AFN # 147: Four Nations, Unalike In Dignity

plus: requerying etiquette

Before I get into it, something good: HBO’s spinoff series The Penguin, which my sister was the Art Department Coordinator for, won an Art Director’s Guild Award! I’m so proud of her—she and her team worked so hard on this show, and the production designer gave each of them a shoutout by name on stage. (My sister is “the nerve center of the department,” in case you were wondering!) If you haven’t watched The Penguin yet, I highly recommend it, especially since the production design is amazing. One might even say award-winning. :)

PUBLISHING QUESTION OF THE WEEK

remember, you can ask a question anonymously here! I’m almost out of questions, so please send them over!

Is it ever appropriate to inform an agent you have updated your query package? Also, many agents are open to receiving queries after a major revision, but what qualifies as a major revision? Thank you!

For your first question: if you’re talking about updating a query package that the agent is already considering, the answer is no. By which I mean, if the query is in their inbox already and they haven’t responded, it’s not great to email them anew with a new query package. All that’s doing is adding to their inbox load. Where this gets a little tricky is with Query Manager, which gives you (the author) the ability to withdraw the query from me (the agent) and resubmit.

I don’t really see a drawback to doing that—I would actually prefer to get to a query and realize that it’s been withdrawn. That tells me “Ah, great one more thing I don’t have to think about” and allows me to move on with my life.

What I’m less enthused by is when I pass on a book and then a week later I get a query for the same book, with seemingly very few changes. And just so you know, on the back end of QueryManager, we can see who you’ve queried at our agency before—we can see that you have two queries out to the same agent at the same time, or that you turned around and re-queried less than a week after receiving a pass.

I think my answer to your second question also informs my feelings about your first. If I pass on the query, it’s because there’s something in the concept or the execution in the opening pages that didn’t interest me (or the writing was just not good) and I wouldn’t necessarily register a major revision. If I pass on the manuscript I’ve usually given a reason, so I can judge better if the changes are compelling enough to ask for it again. A few kinds of “major” revisions could be: significant reductions or changes in word count, removing or adding a storyline, or alteration of characterization.

Your mileage may vary with my next piece of advice, which might be a little controversial and may not be what you want to hear:

You might need to write a new project. MIGHT! I said might. Some books are destined to remain learning experiences, and I cannot stress to you enough how fine that is. It is absolutely okay for the first book you write to go nowhere. That time was not wasted.

Fun fact: Marrying In was not the first book I wrote. Not even the second. The second will never see the light of day in its current form, and the first won’t see the light of day at all. And that’s okay! I wasn’t a good enough writer when I worked on them. I’ve learned and grown and changed, and every word I’ve read and written in the years since has helped me become a better one.

Multiple queries for the same book make me worry because I’m second-guessing how much work you’ve done on the book, sure, but they also make me worry that you’re spinning your wheels—that you’re so attached to this one idea that you may have trouble coming up with another one. So when you’re spending time (and money, in some cases) reworking your query package, take a good long look and ask yourself if that time might be better spent working on something new.

INDUSTRY NEWS

I’m not going to lie, it feels a little insane to be working in publishing right now; we’re all warily watching the Shitshow In Chief to see if he’ll make it impossible to publish books in this country, not to mention all the other horrors. If the tariffs go through, you can kiss the affordable fancy special edition goodbye (many of them are printed overseas.) You can also say au revoir to cookbooks, graphic novels, and many children’s books, since most of those are also printed overseas. We get a lot of paper from Canada for domestically-printed books (although a friend pointed out, darkly, that a whole lot of national park wood was just made available.)

Since this is my newsletter and my own personal views are on display, I’d like to encourage my readers who are in the US to keep calling their representatives and tell them to get off their asses and do something to try and stop the wholesale arson of our federal government. Even if your rep is a conservative. 5calls has great scripts for this. Jason Sanford’s Genre Grapevine also has a great set of recommendations on how to remain engaged and resist in a way that doesn’t totally burn you out.

Also, if you back your Kindle up to your computer via USB, make sure to do that one last time before February 26—Amazon is shutting down that feature.

WHAT I’M READING

ahahahahahahahahhahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahah. Well, submissions, still, mostly. I’ve also got Freya Marske’s Swordcrossed, which I saw on submission a thousand years ago and loved. I’m trying to resist the siren call of buying new books (and even borrowing them from the library) in favor of reading the things I’ve bought and haven’t read, but my brain has been mulling links between Ling Ma’s novel Severance and the Apple TV show Severance (both of which absolutely slap) and a reread of that may be in order.

THIS WEEK IN HOCKEY

The Four Nations Tournament is done, baby! Listen, it’s really hard to feel even the teensiest bit patriotic right now, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t watch the three (THREE) fights that occured in the first nine seconds of the US-Canada game last week and think for a brief moment “these colors don’t run!!” (Yes, two of the fighters were Tkachuks and thus Trump supporters, but in a baffling twist, even Canadians like PK Subban seemed willing to entertain Trump attending the US-Canada final as a cool and morally neutral thing to see, so clearly America doesn’t have a corner on dipshittery!) The tournament has been fun to watch, even if its format is a little baffling—why these four nations? Why no Russia? Are we just pretending that the league hasn’t been breathlessly and orgasmically following Alexander Ovechkin’s race to beat Wayne Gretzky’s record? Are we going to pretend that Leon Draisaitl isn’t one of the best players in the league right now, despite the sin of having been born in Germany? Baffling, like all of Gary Bettman’s decisions, but at least this one has turned out to be profitable—and with a predictable outcome, since Canada won the tournament last night. (Sidebar: If you want to witness an IRL murder, please enjoy Akim Aliu’s takedown of PK’s craven instagram post.) Elsewhere, none of the Washington Capitals were selected to participate in the Four Nations, so they’re coming back to finish their season rested and happy.

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HOUSEKEEPING

Do you have any questions about the publishing industry? Requests for advice? Thoughts on your recent reads? You can leave them as comments, replies to this email, or fill out this Google form to ask anonymously!

For my sins, I have reopened to queries.

My first novel, Marrying In, is available for purchase on Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, and is coming soon to iBooks. If you’ve read it, consider leaving a review—that helps me and the book in the long run!

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This newsletter is a personal project, and the sentiments and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of my employer.