July 9, 2024 • 27 mins
Literary Agent and author Lucinda Halpern discusses tips for querying and other ways to get connected to and signed by an agent in this episode of All Things Book Marketing!
Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent and the founder of Lucinda Literary, based in New York. She has worked with all major publishers, including Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and Scholastic, and currently represents New York Times and internationally best-selling authors in the categories of personal growth, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction. Her classes and coaching programs have been taught to hundreds of writers worldwide, and became the inspiration for her new book Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author (Hay House; February 6th, 2024). Learn more at lucindaliterary.com or download Lucinda’s free author training. Follow Lucinda Halpern on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X @lucindaliterary and @luncindahalpern and learn more about her work at LucindaLiterary.com.
Discover more about Smith Publicity at www.smithpublicity.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, & LinkedIn.
Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent and the founder of Lucinda Literary, based in New York. She has worked with all major publishers, including Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and Scholastic, and currently represents New York Times and internationally best-selling authors in the categories of personal growth, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction. Her classes and coaching programs have been taught to hundreds of writers worldwide, and became the inspiration for her new book Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author (Hay House; February 6th, 2024). Learn more at lucindaliterary.com or download Lucinda’s free author training. Follow Lucinda Halpern on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X @lucindaliterary and @luncindahalpern and learn more about her work at LucindaLiterary.com.
Discover more about Smith Publicity at www.smithpublicity.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, & LinkedIn.
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(00:01):
Welcome to the Smith Publicity All ThingsBook Marketing podcast, offering tips, insights,
and advice from the best in thepublishing industry. Hello and welcome to
this episode of All Things Book Marketing. I'm your host Olivia McCoy, and
our special guest today is Lucinda Halpern. Lucinda is a literary agent and the
(00:22):
founder of Listenda Literary Welcome to AllThings Book Marketing. Thanks Olivia. As
you know, I love the nameOlivia because my daughter is named that.
So it's a wonderful name. Itleads itself to a lot of nicknames.
It does well. Thank you forjoining us on the show. I would
love for you to start with whatyou do and how you help authors.
(00:44):
Yeah, so thanks again for havingme. You guys have a wonderful marketing
firm, so I'm really happy tobe here. And in ways, I
consider being an author the best formof marketing your message, right if you're
a novelist or a nonfiction author.So some of the ways in which we
help authors, many of whom beginas total unknowns, as total first timers,
(01:11):
is that we actually now coach andeducate them into what it means and
what it takes to become an author. So that's been a really exciting division
of my agency as of twenty twenty, when so many people were sort of
reinventing their businesses to have more onlinelearning, and I've taken so much to
teaching and coaching writers at scale ina way that literary boutiques really can't handle
(01:38):
otherwise, right, which is onereason that literary agencies based in New York
and publishing houses are so mysterious andopaque and difficult to access and exclusive.
And I really wanted to change thatwith the opportunities that Zoom was allowing to
now meet with writers all over theworld. They didn't have to come into
New York to meet with an agent. So that's one of the exciting things
(01:59):
we're doing through our sind the LiteraryAcademy. But beyond that, we have
worked now for this has been youknow, around since twenty thirteen and even
maybe twenty eleven. It's on histhirteenth year, so yeah, that makes
it twenty eleven, and that's wonderful, right, And it's and it's diversified
(02:21):
and pivoted and innovated in so manyways from the beginning. So when I
started out actually had a publicity background. I was on the heels of having
helped Gretchen Rubin market her very famousHappiness project along with some other authors.
I'd worked with the authors of Freakonomics, for instance, when I was at
HarperCollins, and all of this timeearlier in my career, I was taking
(02:44):
notes and I was learning from sortof the best in breed how to take
advantage of this burgeoning online you know, marketplace that was amplifying the messages of
books and authors. So I startedwithin de literary with that in mind,
how can I navigate authors through onlinemarketing and also publicized to the media their
(03:05):
books. Five years in, rightaround the time I had my first daughter,
I thought, you know what,I've always been really deeply editorial.
We have enough authors now that I'mrepresenting in just your standard agent capacity,
which for those who aren't familiar withwhat an agent does, I may have
started there. We are your doulas, your spouse is, your therapists,
(03:29):
and your advocates. We are thepeople, your very first editors and champions
who you know, make the partnershipwith you early on, share your vision,
develop your book proposal or your manuscript, and sell your work to a
publisher. We're obviously so much morethan that, because the publishing journey is
a long one. So you know, five years in starting with similarly,
(03:52):
I was really working more full timewith authors in that way, and then
we heard that authors needed lecture agentsand why couldn't they find a good lecture
agent when so many of my nonfictionauthors really needed that service as a way
to monetize their books and have careersas authors, and so we invented a
lecture bureau. It turns out thework is not that dissimilar from what we
(04:15):
do as agents. It's matchmaking andit's negotiating. So we developed that in
twenty sixteen and then again in twentytwenty we started what's now known as the
Luisina Literary Academy, and throughout thatprocess we've been signing new authors and selling
their books to major publishers. Sothat's those are the ways we hope authors.
(04:36):
So a big list, it isa big list. It's a lot
you have going on, but it'sall worthwhile. It's all great information.
So we really appreciate you educating authors. My favorite part of the job is
author education, so I get thatdeeply. Yes, yes, and speaking
of matchmaking, let's go back andvisit how you find your authors or how
(04:59):
your authors find you and all theythat you get connected with them. Oh,
I like that second flip of thequestion. I guess you know.
