Writing Business: One agent's advice on revving up your career during difficult times
by Londa Konner

"It's more important than ever to have confidence. Everyone else is insecure. If you start to take a little bit of everyone else's insecurity, forget it."
—Diane von Furstenberg, The New York Times, July 2009

When I first became a freelance writer as a teenager, my mother felt so sorry for me. She would see me emerge from my room after hours spent in front of my mint-green Hermes typewriter with stacks of articles and query letters addressed to magazine editors near and far.

"You get so much rejection!" my mother said sympathetically, not understanding why I bothered to go on when the poor mailman came to our house with a seemingly-daily stack of returned manuscripts. But even then I realized that, along with the basic talent necessary for getting any writing published, it was also a numbers game. So every time I'd drop 10 or 20 manilas into the mailbox, I'd usually get… nine or 19 back. Translation: I would sometimes actually achieve my goal. I would get an article accepted and published, by trying and trying and trying.

My mom, God bless her, may not have understood or completely supported me in my quest to become a professional writer, but she did give me an inadvertent gift: She taught me how to deflect the comments of naysayers, doomsayers, and all other types of negative people. I would never let rejection bother me because I knew that if this editor didn't get what I was doing, maybe the next one would, or the next one. I wasn't a brilliant writer, but I knew you didn't have to be. You just had to be a good one who never gave up. That was me.

Today, many moons later and a literary agent for the past 13 years, I am following the same basic M.O. on behalf of my 75 clients. I may not be the agent who does the mega-deals you read about in The New York Post, but the majority of my clients (many of whom are in ASJA) appreciate what I'm good at: persistence. To paraphrase Miss Jean Brodie: Give me a book proposal at an impressionable stage and it is mine for life; I really never return it to an author until I've found it a publisher, no matter how many tries it takes. Last year I sold a book proposal I'd acquired in 1999. (I actually had to reintroduce myself to that Virginia Beach client when I called her to announce the news; it had been years since we had spoken.)

Which brings me to the doom-and-gloom we've all been hearing (or speaking) about the current state of publishing. Yes, magazines are folding. Yes, people have stopped buying newspapers. Yes, book sales are down and book editors (when they manage to hang onto their jobs) are more cautious about what they acquire and offer smaller advances. OK—not a pretty picture. But we all know that while the publishing formats and platforms may have shrunk and/or changed, content will always be in demand. Haven't naysayers been predicting theater's demise for at least the last century? Yet, I saw the fabulous God of Carnage recently and look forward to seeing Hamlet when Jude Law stars in the upcoming Broadway production. The point is, publishing, like theater, isn't going away. But we may have to do some fancy footwork these days to stay afloat as writers. And that's where resilience comes in.

The truth is everyone is being forced to reexamine his/her career these days, and writers are no exception. I feel for my clients who say their workload and their income are down for 2009. But I don't feel sorry for those who have refused to get a little creative about their work and come up with ways to boost their careers. For some of us, it will take some doing to survive this downturn and live on less for awhile. I do believe that business will pick up sooner or later, as do most of my book-publishing colleagues. I, for one, am heartened by the fact that 1) newspaper executives are rethinking the idea of providing free online content; perhaps they'll come up with a way to save newspapers and make them profitable again; 2) ebook sales are soaring; and 3) a brand-new branch of the independent bookstore, Posman, is set to open in my Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in a few weeks. So the news isn't all bad. Still, it's up to all of us to figure out how to keep going and even thrive in a difficult publishing period. Below I offer a grab bag of suggestions. Maybe one or more will work for you.

• Play the numbers game in earnest. Increase your numbers. If you're not sending magazine/e-zine and similar queries 20 or 25 at a time, you're not sending out enough. If you're currently agent-shopping and haven't pitched yourself/your book idea to 20 or 25 literary agents at a time, you haven't sent out enough.

• Be more aggressive about following up. Certainly, if you haven't heard anything in three or four weeks, call or email. Don't ever let an editor or an agent string you along month after month.

• Even if your usual article fees are being cut, don't just sit back and take it. Once a piece has been accepted, start negotiating for your next assignment, and at a higher fee, while you and your editor are still enjoying the honeymoon phase.

• If you and your editor develop an especially positive relationship, ask if he/she has a freelance project you can tackle—a book-doctor job, some copyediting, press-release writing, per-diem in-house editing, etc. Unless you speak up about your interest, your editor may simply not consider you for such gigs, even though he/she may be desperate for someone with your talents.

• Actively seek out book collaborators—interesting people you've read or heard about who may be ready for their moment of publishing glory. Set yourself a goal, say, to reach out to two new people a week. First, check their name on Amazon to be sure they haven't already done a book. Then try to track them down and see if they might be interested in working with you. Having at least a tentative idea for their book when you contact them is helpful. And if you leave a message or send an email that isn't immediately returned, don't assume there's no interest. Try, try again until you've heard either "come back later" or "never darken my door again." I do this myself all the time and have discovered that these professional hook-ups are usually a matter of timing, luck and/or persistence. (And since you can't control timing or luck, you may as well be persistent.)

• Use your down time productively. Remember the writing projects you said you'd start or resume the day you got off that hamster wheel, frantically meeting all your deadlines? Well, that day is here—or may be soon. Peter, my honey of 31 years, was one of approximately 200 who took a buy-out last December after 15 years on staff at the (Newark) Star-Ledger. Because we both work at home, we mused about how we might now get to while away some pleasant daylight hours together. It never happened. In the eight months since he went from staff theater critic to freelance theater critic, he: 1) wrote a play and had two readings of it; 2) wrote a nonfiction book proposal (which I sold for him) plus half of the book; 3) wrote a proposal for a calendar; and 4) turned out 155 pages of his first-ever adult novel. (So much for those pleasant afternoon get-togethers.) I'm so proud of Peter. He's been far too busy igniting back-burner writing projects (and getting paid for some of them) to feel bad about having left a job he loved.

• Blog for fun and profit. It worked for Julie (Julie and Julia) Powell. And it's worked for scores of authors who (unlike you, with the advantage of years of publishing experience) started out as mere bloggers. But don't just blog; leave your mark in the blogosphere. Figure out how to link to large, heavily-trafficked blogs to draw readers to your own, as some of my clients have done; become a guest blogger on such popular sites as Huffington Post; get media coverage and/or paid advertising on your blog. Some authors are asked to blog on their publisher's website, which helps promote them and their book. (And nowadays it's a foregone conclusion by book publishers that authors will not only have their own website but are also blogging, Twittering, and Facebooking regularly.) The ASJA Members Only section features an array of member blogs, if you need ideas on how to get started.

Linda Konner is founder of The Linda Konner Literary Agency (LKLA), which represents 75 authors of adult nonfiction books published by an assortment of publishers such as HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, John Wiley, Penguin, and Rodale.