I wanted to ease into this whole blogging thing by starting small (see last week’s post—First Thoughts On Publishing) and gradually float through simple topics like my past experiences with looking for an agent (10 years ago) and choosing between traditional and self-publishing, but recent events call for an Emergency Post.
I have spent the last week dipping into the agent pool (and there is much to write about what has changed in the last ten years) and sending out a few query letters to the folks I thought looked like the best fit for this project. Broadly speaking, there are way more prospective authors than there are good agents, and even an agent who you think might like your work is under no obligation to take you on as a client. As an author, landing an agent is kind of like winning the lottery… and that is before they ever manage to sell your book to a publisher.
I only prepared a handful of queries over the week. After a couple days of scouring through hundreds of agent listings and choosing your ‘favorites,’ each query takes over an hour to put together; first you read the agent’s profile, investigate their website, check their twitter, etc., and eventually compose a personalized letter that shows you have put in the time trying to understand their tastes and what sort of new projects they are seeking.
Long story short, I heard back from two agents from reputable agencies, both of whom I had ranked highly on my favorites. Turn-around is not usually so quick, but each of them basically reached out to say that The Alleys of Olde Architecture is way, way, way too long. One said that even if I split the manuscript into two or three volumes, it would still be too long for her comfort zone.
This is not totally unexpected. I have been including in my queries an offer/suggestion/idea that the book could be split up—that it would, in fact, be relatively quick and easy to do so, chunking it apart amongst the seven different Acts that form natural narrative breaks—but that I hoped to get some agent-insight on how to go about this, or whether it is truly necessary.
Well, only the two have gotten back to me so far, but I am beginning to think the verdict is in.
I worry the predominant attitude will be: If your story needs to be split up, do it before querying me. (I do not mean to make that sound rude; they go through A LOT of submissions, and I can’t expect them to do my work for me; I had just hoped to hook somebody on the story and then discuss the possibility of splitting it up.)
Anyhow, this brings me to my First Big Conundrum: split up the manuscript and start pitching it to a new batch of agents as a much smaller Part One of a multipart saga, or stay the course and hope somebody falls in love with it, as is?
There are upsides and downsides to each. The obvious downside to keeping it the same is that every agent I approach will run for the hills; the upside is that the natural form of the story is one, big book—it is a single, cohesive story.
The upside to subdividing the manuscript, obviously, is that more agents will give it a chance. (For example, rather than pitching a 525,000-word book, Part One would be approx. 115,000 words. Much more manageable.) The downside, though, is that the story was conceived of and written as a cohesive whole; even though there are natural narrative breaks where I can split it up, and even where those break-points have climactic scenes and great cliffhangers, I worry that each Part will never truly feel like its own standalone book. But, does it have to? This is a really unique story; maybe it can survive and thrive by taking its own unique road to publication…
I think, honestly, the wisest thing is to start shifting gears and split it up. The book does not need any rewriting—the break at the end of Act III would work wonderfully as the end of Part One. But I need to adjust the website to reflect this (in case any would-be agents come snooping around), rewrite the synopsis I have been sending out (an agonizing process), adjust the posture of the query letters I am writing, and maybe even come up with some new subtitles for Parts One, Two, and Three… not to mention the mental reconfiguring I have to do in my own head to start thinking about ‘my book',’ which I have been working on for the last nine years, as ‘my books.’