In my younger and more vulnerable years, I was given a piece of advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. (And no, it is not to shamelessly rip off The Great Gatsby's opening line; that I do all on my own.) The advice was this: Write a thousand words of your work-in-progress each day. No more, no less. Just a cool grand.Here's the why of the advice:
A thousand words is kind of an arbitrary number. It is the number my long-ago advisor chose, but you can adjust it to suit your needs. Graham Greene wrote exactly eight hundred words and boasted that he would stop mid-sentence when he'd reached that number. (He had a finely calibrated internal word counter, apparently.)
But he wrote every day—the set number of words—no matter what was going on in his life. Writing every single day makes it easier to beat a path to the well, makes it easier to re-enter the fictive dream of the manuscript as though the preceding 23 hours haven't intervened.
I was fortunate enough last summer to speak with Bruce Coville at an SCBWI event in Orlando. (He's an amazing speaker—truly amazing—and if you catch word that he is speaking somewhere, by all means go and see him.) Bruce mentioned something he called "The Rule of Twenty." He doesn't recall where he picked it up—a business article? a self-help book? a primer on original thinking?—but wherever it came from, I have since relied on it and relied on it often.
What is it? Put most simply, it is this: It is only when one reaches the twentieth or so idea that one starts entering the realm of the truly original idea.
The first five or ten? Those are the obvious ones that the brain goes to along its well-traveled paths. Most people's heads will go that way and think of that thing. (Are you disappointed when you can see the plotline of a movie from a mile away? That's thanks to the filmmakers working the shallows of the Rule of Twenty.) In the teens, you are starting to bushwhack into uncharted territory, where most people's brains rarely go (because they are not as focused on craft as, say, a writer is). But by the time you hit twenty, you've likely discarded all the obvious and nearly obvious, and now you are working in a territory that is peculiarly yours. Those ideas you've worked toward will have the snap of the real and a complexity that speaks volumes.
Bruce was talking about the naming of things—characters, realms, books, what-have-you. Names are hugely important in fiction, of course, and our most beloved writers are masters of naming. But naming is about much more than simply giving a place or a character a telling handle, it is also the way the writer establishes his or her authority, where the writer becomes the author, if you will. Is the name too simple? Too easy? Too telling? Does it have hidden qualities?
Can you imagine Dickens without Magwitch or Havisham or Pecksniff? Rowling without Hogwarts or the Weasleys or Snape or her latinate spell names? Dahl without Trunchbull or Augustus Gloop? Pullman without the aletheiometer or Iorek Brynison or places like Bolvangar? The naming here does important work—so much so that a lot of exposition can be left out. Thanks to etymology, we know that "panserbørne" in The Golden Compass means more than simply "armored bear" (the Danish translation)—we hear echoes of Rommel's panzer division, and there is an instant military air to the term. (Children won't necessarily hear that, but that's okay—the name is dark and rich and has extra dimensions folded within it.)
But naming is only one part of it: The Rule of Twenty can and should be used to consider plot twists and any other part of writing a story when you suspect you may have taken a too-easy route. Chances are that you have. So push yourself, reach that twentieth idea that is yours and yours alone, and see what you end up with.
[Once upon a time, one of us judged a contest for the blog at QueryTracker.net, a great site for writers at the query stage looking for more information about potential agents. When this agent agreed to help out, he came up with a plan that would be both 1) easy on him, and 2) beneficial to writers: he decided to limit the entries to pitches of 25 words or less.
We can already hear many of you groaning. If boiling down a story into two or three paragraphs for a query is like stubbing your toe, then fitting an entire novel into 25 words is like getting a 50-ton anvil dropped on your cat. You know, if you really like your cat.]
So how do you write these things, anyway? There's no perfect formula, but one way to start is with who the story is about, what challenges the protagonist faces, and some standout detail that makes it feel unique. For example, when pitching erstwhile client Cole Gibsen's book KATANA, the 25-word pitch was: "It's KILL BILL meets BUFFY, about a teen girl who discovers she's a reincarnated samurai, but would rather be breaking hearts than breaking bones." Who is it about? A teen girl. What challenges does she face? She's learned she might be a samurai warrior, for the love of Pete! What makes it feel unique? All of it, really, but most notably, the notion of a kick-ass teen who may or may not use swords. This pitch doesn't get into many of the elements that make this project so fun and awesome, but it's enough to make people (hopefully) say, "Huh, that's interesting!"
