The Publishing Contrarian

Lynne W. Scanlon Offers Book Proposal Critique Service

to Help Authors Reach Literary Agents and Editors…and Get Published!

Lynne W. Scanlon, also known as The Wicked Witch of Publishing ™ and columnist for The Publishing Contrarian, announced today that she is offering a new consulting service at www.thepublishingcontrarian.com/getpublished. The service is directed at writers who have been unable to place their fiction or nonfiction manuscripts with literary agents or publishing houses. The Wicked Witch’s new service is designed to help authors tear apart and reconstitute the materials that literary agents and editors first see when a book proposal is submitted. The Wicked Witch’s critique and personal assistance will include

• Targeting the right literary agents, editors and publishing houses.
• Writing a rip-roaring-good query letter to keep out of the slush pile.
• Creating a page-turning book synopsis that stops a literary agent or editor in his or her tracks.
• Developing a marketing plan that proves to a literary agent or editor that this book will sell!

In her March 14th posting on The Publishing Contrarian, the Wicked Witch of Publishing called for email attachments of sample query letters, book synopses, marketing plans and the first few pages of manuscripts—exactly the materials that had been submitted and rejected repeatedly by literary agents and publishing companies. “I wanted to see why people who could obviously write couldn’t get anywhere with their book submissions to literary agents or editors. Whew! One look at the book submission package and I could see why. The query letters were weak, the synopses didn’t sound exciting, and the marketing plans were unfocused—if they existed at all.”

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On impulse I walked over to The Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City to see John B. Keane’s The Field. Had I known the subject of the play would so closely parallel my experiences of the past few years, I don’t think I would have gone to see it. I wasn’t prepared to witness a variation of what happened to me, happen to the characters in the play any more than someone who had recently lost a loved one would want to subject himself to sitting through a play about death, or than someone who had just broken up with a true love would want to be penned in by an audience and watch a relationship between a man and a woman disintegrate from 8 pm to 10:30 pm.

The Playbill presented the drama as being a battle over a four-acre patch of land and “the challenges upcoming generations of Irish will face as economic progress comes into conflict with time-honored tradition.” I settled in for a slice-of-life conflict awash in Irish brogues and Irish humor. Instead, within 10-minutes I knew this play was only superficially about cows grazing on a field that might be lost to an industrial site, or about the end of a way of life in Ireland. No, this play was about losing your moral compass, about opportunism, and about clutching what you already have at the cost of losing your soul. 

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I’m still laughing! The cover story of Newsday.com on May 29th had me in stitches. Jeff Pearlman’s article, “Pulp friction, or hey, buy my book!,” is an hilarious account of his efforts to try and promote his newly released biography of Barry Bonds, Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero. I can see the image of a rain drenched Pearlman, drops dribbling off the end of his nose and ear lobes while handing out promo flyers for his book outside AT&T Park in San Francisco, home of the Giants.

Jeff, I am assuming that the book was so offensive to the stadium/team that your publisher, HarperCollins, was unable to strike a deal with them to buy thousands of special-order copies for free distribution to the fans holding tickets to the worst seats in the stadium? Not free binoculars, but a nice perk for them. (Strike one!) Nor were they able to convince the Bonds promo machine to buy your book in bulk, customize the cover, and offer it along with the Barry Bonds 715 Women’s Logo Cap-Sleeve Baby Doll T-Shirts and Authentic SBC Park Infield Dirt Coins that he hawks in his Web site store. (Strike two!) So let’s assume Bonds is huffy about the book. Too bad. Who said, to paraphrase someone, that any publicity is good publicity, even if it’s bad publicity?

I don’t think it’s coming as a big surprise to many authors anymore that, as Kim Lionetti, a literary agent with Book Ends, LLC, says in the same article, “There’s a real demand for creativity.” She means, of course, on the part of the author to sell his own book! We know that, I think.

Jeff Pearlman, you are not the roundheel you claim to be! You were wearing sensible shoes, not teetering on hooker high heels outside that park. You were showing the requisite characteristics of a successful author. You were building momentum for your book, while risking pneumonia for the cause. (Where was your editor that day? Having a power lunch in a posh Manhattan restaurant and discussing Updike’s Terrorist and the current state of fatwas?) I’m sure everyone outside the stadium remembers that pathetic author with his waterlogged, unreadable flyers. Some might even be talking about it right now on the way to the bookstore. I give you CREDIT, but buy some foul weather gear.

Jeff, you were smart enough to write about a very popular (okay, now notorious) figure in a national pastime sport. And yes, even though you have a lot of competition from Game of Shadows by Mark Faina-Wada and Lance Williams, I wouldn’t worry too much about a book that was released one month ahead of yours (although I am sure William Shinker, President & Publisher of Gotham Books in New York City is cartwheeling). There are plenty of rabid baseball fans who, once they finish reading Game of Shadows, will pick up your book.

Nope, I don’t think you are quite as hapless as you paint yourself in the Newday.com article, so I’m not going to worry about you and your book. Not at all. In fact, despite skulking about Barnes & Noble and moving your book to a more prominent position—while no doubt bumping into lots of other lurking authors, and letting your high school alumni association know you have another book out (ah, the glory!), I actually think you are pretty savvy when it comes to the P&P of book marketing—promotion…and prostitution.

• Somehow you wrote a book. (Home run!) 
• Somehow you created a promo Web site. (Home run!)
• Somehow you managed to be published by HarperCollins. (Home run!)
• Somehow you got ranked on Amazon.com with 4.5 stars. (Stand-up triple!)
• Somehow you goosed your book from Amazon Sales Rank of 5,427 yesterday to 2,982 today. (Line drive through the shortstop’s legs!)
• Somehow you managed to write the cover story for Newday.com. (Yet another home run!)
• Somehow you wrote an article that was forwarded to The Publishing Contrarian and the Wicked Witch of Publishing blogged about you. (Out of the park!)

I’d say you’re batting .700! 

Not only am I laughing, I’m impressed. You are doing what every author should do: Exploiting any and all opportunities, while moving steadily away from the minor leagues and into the majors.   

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: I’m trying to think of the worst possible, most debasing thing I have done to promote my books! Let me think about this. Meanwhile, thank you David Buda for emailing me the link to this article!