10 people you will meet in literary hell (Pt. 2)

a continuation

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A continuation of last week’s article, where we recounted five of the ten literary people you will meet in hell. Onward!

Evil beta reader

I have been blessed with never having had this problem, but there are some truly terrible beta readers out there. Beta readers are hard to find— many writers live somewhat isolated artistic lives, so they turn to random strangers they meet online, or pay for beta readers. I’m not sure how good the paid beta readers are, but generally speaking, it is always better to get something for free if its available and of just as good or better quality. (If you do have to pay for a beta reader, make sure they have good reviews first, or even better, you know someone who has used them. and if you use them and they ARE good, absolutely leave them a good review and spread the word). I have seen people talk about beta readers attacking them, laughing at them, handing over long screeds in track changes, telling them that they “can’t” do one thing or another. I would probably have steam coming out of my ears if someone turned over a bunch of line editing to me, especially if it was a blind leading the blind situation.

If you’re taking a writing class, whether online or in person, this is a great place to make friends with someone who mutually wants to exchange material because you already have a sense if they are batshit insane or not. You can meet people at conferences, or maybe even book clubs. One of my critique partners I met on Meetup maybe in 2010—we have literally read 100% of each other’s novels! But also, think outside the box. Do you have someone in your life who is an avid reader? A good beta reader to have is someone who reads a lot, but doesn’t write. They won’t give you advice in terms of craft terms (ie, “the pacing is off”) but will respond like an every day reader “the middle dragged.” You just need to be sure it’s the right sort of person: not your mom who is always showering you with praise, or your cousin who is jealous that you actually completed a novel. Just someone who loves reading and reads within your genre. You need observations from someone who is a smart reader, not just any old reader. Bad advice from a beta reader is worse that no advice at all.

At this point in my life, I have an agent, and when I am signed I have an editor. I have what I call critique partners—I’m not sure if that’s different than a beta reader. But we make it really clear what we want/ need from each other. I do not want line editing. But I will ask if characters are working. Specifically, especially because I write mystery, I will often ask who they think did it at this point in time, what they think is happening with X, what subplot are they most intrigued by, is character Y annoying? If you don’t make it clear what kind of feedback you want and need, people will just say whatever. Write down your fears and questions even if they are pretty specific. You can divide the questions into “read this before you read the book” or “read this after.” for example, I’m worried that that the transition between part 1 and 2 is too jumpy. I’m worried that if we introduced character A in chapters 1-5 and then move onto character B, people will feel frustrated, etc.

Schmagent

On the earlier comment that bad advice is worse than no advice… You’ve probably heard someone say that having no agent is better than having a bad agent. If I could explain: being an agent is not like being a doctor—there is no test or certification to pass. (sidebar: I think an agent not being a member of AAR is kind of meaningless. I do think it would be meaningful, however, if someone got kicked out of AAR or sued by them or something- I would look into that if it happened.) You can just hang up a shingle and yell “I AM AN AGENT!” like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. If you recall my article about LJ Smith, part of the reason she got screwed was because her “agent” was some random friend of hers. Who probably had no ill intent! If you consider a continuum of bad agents, on one far end you have a malicious agent who is stealing money from you, just slightly to the right of that is the agent who does things that are in THEIR best interest rather than yours, and on the other end of the spectrum are the well-intentioned but incompetent agents. You hear WAY more about incompetent agents than malicious agents. In 2018, it was discovered that an accountant at Donadio and Olson (a well respected literary agency) was embezzling millions of dollars from clients. Chuck Palahniuk had complained for years that it SEEMED like he should be making more money in royalties, but blamed the issue on piracy. I don’t want to blame the victim, but I wonder if he was reading his royalty statements, and also, I guess that accountant wasn’t being audited by anyone else?? That’s a really extreme example, but I’ve heard other things, like agents sending out manuscripts of authors who had not agreed to sign with them to editors, agents spamming a bunch of editors all crammed on the same “To:” line, agents saying they sent something out when actually they didn’t. These are very bad things.