Or, to choose an example many of you will be familiar with, CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. If I was looking to tell a someone about the story, I may start with something like this:
So that's 84 words. Not a bad start—this may work for a query—but it's too long for the mailman to sit through. How can we go shorter? What can be eliminated? The first thing I'd ask is whether the story is about Willy Wonka or about Charlie. Although the title of the Gene Wilder film may say otherwise, the title of the book is CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, and though Willy Wonka is an iconic character, Charlie is still our hero here. So I'm tempted to make it more about him.
Here's another, shorter attempt:
Still not perfect, but we're down to 43 words, although Willy is still a part of it. What else can we prune? We don't need Charlie's last name, we don't need the exact details about the Golden Ticket, but, for my money, there needs to be more of a hint of just how special this opportunity is. Here's my final 25-word pitch:
Perfect? Nope! But it's 25 words and hopefully gets across enough of the story's flavor to be compelling. We have the two main players, a hint of the conflict, and a sense of what sort of story we can expect to read.Remember when trying these yourselves to include the most information in the least amount of words. Like a solid poem, each word has to count and be absolutely necessary. Use active verbs wherever possible, and be selective with adjectives. In my example, I included "reclusive" and "courageous" because I felt they were both important in illustrating the two characters in the least amount of words.
[Many years ago, I was in Chicago to give a couple of talks at an SCBWI conference. While I was in fine form for much of the conference, I punted my final talk, to my chagrin. Part of the issue was an ill-advised, last-minute rejiggering of my notes and talking points into a confusing mess of arrows and write-ins (a poor idea, as it is all too easy to lose the thread of an argument while speaking); but more the issue was an inability to get my head around the topic. The title of the talk had been dictated to me—"The Joys and Challenges of Agenting Across Formats"—and, I blithely asserted, I had little if anything to say about that beyond, "Yes, agenting these sorts of manuscripts is different."
[Well, I was blazingly incorrect about that, and recent experience has driven this home. So I've put my notes back into their original order and fleshed them out. What follows below is, without apology, the first part of what that talk should have been. Forewarning: This will be a long post—more of an essay, really; a self-indulgence.—M.
[The talk began with some introductory remarks: Who I am, where I come from, how to find me, and so on. And then I got down to business.]
On the face of it, in the most superficial manner imaginable, agenting picture books is no different from agenting novels. A manuscript comes in, the agent tweaks it a little or a lot, the author revises, the final manuscript is submitted to editors at various houses, and soon—one hopes!— it is purchased and published. But to leave the comparison at that—to say that agenting the two things is not much of a different experience for the agent—would be somewhat irresponsible. Like saying since a primate and a whale are both mammals, they're basically the same. Picture books and novels are different, obviously, most notably in terms of process, and that's what I'm going to talk about today.
1. About Picture Books and Picture Book Writing
I should start by stating unequivocally that I love picture books. Love them. I squander my spare cash buying picture books I love. I read them over and over again to see how they're structured. I spend hours grazing at local bookstores while parents give me the hairy eye wondering what's up with the strange single male who is reading picture books to himself and chortling.
But even though I love picture books, I represent and acquire very few.
Why? Well, I don't always love working with picture book authors, for reasons that can be difficult to articulate without coming off as uncharitable. Here's the thing: A really great picture book is a difficult art to pull off. I'm deadly serious when I use the word "art" here. That's how I view a great picture book. It is about grace and the right words in the right place—much more akin to poetry than mere storytelling. The picture books I love are "language driven"—that is, are more about sound and rhythm and call-and-response than about, say, the devices of regular fiction—those things familiar from novels, such as extended scene and dialogue exchange and long descriptive passages. Picture book writing must be woefully dependent on the illustrations, else the manuscript is trying to do far too much, is the bore at the table who won't let anyone else speak, won't let the conversation come to life, and flattens the spirit of the evening.
(Some will cry out, but what about storybooks! There are tons of picture books that rely on fictive devices! And to those I say, yes, such books are published, and there are many good ones out there—favorites come to mind such as a lot of Steig—but for me, the books I most love, those are the shorter texts, and those are the ones I've chosen to talk about here.)
Anyway, getting a picture book manuscript to work in this fashion is no easy matter. Some people—such as Jane Yolen or Kathi Appelt—come to this naturally. They have a true gift, make no mistake. Such writers have an innate economy of expression and an artful ear, and though they work hard writing their picture book manuscripts, it doesn't show: There is a fleetness to the language, an always perceptible joy. They make it look effortless.
