How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy (18 page)

Foreign markets. There are short fiction markets in other countries. They’re hard to hear about, and unless you read the language, it’s hard to judge the quality. Two, however, are so excellent that they constitute legitimate markets to which you might wish to submit your best work.

Interzone,
published in England with a rather small circulation, has an excellent reputation for publishing powerful, dangerous, daring stories. Not everyone appreciates everything they publish-but issues of
Interzone
are never boring, and some of the finest writers in the field appear there first.

Hayakawa’s SF
magazine is Japan’s only professional-level science fiction magazine. Naturally, any English-language story they receive has to be translated before publication. I urge
you not
to submit to them work that has already been rejected by all the American magazines-their standard

are just as high as American standards, and it’s far more effort for them to consider English-language submissions. But if you thinly a story you’ve written might be particularly well received in Japan,
Hayakawa’s
SF magazine is a good choice. Several noted American authors, starting with Bruce Sterling, have had stories published there first; it was no barrier to later U.S. publication.

2. Novels

If you’re writing fantasy or horror, you probably have to start with novels the short fiction market is too small. And even if you’re writing science fiction, you can’t live on short stories alone; at some time you’ll almost certainly switch to novels.

So, now you’ve finished writing your first novel. What do you do with it?

Queries. There are only a limited number of houses publishing science fiction on a regular basis. The leaders at this writing are Bantam/Doubleday/Dell, St. Martin’s/TOR, Berkley/Putnam/Ace, and Ballantine/Del Rey; other major lines include DAW, NAL/Signet, Warner/Popular Library, and Morrow (hardcover only). At the time you’re deciding where to send your book, check the bookstore and see if any more need to be added. Look up the addresses of the publishers in
Writer’s Market
or
Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market. (You
also might want to telephone the publishers to find out the names of their science fiction and fantasy editors, so you can put the right name on the query letter.)

Then prepare a query and send it to all of them at once.

That’s right. Don’t waste years of your life waiting for the editor at House X to remember that your manuscript is still sitting in the four-ton pile beside his bed waiting to be read. The query consists of the first couple of chapters and a brief outline of the rest of the book, right to the end. The outline is not in “I.A.La.” form; it’s a present-tense recounting of what happens and why. Period. None of the neat information about the world you’ve created, no snatches of dialogue from the best scenes-just what happens and why.

On top of this you may place a one-page synopsis consisting of no more than three paragraphs. This synopsis consists of the kind of overview that is usually placed on the back cover of a paperback. It does
not
include

praise of the author or quotes from reviewers-it simply tells what the book is about in a way that helps the reader decide whether to buy or not. You include this, not because you expect it to end up on the back cover, but rather to hook the editor-and show the editor how your book might also hook its audience. Study a lot of back covers before you try writing such a synopsis, and if you still don’t understand how it’s done, don’t include one. It’s not mandatory, and it’s only helpful if you do it right.

Cover letter. Finally, the first sheet in your query parcel is a letter that, under vour name, address, and phone number, says:

Dear [Editor’s Name],
Enclosed are the first two chapters and an outline of nay fantasy novel
Doom of the Dyphnikei
. Would you like me to send you the complete manuscript?
Three of my stories have been purchased, two by
F&SF
and one by Marion Zimmer Bradley for
Swords and Sorceresses
; they have not yet appeased. You may recall that I spoke to you at BayCon in San Jose last May, and you suggested you’d like me to send you this query.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
encl: Synopsis, chapters 1&2, outline

That’s it. That’s all. And if you
don’t
have any legitimate credentials and/ or
haven’t
met the editor, then the entire body of your letter is that first paragraph. Its message is simple and clear: First, that you are querying, not submitting this novel; this is communicated by the fact that you say “Would you like me to send the complete manuscript?” Because you include this sentence, your package is not a multiple submission, which is

a no-no, but rather a multiple query, which is a perfectly acceptable indeed, necessary-thing to do. Second, you have identified your book’s genre. It is a fantasy novel.

Anything else you say, beyond legitimate credentials that won’t otherwise be known to the editor, is superfluous and will probably make you seem amateurish. After all, you’re not striking up a friendship, you’re establishing the terms under which you’re asking the editor to read part of your novel. Once the editor has read your partial and outline and likes it,
then your
relationship can start getting friendly and chatty. Until that time, any attempt at friendship with an editor you don’t know well will seem presumptuous at best. Nothing shouts “unprofessional” like an overlong cover letter.

Is it “who you know”? Is it true that malting friends with editors is the key to getting published? That it’s “who you know,” not how well you write?

There is a sense in which that’s true. Editors are human-when a manuscript by a friend or by a writer whose work they know lands on their desk, they’re more likely to give it an early reading, and they may read it with a bit more sympathy, a bit more willingness to forgive flaws.

Furthermore, a known writer who has already built a following is more likely to be a good financial risk than a new writer who has no audience waiting eagerly for the next book. If two manuscripts are of equal interest and quality, the more established writer will usually get the nod.

That only means that to break in, you may have to be better than average, especially if you come in at a time when the market is retrenching rather than expanding. It
doesn’t mean
that there’s no hope for you unless you get to know an editor.

