A couple of weeks ago my friend Tamar, who’s also a member of the Backspace writers’ board, said, “You know, you’re almost done with your novel and getting ready to submit. You should come out to this conference to talk to some agents.” So I talked to Darin about it, and, despite the fact that it would be a midweek trip (seriously harshing Darin’s working buzz), I decided to do it. The decision was made a lot easier by the fact that I was going to stay at her house, which would allow me to skip the cost of a hotel room in New York City (where, no matter what the room rate, they always get you on the city tax).
So last Monday I flew out to Newark, spent Tuesday and Wednesday at the conference, and then flew home first thing (and I do mean first thing) Thursday morning.
It was a great conference (and, alas, probably the last of its ilk). Two days of panels and schmoozing with literary agents. The highlight of each day was the “Two Minutes, Two Pages” workshop in which writers brought the first two pages of their novel to be read out loud, and the agents would say where they’d stop. At least, that’s how the panel has worked in earlier incarnations; it didn’t work so well this time because there were so many writers at a few tables that the noise was unbearable. The table I sat at on Tuesday decided that instead of reading the pages aloud everyone would read silently (since we all had copies) and the agents would start talking when they’d stopped reading. Where they stopped, why they stopped, etc.
What I learned: Unbelievably illuminating.
Tamar had volunteered to work at the conference (she’s agented already) and she was in charge of cracking the whip at the table I was at the first day. We compared notes later and we both said: Wow, that was great. You know how you always hear “Show, don’t tell”? There were plenty of scenes that I would have said were “Showing” — dramatic, showing things in medias res, describing what was going on there and then And the agents very quickly distilled why they considered it telling and why they’d stop.
Despite being completely wasted from my flight out Monday, and then my terrible night’s sleep Monday night, and a full day at the conference, I rewrote my two pages for the second day of the conference. Did it pay off? Well…both of the agents at my workshop the second day said they’d keep reading, so I’d have to say, Yes.
Or, as I said to Tamar during one of our train rides, “Do we ever stop learning stuff we thought we already knew?” She said, “I don’t think so.”
The main things I learned at this conference:
- Wow, are agents always looking for clients. You’d think, Why would a bunch of agents who are getting 1000 query letters a week take a few hours out of their day to chat up a bunch of unpublished, unagented authors? Because they really, really, really want to find someone. They might get 1000 queries a week, but it sounds like some intensely small percentage of that 1000 are anywhere near the bulls’ eye in terms of what they need.
- Wow, do agents’ tastes vary. Scott Hoffman told a hilarious story about a previous panel he was on where he described a query he got that was completely and totally perfect for him, and the agent next to him said, “I got that query. I hated that book!”
- Most of the people who query agents do not have their shit together. The people at the conference (who clearly were there because they were interested in the getting of agents) were much further along than most of the people who are hawking a book. Research the damn agents already. Don’t send urban fantasy to an agent only looking for political nonfiction, ‘kay? This information is easier to find than ever before. Do your homework.
- You’ll help yourself immeasurably if you can distill your novel into one or two sentences. If you tell someone your premise and get a “Whoa!” you’re on to something. You need to be able to distinguish your novel from every other one out there. (Scott Hoffman had a good exercise for everyone: turn to the person next to you, tell them the premise for your novel, and have them pitch theirs. Now, would you pay $25 for their book? Would they pay $25 for yours?)
- Referrals? Really do help. So use the power of the Internet to network — also easier than ever before. A referral won’t get you an agent, it’ll just get you read faster. You still have to show up with the goods.
Definitely worthwhile for me to go. I don’t know if Backspace is going to do another one, alas.
Now to make the agent I totally fell in love with totally fall in love with my book.
Six or eight months ago, my friend Michele pinged me and said, “Hey, the rest of us are all going to the Backspace conference in New York, so you have to go too.”
And I said, “Well, if I have to, I have to,” and I began making plans to head out to New York. (It turned out that Michele had said the same things to the others, so we all made our plans under false pretenses. Ah well.) The first thing I had to do, of course, was figure out how Darin would take care of the kids while I was away. Muahahahaha. That part was fun.
I arrived in New York and settled in to the van of one of the craziest shuttle drivers I’ve had the, um, privilege of driving with. The woman next to me and I joked about our last days on Earth, and I managed to scrounge up a seat belt because, as I put it, “If he slams on the brakes, I’m straight through the front window.” I finally got to the hotel a good two and a half hours after landing, where I met up with Michele and we squee-ed like little girls. We had dinner, then went back to the room.