Other writers achieve an artful manuscript via many many many revisions, and a paring away of extraneous bits. Twenty-five drafts in, say, such writers may have nailed their manuscript. It may differ only in the use of forty words, but those forty words matter and affect the tone and impact of the whole. Most writers, of course, fall somewhere in the middle in terms of process. However the writer achieves it, getting the picture book manuscript to that place it needs to be requires an artist's heart and patience.
For the agent (and editor, I'd wager), editing and responding to the picture book requires an artist's heart and patience as well. It is rarely obvious in a well-written picture book draft what, exactly, is missing. The prose may read well enough, the story may have a beginning, a middle, an end. The punctuation may be in all the right places. The images called to mind may be original and fun. And yet, something about the manuscript is off. Perhaps the concept isn't quite "there." That is, maybe the concept needs to be rethunk, and if so, that will affect the way it has been realized in the manuscript itself—will affect the very prose. It is not uncommon to work on a manuscript off and on for ages and then have to toss it. It is sad when this happens, of course, but it does happen.
So in some cases, the agent reads the manuscript, ponders it, sets it aside to marinate. Comes back to it a week later, rereads it, ponders it, makes a few notes. Keeps doing this until something unlocks. Because seeing the "fix" that will give a good manuscript heart, or finding a way to cut out half the words without cutting out the soul of the story—is hard work. If it weren't, the author wouldn't need an editor at all. (Some authors feel that they don't need editors at all, and I wish such writers all best of luck.) It can take time, the figuring out of picture books—time inversely proportional to the length of the book.
There is a picture book manuscript that one writer and I had been backing-and-forthing for months, making little tweaks, making larger tweaks, fixing meter and rhyme, but it was only after five months of this that we finally stumbled upon the question we hadn't been asking, the question that revealed what the story needed in order to feel emotionally full. I wish we'd seen this six months earlier. But somehow we'd been blinded by the little things. Now it's got it all and is going to market.
Few beginners understand this, the length of the process.
Many new writers in the children's books arena (80% of SCBWI attendees?) cut their teeth on picture books, for obvious reasons. Picture books are short. Picture books can be revised quickly. Picture books look "easy" to the untrained eye. Whereas a novel is obviously a serious commitment, an undertaking of many months or even years, a picture book by contrast looks like something that can be knocked out in an hour. Such writers would never admit this, but they think picture books are simple.
I dread such writers. And they are the ones who fill-to-bursting submission piles when agents open the floodgates and accept picture book manuscripts. This is why most agents will not look at picture book manuscripts at all.
This can strike the new writer as unfair, as a blind punishment of the talented and hard-working in order to keep the untalented rabble out. And I suppose these writers have a point: It is unfair. But so what? Who ever said this process was going to be "fair"? And fair to whom? Such measures are the only way for an agent to make the most of her time in the slushpile.
But what I've been talking about—the hard-to-achieve art of the picture book—it is only one of the reasons few agents embrace the format from newcomers. There is a second reason, and that is all about how picture book writers come across in their initial submissions.
2. Picture Book Dilettantes
A made-up, potentially hot-button label.
What, precisely, is a picture book dilettante? Well, it can be hard to say, and defining it can be borderline offensive. Seriously! One can look at our very best authors—Philip Pullman, Gail Carson Levine, and other literary greats—and label them picture book dilettantes. Remember Pullman's Puss in Boots? No? I thought not. Most don't even know it exists. Same is true of Levine's Betsy Who Cried Wolf! Both of these are excellent picture books but not why these authors are known. Their brief forays into picture books are interesting side projects. Which is to say, smallish. Not treated by anyone as fresh, exciting debuts. Is that because of the books themselves? or because the authors are already known well for something else?
There are authors who move between novels and picture books with great ease, finding success with both—Kevin Henkes, Kathi Appelt, Tedd Arnold, Jane Yolen, M.T. Anderson, and on and on—but for the most part, those writers began in picture books and then grew into novel writing. Not always, but often. I think it's easier for a writer to develop from a picture book creator into a novelist rather than the other way around, but that's not really what I want to talk about here, and is a full talk all to itself (about the market, and about defining a brand in the market, and whether brands work backwards into picture books or only upwards into novels). So an interesting aside, but one that has little impact on you, the newish writer of picture books.
