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Helping to Change the World…Word by Word

The Steve Laube Agency

The Steve Laube Agency

Helping to Change the World Word by Word

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Home » Career » Page 30

Career

Why an In-the-Know Agent is Your Best Partner

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon April 10, 2014
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businesswoman on the phone

Even in the tightest market, new opportunities develop. Not only can authors keep up with these opportunities by being well-connected themselves, but this is just one part of your career where partnering with a great agent is key.

Why? Because editors don’t always put out a call to every writers’ loop when they need proposals. Most don’t have time to become inundated with lots of proposals that won’t work. Instead, editors go to their friends, the agents. An experienced agent with a healthy list of talented authors will send editors appropriate proposals.  

A well-connected agent with a stellar agency is likely to learn:

When there is hole in an editor’s schedule. Writers miss deadlines for many reasons. That’s when your agent can help you fill that hole. This can be the start, or continuation of, a fabulous relationship between you and a grateful editor.

About a new line. Agents are often the first outside of a publishing house to learn about a new line. This can help you be among the first authors to submit a proposal.

About unexpected needs. Editors will often let agents know they are expecting to need certain categories of books in the near future. This knowledge also gives you a chance to be an early contender.

That a house is changing direction. Publishers’ web sites and Amazon listings are informative but even the most up to date only reveal what has just happened. You want to look to the future because your book will be published in the future. That’s why, based on a web site, it may seem like a great idea to submit, say, a chick lit book to a house. But if that house has decided to move in the direction of WWII novels, your agent is more likely than any of your other business partners to know this. Your agent can keep you from submitting a fantastic proposal — fantastic for last year.

A key person is leaving. Just one key person’s departure may not only affect individual authors, but might even impact the future direction of a publishing house. Knowing personnel changes sooner rather than later will help you stay ahead in the game.

This doesn’t mean agents, even extraordinary ones, are the first to learn every bit of important news — but we are privy to quite a bit. And this does not mean that just because an author is among the first to submit work, that her work will be accepted over proposals arriving later. But being in the know early is still just one of many good reasons to partner with a great agent.

Your turn:

What are some other reasons you think it’s a good idea to partner with a wonderful agent?

Have you ever been able to submit a work early based on your agent’s inside knowledge?

Or do you disagree? Do you think authors are just as effective as agents in learning news early?

Leave a Comment
Category: Agents, Book Business, Book Proposals, Career, Communication, Get Published, TamelaTag: Agents, Career, Get Published

What About Medium Stuff?

By Dan Balowon April 8, 2014
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Today I stand in support of medium stuff. There is no argument that big important things deserve our undivided attention. There seems to be some disagreement over small stuff…do we sweat it or not? According to the Stan Jantz and Bruce Bickel’s book, God is in the Small Stuff, we probably need to be paying close attention to those things. I am concerned with those things in the middle…the medium …

Read moreWhat About Medium Stuff?
Category: Book Business, Career, Dan, The Publishing LifeTag: Book Business, publishing, The Publishing Life

Should I Respond to a One-Star Review?

By Tamela Hancock Murrayon March 27, 2014
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    Have you ever received a one-star review? Or do you dread the day that might happen? Or perhaps you are hoping to be published so you can get a review. Any review. When you start receiving reviews, some of them might not be as stellar as you had hoped. So what, if anything, should you do? Good, Bad, Indifferent? When I look at reviews of sites such as Amazon, I think it’s healthy to …

Read moreShould I Respond to a One-Star Review?
Category: Career, Marketing, TamelaTag: Career, reviews

Don’t Just Do It

By Dan Balowon March 25, 2014
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I don’t like the word “just”. Don’t get me wrong, “just” is a fine word, especially when used in a triple-word space in Scrabble.  It has all sorts of good uses and meanings…even used to fill time when we are thinking, along with the other great words and phrases of our culture, such as “like”, ”um”, “I mean” and ”you know.”  I simply do not like the word “just” when it is used to place limits on …

Read moreDon’t Just Do It
Category: Career, Creativity, Dan, PlatformTag: Attitude, Career

How to Be A Reader’s Favorite Author

By Dan Balowon March 18, 2014
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Last week in this space, I wrote about how you could become a publisher’s favorite author (other than selling millions of books).  Today, we’ll go a little different direction and talk about what you would need to do to become a favorite author to your readers. A key difference between how you relate to a publisher and how you relate to a reader is that one is business and one is personal.  An …

Read moreHow to Be A Reader’s Favorite Author
Category: Branding, Career, Communication, Craft, Creativity, Dan, Marketing, PlatformTag: Authors, Career, readers

Two Important Ingredients for Success

By Karen Ballon March 12, 2014
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  I’ll never forget the day, just after church, when a friend pulled me aside and said, “My son can’t find a job and he needs to make some money fast. So he’s going to write a book. Any advice for him?” Yeah, well, the advice I had wasn’t for him, it was for her: “Don’t ever say anything like that to me again.” Whatever gave people the impression that writing was a get-rich quick …

Read moreTwo Important Ingredients for Success
Category: Book Business, Career, Creativity, Karen, PlatformTag: Career, perseverance, Success

How to Be A Publisher’s Favorite Author

By Dan Balowon March 11, 2014
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Three years ago, Seth Godin published his book Linchpin.  Since I follow Seth’s books and blog as a personal and professional challenge, I read it and was inspired by it’s concepts. In it, Godin speaks about some of the new realities in business relationships.  There used to be management and those who were managed.  But now, he says, there is a third group…linchpins.  These are people who make …

Read moreHow to Be A Publisher’s Favorite Author
Category: Book Business, Branding, Career, Dan, PlatformTag: Authors, Career, publishing

The Pessimist’s Guide to Things That Will Never Work

By Dan Balowon March 4, 2014
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This is the first in a three-part series on attitudes toward work, specifically for people in publishing.

Today, I am writing about pessimism.  If there were a book glorifying its virtues, it would be the title above.  It would be a thousand pages long with an updated and expanded edition published annually.

Full disclosure…I became a baseball fan of the Chicago Cubs in 1966, a year when …

Read moreThe Pessimist’s Guide to Things That Will Never Work
Category: Career, Dan, The Publishing LifeTag: Career

What Will You Give Up for Lent?

By Karen Ballon February 26, 2014
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Believe it or not, Easter is just around the corner. Which means something else is almost upon us:

Lent.

I love the idea of a 40-day preparation for Easter, of refocusing our hearts and minds to spend more time in prayer and contemplation of what Christ has done for us. And I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of “giving up” something for those 40 days. Even more intriguing—and sometimes …

Read moreWhat Will You Give Up for Lent?
Category: Career, Christian, Faith, Karen, Personal, TheologyTag: Career, Faith, lent

Basketball and Writing

By Dan Balowon February 25, 2014
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Next week is March and that means basketball “March Madness” around the country.  From high school to college, teams will compete in tournaments where excitement is at its peak.  

One of my hobbies is to work as the official scorer for the Wheaton College (Illinois) men’s and women’s home basketball games.  I started doing this back in the late 70’s, took some time away from it when our kids …

Read moreBasketball and Writing
Category: Book Business, Career, Creativity, Dan, The Publishing Life, Writing CraftTag: Basketball, publishing, Writing Craft
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