Some authors have heard that agents engage in pre-submission editing prior to submitting to publishers. Failing that, they know that editing is literally in an editor’s job title.
So if you just have a great idea for a book, an agent and editor will help you polish it up into something publishable, right?
Don’t count on it.
Yes, sure. Some agents really do offer pre-submission editing. But typically these are situations where agents are taking a book project that’s nearly there and helping it that last extra mile across the finish line. They’re taking books that are already in the 99.5th percentile and getting them to the 99.9th. They’re not taking a hot mess and turning it into gold.
Ideas are highly, highly overrated. Execution is what matters. Your writing needs to be competent at worst, ideally much more than that. However you feel about [insert traditionally published bestseller with a reputation for being poorly written], it is way better than the vast majority of what goes unpublished. (Don’t believe me? Find a way to read some slush).
Take your time if you’re considering publishing. Revise, get some feedback, revise some more, get some more feedback, revise again, consider getting a professional edit, revise again, do a final pass, and then–maybe then–you’ll be ready to pursue publication.
Unless you are writing on a highly topical nonfiction project with a very specific bombshell, current events don’t tend to matter much in the book world, particularly for fiction. It doesn’t pay to rush.
It’s a massively competitive landscape out there and it’s harder than it’s ever been to break out of the crowd. Agents want something you think is perfect. And even then you may still have more work to do.
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Art: Lower section of the Annaberger Bergaltars by Hans Hesse
I must admit, I’m one of those befuddled writers who has scratched his near-bald head as to how Stephanie Meyers got published, let alone became a best seller. To me it was a proof that the earth truly has spun out of its orbit and will soon crash into the sun.
But after the scars on my head healed, I decided that I just don’t know how these things can work sometimes, and try to stay the course, listen to what the experienced have to say.
Thanks for staying with us, Nathan. Obviously, its not been easy.
I think her writing is very underrated. (You’re also not the target audience!).
I helped translate “Twilight” into Spanish in Spain, so I read it very closely. I soon realized that if I had been 14 years old, I would have loved loved loved that novel. At age 54, I simply thought there were too many adverbs — but I had to translate every one of them, which colored my opinion.
Amen and amen to this! As a former slush pile reader for two publishers (both of which now only take manuscripts from agented authors), I couldn’t agree more. Publishing has changed so much since I started ages ago. At many houses there simply isn’t enough time or personnel to go back and forth with authors whose manuscripts have potential but aren’t quite there yet. Authors are expected to do what you wrote about here—polish their manuscripts. In the last couple of years, whenever I’ve been hired as a freelance developmental editor/line editor at publishers, I usually get about two to three weeks to help an author get a manuscript with issues up to the quality where I can then edit it. But the authors I’ve worked with only had about a month at most (some far less) to turn the project around.
Amen, Nathan! Stephenie Meyer’s writing is GREATLY underated! EVERY book should have sparkly centenarian-plus vampires! And a forty page long conversation in a car!
If it was easy to write a generation-defining novel, everyone would do it.