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The publishing world is divided between those who have read the slush pile and those who have not. If you have, then you can understand some of the cynicism and jaded eyes you see behind the glasses of an editor or an agent.

If you have not, then it is difficult to comprehend the unbelievable variety of ideas that can cross our desks. Let me provide you with some recent examples but with a huge caveat. I am not mocking these writers. I’m using them, as a teacher would, as an example of what not to send to an agent. I don’t doubt the sincerity of the writers who create these ideas. In fact I’m impressed with anyone willing to put their ideas out on display. I’m not sure I could ever have that much self-confidence in my own work. I only wish some would spend a little more time to determine if their project is a good fit for a particular agency and learn how to best write a quality pitch (and not overstate their case).

So, with that disclaimer in place…..

• A proposal for a book of poems to read to your dog. The book will “help dogs feel more loved and more understood.”
• A phone call from a fellow who wants an agent for his novel, his screenplay, and his non-fiction books. He said I had to go to his site to see what he had to offer, I replied that I prefer he go to mine first and follow the guidelines. We agreed to disagree…  Afterwards, out of curiosity, I visited the site and discovered conspiracy theory material and advocacy for the legalization of marijuana.
• Cover letter proclaims that the book’s, “… real author is the Holy Spirit… The book could come next to the Holy Scripture in terms of divine authorship.”
• A novel that is “made up of multiple lessons and experiences…layer upon layer of actions, emotions and moments…woven together to create an indelible legacy…” (in a long run-on sentence.)
• A non-fiction study revealing that Moses was Satan in disguise. According to the author, Moses was “the worst serial killer in recorded history.”
• A letter addressed to The Steve Laub Agency (misspelled my last name)…and then the salutation of the letter began: Dear Mr. Fugate
• A book titled Cosmic [expletive deleted] described that it “has the audacity to speak the truth. It says, ignore all the [expletive deleted] , believe in your dreams and do what you love– it WILL work out! It is as fearless and fun as it is comforting and inspirational.”
• A book with a subtitle: Actual Raw Photography of Fairies, Gnomes and More
• Opening line from a query letter: “Imagine a combination of a romance by Danielle Steele, an epic novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, and an action novel by Nelson DeMille.”
• An email that reads in its entirety: “I got your email from your website. I have finished a book and am looking for publishing. I can be reached on email as well. Thank you so much.”
• In the body of a query letter: “Not since the LEFT BEHIND series has the subject of Christ’s Second Coming been so engagingly addressed.  Not since THE SHACK have spiritual themes been so articulately conveyed.”
• Letter begins with, “Before my first psychotic break….”
• Book “based on true experiences” with a subtitle of “Eye floaters as shining structure of consciousness.”

There you have it. A sample of some of the more exotic pieces that have recently crossed my desk.

[UPDATE: Three hours after posting this blog I received a phone call that would have made it on the list if it had come earlier. Person on the phone wonders if we represent memoirs. Why? Because this one is special, caller claims, because caller believes that he/she is the actual person/woman found in Revelation chapter 12. This new development has brought understanding to the caller's experiences with UFOs...and the caller's UFO support group concurs.]

Read these excellent articles about “The Slush Pile”

Laura Miller “When Anyone Can be a Published Author” – Salon Magazine
Rachelle Gardner “Why Oh Why Did I Get Rejected?”
Rachel Funari “Escaping the Slush Pile”
Katherine Rosman “The Death of the Slush Pile”
The Rejectionist “A Good Author is Hard to Find”

Related posts:

1. Incoming Proposals
2. The Curse of the Writer
3. Writers Beware! Protect Yourself

In February I was in the Denver airport waiting for a flight. As usual I couldn’t resist browsing the bookstore shelves. Something about the book Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah caught my eye. So, on impulse, I bought the book and began reading it on the plane. I learned a lot about this phenomenon called social marketing and thought that it would be a great book for all authors to read. But I never got around to writing a review!

The solution to this came yesterday when my friend Randy Ingermanson posted a review of the book as part of his Advanced Fiction Writing e-zine. Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, you owe it to yourself to subscribe to this free resource at advancedfictionwriting.com. And while you are there, read ALL of the past issues. In a short while you will receive a wonderful education!

Randy agreed to let me reprint his review of this book. He said the book had been recommended to him by Thomas Umstattd (authortechtips.com). Which goes to show, in a small way, how word-of-mouth sells books!

Let me step aside and let Randy’s review speak for itself:

The biggest mistake that I see authors making in marketing their book is based on the idea that “marketing is all about me.”

It isn’t, except in the very rare cases where the author is a celebrity, in which case the quality of the writing doesn’t matter. If Bill Clinton or Mother Teresa or Albert Einstein wrote a novel, it would fly off the shelves, whether it was any good or not.

Most novelists aren’t celebrities, and so we need to market our books, not ourselves. (If you do that well enough, you’ll become a celebrity and THEN you can market yourself.)

The second biggest mistake I see authors making in marketing their book is based on the idea that “marketing is all about my book.”

It is and it isn’t.

It is, in the sense that the success of a book depends in some way on its perceived quality in the market.

It isn’t, in the sense that you don’t persuade people that you have a great book by telling people, “I have a great book.” The problem is that “telling” doesn’t work any better in marketing than it does in fiction. “Show, don’t tell,” is a good maxim in marketing, just as in fiction writing.

What works in marketing is to show people that you have a great book, instead of telling them.