What does all of the above mean for the new writer approaching an agent? Well, two very concrete things. First, here's a not-atypical approach from an email query to me:
Hi! I am a new writer and I have completed work in many different genres. Please tell me which genre do you want to see? I write picture books, middle grade, young adult, fiction, nonfiction, and erotica for the defrocked clergy. I have attached a list of all my available projects with loglines for each. Please review it, check off which are most appealing to you, and I will send them to you as soon as possible. Please also send me a contract and tell me when I can expect to receive my money.
My immediate and overwhelming feeling is that this person doesn’t have any freaking idea what it is she writes. She believes she is a master of everything and so I'm willing to bet she is a master of nothing. (Unless the signature at the bottom reads Jane Yolen or Kathi Appelt, in which case I'm on board.) Such a writer is clearly a dilettante, dipping her toes in everything. Basically, she’s approached me with everything she’s ever put to paper, saying, "Hey, I’m having a yard sale—and lucky you, you get first pick of the goods!"
Thank you, but no thanks.
Instead, I look for writers who put their strongest stuff forward first. If she feels her picture books are her strongest material, then she should start there. If she feels she is primarily a novelist, then she should start with a novel. The goal when starting out and approaching an agent isn't to sell yourself as able to do everything—sorry, I don't believe you, and my experience makes me skeptical of self-declared renaissance types. The goal is to appear focused and dedicated to your genre. The goal is to show you're dedicated to doing this one thing as well as you can to the best of your ability. And then, after you’ve hooked the agent with that, you can go about revealing the erotica you write for defrocked clergymen (if you must).
So the first point here is to lead off with your strongest suit. Only lead off with that. If you feel your picture books are your strongest, then start there. If you feel you’re primarily a novelist, then start with a novel. The goal starting out is to appear focused and dedicated to your genre.
Second, don’t write picture books just because they’re shorter than novels.
Sounds absurd, but this is the real problem I was skirting around above. A picture book isn’t just a short story with pictures. It is something else entirely. If you attempt picture books, you should attempt them as picture book writers—rooted in a love of language and very young concerns. Otherwise you’re making life not just harder for you, but harder for your agent, and, down the road, harder for your next books. There is nothing worse than having to chase an unwanted picture book manuscript with a novel manuscript. The novel may be completely excellent, but it will be coming in on the coattails of something that was begrudgingly considered, and that memory may color the book’s reception.
Which brings me to another, grimmer reason that some agents look askance at picture book manuscripts on their own:
3. The Economics of Picture Books
First, time spent vs. money earned.
The agents who represent picture books do so because they love picture books. There are payoffs in the picture book market, of course—and in the case of runaway bestsellers (Fancy Nancy, anyone?) such payoffs are huge. But those are the exceptions, and the rule is a much tinier thing.
Payoffs in the picture book market tend to be smaller—and more importantly they tend to be later—than with a kid's novel. Payoff comes only after the manuscript has been matched to an illustrator, published, achieved some measure of success (an award or four, a line-of-dolls, a movie). Initial advances tend to be more modest (most debut novels sell for bigger advances), and—because picture books take years to produce and bring to market—earnouts of the advance tend to be very distant. And, considering how rocky the picture book market can be, getting any title to take off and become huge is a chancy thing. Like gambling at roulette.
So picture books aren't a huge money-making business up front. Like you, we do this for love. Because we can't not do it.
But that long process of getting that manuscript to market? It can easily take as long and as much labor as it does to revise a novel. Picture book creators are prolific and fast, and produce many revisions, each of which differs in a number of slight ways that have to be weighed, their combined effects measured. And even while one picture book manuscript is being tweaked and refined, the author has written four others and sent them along to the agent.
Because, let's be honest, for the gifted picture book writer (Jane, Kathi, and perhaps you), it is easy to write lots of picture books very quickly. But few publishers are going to sign more than a few picture book manuscripts from one author before publishing the first, and publishers will feel a bit peeved if they know that the author is selling picture books all over the market (in effect, flooding the market with their name, lessening the special quality of any individual book by floating out lots of books, some of which may be less fabulous than others).
So with my picture book clients, I spend a fair amount of time strategizing what goes out when, and to whom, and how to position the different publications. Just because a great picture book writer can write ten manuscripts a year doesn't mean all ten of those should appear. In the world of problems, a skilled writer's prolificity isn't a big one, but it does pose a challenge for the agent. How to best deliver the manuscripts to market? Which house will make the best home for a particular picture book? Will another house be peeved to read that a picture book has sold to an editor elsewhere?