“We’re in New York. We should really go out somewhere.”
She said, “Yeah, we really should.”
So, off we went to the subway, down to Times Square –
(Holy Mother of Zeus, there’s a Toys R Us in Times Square now. Wow. So now where do I have to go for hookers? Brooklyn? Yonkers?)
– and thence to the Algonquin, where the get-together cocktail party for Backspace attendees was being held. The wonderful and warm Karen Dionne welcomed us, although we’d missed most of the party and neither of us was particularly interested in drinking at that moment. So after introductions and a little chat, Michele and I headed back uptown to our hotel, where we tried to crash.
The first day of the conference Tamar arrived, and since I haven’t seen her in two years we squee-ed like little girls. The conference sessions were for the most part good, although the Algonquin is not my idea of a good time — we were all under strict orders not to bring in any outside food, because if the Algonquin staff found one rogue Starbucks cup, BAM! The conference organizers were going to get hit with a massive fine. And hello: I was still on California time.
After the conference, Tamar, Michele, and I headed immediately back to the hotel, where Toni was waiting for us, having just flown in from Louisiana (and boy, were her arms tired). We picked up some food at Zabar’s and H&H Bagels, and then settled into the living room of the hotel suite to have a picnic and catch up. Tamar had to take off at about nine to head home. At which point Michele, Toni, and I said, “You know, we’re in New York. We should really go out.” So we headed out to Barnes & Noble, where I made Toni sign her books, and then it was off to Cafe Lalo, which is a great dessert cafe (whose claim to fame was that it was featured in You’ve Got Mail).
On Friday it was back to the conference (and the inhalation of a coffee and muffin before setting foot in the Algonquin). We cut out of the conference a little early, because we had important things on our agenda: 1) checking out the New York Apple Store (okay, this may have been primary on my agenda) and 2) getting a personal tour of the offices, stages, and studios of NBC News, the Olympics, and Saturday Night Live. from a friend of Michele’s. (Michele knows everyone. You know Michele. You do. Check your Rolodex.)
Saturday we headed off en masse to Book Expo America, the trade show for publishers, in which everyone gets together to advertise their wares and schmooze and do whatever the hell it is publishers and booksellers and distributors do when they get together.
You know the saying “Kid in a candy store”? Well, despite my love of sugar I’m not that fond of candy stores — my passions are ice cream and cake, in that order, and even I can only eat so much of either. I have no such limitations when it comes to books. “Kid in a book store” is much more my speed.
“Kid at BEA Convention” is the ultimate expression of this.
Two floors filled with publishers hawking their wares. Giant piles of ARCs for the taking! Flyers and posters and authors autographing!
I actually couldn’t figure out how I was going to get in. I was going to buy a badge, but being neither author nor publisher nor distributor nor bookseller nor dyed-in-the-wool schmoozer I wasn’t qualified to get in. However, over the past year or so Tamar has become friends with the beautiful and talented Alaya Dawn Johnson, who very kindly offered Tamar a pass to BEA and then came up with another one when Tamar said her friend Diane needed one too. (Michele had a friend who got her one, and Toni was a featured guest of St Martin’s Press, so they were taken care of.)
The biggest “Whoa!” moment for me was when we passed a gigantic line for one of the autograph tables, much, much longer than the given aisle for it. The line snaked down through an aisle filled with publishers, impeding the flow of traffic. I stopped one of the people in line and asked who she was waiting for.
“Patterson,” she said.
I blinked.
It took me a second to realize that she meant James Patterson. (Sadly, no relation. If he were a relation, I would be blogging this from my penthouse atop Notre Dame Cathedral, believe you me.) But I think I may have imprinted upon this experience. Talk about something to shoot for.
I shipped home 48 pounds of books, some probably good, some I already suspect are bad, the rest complete unknowns. The shippers knew they had a captive audience and raped and pillaged accordingly: $35 per box plus the cost of shipping. But I certainly wasn’t lugging home that many books, nor was I going to sort through them right then.
When Toni, Tamar, and I fell out of Javits Center, there was not a cab to be had for blocks. (No idea what happened to Michele, but I suspect she was meeting the last people in America she wasn’t friends with yet.) We kept walking and kept finding pockets of people desperately hailing cabs that were nowhere to be seen. We crawled back to the hotel room, sadly lacking in the fixings for margaritas but intensely pleased with how much fun this little vacation was.
If I can figure out some way for Darin to take care of the kids, I am so all over doing this again next year.