

To enter to win a free copy of The Joy of Less, scroll down to the bottom of this post!

In the meantime, let me take a big breath and better explain how the self-pubbed to traditional-pubbed process works:

As we all know, the job of an agent or acquiring editor is to make an educated guess about how a book will perform in the marketplace. We all have our own hunches about how marketable a concept is, how well an author’s platform will translate into sales, and how much readers, reviewers, and the press will like the book.

That’s what our jobs come down to: making bets based on hunches. If we make good bets and take on good projects, we do well. If an editor signs a breakout author, she can start getting promoted up the ladder as she works on the author’s next (hopefully as successful!) books. If an agent signs a breakout author, she can negotiate an even better deal for the author’s second book, and then her third and fourth book after that. That’s the part that thrills us to our cores: building lasting careers for authors we admire.

But any agent and editor will also tell you that it’s nearly impossible to predict with total accuracy whether a book will do well in the marketplace. With one big exception: self-published books.

Because self-published books have already had their debut in the marketplace, editors and agents will know exactly what to expect, and they’ll have many more data points when they run their P&Ls.

This can be a great thing if you have a highly successful self-published book, because you’ll be able to show editors and agents that investing time and resources in you will be fairly low risk. But it can also make self-published books with middling sales look like an especially high risk.

So the very first thing I ask myself when assessing a self-published book is:

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A Can’t-Miss Blogging Conference to Watch at Home

by Maria

profitable blogging summit maria ribas literary agent

I know I’m supposed to be on vacation (whoops), but I wanted to pop in and let you all know about a great summit I’m speaking at this week. The Profitable Blogging Summit is perfect for writers, bloggers, small business owners, and anyone else who wants to get more readers for their work. It’s also perfect for anyone who doesn’t want to drag themselves to a frigid, horrendously decorated hotel ballroom to get the conference experience. I call it the couch-conference circuit.

The fabulous Kirsten Oliphant has pulled together a great list of experts to cover all the blogging questions you’ve ever had. And yes, it’s free!

Here’s what you can learn if you tune in this week:

Monday

  • Creating an Effective Pinterest Strategy – Jennifer Fishkind
  • Going from 0-3 Million Pageviews – Becky Mansfield
  • Growing Your YouTube Channel in 2016 – Amy Schmittauer
  • Building an Email List from the Start – Matt Ragland
  • Becoming a Profitable Blogger – Kirsten Oliphant

Tuesday

  • Writing & Optimizing Viral Posts – Paula Rollo
  • Designing Profitable Online Courses – Melyssa Griffin
  • Building a Simple Sales Funnel – Caressa Lenae
  • Creating an Effective Visual Brand – Andrea Beltrami
  • Diving Deep into SEO – Zach Doty
  • Writing Killer Sponsored Content – David Ulrich

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The One Piece of Advice I Give Every Single Aspiring Author

by Maria

literary agent advice for writers to get published

But first, the book publishing stories worth reading this week:

Your Biggest Book Marketing or Platform Building Roadblocks – And How to Overcome Them (The Book Designer): This is a wonderfully detailed guide that tackles the 5 biggest obstacles writers face when trying to get their books out into the world. If you’re having trouble reaching your “dream readers,” feel like you don’t have enough time or money for a platform, or are struggling to see engagement on your platform, this is a great place to start.

J.K. Rowling posts letters of rejection on Twitter to help budding authors (The Guardian): “When she pitched under the name Galbraith without revealing her true identity, she faced many more snubs. Since then, Galbraith has published three successful novels but the first was rejected by several publishers, and Rowling was even advised to take a writing course.”

The Art of Influence: Who’s an Influencer, Who’s an Endorser, and How Do I Talk to Them? (Chadwick Cannon): “People don’t trust brands. They rarely trust strangers. But they do trust familiar people.”

The Charming Doodles Charles Darwin’s Children Left All Over the Manuscript of ‘On the Origin of Species’ (Brain Pickings): “In contemplating family, work, and happiness, Charles Darwin proclaimed: ‘Children are one’s greatest happiness, but often & often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to have none.’ And yet he and Emma had ten.”