Happily, the houses have very different sensibilities, kind of like the studios in old Hollywood (where MGM did lots of musicals; WB did gangster pics; Universal was the monster house; and so on). Harper Collins is different from Candlewick is different from Chronicle is different from Holiday House. And within each house, there is often a very different editorial guard who edit picture books versus those who are more focused on novels. Some manuscripts just seem so strange that it seems they won't find a home at all, but then an editor at a house will surprise you. Over lunch, say, I'll mention to an editor that I have a picture book about dog drool and the water table, and that editor will clasp her hands together and say, I'd love a book about the water table. A wonderful thing when that happens, but it is the work of a long while sifting through the tastes and needs of different editors at different houses.
Second, the picture book market itself.
The picture book market of late has been a small, difficult-to-hit, moving target.
The bigger chains have promotions each year that dictate the lion's share of their buys. These promotions comprise a mix of familiar and not-so-familiar themes and vary year-to-year: Christmas, Mother's Day, Back-to-School, Halloween, sure, but then there will be odd ones thrown in: Single Parents, Transgendered Housepets, Cooking is Fun!—whatever. If a book has a promotional hook, it can help it in the marketplace. But it can hurt it, too. The Christmas book market is huge, but also intensely crowded by a lot of familiar brand names (Fancy Nancy, The Polar Express, Santa Calls, and on and on and on). It can be hard to get a toehold. But if a picture book does get pegged for a promotion, it can be the difference in an initial order of many thousands of copies. And the more copies in stores, the more copies will sell. (People have to see things in order to want to buy them. Sales are all about real estate and getting the word out.)
And the shelf life of picture books has shrunk over the years. Used to be that picture books sold, and sold pretty steadily, for years. Most of that market had to do with the prevalence of independent booksellers, who hand-sold the best books year after year. With the exception of great regional stores such as Anderson's here in the Chicago area, and Books of Wonder in New York, and Books, Inc. in the Bay Area, handselling is gone. Now, just as elsewhere, there is a big initial sales window in the chains, and then books are returned and a few copies placed spine out. So if a picture book doesn't hit big initially, it will be difficult for it to build and gain "legs," as they say. Because really, who sees a picture book that is shelved spine out? Very few.
Mind you, this may sound like whinging, complaining. Trust me, I am always happy do my fair share of pissing and moaning about the work, but I'm not doing that here. This isn't complaint; it's more description. Just limning the work of the picture book agent. (And a caveat: It's not always like this. Of course! Many picture book manuscripts—especially from experienced hands—come in that are much closer to fine. I'm not talking of those, but rather, of the writers at the start of their career. People such as you all sitting in this audience in this auditorium.)
Now, in the face of all the above—the reluctance of agents, the difficulties of the marketplace, the need for a writer to actually choose a genre and stake an identity—the fledgling writer can be forgiven for wanting to throw up her hands and say, Never mind!
But that would be to quit something simply because it is hard to do. Of course it is hard to do; if it were easy as cliché, everyone would do it. We agents who choose to work on picture books do so because of love, yes, but also because they are hard, so when we all succeed in spite of the difficulty, that success is all the sweeter. As with anything worthwhile.
And, anyway, novels have their own host of difficulties and pleasures, for both writer and agent, which I will post about next week.
[Alas, I never went on to write that post because of work intervening. Perhaps one day I'll get around to talking about the peculiar hurdles agents face in selling novels.—MS.]
If you work in publishing in any capacity whatsoever, then you likely have a deep affection for Little, Brown. And not just because they are riding so high these days. Sure, they the publishers of a kind-of-sort-of-somewhat-successful series you may have heard of, but they also have one of the sharpest, most insistently singular lists around. Not just the thrill-a-minute money machines of James Patterson, but also cheerily commercial fare such as Vampirates, literary bestsellers that smart kids love such as The Mysterious Benedict Society, compelling and complex teen fiction about dark stuff in life such as The Hate List and North of Beautiful, and more more more. It's just a great house with great books, and the people who edit there are pretty fabulous, too.
But this isn't a love letter to Little, Brown—honest, it's not. (My love is much too fickle and unpleasant to be captured in a mere blog post.) Instead, it's a reproduction of a useful handout their editors distribute at conferences and which every writer should tack to his or her wall.
The list of eminent attributes below may not all be required of a good book, but I'd wager most are true of the best books. How do these strike all of you? As things that need not be said? As constraints? Or as the distilled wisdom of the soldiers in the trenches of children's books publishing?
