Is Your Dream Publisher Right for You?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ย. 2023
- Literary agents Jessica Faust and James McGowan talk about what to think about when you're considering publishers, and why you should talk to your agent about your "dream" publisher.
BookEnds is dedicated to making publishing a book traditionally a more transparent process, and it starts with these videos!
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Jessica Faust’s love for books is what first brought her to open BookEnds Literary Agency. It is her desire to be an advocate for all authors that pushed her to create her blog, the BookEnds TH-cam channel and to maintain a vibrant presence on Twitter.
Jessica is proud to have grown BookEnds to an agency that represents authors of all genres for children and adults, allowing her to reach more readers and help more authors and illustrators achieve their dreams.
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James McGowan is a Literary Agent at BookEnds and writer for children. He began working with the agency as an intern in the summer of 2015, and basically never left. He represents a talented group of authors and illustrators working in everything from board books to middle grade graphic novels. He also works in adult nonfiction, and adult mystery and suspense projects. James is the author of GOOD NIGHT OPPY, which is available now.
Connect with BookEnds!
Twitter: bookendslit
Instagram: bookends_literary
Website: www.bookendsliterary.com
Connect with Jessica: bookendsjessica
Connect with James: jmcgowanbks
I don’t have a dream publisher I just have a dream!
Hi James and Jessica, I have a question for a possible video in the future. I was wondering if you could do a break down on how multi book deals work and what the agent's role in it is. I'd love to hear how it usually plays out!
Could you possibly talk about ways to market your first book? Maybe strategies for authors who aren't looking to be very public?
Yay! BookEnds 🥳
Thank your for your help.
Vision! Vision! Vision! You took the word right out of my mouth!📚
Great content, makes a lot of sense. 5 stars, you two are awesome. Dream Agent is James McGowan, but I love Jessica Faust as well. I still need to find out what books you have put out.
thank you for this! this video answered so many of my questions
Great video! I sent my epic fantasy novel to Jenissa Graham. CLARA STONE. My fingers are crossed. Take care. 😊
I'm missing your videos. I look forward to seeing them every week and I haven't seen a new one in three weeks. Hope some new ones are coming soon.
We are still on hiatus for the time being but we hope we can get back to it!
I hope you come back. I miss the information you provide and the encouragement. @@BookEndsLiterary
In otherwords, place a marker at the top at the highest idea and work your way down to the practical that will get the author the best bang for their art in the strongest way possible. I have five dream publishers in mind in order from the highest to the lowest and then I can make a new list for the most practical later.
I've been querying and have 4 rejections thus far, but I'm not giving up. I see it it as 4 closer to a yes. (Hopefully, lol.)😊
I think having an indie book publisher should be everyone's dream publisher because indie publishers aren't as picky as big traditional publishers like Harper Collins. I respect huge traditional publishers but they are just very hard to get a book deal with.
Hi Jessica and James! Love your videos and appreciate them very much. I was wondering, I plan on using a separate email to query with so I don't check it obsessively/only look when I'm in the right headspace. If an agent requests a partial or a full and I don't respond for a few days because I haven't checked the email is that going to reflect poorly on me or make an agent think twice? Thank you so much and I hope y'all have some well deserved rest coming up this holiday season!
Hi! As long as it's within a few days, it should be totally fine! Technically you can submit any time after a request, but the longer you wait, the more the initial excitement to see the story might wane and the longer it might take them to get to once you do submit it. So we wouldn't recommend waiting several weeks to submit but it is possible! A few days is no problem :)
What happens when you get notified of an offer of representation from another agency on a query.
Do you drop everything to review the submission? And the potentially to read the pages of that author?
Do you ever find yourself revaluating a query you were leaning towards passing on because someone else is now interested? Have you ever turned down a query or book that went on to be successful with someone else that you regretted? (Not talking about books you knew you weren't a good fit for but liked). Would love a video on these questions - could be encouraging 😂 I just had a request for full MS, I have 72 unanswered queries. Trying to wrap my head around what goes on behind the scenes. Also, I love your videos! Big thank you James and Jessica!!!
Hi! I can definitely add it to our list of video ideas, but since we are still currently on hiatus, I can give you some quick answers:
Yes, agents do prioritize queries that we've been notified have offers of rep! They know there's a deadline, so they often try to get to them ASAP. And if they were previously considering rejecting the query, there's a good chance that knowing another agent saw the potential in it might encourage the agent to give it another look.
Every agent has "the one that got away"-actually, most agents have several! These can be queries they outright rejected but keep thinking about until they see that it sold somewhere, or someone they offered on who didn't accept, or queries they thought they weren't a good fit for but still think about later. :)
Thank you!
