A Daily Dose of Romance

Great. Your manuscript is complete, polished and as perfect as you can make it. So what now? My suggestion is to do a little bit of prep work.

First, work on a blurb for your book. I talked about these in one of my earlier posts about pitching. I usually start working on mine before I’ve even finished writing the book. They can be that important. The general idea of a blurb is back cover copy. You want to capture, in a mere couple of small paragraphs (the most difficult writing you’ll do), conflict, motivation, emotion, your hero and heroine, goals, setting, and a heart grabbing must read last line. 

Many agents only want a query letter. If you’ve done your job well, and created a fantastic blurb, they will very likely request pages to read.

Now, the next bit of prep work will likely be easier. What is it you write? Know how to define your writing in terms of genres. Do you write mysteries? Fantasy? Historical fiction? Or do you write stories that cross genres, like Romantic Suspense, Women’s fiction, or Paranormals? Also, does what you write cross sub-genres? Under the large umbrella of Romance, there are a variety of sub-genres, such as paranormals, historicals, inspirationals, erotics, suspense, regencies. The list goes on, but often, we’ll write a story that crosses the line and delves into two of these sub-genres. While the story is a Romance at its core, it may also be an erotic suspense, or an inspirational regency, etc. You will need to understand what you have written, or the agent may not.

Another critical piece of information is word count. Know your word count. Certain publisher lines need a minimum word count, but on the flip side, there is usually a maximum word count. No agent can sell a 500,000 word historical romance, not as a single book anyway. You need to understand if the story you’ve written is a single title, a category length book, a novella.

Now get cracking on your prep work, and tomorrow I’ll tell you where to start looking for that fabulous agent.

Every writer wants to sell that manuscript and see it in print. Imagine walking into a book store and seeing the book you’ve written right there on a shelf for everyone to buy. But the industry today almost demands you have an agent.

With little exception, the big New York publishing houses require you have an agent submit your work to editors.  Occasionally someone without an agent will sell a manuscript to one of the big publishers, but that is not common and usually comes after some sort of personal contact with that editor, such as pitching at a conference.

So where do you begin?

First, have the manuscript completed. Especially if you are unpublished in the genre you’re writing. And I mean completed, not an outline, or a synopsis or any other version of, “But I know what’s going to happen.” No agent is going to shop a brand new author’s story that has not been completed, edited and polished to gleam like the brightest thing this side of the sun. It’s different if you’ve been published and have a track record in fiction. Agents will know you can complete a book contract and might be willing to take you on based on that partial. But do not expect an agent to be willing to put his/her reputation on the line with editors for any brand new writer, no matter how much they love the partial.

Agents can sometimes take months to get back to you on just a query letter (though they are usually quite prompt on those), and partials will almost always take time. But don’t be tempted to send in that partial and think, “Oh, by the time they read this, I’ll have the rest of the book written.” Sometimes, that might be the case, maybe more often than not even. But not always. I know authors who sent in partials and had full requests in a matter of days.

So do yourself a favor, write, edit, polish, and re-read the entire book first. Then, and only then, send it to an agent.

Stay tuned for more during the holiday week. I’ll be talking about how to find and get that agent of your dreams…