What's In Store
Find Your Future In A Market Guide
by Randy Dotinga

Some books are forever. Annual market guides for writers, alas, don't exactly fit in that category. But they still may give you information that could change your career.

Here's a look at three annual writers guides that deserve your attention:

2009 Writer's Market, Writers Digest Books, 2009. 1,184 pages. Paperback. $29.99. (Deluxe edition is $49.99 and includes access to an updated website.)

This is the granddaddy of them all, a doorstop of a book that provides listings for hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and agents along with tons of other information. It has its limitations, but still remains a handy resource for anyone who's looking for new markets.

The helpful front section includes a variety of essays with advice for writers, including pieces by two top authors: Amy Silverstein ("Sick Girl," about her heart disease scare) and Karen Abbott ("Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul").

Silverstein is a bit of a cipher, never explaining how she stayed afloat financially while writing eight hours a day for six months without selling her manuscript. But Abbott is better, giving advice about how she sold her book despite not having had a byline for six years.

At one point, Abbott asked her agent: "What am I going to do if this book doesn't sell?" The agent's answer: "You're going to write another book."

Good advice.

Writer's Market also includes helpful samples of "good" and "bad" query letters, with details about what's wrong and right about them.

Listings make up the bulk of the book. Readers will find plenty of details about magazines, from suggestions on how to query to editors' notes about what they're looking for.

Unfortunately, Writer's Market is often incomplete. As a test, I randomly looked up three major magazines and a newspaper that use freelancers—Glamour, Atlantic Monthly, Discover, and The Christian Science Monitor—and found the listings lacking.

There was nothing on Discover or the Monitor and just a few basic facts about Glamour. Only the entry for Atlantic Monthly included helpful and complete information, which is odd considering that anyone who needs to peruse Writer's Market is probably too inexperienced to get a second look from the magazine.

Writer's Market's criteria about payment is another problem. Annoyingly, it includes publications that pay nothing and only provides vague details about those that do actually pay writers. There's a big difference, for example, between publications that pay 10 cents a word and 45 cents, but Writer's Market puts them all in the same category.

But there are benefits to skimming Writer's Market: You'll find plenty of tidbits to enliven your next conversation.

Did you know there's a journal called Knives Illustrated? Or that there's a genre called "flash fiction" that has its own magazine (Vestal Review)? The Kosher industry has its own trade journal (Kashrus Magazine), and the magazine Weatherwise is devoted to, well, the weather.

 

2009 Guide To Literary Agents. Edited by Chuck Sambuchino, Writers Digest Books, 2009. 384 pages. Paperback. $27.99.

This is another excellent book by the Writers Digest people, with perhaps the best how-to articles of any of these three market guides. The "good" and "bad" query letters are especially helpful. (Hint: don't ever write that "family, friends, and readers love" your book.)

Sambuchino, the book's editor, insists that the book is more up-to-date, complete and accurate than just about any online listing. That may or may not be true, but the 650-plus listings are certainly a treasure trove of information about agents, including recent books they've represented, the kinds of books they're looking for and writer conferences they attend (such as, yes, ASJA's).

 

Jeff Herman's Guide To Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents 2009: Who They Are! What They Want! How To Win Them Over. Edited by Jeff Herman, Three Dog Press, 2009. 1,000 pages. Paperback $29.99.

Never mind the hyperventilating title. This brick of a book is a fine resource.

Jeff Herman is a longtime book agent in Massachusetts and has spent years putting together the annual editions of this guide. Like Writers Market, it includes essays by Herman and others on making it in the book market. It also includes a useful section helping readers navigate the confusing world of publishing houses and all their subsidiaries.

Harper Collins, for example, encompasses Avon, Collins, Ecco and William Morrow. Who knew?

However, Herman doesn't include extensive contact information. It's fine to learn the name of such-and-such editor, but what's her email? Even an email formula for each publishing company would be helpful.

The listings of agents, however, are fantastic, especially since Herman asks them things like "describe the client from hell."

Herman admits that some scamsters have made their way into his listings, but he tries to make sure any agent listed is legitimate.

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Randy Dotinga is a senior book critic with The Christian Science Monitor.