Thank you so much for the videos, Jessica and James! Your videos are immensely helpful and very appreciated.
Question for you guys:
When submitting a manuscript, how can I differentiate between two completely different formatted sections? The directions I keep reading or hearing explain that the formatting should be Times New Roman 12pt throughout, but my book bounces back and forth between narration and journal entries. There are currently two different fonts in my manuscript to make the distinction clear. But if I submit it, what is the correct way to handle that? (And yes, I know that a lot of people don't like journal entries, but this is narrative nonfiction where the journal entries and certain original artifacts are part of the telling of the story) Also, along those same lines, how would someone submitting a manuscript for narrative nonfiction handle things such as original artifacts that are built into the manuscript, photos they wish to be included, and/or an author's note which clarifies topics touched on in the story?
Hi! Times New Roman is just the standard recommendation, but if it fits the purposes of your story, you can just choose a second easy-to-read font for the other sections! There are no hard or fast rules so this is perfectly fine with reason :) And you can just insert the photos into the doc (preferably labeled with a figure number and called out within the text), use authors notes, etc. to include the built in material.
My dream publisher is like my dream agent: someone who is 100% behind my book. I want them to be so excited about my book that it's all they can talk about. I want them to put it at the top of their list for marketing and everything else. I want the publisher who absolutely loves my book above all.
Okay, I know that's not likely to happen, but we're talking dreams here, right? I don't care "who" the publisher is, as long as their dream meshes with mine.
I love this show. I don't mind getting rejections, but Jennesa hasn't even acknowledged me on Query Manager. Other agents were kind enough to open Query Manager. Is she a part-time associate? Kind regards, Corey 😊
It can take a few weeks or even months for agents to catch up on queries sometimes, but everyone at BookEnds replies to all queries eventually, so if you haven't received a rejection she is still considering your query!
@@BookEndsLiterary I understand. No problem, ty
*Question for a possible future video*: Hi Jessica and James, when Bookends takes on an author who is non-American (e.g. British or Canadian or Aussie), is it OK or not OK for the manuscript to have local settings and British English used? Or, would you rather the English spellings and words used be 'American' English? ~ Thanks! I've been watching your videos for 3 years and they are always helpful in understanding how traditional publishing operates.
Hi! Glad you've found our videos helpful! You don't have to change anything to American English :) Especially if it's not set in America. There's a little chance that if it sells to an American publisher they might change some spellings to fit their style guides at the copyedit stage, but at the querying stage, leave it as is!
@@BookEndsLiterary That's a relief - cheers!
Can you guys do a video for illustrators and the risk of AI art being used in children's books? It's very unnerving for us to see AI art swoop in and potentially take the few jobs illustrators have away. I've been practicing and preparing my portfolio and now I feel like it may not even be worth it. :(
I like to get a deal with an agent I think is suitable for me because she represents not only my genre, but various tropes I write in. Sadly she rejected my previous works and for this year, she is closed. I keep on trying now that I have done a huge rewrite to my work. Sadly getting rejections as of writing this now, but they are a bit more personal than the usual ones.
Did query Jenissa a few weeks ago, so time will tell what she thinks of it.
Question:
I have written in total of nine books, but only self published four of them. Should I mention in the letter or at least on querytracker in the BIO field, the amount I have written or only books that have been released?
Hi! You can mention in your query letter that you have self-published some books, but you don't have to get into any details if they're not relevant to the specific book you're querying or if your self publishing numbers weren't very high!
@@BookEndsLiterary All my books are fantasy and I have certainly mentioned that I have self published four of them. Even when sales are pretty much non-existent, as some ask about how many have been sold that year.
So I can mention amount as long as it's the same genre and relevant to the book I'm currently querying.
Hi guys I have a question. I'm from India and here, I have a chance to submit directly to some well known publishers. One such publisher doesn't have any submission guidelines but just says to send submission to said email Id. So in such a case what should I submit? Should it be the usual book proposal or the entire manuscript?
Hi! It's probably a good idea to submit a proposal and a partial manuscript (a few chapters) to start!
oh, man. I feel silly. My dream publisher is Penguin... just because their logo is a penguin. And I dream of my books having the logo on them. lol. (I'm so silly)
I refuse to believe that people have "dream" publishers nor that people pay enough attention to know who potential publishers are lol
People have dreams about money and movie deals. Not publishers.
It's certainly not as common, but we have repped lots of authors who have a dream publisher, which is why we wanted to make this video! :)