The answer to one and two isreally agencies have long been a referral based
business word of mouth, right,So you get your first author, and
(05:19):
your first author has a successful experience, and then they recommend you to five
other author friends, and likewise,the way that those authors are finding us
is they're reading the acknowledgments of theirfriends' books where the authors they admire,
and they're thinking, I've written abook just like that, I want to
be represented by her. So that'sthe way. That is like the most
(05:40):
typical way that agents and authors arefinding each other. But recently I decided
to do like a bit of anaudit, a pie chart, if you
will, of like we were actuallygetting most of our business because so much
of the landscape is changing with Instagram, with social with online right. So
it did this little pie chart,and I realized that about seventy percent of
(06:03):
our business remains by referral, butthat it isn't always authors who are making
those referrals. It's publicists, bookmarketing firms and ghostwriters, you know,
book collaborators, And that was suchan interesting I was like, Wow,
those are the relationships that not onlyI need to be focused on, but
(06:24):
that authors can be using to theiradvantage. Right, Because I have a
lot of trusted publicist relationships. Weshare taste, we send each other business.
And it turns out that that's madeup about fifty percent of that larger
piece of referral business. The otherthirty percent is probably I really scrutinize this
down to like sort of the number, but I would say maybe half and
(06:46):
half what comes in through the proverbialslush pile, a term I don't particularly
like, but what comes in unsolicitedthrough our inbox or what we are scouting
proactively. And that's a really funthing for authors to learn about. That
you don't always have to do allthe knocking on doors blindly submitting to people
(07:10):
you have no connection with. Youcan be out there. Is what I
say in my book Get Sign,I say getting seen. You can get
seen and have people come to you. So perfect example, years ago,
I read a Modern Love column.Modern love is historically known for a place
that if you write a column asa new author, twenty agents are going
to come after you for the bookthat comes out of that column. Same
(07:34):
case. Here, this wonderful author, Michelle dud had written a piece called
in Love in the Time of LowExpectations. It became one of their most
popular articles that year. But whatI noticed in the essay was that she
had a background. It was justa line where she mentioned that she'd been
raised in an evangelical cult by thiskind of like a sort of patriarchal father
(07:56):
figure, And I said, that'sthe book I want the next education.
She's a great writer. I loveher whole vibe, and we can you
know. I reached out to herproactively and she was like, great,
let's do a book proposal. Sothose are the sorts of things I want
new authors to be striving for.It's this inventive way of getting an ancient's
(08:18):
attention that's not always about your proactiveoutreach, but about how visible you are
elsewhere. So yeah, long answerto your question, No, it's a
great answer. It actually backs upa lot of what I'm telling authors all
the time, which is that brandingand platform building is incredibly important no matter
where you are in the process andwhat you're looking to do. Growing your
(08:39):
network, making sure that your mission, vision values are being clearly communicated to
the right people on the right platforms, the right networks, and even even
for fiction authors, making sure thatyou're connecting with other readers and writers in
that genre the stories, getting yourselfknown, and then making someuf more visible
(09:01):
so that when agents are scouting lookingfor books, you pop up in search
results or on their feed or theneven if you are querying them or applying
unsolicited, then you are standing outbecause you already have a platform, You
already have a kind of a visionfor who you are as an author,
what you want to do, andwhere you want to go. That's exactly
(09:24):
right, And a lot of authorsunderstand that this is really chicken and egg,
or rather they're like queering, whythis is their chicken and egg.
Well, of course I'm going toget the audience once I have the book.
A decade ago, that was thecase. An unknown talent could just
have a great book, it wouldcome out and then suddenly they'd have all
these followers, fans and reviewers.But now it's it's like the coin is
(09:45):
flipped and publishers do expect that youcome in with that built in audience.
I would also argue that what we'veseen with media, because you know,
this is like a nerd out aboutmedia and marketing too. A lot of
my publicists friends will say, weneed a platform in your author in order
to get the media that they wishto obtain, because what media is looking
(10:07):
for is the groundswell the community aroundyour ideas and books are looking for the
same. I've I've got a littlefun sort of section and get signed about
how agents think like editors. Editorshave to think like the media, and
media have to think like readers.But we're all thinking about that end reader,
right, So it's like, whatare we all interested in at the
(10:30):
end of the day, readers?And it's an interesting sort of formula to
consider. Why it is if you'rean author, you're wondering, why can't
I just have a great book?Why do I need a platform too?
And isn't that the question? Becausea lot of great books out there and
you got to break through the noise. Especially in this day and age of
(10:50):
self publishing and indie publishing, that'sjust made the industry more accessible, which
we love, just fantastic and welove that more people are able to put
their voice in their visions out there. But also it does mean more competition.
It does mean yeah, more outthere to break through. I mean,
just to give you a visual,so many bookstores have gone out of
(11:11):
business. Review space has been shrinking, you know since I came into the
industry. So there literally is onlyso much room on a shelf, and
you got to make room for allthese classics and these big bestsellers, and
so how are you going to breakout of that pack? In exers,
like a hopeful exercise that I givewriters is to go into their local bookstore.
(11:33):
This comes up all the time whenpeople ask about comps, so comparative
titles. I can't figure out mycomps, and what of this comp is
not quite like my book? Youknow, they're sort of like spending a
lot of time thinking about the wrongthings writers, or thinking about the wrong
things for comps. The right thingto think about is what was the author's
profile that's similar to mine? Thatmakes mine a lookalike book, not that
(11:58):
it is verbatim the same book,but that it has the same readership.
