Best of Ask the Agent: How Close is TOO Close?
Plus, a new way to buy books online, a time-traveling golden retriever, and more!
Welcome to another edition of Best of Ask the Agent (the newsletter), where I climb up the massive oak tree that is my #AskAgent tumblr and rescue the kittens of information that are trapped there. Last week we learned all about comp titles… this week, the question gets a little more complicated. But first, some link-a-dinks!
In Case You Missed It
The Kids IndieNext list for spring has been released; CHIRP by Kate Messner and RICK by Alex Gino both made the list.
Bookshop.Org is a new consumer book buying website (still in Beta form), that hopes to take a bite from A**zon’s apple. For shoppers, it’s easy: you just pop the books you want in your basket and go. For linkers, there’s an affiliate program that gives you a percentage of sales. And for bookstores, a percentage of sales goes into a pool of all the registered bookstores and is shared. I’m experimenting by linking all my client’s new books and all the books I talk about on the podcast, provided they are available — if you are an author, consider adding a link to your Bookshop.Org titles onto your “buy links” list! It feels good to support local businesses. Here’s an article about it in the Chicago Trib, and here it is in Forbes.
My client Phoebe Wahl is co-creating an amazing looking stop-motion animation film called Tulip. You can learn more about the project, and donate to the kickstarter here (and get some great incentive items, as well!)
Best of Ask the Agent: How Close is TOO Close?
“Hi Jennifer! I was wondering if it makes sense to query agents who represent your comp titles. Are most agents looking for a diverse roster of clients? Or does it just depend on the agent? Thank you!”
Research agents for even a short while and you’re almost sure to come up with two competing bits of wisdom:
LOOK FOR AGENTS WHO REP THE BOOKS MOST LIKE YOUR OWN!
vs
AGENTS WON’T TAKE ON WORK TOO SIMILAR TO WHAT THEY ALREADY REP.
Guess what? BOTH these contradictory statements are… true?! Yayyy??
Of course you want to pick an agent who does the kind of books you do, and hopefully reps some authors you admire… but yep, that agent will likely decline if the books are too similar. I wrote a blog post way back in 2011 about WHY agents don’t like to take on work that too directly competes with what they already rep. It’s all still true, so I won’t rehash it here. We know the WHY. But how can you tell if your book falls into this problematic area?
A quick way to decide if your book might be too close to what an agent already reps: If you break your book and the comparable book(s) down into general CATEGORY, TONE and THEME - TWO of these can match. But if all three overlap, it’s probably too close.
In other words:
I could rep two hilarious picture books … but not two hilarious picture books about Sloths. I could rep two picture books about Sloths, if one was hilarious, while the other was a bedtime book, or a nonfiction book. I could rep two hilarious Sloth books… if one was a picture book and one was a chapter book. (That isn’t to say that there isn’t room IN THE WORLD for multiple funny picture books about Sloths, btw… just that I personally would feel uncomfortable repping all of them!)
In the case of something more nuanced like “heartfelt middle grade fiction about complicated families and kids growing up” - where there are certainly lots of great books that seem to overlap… the differences might be more subtle. I rep Linda Urban and Kate Messner and Jo Knowles, for example - three great authors, sometimes writing in a similar space - but you wouldn’t confuse their work. You just wouldn’t. On the surface there might be some similarities, but there’s a difference at the bone.
So if you’re researching an agent who reps what you write… and you’ve thought about the chart and you see the surface similarities but you still think YOUR difference is different enough… you might as well try querying the agent… why not, right? Nothing to lose. Nobody is going to be mad at you - the worst that can happen is, you get a rejection, and that isn’t anything to lose sleep over.
New Release: Available Now!
Ranger In Time #11: ESCAPE FROM THE TWIN TOWERS by Kate Messner
Ranger, the time-traveling golden retriever with search-and-rescue training, travels to New York City on the morning of the 9/11 attacks.
COURAGE IN THE FACE OF DANGER
Ranger has never needed his search-and-rescue training more than when he arrives at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. There he meets Risha Scott and her friend Max who have come to work with Risha's mother for a school project. But when the unthinkable happens and the building is evacuated, Risha is separated from her mom. Can Ranger lead Risha to safety and help reunite her family?
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