Without further ado:LIST OF ATTRIBUTES THAT MAKE A GOOD CHILDREN’S BOOK (in our opinion)
Many unagented writers out there are terrified of breaking rules when it comes to getting in contact with agents. What rules? Always wait patiently to hear back on a submission! Never, under any circumstance, follow up on a requested manuscript!! FOLLOW SUBMISSION GUIDELINES TO THE LETTER LEST YOU FEEL OUR WRATH!!!
We at Upstart Crow are not wrathful ogres full of wrath, but we do appreciate writers with a sense of decorum. We've put up submission guidelines for a reason, and if you refuse to follow them, it makes things more difficult. Do we reject things automatically where a writer has made a simple mistake? Well, no, but every extra step we have to take in order to consider your manuscript (like you've sent an attachment instead of pasting pages into the email, or you've linked to your website with information about your project rather than simply telling us about it) is taking up more of our time and may, if we haven't had our coffee yet, cause us to frown and shake our heads. If we have a huge pool of submissions to go through, it's certainly easier to pass on things which don't follow the guidelines.
In regards to following up on submissions... well, we don't have a hard-and-fast "Never do this ever" policy. We try to respond to things in a reasonable amount of time (I, for example, try my absolute best to respond to all queries within one month of receiving them, and to all requested manuscripts within two). Am I always successful? Of course not. If it’s been 32 days for a query or 62 days on a manuscript submission, should you be sending a follow-up demanding to know why you haven't heard from me? Heavens no! But sometimes things do get lost, or forgotten, or sometimes the rest of my life makes me busy enough that I can’t keep up. If you’ve waited an especially long time, I’m not going to be angry if you follow up.
Now, there are also times when it’s in your best interest to send along an email for other reasons. Like what, you ask? Well, if you’ve sent me an manuscript and have received an offer of representation from someone else, I’d certainly hope that you’d email me and let me know, no matter how long I’ve had your manuscript or even just the query. I’ll always do my best to read material quickly if you have a legitimate offer on the table. Does that mean I’m more likely to sign a project? Nope. It still comes down to how I connect with the writing, the story, and the author, more than how someone else feels about it.
The most important thing to remember, though, is that if an agent is open to submissions, it's because he's looking to sign new clients. Furthermore, if he requests material, it’s because he wants to read it. Just as your time is valuable, so is ours. I’d hate to spend time reading, thinking about, and discussing a manuscript only to realize that it’s been signed before I even had a shot.
Are there other times you should email? What if you’ve written a new draft since I requested the material? Nope. That just makes me wonder why I didn’t get the final draft in the first place. What if you’ve published a poem or short story somewhere? Should you send along an update? Again I'll say no, since it doesn’t change the draft I’ve already requested, right? What if your dog gave birth to puppies? Well, that depends on the breed, the quality of the photos, and how much you want for one. This guy I'd totally go for.
In all seriousness, it's a good idea to follow the main guidelines and rules, because we've set them up to make things as fair for everyone as possible. But remember, there are also times when a follow-up email isn't the worst thing in the world, and chances are, as long as you have a legitimate reason for following up (not counting puppies), we won't get upset about it.
There are tons of different ways for agencies to ask for submissions. Some places request just a query. Some ask for a query plus a few pages. Some less reputable agencies ask for a query plus a head shot and your measurements.
When setting the submission guidelines, we at Upstart Crow had a lot to decide on. Should we accept queries through email or through an online form? What should we project for response times? Should every writer begin their query with a knock-knock joke? And, most importantly, how many pages should we ask for?
At my old agency, we asked for a query and the first two pages of a manuscript. I found with that setup I could easily spot manuscripts that were completely wrong for me based on the query, and I could usually figure out in two pages if the writing had promise or not, but I found myself requesting a decent amount of material where I was somewhat unsure. I broke it down once and figured out that my request rate for seeing manuscripts was probably about 10% of the total queries I read.
At Upstart Crow, we decided against knock-knock jokes and instead to ask for 20 pages pasted into the body of the email. (To see which 20 pages, refer to this post). I'm finding that 20 pages gives me a great chance to read a good chunk of a manuscript and really get a sense of the writing, the pacing, the plot, and the strength of the characters. Do I know whether I'll sign a book in 20 pages? No, of course not. Do I have a good sense of whether the author is serious about her story? For sure.
For me, the 20 pages makes it more difficult plowing through my submissions pile, since there's more to read, but makes it easier for me to pass on material I may have flip-flopped on before.