And an exercise I love to prescribeis go into your local bookstore, your
favorite local bookstore, and talk toa bookseller about what they're selling every day
and ask the question, what wasthe book you didn't expect to be fine
off the shelves, but is reallyjust sort of surprising everyone. And you're
(12:22):
reordering your reordering, and you'll learnabout like those non celebrity, non best
selling authors who are creating these successfulfir sign books, and that can guide
you actually and finding your comps.So everyone has access to that. And
speaking of the unsolicited submissions the editorsand agents get I'd love to talk about
how to break out of that pack. So what does it look like?
(12:43):
I mean, I know the processis called querying for authors that have heard
of that somewhere in the conversation,but don't exactly know what that means.
It's the act of submitting unsolicited tothese agents and to these editors. So
what, yep, what exactly goesinto an author query or book proposal?
Is there a difference? There isa difference, And fortunately I have created
(13:11):
this book called Get Signed, andthere is an entire chapter on creating the
perfect query letter. But I've aimedin that to give you advice that you
won't find online for free. Right, this is like sort of secret agent
advice, like the things that wedo because we write something very similar to
a query letter to a publisher whenwe pitch your book. And so it's
like use our language, use ourstrategies, use our tactics. So I
(13:35):
have a few things I can givethere, but I guess the way I
like to, you know, toanswer your question is a book proposal like
a query letter. It's not aquery letter is your first pay into the
conversation. Like that is a threehundred word or less pitch letter that you
send via email. Used to haveto send them via snowmill. And I
(13:56):
always tell people that actually wasn't inway. That was actually a better situation
because someone had to open those envelopesand peak at the manuscript. Now it's
a subject line that gets you.It's a title, right, Like you're
just looking through a very saturated inbox. So a query letter is your pitch
letter, and your pitch letter needsto tell us not what your book is
(14:20):
about, but why it matters.It's a very fundamental difference. Why it
matters? Why this book? Now? Why are you the person to write
it? Those are the things thatpeople want answered for them an agent wants
answered. A book proposal is fornonfiction authors exclusively, and it's the fifty
page blow up of the pitch.It's the longer marketing presentation honestly, that
(14:46):
contains some sample writing to show thatyou can write a book. Why is
that the case because for so muchnonfiction, editors and agents want to get
in on the ground floor and developand shape the book. And nonfiction tends
to bend or around the news ofthe day. You know, it tends
to it tends to morph, whereasfiction needs to be considered on the full
(15:07):
manuscript. With fiction, we needto see that beginning, middle, and
end, we need to see thatwe stay engrossed in that pot that someone
can really execute on the page.So that's sort of the three different elements.
You've got your query letter, whichis your pitch, a book proposal,
a fifty page marketing document if you'rewriting nonfiction, or a full manuscript
(15:30):
if you're writing fiction. And youcan't have any of these things incomplete.
They can't just be partially done.They have to be fully done and ideally
edited before you're submitting them to agents. My brother is a writer and aspiring
author who has been through the queeryprocess three times now and I've worked through
his query letters, his pitch letterswith him, and it is gruesome.
(15:54):
I got to tell you, wespent probably four hours each time on a
zoom call together, are really makingsure everything was answered and nitty gritty,
and it's just it's just a process. So what is there a way to
make it easier? Is there away? And I know you probably teach
these in your classes, and Ido. I teach these in my class,
But you know what, there honestlyis no There honestly is no magic
(16:17):
bullets. There's no one size fitsall for any book, which is what
makes books bespoken beautiful. I liketo view pitch letters as opportunities to lead
with your strunts. So in getside, I have the four kinds of
writers who get book deals, andthey are the ideator, so the person
has big ideas. The everywhere isthe person who's everywhere visible and has what
we call a platform that built anaudience. I was talking about before,
(16:41):
the data collector, which is thissort of like research detective, which,
by the way, everyone can be. And the crusader, who was like
the person who was so fearless andtenacious about knocking down every door or finding
every way to get in. Andsome people are a combination of these types.
Very very rarely is one all fourof those types. But the idea
(17:04):
with your pitch is like to leverageyour strength and lead with it. So
if you have nothing else but greatcomps that you found, publishing does a
lookalike business. It's a Hollywood business. This is the next X meets Y.
And you would think that that's supertrite and sounds really dumb, but
(17:25):
that's absolutely the way that agents talkand the way that readers think when they're
looking to pick up their next bookon Amazon. It's like, I love
that, so I'm gonna like thisone. So if you nothing but comps,
great, But there are a lotof you know, again, there
are a lot of ways to leadand to end the query letter. In
my book at Signed, I havelike the whole anatomy of what your pitch
(17:47):
should include, broken down the twoconditions I say that every query leader letter
needs to have is a personalized intro, which is more than just hey,
sind I read not that I onesays hey, but WoT wouldn't blacklist them
if they did? But dear Lucinda, you know I read, of course,
(18:07):
I'm looking at a book right nowChris Bailey is the Productivity Project,
and you were listening to acknowledgements,and I'm writing a productivity book that's just
like that or was inspired by thatis different than that. And here's why.
The personalized intro is much more aboutthe win win, like why you
are a fit for someone's list.Agents are working speculatively. We do not
(18:27):
make money until you make money,which means that the risk, the financial
risks that we're taking on for somethingthat may not sell, the time we
have to invest means that we haveto be really, really sure that this
has nothing short of best selling potential. So that personalized intro is here's why
(18:48):
we are a fit. And thenthe second condition I say is close with
urgency. And this again has beenlike such a revelation to writers. They
don't even think about this. Theythink about the sort of passive of like
thank you for your time and consideration, which is not a deal breaker,
but a much better ending to yourquery letter is something that suggests urgency.
(19:11):
Right, I mean, Olivia,you're in the business of publicy and media.
