Longlisted for the Millennium Book Award 2024

Also: a publishing tip: “Agents taking longer than I expected.”

Just found out! As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back is longlisted for Book Viral’s 2024 Millennium Book Award. Forty-two books are on the longlist. On Dec. 16th, we find out the shortlist. Keep me in your hearts and thoughts, please.

On to our publishing tip of the week! I read on a Facebook page:

I’m a small press author. I have my second book out to agents and the responses are trickling in without much feedback.

I figured that already being published with good reviews, agents would be happy to work with me. My book gets 4.8/4.9 stars on Amazon and Goodreads.

I’ve done a couple revisions and then had my beta reader read it and did another revision. I’m just not sure if it’s not ready yet or if it just doesn’t fit their lists like they say. How do you know?

Alle sez:

Take heart! Many agents might well be thrilled to work with you. But they have to come across your submission.

• Busy agents are known to look through the slush only when they need to fill an opening in their roster of authors.
• Our manuscript has to manage to cross their desk on the day they are looking for that kind of project, written they way they like a book written.

It is very, very hard to hit the above kismet. The most important element we can control is our work’s excellence. We can more readily structure when we send out and when we hold back in order to rework.

I know how my submission is faring from what I call, “bounce.” First, to note:

To start my submission process, each week for about a month, I send five to ten queries (query letter, first 50 pages, and a one- or two-page synopsis, depending on what the agency requests).

• If I have 10 query packages in circulation and am not getting bounce (immediate responses), no worries. I keep sending.
• If I have 15–20 in circulation and bounce remains ephemeral, I consider the having the whole package re-evaluated; most importantly, the first 50 pages.
• If I have 25 in circulation with no bounce, I cease querying in favor of another round of revisions.

(Trigger warning)

Odds are the agent won’t read beyond the first two sentences of our pages.

That was not a typo, so those sentences, those pages, that manuscript, had better be top-notch. Work with an editor if you can at all afford to. A second close would be a very, very sharp reader.