Advice from literary agent Lucas Hunt

I was lucky to be able to interview the bright and creatively minded Lucas Hunt - literary agent at Orchard Literary in NYC. Most of the BookHive BuzzBlog from here on out will be interview based in order to serve writers and readers best! Here is what he had to say. 

1. Tell us who you are and where you're from.

My name is Lucas Hunt, and I am from Iowa, by way of The Hamptons.

Lucas Hunt of Orchard Literary

2. What is your professional background and how did you end up with Orchard Literary?

My professional background is in arts and literature. In college and graduate school, I worked at independent bookstores, and assisted various artists and writers. For the last eight years, I’ve worked as a literary agent and rights manager to represent the interests of authors.

3. What clients are Orchard Literary looking for?

Orchard Literary is looking for exceptional fiction and non-fiction. In fiction, we like strong literary voices with purpose, and a fine awareness of things great and small. Some writers I love are DH Lawrence, Simon Van Boy, Georges Simenon, and Michel Houellebecq. In non-fiction, we seek memoirs, essays, and book proposals by experts in their field; people who can prove their authority of a subject on the page, and have done some work in establishing their reputations as authors. I am especially fond of travel writing, cultural criticism and biography. We currently represent authors in the fields of health and wellness, business, cooking and interior design.

4. I'm sure it varies, but how many clients would you typically take in a year, and how does this compare to the number of submissions you receive?

I will take approximately ten clients per year, out of a sea of one thousand submissions.

5. How do you meet new clients, or how do they find you?

We look for outstanding writers online and in papers, magazines, journals, and literary reviews. Also we love referrals, and an immaculate submission via a query letter.

6. Walk us through a great query letter, and a not-so-great query letter.

Great query letter: Hello my name is and this is why I’m writing you. My project is basically about this. A paragraph about my project. A paragraph about me, and what I have done an author. There’s a sample attached. Thank you, goodbye!

Not so great: Dear Ms. Hunt I have seven books and plan twelve more under the name Maximilian Jonathan Franco because my first marriage turned disastrous and since my time as a spy in the CIA, which led alien counter mafia terrorist forces in the future, I cannot tell you anymore about it, but I will be famous I’m sure, and I must address other agents now, so attached are seven documents for you to review asap!

7. For the self-published author, what sales are you hoping to see from their previous book(s) in order to spark your interest? Or do you not take this into account?

Significant sales would be a plus, but what we are looking for is measurable growth beyond the numbers. And that means an author with a strong vision of how they want to be published, who their audience is, and what they are willing to do to contribute to the fulfillment of that vision. Sales are a qualitative indicator of engagement with people, and we like to work with authors who are committed.

8. What other ways can an author stand apart and get noticed?

Writing well is the best revenge. Other than that, they can take the time to invest in their work just as an agent would, by making submissions in online and print, magazines and literary journals. Your work is your gift to the world, begin the responsibility of sharing it with the world now.

9. In what state do you expect to see a manuscript? It might seem obvious, but spell it out.

New York, unless I’m traveling, then in California, Texas, or possibly Florida. In a polished, well-edited state.

10. How many editors will you typically submit to on the first round?

Ten editors.

11. If you get back a unanimous 'no' - what do yourself and the author do then?

We have a conversation about the possibility of making certain edits, and whether or not to make further submissions, based on the criticism we have received. We assess the comments, and make a decision of how to move forward.

12. What is the range of advances these days?

I have worked on deals from zero figure up to 8 figures. How many reader’s does an author bring to the table?

13. Once a manuscript is sold, how involved are you in the process through publication?

At Orchard Literary, we are very involved. We put out a press release, and up our social media presence on the authors behalf. We communicate with the editor, publicist and author to ensure the project moves ahead with real momentum. And we discuss what will come next with our author.

14. Any last advice to authors on how to break into traditional publishing?

Be true to your work. Be your own agent until you really need one. Be untraditional and unconventional.

That's it for this month! And for all the authors out there - take advantage of BookHive's $100 coupon off our services for the rest of the summer. Coupon code BUZZ. Find out more about how we test Fiction, YA/Middle Grade & Memoir with our awesome beta reader data base at our site: www.bookhivecorp.com

Jennifer Bowen, QueenBee, CEO & Founder, of BookHive Corp., thanks you for reading this blog and sharing it if you found it helpful on those good old social media platforms that you visit. Any questions about testing your book or bigger life ponderings, she can be reached at jbowen@bookhivecorp.com

Amazing, Weird & Hard. Writing - and letting it go.

Writing is amazing. And weird. And hard. Maybe in that order and then scrambled again. Well, take it back. It's amazing at first when you get an idea. Or for me it is. I always think whatever I've written is my last piece, truly. But then it happens again. I'm usually sparked by some external experience -- watching someone else's play or film or listening to a piece of music. My personal inspirations rush in, a place, a theme, a character flaw, and I start writing.

It's such a cozy time during the early writing days. You're spending a lot of quality time together like a brand new relationship. Often as I'm falling asleep, the latest scene will replay in my head, the back and forth, what was felt, what wasn't, what was said, what wasn't. Some writers get major editor brain from the get-go. Not me. I just write and don't care and accept it's imperfect.

But the amazing time always ends, because you need to get feedback. That's the weird part which messily slides into the hard part quickly. It's like bringing your kid to the first day of school. You think she looks great (new dress! hair in two braids! what a smile!) But it's possible that her fellow classmates may see her differently (buck teeth! cross eyed stare! bad breath!)