I’m not saying the above never happens, but you are way more likely to run into incompetent agents than malicious ones. These could be people who have no business contacts or are not getting good apprenticeship from other more experienced agents. It could be someone who isn’t good at telling what an editor likes. It can be someone who isn’t good at pitching books. The reason why no agent is better than a bad agent is that once your book is submitted to an imprint, you’re done— you can’t send it to them again. You only get one shot, and it needs to go to the right editor at that imprint and it needs to have been pitched well. Good agents will take time to develop relationships with editors: they meet for lunches and get a sense of what they are looking for, they tee up books they have coming down the pipeline, they talk about clients and books. (Though my first book was ready to go out on sub the first week of March 2020, my agent was like, no, but did somehow have a spidey sense of when during the pandemic would be a good time to strike, and she was absolutely right.)

So how do you tell if an agent is a bad agent? You have to do the legwork before you sign with someone. Have they signed deals with Big 5? Does their agency have a good reputation? For newer agents, without you directly asking the question, does it sound like they are getting good guidance from more experienced agents? Have they retained clients for more than one book? Have you talked to their clients? Have you done ALL the legwork you can do online? (you can almost always find someone on reddit [r/pubtips] who is willing to dish if you have concerns about whether or not something is weird).

Angry at minorities person

At first, I started typing “angry at minorities guy” but then I realized that the past 5 people who did this were white women showing their asses on social media. 99% of people who will try to get a book deal will fail. When you are one of those 99%, you start to look for all sorts of reasons: the market is saturated with books about dragons, your writing isn’t good enough, the economy is bad… or maybe it’s because minorities are getting all the book deals. It’s true that more minorities are getting book deals than in the 80s (but also remember that there was an extremely performative bump in 2020). This means you will see more minority books on the market, including more meh minority books. And you read the meh book and maybe you think, this is meh, and this author got a book deal, so this sort of feels like someone who really isn’t qualified got a thing bc they’re a minority.. The thing is: 1) more books by any demographic means more meh books period 2) white people get to and have for a century published meh books— everyone should get to publish meh books because quality is subjective and 3) unless you are brown, you’re not part of the group chat where we are privately discussing the minority meh books and what we really think of them. (spicy!) When I see a shitty book by a minority I have mixed feelings: on the one hand I want fellow POCs to be better because we cannot afford to be less than perfect*, but on the other hand, I’m like girl cash that paycheck. (*I also understand that we should live in a world where minorities don’t have to be perfect—alas, this is not that world.)

You can read about this in this big PEN report and elsewhere, but white people are published at a rate that is higher than their actual distribution in the population. But why should the publication breakdown match the demographics of the country?? Shouldn’t they just publish the best books? And what if those books just happen to be by white people? I will leave aside the issue of representation mattering and just say: if it were really about just publishing the best work, why were Black authors were turned away and literally told, for years, that Black people do not read (never mind that this is also prejudiced against white readers). Why were gay people asked to make gay characters straight? Asian authors were told “we already have one.” Deciding that there is no market for a book based on nothing other than assumptions about what people are willing to read is by definition not selecting on quality. (and if you’ve ever been on submission, you will know that editors will turn down something they think is great because marketing and sales says they can’t sell it, or even they themselves can’t conceive of it making money. “I don’t know where to put this on a shelf” is not saying “this isn’t good quality.”) White people—gasp!—read books that are written by and about brown people. Straight people read books with gay characters (and, it seems, sometimes seem to seek them out). I actually think the market of readers is more broad minded than the people making decisions about publishing, and the reason why we’ve seen a lot of books about POC suffering is because the publishing world thinks that that’s the version of POC writing that the market wants.

Two other points. If you’re worried about the state of the white writer, don’t worry, 100% of today’s New York Times bestseller list is by white authors, and books that go viral on TikTok are usually white authored. Lastly, if white people are still overrepresented in who is getting to publish books, why is it the assumption that a POC is taking your spot rather than another white person? A white person who is definitely named Becky.

Friend who made you go on an an expensive bachelorette destination vacation, bridal shower, wedding, all involving presents but won’t buy your book.

