Last week I had the pleasure of seeing a talk by Ted Weinstein, literary agent TO THE STARS. The stars in this case are mostly nerds: NPR’s math guy, the 826 Valencia people, a webcomic artist who makes jokes about charts. Ted’s talk was about the thing that you do after you write your book: get it published. Oh, right, that.

The whole talk was a flurry of nonstop helpful tips and tricks, and I’ll do my best to round them all up here in some sort of order. Ted was kind enough to hand out an outline of his talk;  I’ll run through that outline here and add whichever of my margin-scribbled comments were legible enough to read afterwards.

The State of the Industry

The state of all industries at the moment, from writing to meatpacking, is “Kind Of Lousy.” (That’s my observation, not Ted’s.) The state of the publishing industry right now is to focus on nonfiction that falls into three categories:

• Narrative (stuff that can be turned into a movie)
• Practical (how to do stuff)
• Concept History (books about nouns — such as Rats, which I just started reading)

Fiction, on the other hand, is a little more timeless. The best strategy, Ted told us, is to just focus on telling a great story. Bookwriting is such a slow process that if you try to glom onto what’s trendy right now, it’ll come out long after the trends have changed.

Nonfiction is pitched before it’s written. Fiction must be a completed manuscript before it can be sold.

Who Sells What

Interestingly, independent bookstores are vanishing, being overtaken by big boxes like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Borders. That’s kind of not a surprise, since media consolidation’s been so huge for the last decade or so. But it kind of is a surprise, since there are more independent outlets for content on the Internet than ever. I suppose it’s just another representation of the differences between The Tubes and Brick-and-Mortar.

There was another interesting point that Ted made around this point: self-publishing is not necessarily a bad thing. It used to be that “vanity press” meant that you were, well, vain. (Also probably crazy.) But these days, self-publishing can be part of an effective marketing strategy: if you can push a couple thousand copies of your book all by yourself, then you become exponentially more attractive to publishers. The catch, obviously, is that you have to push a couple thousand copies of your book. You do this by working your connections, flexing your muscle in your network, and by being the absolute top expert in your field — or at least, appearing to be the top expert in your field. You have to be ready to do everything that a publisher does all by yourself.

E-publishing, alas, is still very small. Check back in again next year.

Be Famous

Ted made five really important points around the end of his talk. I drew stars next to them on the handout. THAT’S HOW IMPORTANT THEY ARE.

• All publishing is self-publishing. (That is, even when you have a publisher working for you, you still need to hustle. It’s your work of art, after all.)
• Get famous first. (Famous people sell books. Nobodies do too … occasionally.)
• You’re the CEO of your own multimedia empire. (This is kind of why I have started this site! I’m building my credentials and network and knowledge by gathering up invaluable insights like Ted’s and then analyzing and presenting them to you. YOU’RE WELCOME.)
• Build a management team — a “Board of Directors” of editors, a lawyer, an accountant, an agent, and booksellers.
• Build your brand. Become known. Do what you do, do it well, and do it visibly.

Selling Your Idea

Ted described a book as being like a startup that you’re shopping around to venture capitalists. A business plan is indispensable.

If it’s fiction, your business plan starts with a finished manuscript.

If it’s nonfiction, things are a little fudgier: you start with a proposal. Figure out an elevator pitch for your book that includes its hook, its table of contents, its book jacket, and a sample chapter that’s been polished to a high gloss. Demonstrate the success of your brand with expertise and exposure. Quantify your target audience — they should be somewhere between “everybody” and “almost nobody.” Get favorable review quotes.

And importantly, describe your book as unique enough that people will want it; but not so unique that everyone will find it baffling — or worse, a terrible idea.

Also, this is a strategy that often works well:

Miscellaneous Pointers

I couldn’t figure out anywhere else to put these, but they’re important. So look at them.

• Pitch to agents before your pitch to editors or publishers.
• Want to work as a freelance author? If you’ve been published before, just introduce yourself and show off your work. If you haven’t published a book yet, well, that’s trickier: find someone who wants to work with you so you can prove yourself.
• Submit to multiple agents at a time. If an agent wants to be your exclusive representative, take some time to shop around and make sure they’re the right one.
• A pleasant way to introduce yourself: “I see that you’re representing so-and-so; I am working on such-and-such that I think you’ll be interested in.”
• Make your first book a smash hit. That’ll give you the luxury to do something more obscure next time.
• Moving from journalism to books? It’s tough. Prove yourself by writing absolutely perfect samples, and position yourself as the expert on your topic. And make sure your topic is something that people care about. Also, remember that paragraphs can have more than one sentence.

Help

Ted recommended a bunch of handy helpers for getting your book did. Among the online ones:

• Self-Publishing Bootcamp, a locally-run operation
• Publishers Marketplace
• Publishers Weekly
• Book Proposal Bootcamp and The Business of Publishing

So, to sum up

Marketing marketing marketing marketing. It’s not the fun part of writing a book — at least, not for me; I prefer the writing part. But like frosting a cake or closing up a patient on the operating table, it’s often the final steps of a project that’ll make or break the whole thing.

Related posts:

1. Lit Agent Ted Weinstein: Successful Authors do More Than Just Write
2. The Future of Comic Books, Publishers, and the iPad: Interview with Justin Hall, Part 3 of 3
3. How to Sell Your Comic Book: An Interview with Justin Hall, Part 2 of 3
4. Eve Batey, Founder of SF Appeal, Recommends Pitching with Prototypes
5. How TJ DeGroat Escaped the Blog-Post Ghetto for Social News Networking