It's really not very different a mediapitch. It can just sit there
or it can elicit a reaction.And so again I've I have a few
ways to do that in the book. But you know, that's that's what
I want people to concentrate on.If you want me to recap those it's
(19:32):
not what happens in this book,because the big common error of query letters
is an overly long synopsis, youknow, and it just feels like,
here's what happened, da da dada da da, than this, than
this, than this, It's likebut but why, but who? But
you know, I talk about includingthe five w's, the who, what,
where? When? Why? Where? Why is the most important and
(19:53):
you know, so, so thinkabout limiting your synopsis to what's essential,
to what's memorable, and making thecase for why this book now. Comp's
being a great tool if you're writingfiction in particular, right why this book
now? A perfectly great argument wouldbe, well, people are buying a
lot of this book, and they'rewatching a lot of this series, so
(20:15):
that proves the appetite. And thenjust ending with something that gives a little
more spark, a little sense ofyour crusader self, a little more personality
and urgency is a great way toclose. I like that you mentioned TV
shows as or movies as a compas well, and I feel like I
said it before on the podcast,and I say it all tend to authors.
(20:37):
When you hear comp typically people thinkcompetitive at a competitor title, competitive
title, And really what we're sayingis comparable, which is what you said
earlier as well in our conversation.It's someone who has a similar book or
similar piece of media, but thereis a differentiator. Obviously it's not the
same thing. You don't want tobe a copycat, but I do like
(20:59):
that you could pull your comp fromother pieces of media. So if you
were to say this is Hank Greenmeets a Ya book, or this is
science person, uh, you knowBill Andy, the science guy and meets
this book, that is a greatway of kind of talking about that need,
like you said, and that urgencywithout pulling out too many too many
(21:21):
books and maybe dating a little bit. It's I mean, it's a no
stress way to think about comps.Everyone watches Netflix. Every editor is sort
of paying attention. It's there.It's their business to pay attention to the
trends by way of all media forms. Popular podcast what's in the news,
what's the popular on social media,what people are watching, and so,
(21:42):
yes, this is one of thekind of revelations to writers that they can
and should be using comps beyond booktitles in their pitches to prove the appetite
for their book. I love it. And then to wrap up our conversation,
I would love one quick do andone quick don't or oh gosh,
(22:03):
are we're wrapping up? I'm sosad. No, I know so good?
Oh yes, yes, yes,okay, one quick do, one
quick don't. So we talked aboutlike really thinking about being brief. The
less is more we'll ask you ifyou if we want more information, right,
Like the idea is you know,the teaser, the movie trailer.
We have to see more. Theonly thing you have to focus on,
(22:26):
the only win you have to focuson in a query to an agent is
getting the request to see your material, is getting into a dialogue. That's
it. If you've done that,you succeeded. And and so the less
is more approaches one that I considerhelpful in all of life and communication.
(22:47):
Uh so, you know, maybethat's your due along with lead with your
strengths and then your don't we talkedagain about like being overly sort of long
on the synopsis front. I don'tlike, you know, choose I've been
pitched, you know, Dear Lindaor you know, people will blind poppy
(23:07):
a lot of a lot of agents. I I'm going to try to think
of something more inventive. Then don'tgive up. This is a variation on
don't give up. Okay. Mostwriters think that the one shot they've taken
is it. They send a pitchto an agent and they say, well,
I got rejected. I never heardback, and it's been nine months,
(23:30):
and I'm like, this is justI want to just screw your head
on straight, baby, Like thisis not the I hate to see them
so sort of discouraged by this,right, there are so many reasons why
that agent didn't receive the pitch tobegin with. Or you had the wrong
title or the subject line, orthere was the person was out on maternity.
(23:52):
There's someone better, you know,there's so many reasons that that didn't
land the way it should have.And so the don't is, don't give
it one try. You've got toeither follow up and I've got some you
know, some sort of exact languageyou can use for that in get Sawn
in my book. But you've gotto find your way in to your dream
agent. There's always a way in. Yeah, it hurts my heart just
(24:17):
hearing the idea of authors giving upon their book and writers giving up it
just yep, yeah, and theycome and then that come to us and
they'll be so defeated and it's it's, oh, I wish you would come
to me before you gave up,Like, let's let's try and get some
of that spark back because there's somuch you can do and it's fun stuff
like it's it's it's another sect ofbeing an author being published. Yes,
(24:41):
that's right. If one avenue doesn'twork, out, reach out to a
publisher or a publicist or a freelanceagent or someone, because you don't know
the connections they have or the waysthat they can help you get out there.
There's just there's so many different avenuesnowadays that like you're saying, one
shot is not your ownly yes,yes, it's a long and winding road.
(25:03):
If you I could talk more onself publishing, like, if you
self publish, there could be atraditional deal ahead. It's not you know,
it's not stigmatized in the way itused to be. It could be
incredibly effective for authors, and manychoose to do that even when given other
opportunities. There are so many waysto think about, like what's the right
path for your book? Mm hmmm, that begin with what are your goals
(25:26):
for this? And there's so manyways to keep productive. So the news
that are like we're about to sendthis week is about ways to keep productive
while you're waiting to hear from agents. Yeah. Yeah, it's like what
an anxious waiting period, right,build your network, branding, make sure
that yeah, yes, all ofthese things. Yeah, that'll be fun.
(25:48):
So in terms of how to getin touch to for the we have
a ton on our website. Wesendoliterary dot com. If you actually subscribe
to our mailing list, we sendthe literary dot Com backs. Subscribe,
you get like a free author trainingkid. You get I think a video
with me. I'm sorry, Ihope it's helpful. You get, you
(26:11):
know, you get so much stuff. I think you get like an author
e book of some kind. Andwe also run these free bonus q and
as now where a bunch of writerscan just jump in a room with me,
like bring a cup of coffee,being your pajamas and ask questions of
an agent because this is what Zoomallows us to do, and so you
know, we always have sort offun challenges and programs and events going on.