Your “cute little hobby” friend

(I realize the above joke makes it seem like I have a friend who did this to me—I actually do not. My friends are amazing and have been proselytizing my books, including one who continues to spread misinformation that I made the New York Times bestseller list, which I did not. I will have the hot take that all your friends should buy your book, even if they don’t read it, and if they do not and it isn’t for some crippling financial reason, they are kinda a bad friend and I will die on that hill.)

For some reasons, having a hobby is viewed as something like a cute diversion you do in your free time. Adults are off doing REAL things, like fixing the gutter, taking care of children, or paying bills. In fact, hobbies are often derided as childish: men playing video games or painting Warhammer figurines are pathetic, women crocheting is quaint and sad. You’re not doing something important. One time I was at a leadership development thing, and the icebreaker was “what is your hobby” and one guy said, “I guess I don’t have a hobby—my kids are my hobby” then everyone else (except me) said the same thing! Having a hobby is not cute. It means you take time to engage in an activity you enjoy for no reason other than the fact that you enjoy it. There are many social and psychological reasons to engage in hobbies because of how they enrich us, for example, staving off cognitive decline, or making new friends. (note that we are having a loneliness epidemic and that some of the people reporting loneliness actually have kids.)

Having a book published is weird—I know I like to keep making this analogy about athletes getting into the NBA, but getting a book published is weirder. If you know someone in the NBA, their lives probably revolved around basketball from the time they were a kid. If they went to UCLA on a basketball scholarship after being a star high school player, it couldn’t be too surprising for them to let you know that they just got drafted by the NBA. Getting a book deal is far weirder, because it would be like your coworker of many years suddenly letting you know that they need two weeks off because they got into the Olympics. Oh yeah, I do biathlons outside of work. I guess I got good at it.

But writing isn’t like basketball or biathlons because most people secretly think they can write a novel, whereas they have probably never thought if they could win a biathlon. When people meet writers, they often say something stupid like “everyone’s got a book in them,” but when you meet a mathematician, no one ever says, “everyone has the solution to an unsolved proof in them.” Because writing is accessible, and everyone has tried their hand at it, a lot of people think they could write a novel, if they just only had the time to sit down and do it.

Your cute little hobby friend thinks its cute that you have a hobby. I mean, they don’t have time for a hobby, because they’re shuttling three kids around to various classes (hobbies..), or they’re exhausted after their high pressure high paying job that takes it all out of them. Your good friends will say, “You got a book deal!” but your cute little hobby friend will say, “You got a book deal?” As it turns from ephemeral news to physical ARCs to an actual book that is at Barnes and Noble, you might get a little, “hey, it’s actually a real thing!” from them as if you lied about getting a book deal. It’s hard for them to think about your little hobby being cute once you’re in Barnes and Noble. What happened is, you got into the Olympics where the farthest they ever got was daydreaming about being in the Olympics. You had a dream and actually did the legwork to achieve that dream. If you make a dream happen—one that is achievement oriented as opposed to life-stage oriented (getting married, having kids)— you’ve done something that makes people very uncomfortable: you’ve suggested that lifelong goals are actually achievable. Which means that people who had dreams they never realized might have been able to achieve that dream if they had just prioritized it enough. This makes some people very uncomfy.

You

Did you know I was going to arrive at this twist?

There’s a person who says cruel things to you. Who says your work is terrible and that you are worthless. Who says such mean things to you that it even kills your desire to even open your notebook or laptop. Who scrolls through social media seeking out pictures of hot authors meeting other hot authors and posting their Publisher’s Marketplace book deal blurbs. Who second guesses themselves constantly. Who says “why bother even trying?” when they get a rejection. Who says, “that scholarship is too competitive for me” or “no one would want to read this.” That person is you.

Think for a second, when you are thinking this way, if you would ever say any of the above out loud to a friend in a similar situation. If your friend got really upset because they get rejected from a conference again, you would never say, “Why bother applying to these things? Your work is garbage.” Someone who would do that is an absolute sociopath. So why would you do it to yourself? When a friend o mine tells me about something they really wanted but didn’t get, my heart hurts for them a little, and then I try to make them feel better—there will be other opportunities, you still got positive feedback, I think your work is awesome, etc. When you get that rejection, allow your heart to be hurt like this, but don’t spiral into thinking it says something about you on the whole.