Relevant (Literary Agent Donald Maass on Writer Unboxed): “Being relevant is not the same as being topical. Nor is it the same as being resonant. Topical stories have the quality of being current, ripped out of the headlines, a take on what is happening right now. Resonant stories are less immediate. They echo in the mind. They cause us to reflect and ponder. ”

The One Piece of Advice I Give Every Single Aspiring Author

The weather is gorgeous here in DC, submissions to publishers are in full swing, and the spring publishing season is chockfull of wonderful books. (Try this gorgeous cookbook, or this personal favorite.)

And today I’m on Kirsten Oliphant’s podcast, Create If Writing, chatting about everything from how the traditional publishing process works to what I look for when signing clients. Kirsten is incredibly savvy and hard-working–she writes books, hosts a podcast, leads online courses, and writes a blog, all while being a mom and wife. I actually think she may be the Beyoncé of our little writing blog community. All signs point to yes.

We were able to get in deep and talk about some of the most important topics that plague aspiring writers today:

  • How to get excited about building a platform (even when you really, really don’t want to)
  • Why you don’t need to be a used car salesman for your book
  • What a typical day in the life of a Literary Agent looks like (spoiler alert: a lot less glamor than you’d think)
  • How to avoid a lie-awake-at-night-in-fear book launch
  • How focusing on your own personal development can also help you in your writing career
  • Why you should buy your name as a domain (and how I failed at this)
  • The one piece of advice I give to every single aspiring author

Click here to listen to the full interview!

Get one free tip for reading more + living better each week!

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How to Build a Platform as a Fiction Writer [Free Workbook!]

by Maria

Author platforms for fiction writers short

But first, the stories worth reading this week:

How to Be More Successful with the Right Content Marketing Tools (Ben Sailer for CoSchedule): This article is especially helpful for writers who already have an author platform in the works, but they’re not quite sure how to drive traffic or followers to those outlets. And be sure to read more below about how to get clarity on who your readers are before you try to market content to them!

4 Lessons for Authors on the Current State of Book Publishing (Jane Friedman): “Industry marketing expert Peter McCarthy and Rand Fishkin both discussed how to find your readers online and reach them directly. McCarthy described it as picking up ‘the lingua franca of the customer’ with a variety of tools and techniques. He demonstrated how he rapidly tests out phrases to learn and access ‘adjacencies’—the key concepts, active people, and communities whose interests are aligned with themes, topics, or points from your work.”

How and When to Catch the Elusive Publicity Department (Lizzy Mason on Pub Crawl): Lizzy Mason is the Director of Publicity at Bloomsbury Children’s Books, and this is a great inside look at the typical timeline in-house publicists stick to when pitching a new release. This is a must-read for any author working with a publicist, or planning on ever working with a publicist.

The Custodian of Forgotten Books (Daniel A. Gross for The New Yorker): “A little over a decade ago, a forgotten book was suddenly remembered. Its second life began when a fiction writer referenced it in a book of her own. A blogger read the new book, then tracked down a copy of the old one, and wrote about all this on his Web site. An archivist read the blog post and e-mailed it to a small publisher. By 2009, Jetta Carleton’s ‘The Moonflower Vine,’ first published in 1962, was back in print.”

Literary-Themed Goodies for Your Kitchen (Kristina Pino on BookRiot): “Rows of bookshelves in your living room and piles of novels on your bedside and coffee tables not enough to properly express your love of books? Time to move into new territory and bookify your kitchen.” WELL, OKAY.

How to Build a Platform as a Fiction Writer (with a free workbook!)

How To Find Your Readers as a Fiction Writer_Page_1

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I’m back this week with the workbook I promised you, which I think will be a great tool for fiction writers to gain clarity on platform-building.

As Kristen and I discussed recently, it’s not easy building a platform as a fiction writer. And it’s not easy learning how to market your novels. But it is essential, and it is incredibly rewarding when done right.

And don’t worry: No one starts out knowing how to do all this stuff. No one starts their career knowing how to tweet, how to blog, how to build a list, how to speak in front of crowds, how to pitch a magazine editor. Just like no one starts out knowing how to write a book.

We all understand that writing is a craft, and that is must be honed with time and experience. But marketing is also a craft, and it takes just as much time and experience to learn how to do it well–that is, authentically, and without sounding like a late-night infomercial.

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