How do you do that? That’s what makes marketing hard. I recently read a book that gives you a strategy for doing exactly that.

The title of the book is Inbound Marketing. The subtitle is “Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs.”

Be aware that Inbound Marketing is not about marketing fiction. It’s a general-purpose book on marketing and it’s all about using the internet to get found by customers who are interested in your product, rather than trying to go out and find customers and persuade them to be interested in your product.

Traditional advertising methods are “outbound marketing.” You buy time on TV or radio or you buy space on a billboard or a newspaper or a magazine and you shotgun out a message about your widget and you just hope that people who want widgets happen to see or hear your message just at the time when their desire for a widget is causing them to pull out their wallets.

Outbound marketing is horribly inefficient, because the vast majority of people don’t give a flip about widgets and they get annoyed when somebody makes an unwanted sales pitch about their great widget.

If you don’t want a widget, you don’t want a widget.

Outbound marketing can never change that.

“Inbound marketing” is all about making it easy for customers who already want a widget to find the best widget-makers. It’s far, far easier to sell a widget to a customer who wants one that to a customer who doesn’t.

The internet makes it fantastically easy for anybody to find a widget. Google will find you all the most popular pages about widgets. Blogs will give you a wide range of opinions on which widgets are good and which ones suck. Facebook and Twitter will give you comments by real-live widget users, happy or unhappy. LinkedIn will connect you to the leading experts in widget making. YouTube will show you videos of people using widgets, mocking them, or in some cases, blending them to bits. Amazon will show you all the current books on widgets. Wikipedia will tell you how to make your own widget.

The book Inbound Marketing explains all the strategic principles needed to help you get found by hungry customers who want the widget you happen to make.

The tools customers use to find widgets are constantly changing. What doesn’t change is that you can’t make people come to you by using the old outbound marketing methods with these new tools. Building a brochure web site is outbound marketing. Writing a blog in which you constantly pitch your book is outbound marketing.

Flogging your book on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or YouTube is outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing, by contrast, is all about creating what Seth Godin calls “REMARKable content” — content that’s worth remarking on. I have traditionally called this simply “great content”. I like Seth’s term because it gets to the core of the matter. If people are remarking about your product, then they are creating word of mouth.

And that’s the key for novelists. Just about everybody in publishing agrees that the most powerful force in the marketing universe is word of mouth. If you can get people talking about your book, and if they like it, then your marketing job is done. (If they don’t like it, your book is toast, but we’re assuming here that your book really is a great piece of work.)

The book Inbound Marketing explains the strategic principles of creating REMARKable content and then making it findable. Understand that this is not a tactical book. If you want tactics, then look for one of the popular Dummies books on SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Podcasting, or whatever particular tool you want to use.

Tactics are great, because they teach you HOW, but I always believe in learning strategic thinking first, because it teaches you WHY. Once you know WHY, learning HOW is a cakewalk because you’re motivated to work through all the details.

Inbound Marketing is, in my opinion, a REMARKable book.

The authors have succeeded in getting me to remark on it here. The reason is simple. They’ve given me a number of good ideas that I’ll be putting into practice on my own web site.

If you’d like to know more, here’s an easy link to the Amazon page for Inbound Marketing:

http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com/blinks/inbound.php

Full disclosure: The above link contains Randy Ingermanson’s Amazon associates code, which will earn a referral fee if you click on it and then buy the book. Randy only make referrals to books that he likes, but if you prefer that he earn no referral fee, then feel free to go direct to Amazon and search for Inbound Marketing.

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Related posts:

1. A Year in Review

Yesterday afternoon I received James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers: fiction writing strategies, tactics, and exercises (published by Writer’s Digest Books). With interest I took the book home and devoured it. Not literally of course, as I’m not sure what the pages would have tasted like with extra cheese. But I could not keep from turning the pages with delight.

James Scott Bell has done an immeasurable service to writers everywhere. This little book is chock full of sage advice. Loosely based on the ancient classic The Art of War he consistently nudges the reader with nuggets of wisdom that are hard to assail.

The book is flooded with amazing quotes. I kept saying to myself, “Oh that’s a good one, I’ll have to use that in my next presentation.” But after saying that a dozen times in only a few pages I began to to realize the extraordinary wealth found in this book.

While the subtitle indicates the book is written with the novelist in mind the information is universal. Every non-fiction writer can glean much from these pages too.

I was also impressed with the interior design. The publisher went to great lengths to make the reading experience enjoyable. A deft use of two color printing creates accents in all the right places. And the page layout is easy on my old eyes. Thank you Writer’s Digest for an example of top drawer publishing.

Whether you are a novice or a published veteran in the industry there is something for you. The novice should return to the book again and again and practice what they have read! The experienced writer will find a great refresher course in ideas, but can also glean new insights to common problems.

In full disclosure, the author is a friend. We have taught at numerous conferences together over the years. But he has no idea I’m writing this review. And I still like him even though he quotes another agent in the book! Frivolity aside, I can, with full confidence, attest that Jim is the real deal. He has a teacher’s heart and truly wants to do whatever he can to help others succeed.

Do yourself a favor. Buy this book right now! Or put it on your Christmas wish list. It is reasonably priced (retail only $14.99 for 264 pages!)

All three online stores below have the book discounted for under $11.00 (as of the posting of this blog). Such a deal!

Writer’s Digest Books

Barnes & Noble

Amazon.com

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