(26:33):
It was sind the literary. Soyeah, that's how I encourage people
to find us well incredible. Thankyou so much for joining us and listeners
Blasters. If you like this episode, don't forget to rate, review,
subscribe, and share it with anyoneelse that might be interested. We'll see
you next time. Thanks, thankyou for listening to this episode of the
(26:56):
Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast. To reach us and learn about our
many services, visit Smith Publicity dotcom or send us an email to info
at Smith Publicity dot com
Welcome to the Smith Publicity All ThingsBook Marketing podcast, offering tips, insights,
and advice from the best in thepublishing industry. Hello and welcome to
this episode of All Things Book Marketing. I'm your host Olivia McCoy, and
our special guest today is Lucinda Halpern. Lucinda is a literary agent and the
(00:22):
founder of Listenda Literary Welcome to AllThings Book Marketing. Thanks Olivia. As
you know, I love the nameOlivia because my daughter is named that.
So it's a wonderful name. Itleads itself to a lot of nicknames.
It does well. Thank you forjoining us on the show. I would
love for you to start with whatyou do and how you help authors.
(00:44):
Yeah, so thanks again for havingme. You guys have a wonderful marketing
firm, so I'm really happy tobe here. And in ways, I
consider being an author the best formof marketing your message, right if you're
a novelist or a nonfiction author.So some of the ways in which we
help authors, many of whom beginas total unknowns, as total first timers,
(01:11):
is that we actually now coach andeducate them into what it means and
what it takes to become an author. So that's been a really exciting division
of my agency as of twenty twenty, when so many people were sort of
reinventing their businesses to have more onlinelearning, and I've taken so much to
teaching and coaching writers at scale ina way that literary boutiques really can't handle
(01:38):
otherwise, right, which is onereason that literary agencies based in New York
and publishing houses are so mysterious andopaque and difficult to access and exclusive.
And I really wanted to change thatwith the opportunities that Zoom was allowing to
now meet with writers all over theworld. They didn't have to come into
New York to meet with an agent. So that's one of the exciting things
(01:59):
we're doing through our sind the LiteraryAcademy. But beyond that, we have
worked now for this has been youknow, around since twenty thirteen and even
maybe twenty eleven. It's on histhirteenth year, so yeah, that makes
it twenty eleven, and that's wonderful, right, And it's and it's diversified
(02:21):
and pivoted and innovated in so manyways from the beginning. So when I
started out actually had a publicity background. I was on the heels of having
helped Gretchen Rubin market her very famousHappiness project along with some other authors.
I'd worked with the authors of Freakonomics, for instance, when I was at
HarperCollins, and all of this timeearlier in my career, I was taking
(02:44):
notes and I was learning from sortof the best in breed how to take
advantage of this burgeoning online you know, marketplace that was amplifying the messages of
books and authors. So I startedwithin de literary with that in mind,
how can I navigate authors through onlinemarketing and also publicized to the media their
(03:05):
books. Five years in, rightaround the time I had my first daughter,
I thought, you know what,I've always been really deeply editorial.
We have enough authors now that I'mrepresenting in just your standard agent capacity,
which for those who aren't familiar withwhat an agent does, I may have
started there. We are your doulas, your spouse is, your therapists,
(03:29):
and your advocates. We are thepeople, your very first editors and champions
who you know, make the partnershipwith you early on, share your vision,
develop your book proposal or your manuscript, and sell your work to a
publisher. We're obviously so much morethan that, because the publishing journey is
a long one. So you know, five years in starting with similarly,
(03:52):
I was really working more full timewith authors in that way, and then
we heard that authors needed lecture agentsand why couldn't they find a good lecture
agent when so many of my nonfictionauthors really needed that service as a way
to monetize their books and have careersas authors, and so we invented a
lecture bureau. It turns out thework is not that dissimilar from what we
(04:15):
do as agents. It's matchmaking andit's negotiating. So we developed that in
twenty sixteen and then again in twentytwenty we started what's now known as the
Luisina Literary Academy, and throughout thatprocess we've been signing new authors and selling
their books to major publishers. Sothat's those are the ways we hope authors.
(04:36):
So a big list, it isa big list. It's a lot
you have going on, but it'sall worthwhile. It's all great information.
So we really appreciate you educating authors. My favorite part of the job is
author education, so I get thatdeeply. Yes, yes, and speaking
of matchmaking, let's go back andvisit how you find your authors or how
(04:59):
your authors find you and all theythat you get connected with them. Oh,
I like that second flip of thequestion. I guess you know.
The answer to one and two isreally agencies have long been a referral based
business word of mouth, right,So you get your first author, and
(05:19):
your first author has a successful experience, and then they recommend you to five
other author friends, and likewise,the way that those authors are finding us
is they're reading the acknowledgments of theirfriends' books where the authors they admire,
and they're thinking, I've written abook just like that, I want to
be represented by her. So that'sthe way. That is like the most
(05:40):
typical way that agents and authors arefinding each other. But recently I decided
to do like a bit of anaudit, a pie chart, if you
will, of like we were actuallygetting most of our business because so much
of the landscape is changing with Instagram, with social with online right. So
it did this little pie chart,and I realized that about seventy percent of
(06:03):
our business remains by referral, butthat it isn't always authors who are making
those referrals. It's publicists, bookmarketing firms and ghostwriters, you know,
book collaborators, And that was suchan interesting I was like, Wow,
those are the relationships that not onlyI need to be focused on, but
(06:24):
that authors can be using to theiradvantage. Right, Because I have a
lot of trusted publicist relationships. Weshare taste, we send each other business.
