I have registered for
the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in June. One of the decisions I have to
make this week is whether to take advantage of any of the advance submission
agents who will be present at
the conference.
For those of you unfamiliar with advance submissions, these are often available at a conference. You select from a list of agents who have registered and you send them a sample of your novel or book. At the Southern California Writer’s Conference they asked for the first chapter and a two-page synopsis. At the Santa Barbara event they are asking for the first five pages. At the conference you meet with them for ten to fifteen minutes and they give you their feedback.
There is a charge connected with this opportunity. In San Diego it was $50 for each agent you selected (I went with two). In Santa Barbara it is $40 per submission.
Most of the advance submission readers at San Diego were freelance editors or published novelists. In Santa Barbara it looks as if most of them are agents. There are only two agents who are interested in my genre—adult contemporary fiction—and one of them I have already submitted to and received a rejection. Perhaps I should submit to him again just to get some in-person feedback.
How did the experience go for me last time?
It was kind of a draw, an illustration of how subjective the agent business can be.
The first editor said she liked what she read, but she was concerned that there was too much going on. She was concerned about how much she needed to remember.
The second reader—which ended up being a spur-of-the-moment thing there at the conference—stared at me with a blank look and said, “I don’t get it.” He writes spy thrillers, however, so my guess it that unless blood is running ankle deep in the by the second page, the manuscript doesn’t have a chance with him.
When I sat down at the table and introduced myself to the third reader, she shuffled through some papers and pulled out my manuscript. She took one look and said, “Oh, this guy [referring to my protagonist/narrator] is hilarious.” The remainder of her critique was very complimentary.
So there you have it. If you decide to pop for a writer’s conference, spend a little extra for the advance submissions.
I should also warn you: writer’s conferences are not cheap. Advance registration was $550 for this one, plus another $400 for the hotel room (if I had opted for the host hotel it would have been closer to $600. Add meals and gas, and the total comes closer to $1,400 or $1,500.
I had better publish something quick.
See ya’ later.
WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com by Tim Sunderland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Comments