Translation? You get feedback that the first 10 pages of your novel doesn't hook readers and that character of yours (INSERT NAME HERE) lacks a clear journey.

Hard.

But necessary.

Case in point. See the picture below of me when I'm twelve? I'm sure my mother, the Author of me, would say I was cute, but, well, you get it. It can all be subjective.

It's this hard part that scares a lot of the first time Authors I've spoken to via BookHive. Who wants to go in front of the firing squad? The flat computer screen and yourself on the couch, that intimate tête-à-tête, is such an easier place to live. I get it.

We do our best at BookHive to protect our Authors. We do this by carefully vetting our Test Readers. We've all been on blogs or Facebook when a psycho outlier goes for the jugular. If I ever see that kind of feedback from a Test Reader, which is unnecessarily snarky and cruel, we never use them again. Everything is tailored for the Author. From the way we order the questions, to who we pick to test their novel, BookHive does its best to give the Author the most potentially positive and useful outcome.

That all said, it's still scary for the writer. I recently had a play workshopped in New York and I found myself really distancing myself, emotionally and physically, from the rehearsals. Not all playwrights work this way. But the play had been mine for so long. I had to take a step back. It's the only way I had a chance in hell to 'see it' at all in the performances.

Getting feedback is a total act of letting go.  I meditate on not having huge expectations and not looking for every Test Reader to validate my work. This is all easier said then done. But when I tested my own YA novel through BookHive, some of the critiques stung, but a lot of it gave me the direction to make the work better. There were also a lot of thumbs up, so I knew what to keep. I'd rather face my fear of someone thinking I'm not oh-so-brilliant than keeping my work safe and for an audience of only one (me).

I'd admire all writers who take the leap to get better. Writing is weird. And amazing. And hard. In that order, scrambled, and all at once, too.

If you'd like to test your novel during our soft launch through BookHive for $100 (normally $499), please visit our website: www.book-hive.com

Too 'Yold' for Young Adult? A new business is born.

What does a 34 year-old-woman do after she's written a Young Adult novel? She has doubts.

That was the state I found myself in. I'm what we'd call 'yold.' That's young and old, people. Young enough that I can still remember being seventeen as not some foreign state. But old enough that I worried my novel wouldn't resonate with an audience half my age.

When I was thirteen I fell in love with David Lynch's TV show Twin Peaks. My novel is inspired by Lynch's dissection of small town weirdos, dead prom queens, and his realistic take on the supernatural. With the support of a writers group in New York City, I wrote in my typical mad-woman style, and churned out a wobbly, thriving, first draft at the end of the year.

But...what then?

My writers group consisted of people like myself in their 30's and 40's. But I kept wondering - what would a seventeen-year-old girl think?

The only solution for me was to ask some teenagers directly. The first time I tried this it didn't go so well. I was trying to chase down teenage nieces/daughters/friends of friends, and a lot of them weren't all that interested in reading. But even with the little feedback I got, I knew I needed to make some serious edits. The main one being all the adults who read my manuscript chose the 'right' guy out of the love triangle, but all the teenagers chose the 'other' one.  That was a reality check. #yold

So I wrote and rewrote. A lot. And then I tested it a second time with teenagers a year later.

By this point, I figured out how to attract serious test readers, and by the end of it, I had a 25+ page report full of feedback from teenagers all across the US on what did and didn't work in my manuscript. It tested much better the second go around. They answered big picture questions, from relating and loving my main character June, to reassuring me that my ending--since it's a mystery novel--struck that balance between satisfying and piquing curiosity. They also offered such unique specifics, such as my 'texting' seemed realistic and my teenage sarcastic dialogue was believable. 

The whole process was so wildly helpful, the first time with editing my manuscript, the second time as a marketing tool to prove the viability of the manuscript. As I turned to the oh-so-daunting task of trying to get published, I realized I had a powerful secret weapon with my positive test results. I'd done the field work. I knew my manuscript was grabbing teens. Wouldn't this get an agent's attention?

 

And with that, I turned an idea--doing online testing for novelists--into a company: BookHive Focus Group Services. And here we are!  One day, when my manuscript gets bought (as I hope it will) I'll be thrilled to work with an editor. That editor, I'm sure, will not be seventeen. So it's nice that I've had twelve real-life age appropriate consumers provide me with a backbone of knowledge that I can trust. This is what I want to provide to other novelists: a method of gauging whether their manuscript is solid and ready for public consumption.

 

 

These were some of the initial design inspirations for the company. Bees! Books! #BookHive

 

I think we write in order to feel something and to make others feel something, to transcend the everyday into moments of beauty, humor, and revelations, to tell stories, to learn, to have some ever-evolving creative footprint. And you know what? To put yourself out there--writing or otherwise--can be scary. But my hope is that BookHive can help other writers to clarify their voice and find their audience, leaving 'yold' fears and otherwise in the dust.   





To become a Test Reader or to sign up your manuscript to be tested for our

$100 Launch Price, visit us at www.book-hive.com

 

Jennifer would like to thank Brock Hotaling at Opstreams for creating the BookHive website, Jeri Stunkard via Crowdspring for all the design elements, her brilliant mentor Elisabeth Morten, her NYC Writers Group, her incredibly supportive parents Pamela and Hugh Bowen, and her husband Garrett Neergaard who always believes in her.