And it turns out that that's madeup about fifty percent of that larger
piece of referral business. The otherthirty percent is probably I really scrutinize this
down to like sort of the number, but I would say maybe half and
(06:46):
half what comes in through the proverbialslush pile, a term I don't particularly
like, but what comes in unsolicitedthrough our inbox or what we are scouting
proactively. And that's a really funthing for authors to learn about. That
you don't always have to do allthe knocking on doors blindly submitting to people
(07:10):
you have no connection with. Youcan be out there. Is what I
say in my book Get Sign,I say getting seen. You can get
seen and have people come to you. So perfect example, years ago,
I read a Modern Love column.Modern love is historically known for a place
that if you write a column asa new author, twenty agents are going
to come after you for the bookthat comes out of that column. Same
(07:34):
case. Here, this wonderful author, Michelle dud had written a piece called
in Love in the Time of LowExpectations. It became one of their most
popular articles that year. But whatI noticed in the essay was that she
had a background. It was justa line where she mentioned that she'd been
raised in an evangelical cult by thiskind of like a sort of patriarchal father
(07:56):
figure, And I said, that'sthe book I want the next education.
She's a great writer. I loveher whole vibe, and we can you
know. I reached out to herproactively and she was like, great,
let's do a book proposal. Sothose are the sorts of things I want
new authors to be striving for.It's this inventive way of getting an ancient's
(08:18):
attention that's not always about your proactiveoutreach, but about how visible you are
elsewhere. So yeah, long answerto your question, No, it's a
great answer. It actually backs upa lot of what I'm telling authors all
the time, which is that brandingand platform building is incredibly important no matter
where you are in the process andwhat you're looking to do. Growing your
(08:39):
network, making sure that your mission, vision values are being clearly communicated to
the right people on the right platforms, the right networks, and even even
for fiction authors, making sure thatyou're connecting with other readers and writers in
that genre the stories, getting yourselfknown, and then making someuf more visible
(09:01):
so that when agents are scouting lookingfor books, you pop up in search
results or on their feed or theneven if you are querying them or applying
unsolicited, then you are standing outbecause you already have a platform, You
already have a kind of a visionfor who you are as an author,
what you want to do, andwhere you want to go. That's exactly
(09:24):
right, And a lot of authorsunderstand that this is really chicken and egg,
or rather they're like queering, whythis is their chicken and egg.
Well, of course I'm going toget the audience once I have the book.
A decade ago, that was thecase. An unknown talent could just
have a great book, it wouldcome out and then suddenly they'd have all
these followers, fans and reviewers.But now it's it's like the coin is
(09:45):
flipped and publishers do expect that youcome in with that built in audience.
I would also argue that what we'veseen with media, because you know,
this is like a nerd out aboutmedia and marketing too. A lot of
my publicists friends will say, weneed a platform in your author in order
to get the media that they wishto obtain, because what media is looking
(10:07):
for is the groundswell the community aroundyour ideas and books are looking for the
same. I've I've got a littlefun sort of section and get signed about
how agents think like editors. Editorshave to think like the media, and
media have to think like readers.But we're all thinking about that end reader,
right, So it's like, whatare we all interested in at the
(10:30):
end of the day, readers?And it's an interesting sort of formula to
consider. Why it is if you'rean author, you're wondering, why can't
I just have a great book?Why do I need a platform too?
And isn't that the question? Becausea lot of great books out there and
you got to break through the noise. Especially in this day and age of
(10:50):
self publishing and indie publishing, that'sjust made the industry more accessible, which
we love, just fantastic and welove that more people are able to put
their voice in their visions out there. But also it does mean more competition.
It does mean yeah, more outthere to break through. I mean,
just to give you a visual,so many bookstores have gone out of
(11:11):
business. Review space has been shrinking, you know since I came into the
industry. So there literally is onlyso much room on a shelf, and
you got to make room for allthese classics and these big bestsellers, and
so how are you going to breakout of that pack? In exers,
like a hopeful exercise that I givewriters is to go into their local bookstore.
(11:33):
This comes up all the time whenpeople ask about comps, so comparative
titles. I can't figure out mycomps, and what of this comp is
not quite like my book? Youknow, they're sort of like spending a
lot of time thinking about the wrongthings writers, or thinking about the wrong
things for comps. The right thingto think about is what was the author's
profile that's similar to mine? Thatmakes mine a lookalike book, not that
(11:58):
it is verbatim the same book,but that it has the same readership.
And an exercise I love to prescribeis go into your local bookstore, your
favorite local bookstore, and talk toa bookseller about what they're selling every day
and ask the question, what wasthe book you didn't expect to be fine
off the shelves, but is reallyjust sort of surprising everyone. And you're
(12:22):
reordering your reordering, and you'll learnabout like those non celebrity, non best
selling authors who are creating these successfulfir sign books, and that can guide
you actually and finding your comps.So everyone has access to that. And
speaking of the unsolicited submissions the editorsand agents get I'd love to talk about
how to break out of that pack. So what does it look like?
(12:43):
I mean, I know the processis called querying for authors that have heard
of that somewhere in the conversation,but don't exactly know what that means.
It's the act of submitting unsolicited tothese agents and to these editors. So
what, yep, what exactly goesinto an author query or book proposal?
