Publishing
I was a rule follower in school--just ask the two guy friends who picked me up and hauled me off kicking and screaming away from my history teacher's doorway one morning late in my senior year of high school, so that they could make me tardy just the one time. And this isn't just about how I was raised, either, with all due respect to my very excellent parents. I can boast of several siblings who approached high school with the attitude that deadlines are for losers. (Thank goodness they snapped out of that by college.) This is just my personality. While I am far from perfect, I just have no idea how to intentionally drop the ball. Rules are rules. If you can't meet a deadline, fulfill an assignment, or meet a commitment for whatever reason (and it better be a darn good one), it is your responsibility to make a phone call, make an apology, find a substitute for yourself, and/or make amends.
So, you might ask, what does this have to do with query letters? Have you ever tried to query an agent or a publisher? Allow me to explain.
First, contrary to popular myths and legends, there is no industry standard for queries, anymore than there is a standard for auditions. (I have been both a dance instructor and a choreographer in my time.) One popular website for the industry suggests that you prepare a cover letter/query letter, a short and a long version of your story synopsis, and an outline to go along with your first 3-5 pages. Formatting specifications that seem clear and reasonable to follow exist everywhere. This should cover the basics that might be asked for, right? Wrong.
Using a couple of different databases, recommendations from a few writer friends, and a couple of articles written by agents, I have assembled a list of forty-one agents and publishers who work not only with the genre I am querying in, but also a couple of other genres I am interested in working in down the road. I've done my homework on each of these agents or editors. Some, I've known about for years. With others, I've spent considerable time on their websites, along with reading interviews and articles about them or their agencies. Curiously, not a single pair of them has the same specifications on their website for query letters. What are the odds?
One asked only for a one page query that could be sent by email, no attachments please. Nice. Straightforward. I personalized a pitch in an hour and sent it out. The next agent on the list wanted a query, a one page (only!) synopsis, and the first three pages of the ms. Okay. Time to cut that 1-2 page synopsis down a bit. (Remember the standard "short" synopsis?) Well, that only took a couple of hours, oh... and then another hour to personalize the query letter. So far, so good.
Which brings me to my next query--this time for a publisher. I needed a cover letter... in a font I've never heard of before (I kid you not.), a long synopsis (minimum five pages) and an outline. This required that I turn my "long" synopsis, which was four pages, into something a little longer. What else do I want to include that I left out of the four page version? Three hours of scrolling through my ms later, I think I may have something resembling what the publisher wanted. Now about that outline--which I was told should be 1-2 pages by this popular website, two different books, and a published author. Apparently none of them consulted this publisher, who said that it should be no more than one page long. Mine was a page and a half, and that was the super-abbreviated version. It took two more hours to cut it down. Bleh. Are you starting to see where this is going?
There is not space here to cover all of the variations on a theme, still.... Some expected me to change the font to a 14-point, some had specifics about margins, two mentioned their own specific way of handling headers and footers, page numbering, etc. The synopsis must be less than a page, 1-2 pages; no actually, it must be at least eight. (Where does the magic number eight come from?) Queries must be single spaced, double spaced, and no more than a page long, two is fine, or at least five because we want the synopsis included in the body of the query. One publisher expects that all words needing emphasis in your ms be underlined, some were fine with either italics or underlining, and one insisted that only italics be used. Outlines could be ABC/123 style, or must be paragraph style (isn't that a synopsis?), or numbers only... like a list. My not-so-favorite instructions included words such as "short" and "long," which then necessitated some research to discover exactly what was meant by that.
I was a history major and an English minor in college, so I've been there/screwed up that citation, while flipping back and forth between the MLA Handbook and the Chicago Manual of Style.
I am a rule follower, so I follow the rules. Sigh.
Does any of this really matter? Seriously--is your query going to be tossed from the slush pile to the rubbish heap with nary a glance if the agent notices that you went two sentences over the one page limit on your synopsis or didn't use the 14 point font specified? I don't know. I suspect that many of them would just exhale, roll their eyeballs, and plow ahead anyway, but some would not. Do you really want to take that chance?
For those of you who cannot believe that such a thing would matter, let me give you an example. Several years ago, I attended a "by audition only" writer's workshop. Somehow, I managed to get in, in spite of the fact that instructions on the website regarding the audition piece were so vague that I spent two weeks fretting over what exactly was meant by "send in the first page ONLY." You see, according to the "standard" way of formatting short stories, by the time you have put in your contact information, centered the title, and dropped down to begin your story, you barely have room to write the first paragraph and a half. I was sure that this was incorrect because I couldn't imagine having my writing judged by a handful of sentences. Still, the website didn't say if the "first page ONLY" meant the first page using standard formatting or a full page of actual story, and there was no contact information to clarify. After pacing about and running the issue by a couple dozen friends, I finally decided that it would be better to send in too much than not enough. Apparently, I was wrong, but it didn't prevent me from securing one of the handful of coveted seats by the side of famous author and instructor.
For those of you now wrongly concluding that following the rules does not matter, let's fast forward to the day that we were given our formatting instructions for the story we were to write for the workshop. In giving us our instructions, the author didn't mention one of the "standards," which left the lot of us sweating and fretting about it for a day afterward. When it was time to print out our stories, eight of us ended up in the copy center debating the matter as though our entire careers hinged on pleasing this one person. Several of my fellow writers were even afraid of contacting the author for clarification, fearing that it would look bad. Eventually, half of of us decided to use the industry standard, ignoring the instructions, and the other half of us decided to follow the author's instructions to the letter. Guess which half I was in?
I was, unfortunately, the first writer--who followed the instructions to the letter--to have my story reviewed. (Although frankly, if the author in question had flipped through the stack of manuscripts, the formatting confusion would have been obvious.) I can still remember with absolute clarity the stillness in the room following the author's rant to me about my very unprofessional conduct--the angry glare and the blinking that suggested that at the very least, a groveling apology was in order. As I tried to fill the silence by mumbling something like an explanation for what was apparently considered outrageous behavior on my part, my roommate piped up with, "a handout might have been helpful." Yes. It would have. Good grief. Even when you follow the rules, you can get dinged if it appears that you were ignoring them.
Still, I am a rule follower. And I think it says something about an author who wants to work in an industry where formatting, deadlines, and other sorts of rules can have a profound impact on printing, sales, and such that you are someone who has an iota of integrity, dignity, and respect for other people's feeling and needs.
Remember that I mentioned that I was a sometime choreographer? I passed on the best dancer once (community theater) for being a diva during the auditions. I didn't think I had the energy to deal with that for three months. I also nearly booted half a dozen giggly, talkative girls from the chorus for missing their cue some twenty times, over a few different nights of rehearsal. I had decided by that point that it would be easier to change the choreography than deal with that nonsense any longer. Only the intervention of the director and a couple of phone calls to parents, saved their positions. Dancers that showed some respect not just for me, but for the rest of the cast, though, by coming on time, following the rules, working hard, and helping others got extra help, plum positions, and the hint of a promise of better casting during future productions--a promise nearly always followed through with.
One of my best dancers, who did follow the rules, went on to work as a writer for a well-known TV show. What do you think of that?
Conclusions: Follow the rules. Act professional. Take the time to do what you have been asked to do on a publisher's or agent's website. You are auditioning for a job, and you are in no position to show anything less than the utmost courtesy to the person to whom you should grateful for, for taking the time to consider you for representation or publication. Yes, it can be hours of your time. Yes, it can be frustrating. Yes, it's enough to make a saint swear. But can it make a difference? Yes.
What do you do to maintain a professional image?
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