McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Publishing Advice

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black roses:
Yeah. The genre that I write is... well, not that popular. That is: paranormal homoerotic urban fantasy. Yay.

Richelle Mead:
Eek...sorry I've been so MIA on my own topic.

Pretty much I agree with what's been said.  As far as hot genres go, there's no predicting it.  With the backlog in publishing, what's hot is indeed what was selling 2 years ago.  Succubi were very cutting edge when I sold the book, and while there still aren't a lot on the market, it took *18 months* for the book to see print.  Write what you want to write.  If the story is solid and well-done, it won't matter what's hot or not.  Seriously.  Good stories triumph over all.

And as for queries, yes!  Research away and query as many as you can.  Also research each agent you query.  They all have little quirks, and as I said earlier, make sure you know what they want in a query.

Cosmos:
Thanks for the great advice Richelle!  I have a question - something I saw Jim mention in his "How I Got Published" section on the site - conventions?  That's something I hadn't heard recommended in the past, but I'm starting to see it mentioned in more and more writers' groups.  What kind of conventions should an author attend - I mean, are there conventions specifically for authors, or just scifi/fantasy conventions where authors/editors may be attending as a guest?  And how do you approach someone at a convention about your own writing eloquently?  Thanks for any advice any of you can give me.

Yeratel:

--- Quote from: Cosmos on June 05, 2007, 09:54:40 AM ---Thanks for the great advice Richelle!  I have a question - something I saw Jim mention in his "How I Got Published" section on the site - conventions?  That's something I hadn't heard recommended in the past, but I'm starting to see it mentioned in more and more writers' groups.  What kind of conventions should an author attend - I mean, are there conventions specifically for authors, or just scifi/fantasy conventions where authors/editors may be attending as a guest?  And how do you approach someone at a convention about your own writing eloquently?  Thanks for any advice any of you can give me.

--- End quote ---
The Friends of the Library (I'm one of them) here puts on an annual event called Much Ado About Books, http://www.muchadoaboutbooks.com/home.cfm , which brings in published authors for panel discussions and workshops in all sorts of book genres -- scifi, thrillers, romance, memoirs, biographys, children's books, etc. For the price of a ticket, you can pick out the discussions that appeal to you and participate in question and answer sessions with published authors in your field of interest. Maybe there's something like that going on in your area?

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Cosmos on June 05, 2007, 09:54:40 AM ---Thanks for the great advice Richelle!  I have a question - something I saw Jim mention in his "How I Got Published" section on the site - conventions?  That's something I hadn't heard recommended in the past, but I'm starting to see it mentioned in more and more writers' groups.  What kind of conventions should an author attend - I mean, are there conventions specifically for authors, or just scifi/fantasy conventions where authors/editors may be attending as a guest?  And how do you approach someone at a convention about your own writing eloquently?  Thanks for any advice any of you can give me.

--- End quote ---

This has kind of been covered in the Novelist's Social Life thread, but basically; authors and editors are people too. There are conventions that are very business-oriented, like World Fantasy Con, which has a reputation for being swarmed with annoying wannabes, and then there are ones like Minicon which is in my experience [ 2000-2003, I'm not going into the US again until there's a regime change ] full of authors and editors going to have fun and relax and be with their friends, and being around and being interesting and civilised and decent works there as well as it works with any other bunch of human beings.  If you are interesting enough editors will ask you about your fiction, I can think of two examples off the top of my head.  Also as with any other bunch of human beings, the response you'll get for hard-selling someone who is trying to relax and have fun is unlikely to be positive.

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