Is there a difference? There isa difference, And fortunately I have created
(13:11):
this book called Get Signed, andthere is an entire chapter on creating the
perfect query letter. But I've aimedin that to give you advice that you
won't find online for free. Right, this is like sort of secret agent
advice, like the things that wedo because we write something very similar to
a query letter to a publisher whenwe pitch your book. And so it's
like use our language, use ourstrategies, use our tactics. So I
(13:35):
have a few things I can givethere, but I guess the way I
like to, you know, toanswer your question is a book proposal like
a query letter. It's not aquery letter is your first pay into the
conversation. Like that is a threehundred word or less pitch letter that you
send via email. Used to haveto send them via snowmill. And I
(13:56):
always tell people that actually wasn't inway. That was actually a better situation
because someone had to open those envelopesand peak at the manuscript. Now it's
a subject line that gets you.It's a title, right, Like you're
just looking through a very saturated inbox. So a query letter is your pitch
letter, and your pitch letter needsto tell us not what your book is
(14:20):
about, but why it matters.It's a very fundamental difference. Why it
matters? Why this book? Now? Why are you the person to write
it? Those are the things thatpeople want answered for them an agent wants
answered. A book proposal is fornonfiction authors exclusively, and it's the fifty
page blow up of the pitch.It's the longer marketing presentation honestly, that
(14:46):
contains some sample writing to show thatyou can write a book. Why is
that the case because for so muchnonfiction, editors and agents want to get
in on the ground floor and developand shape the book. And nonfiction tends
to bend or around the news ofthe day. You know, it tends
to it tends to morph, whereasfiction needs to be considered on the full
(15:07):
manuscript. With fiction, we needto see that beginning, middle, and
end, we need to see thatwe stay engrossed in that pot that someone
can really execute on the page.So that's sort of the three different elements.
You've got your query letter, whichis your pitch, a book proposal,
a fifty page marketing document if you'rewriting nonfiction, or a full manuscript
(15:30):
if you're writing fiction. And youcan't have any of these things incomplete.
They can't just be partially done.They have to be fully done and ideally
edited before you're submitting them to agents. My brother is a writer and aspiring
author who has been through the queeryprocess three times now and I've worked through
his query letters, his pitch letterswith him, and it is gruesome.
(15:54):
I got to tell you, wespent probably four hours each time on a
zoom call together, are really makingsure everything was answered and nitty gritty,
and it's just it's just a process. So what is there a way to
make it easier? Is there away? And I know you probably teach
these in your classes, and Ido. I teach these in my class,
But you know what, there honestlyis no There honestly is no magic
(16:17):
bullets. There's no one size fitsall for any book, which is what
makes books bespoken beautiful. I liketo view pitch letters as opportunities to lead
with your strunts. So in getside, I have the four kinds of
writers who get book deals, andthey are the ideator, so the person
has big ideas. The everywhere isthe person who's everywhere visible and has what
we call a platform that built anaudience. I was talking about before,
(16:41):
the data collector, which is thissort of like research detective, which,
by the way, everyone can be. And the crusader, who was like
the person who was so fearless andtenacious about knocking down every door or finding
every way to get in. Andsome people are a combination of these types.
Very very rarely is one all fourof those types. But the idea
(17:04):
with your pitch is like to leverageyour strength and lead with it. So
if you have nothing else but greatcomps that you found, publishing does a
lookalike business. It's a Hollywood business. This is the next X meets Y.
And you would think that that's supertrite and sounds really dumb, but
(17:25):
that's absolutely the way that agents talkand the way that readers think when they're
looking to pick up their next bookon Amazon. It's like, I love
that, so I'm gonna like thisone. So if you nothing but comps,
great, But there are a lotof you know, again, there
are a lot of ways to leadand to end the query letter. In
my book at Signed, I havelike the whole anatomy of what your pitch
(17:47):
should include, broken down the twoconditions I say that every query leader letter
needs to have is a personalized intro, which is more than just hey,
sind I read not that I onesays hey, but WoT wouldn't blacklist them
if they did? But dear Lucinda, you know I read, of course,
(18:07):
I'm looking at a book right nowChris Bailey is the Productivity Project,
and you were listening to acknowledgements,and I'm writing a productivity book that's just
like that or was inspired by thatis different than that. And here's why.
The personalized intro is much more aboutthe win win, like why you
are a fit for someone's list.Agents are working speculatively. We do not
(18:27):
make money until you make money,which means that the risk, the financial
risks that we're taking on for somethingthat may not sell, the time we
have to invest means that we haveto be really, really sure that this
has nothing short of best selling potential. So that personalized intro is here's why
(18:48):
we are a fit. And thenthe second condition I say is close with
urgency. And this again has beenlike such a revelation to writers. They
don't even think about this. Theythink about the sort of passive of like
thank you for your time and consideration, which is not a deal breaker,
but a much better ending to yourquery letter is something that suggests urgency.
(19:11):
Right, I mean, Olivia,you're in the business of publicy and media.
It's really not very different a mediapitch. It can just sit there
or it can elicit a reaction.And so again I've I have a few
ways to do that in the book. But you know, that's that's what
I want people to concentrate on.If you want me to recap those it's
(19:32):
not what happens in this book,because the big common error of query letters
is an overly long synopsis, youknow, and it just feels like,
here's what happened, da da dada da da, than this, than
this, than this, It's likebut but why, but who? But
you know, I talk about includingthe five w's, the who, what,
where? When? Why? Where? Why is the most important and
(19:53):
you know, so, so thinkabout limiting your synopsis to what's essential,
to what's memorable, and making thecase for why this book now. Comp's
being a great tool if you're writingfiction in particular, right why this book
now? A perfectly great argument wouldbe, well, people are buying a
lot of this book, and they'rewatching a lot of this series, so
(20:15):
that proves the appetite. And thenjust ending with something that gives a little
more spark, a little sense ofyour crusader self, a little more personality
and urgency is a great way toclose. I like that you mentioned TV
shows as or movies as a compas well, and I feel like I
said it before on the podcast,and I say it all tend to authors.