The truth is that an editor who intends to keep his job doesn’t publish books he doesn’t believe in, even if they’re written by his dearest friends. Editors don’t work in a vacuum. Other people in his company read those books. The sales force often
doesn’t
read it, but they certainly have to sell it. Any editor who has a habit of buying nags and slipping them in among the thoroughbreds will soon be applying for a position at another company.

Besides, every editor
I’ve
known wouldn’t knowingly do it anyway. They’re in this business because they love books-good books. And that’s what they hope to find every time they look at a manuscript. It’s the greatest moment in an editor’s life, to start reading a manuscript by a complete unknown and discover, page after page, that this writer knows what she’s

doing. You ought to talk to them the day after, the week after such a discovery. As a reviewer, I sometimes get letters-maybe once a year, probably less often-in which the editor says, “This is something special. I hope you have a chance to give it a good read.” Editors don’t do this for their
friends.
They do this for the stories they love best. That could be your story.

That’s the only secret to getting ahead-write the kind of story that makes editors and readers respond so powerfully that they can’t contain themselves, they have to tell everybody about your work. If you wrote a substandard book, then knowing an editor only gets it rejected sooner, with a nicer letter. If you wrote a good book, then not knowing any editors beforehand may mean it takes longer to get accepted-but the editor who buys
it
will be all the more excited to have discovered you.

3. Agents
For your short fiction, you don’t need an agent.

For your first novel, you don’t need an agent until you’ve got a contract offer from a publisher.

Unless you have a track record with short fiction, the kind of agent who’ll take you on before you’ve actually received an offer from a publisher is usually not the kind of agent who’ll be able to do much to advance your career. Once you have that contract in hand, however, you can send it to the agent you want to have representing you and say, “House Y has sent me this contract. Would you like to represent me?”

Wait a minute! You already have the contract-why do you need an agent now?

Not so you can get more money-only in very rare cases is an agent going to be able to get you one dime more for a first novel. What you need the agent for is all the other stuff. To get obnoxious clauses removed from the contract before you sign it. To get vital clauses inserted-the reversion of your rights if the publisher lets your book go out of print, for instance.

Subsidiary rights.
Above all, you need an agent to make sure you never yield to the publisher any unnecessary subsidiary rights. Don’t give away your foreign rights or your broadcast and film rights, ever, unless the publisher pays you a lot of additional money for them-and even then I don’t advise it. If you retain those rights, a U.S. agent with an agreement with

a foreign agent can make sales in other countries that your publisher will
never
make for you. Only a handful of my books have made me more from U.S. sales alone than they have brought in from foreign sales-but almost none of that came from the few publishers, early in my career, to whom I yielded the foreign rights to a book.

True, Dutch rights don’t go for much money. But it’s $500 more than you would have had if you’d left those rights with your U.S. publisher, because they’re not going to be pushing your little old first novel in the Netherlands, they’re going to be pushing somebody else’s big book. Or, in many cases, they won’t have a presence in the Netherlands at all.

As for movie rights, don’t expect Hollywood to beat down your door. But now and then somebody’ll nibble. They’ll option a story or a book. Most options never turn into sales-but in the meantime, you can spend the $3,000 or $5,000 option money. I’ve never yet had such a check arrive that I couldn’t find a use for. I’ve also never had such a check arrive as a result of anything a publisher did for me.

That’s what your agent can do. Hold on to your rights, and then exploit them. Remember, your agent works for you. Your publisher doesn’t. Who’s going to protect your interests better?

Ten percent.
There are those who would have you believe that the best agents nowadays are charging their clients fifteen percent. Don’t believe it, not for a second. The best agents charge their clients a ten-percent rate for U.S. sales. (Percentages rightfully go up when they have to split the proceeds with a foreign agency.) When an agent charges a higher rate, it’s either a confession that he’s not good enough to make a living at the tenpercent rate, or an admission that he thinks of himself as being some sort of packager or co-author of your work. He’ll brag about the extra services he performs. I promise you, you don’t want or need any services beyond the ones my agent provides for me-at ten percent.

How do they persuade writers to accept fifteen percent? If you don’t buy that “everybody charges that now” line, then they work on your selfesteem. “I’m sorry, I just can’t afford to take on a
marginal
writer at ten percent.” They prey on your insecurities.

One hundred percent of the value of your book comes from what you put into it. It’s generous of you to give someone else ten percent of the gross income from that book, just for handling the selling and the contract. Don’t you forget it. If you can’t find an agent for ten percent, then find

your own foreign agent directly, get a New York lawyer to work over the contracts for you, read them carefully yourself, and live without an agent. They need you more at ten percent than you need them at fifteen.

Reading fees.
Generally you should steer clear of agencies that charge reading fees. I know that reading the slushpile eats up an enormous amount of an agent’s time-but you won’t be on the slushpile. That’s because you won’t even seek an agent until you have a contract-and when you have a contract, prospective agents know you’re the real thing. There’s no risk. You’re not slushpile.

Besides, agents are business representatives, not writing schools. Who do you think will respond to your manuscript at that agency that charges a reading fee? As likely as not, some poor would-be agent or would-be writer who’s reading the agent’s slush for a fee. What does he know?