(20:37):
When you hear comp typically people thinkcompetitive at a competitor title, competitive
title, And really what we're sayingis comparable, which is what you said
earlier as well in our conversation.It's someone who has a similar book or
similar piece of media, but thereis a differentiator. Obviously it's not the
same thing. You don't want tobe a copycat, but I do like
(20:59):
that you could pull your comp fromother pieces of media. So if you
were to say this is Hank Greenmeets a Ya book, or this is
science person, uh, you knowBill Andy, the science guy and meets
this book, that is a greatway of kind of talking about that need,
like you said, and that urgencywithout pulling out too many too many
(21:21):
books and maybe dating a little bit. It's I mean, it's a no
stress way to think about comps.Everyone watches Netflix. Every editor is sort
of paying attention. It's there.It's their business to pay attention to the
trends by way of all media forms. Popular podcast what's in the news,
what's the popular on social media,what people are watching, and so,
(21:42):
yes, this is one of thekind of revelations to writers that they can
and should be using comps beyond booktitles in their pitches to prove the appetite
for their book. I love it. And then to wrap up our conversation,
I would love one quick do andone quick don't or oh gosh,
(22:03):
are we're wrapping up? I'm sosad. No, I know so good?
Oh yes, yes, yes,okay, one quick do, one
quick don't. So we talked aboutlike really thinking about being brief. The
less is more we'll ask you ifyou if we want more information, right,
Like the idea is you know,the teaser, the movie trailer.
We have to see more. Theonly thing you have to focus on,
(22:26):
the only win you have to focuson in a query to an agent is
getting the request to see your material, is getting into a dialogue. That's
it. If you've done that,you succeeded. And and so the less
is more approaches one that I considerhelpful in all of life and communication.
(22:47):
Uh so, you know, maybethat's your due along with lead with your
strengths and then your don't we talkedagain about like being overly sort of long
on the synopsis front. I don'tlike, you know, choose I've been
pitched, you know, Dear Lindaor you know, people will blind poppy
(23:07):
a lot of a lot of agents. I I'm going to try to think
of something more inventive. Then don'tgive up. This is a variation on
don't give up. Okay. Mostwriters think that the one shot they've taken
is it. They send a pitchto an agent and they say, well,
I got rejected. I never heardback, and it's been nine months,
(23:30):
and I'm like, this is justI want to just screw your head
on straight, baby, Like thisis not the I hate to see them
so sort of discouraged by this,right, there are so many reasons why
that agent didn't receive the pitch tobegin with. Or you had the wrong
title or the subject line, orthere was the person was out on maternity.
(23:52):
There's someone better, you know,there's so many reasons that that didn't
land the way it should have.And so the don't is, don't give
it one try. You've got toeither follow up and I've got some you
know, some sort of exact languageyou can use for that in get Sawn
in my book. But you've gotto find your way in to your dream
agent. There's always a way in. Yeah, it hurts my heart just
(24:17):
hearing the idea of authors giving upon their book and writers giving up it
just yep, yeah, and theycome and then that come to us and
they'll be so defeated and it's it's, oh, I wish you would come
to me before you gave up,Like, let's let's try and get some
of that spark back because there's somuch you can do and it's fun stuff
like it's it's it's another sect ofbeing an author being published. Yes,
(24:41):
that's right. If one avenue doesn'twork, out, reach out to a
publisher or a publicist or a freelanceagent or someone, because you don't know
the connections they have or the waysthat they can help you get out there.
There's just there's so many different avenuesnowadays that like you're saying, one
shot is not your ownly yes,yes, it's a long and winding road.
(25:03):
If you I could talk more onself publishing, like, if you
self publish, there could be atraditional deal ahead. It's not you know,
it's not stigmatized in the way itused to be. It could be
incredibly effective for authors, and manychoose to do that even when given other
opportunities. There are so many waysto think about, like what's the right
path for your book? Mm hmmm, that begin with what are your goals
(25:26):
for this? And there's so manyways to keep productive. So the news
that are like we're about to sendthis week is about ways to keep productive
while you're waiting to hear from agents. Yeah. Yeah, it's like what
an anxious waiting period, right,build your network, branding, make sure
that yeah, yes, all ofthese things. Yeah, that'll be fun.
(25:48):
So in terms of how to getin touch to for the we have
a ton on our website. Wesendoliterary dot com. If you actually subscribe
to our mailing list, we sendthe literary dot Com backs. Subscribe,
you get like a free author trainingkid. You get I think a video
with me. I'm sorry, Ihope it's helpful. You get, you
(26:11):
know, you get so much stuff. I think you get like an author
e book of some kind. Andwe also run these free bonus q and
as now where a bunch of writerscan just jump in a room with me,
like bring a cup of coffee,being your pajamas and ask questions of
an agent because this is what Zoomallows us to do, and so you
know, we always have sort offun challenges and programs and events going on.
(26:33):
It was sind the literary. Soyeah, that's how I encourage people
to find us well incredible. Thankyou so much for joining us and listeners
Blasters. If you like this episode, don't forget to rate, review,
subscribe, and share it with anyoneelse that might be interested. We'll see
you next time. Thanks, thankyou for listening to this episode of the
(26:56):
Smith Publicity All Things Book Marketing podcast. To reach us and learn about our
many services, visit Smith Publicity dotcom or send us an email to info
at Smith Publicity dot com
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