Diana Fox

If you're looking for my submission guidelines, they're beneath the cut.

( how to query me )

You can find out more about me and what I'm interested in representing at Publishers Marketplace and AgentQuery.

I know I said last week that I would post about contests, and while I must depart for the NEC RWA conference shortly, I leave you with two contests.

1) This contest is to win either Rosemary and Rue or A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire. To enter, all you have to do is buy a copy of either book (or have bought one at any time during the past month), take a picture of your receipt, and email it to Seanan. If you win, she'll send you a free copy of whichever book you didn't buy... which means you get both books for the price of one! Details and other rules are here.

2) I decided I liked this idea, so I will be holding a contest offering a similar reward for purchasing Alcestis by Katharine Beutner.

The prize: Your choice of one book--possibly signed, depending on the book!--by any Fox Literary author (see my Publishers Marketplace page for titles), or a $20 Amazon gift certificate.

To enter: Buy a copy of Alcestis any time between now and April 15th, and email a picture of your receipt to contest at fox literary dot com.

The rules: The receipt must be either a paper receipt from a brick-and-mortar store or the packing slip with order information shipped from Amazon (or whatever other online bookstore you order from) with the book. Your name, the date, and the name and price of the book must be visible, but feel free to black out any other identifying details if you so desire. Unfortunately, the high cost of international shipping means that I cannot mail any books anywhere outside the US or Canada, but the Amazon gift certificate offer is good internationally.

And now Boston awaits, but I hope you're all having a great Friday!

I decided to give away not one but two ARCs for Friday's contest, and the winners are Amanda Makepeace on Twitter and ladyfox7oaks on livejournal. Email me with your addresses at submissions at foxliterary dot com!

I also have an addition to my 2010 conference appearances: I'll be at the Backspace writers conference (May 27-29, 2010 in NYC). I don't have my schedule yet so I don't know how many days I'll be appearing, but as I'll post it as soon as I do.

Now, back to reviewing the final draft of AFTERLIFE (I feel a little guilty that the rest of the world will have to wait over a year to read this book, because it's so good and such a satisfying conclusion to the Evernight series... but only a little!).

I just spent the day critiquing query letters at the sold out Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in Manhattan, and had a great time! Hopefully it was equally fun and productive for the authors in attendance. This was my first event with Backspace, but based on my experience today I would definitely recommend their 2010 Backspace Writers Conference, which takes place May 27th-29th in NYC.

The other exciting thing which happened today is that Realm Lovejoy posted an interview with me here on her blog. She's doing an ongoing series of interviews with agents, editors, and authors, with original art to accompany each one! I was thrilled to have the opportunity to participate, because Realm is an amazing artist (plus she didn't kill me for asking her to go back and tweak her drawing of me multiple times, which I really appreciated).

Finally, here's my schedule of appearances for the first half of 2010:

2010 RWA New England Chapter Conference
March 26-27, 2010, Framingham, MA.

DFW Writers Conference
April 10-11, 2010, Dallas, Texas

Las Vegas Writers Conference
April 15-17, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada

Chicago-North RWA Spring Fling 2010
April 23-24, 2010, Deerfield, IL

BEA
May 25-27, 2010, New York, NY

My current plan is to spend the first week of May sleeping.

On that note, I now go to collapse into bed and sleep the sleep of the exhausted. There may be some watching of Supernatural first.

Seanan McGuire's debut novel, Rosemary and Rue, officially comes out today!


If you live in the San Francisco area, there will be not one but two parties happening this weekend--the details are on Seanan's blog here. One lucky person can also win what will perhaps be the last ARC to be released into the wild (now that the book is available in stores) by commenting on this post at The Swivet with your urban fantasy recommendations.

Finally, if you fall in love with Toby Daye and her world the way I did, you'll be happy to know that the next book, A Local Habitation, is available for pre-order now... and March isn't that far away!

Three announcements:

First, this week saw the release of Salt and Silver, a new urban fantasy by Anna Katherine. My favorite things about this book are the heroine, Allie, because her voice really stands out for me, the strong worldbuilding, and a New York that feels like New York. Of course, there's also a yummy hero and lots of demon hunting and magic and sex and a Hellmouth Door to Hell (what? I know what I like in an urban fantasy/paranormal romance!)--and if you like that sort of thing too, I strongly recommend you pick up a copy.

Second, I have changed my submission guidelines. I will still look at snail mail/hard copy submissions, but if you do choose to query me the old fashioned way, you must include your email address in your letter as I will respond to all queries exclusively via email from now on.

I repeat: I will respond to all queries exclusively via email from now on. Do NOT include a SASE with your submission, as I will no longer be sending out paper rejections. As always, I cannot return unsolicited manuscripts, so please do not send them. I apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause, but please understand that it is being enacted in the interest of saving time, money, and our planet's resources.

Third, I am crossposting from a new social networking/journaling service called Dreamwidth (you can find me there as dianafox.dreamwidth.org). While I have no intention of abandoning Livejournal yet and will continue to reproduce all my posts in both places, I'm supporting Dreamwidth during open beta because I like their policy of no ads, the level of communication between the site owners and the users, and the cool new features. The best part is, if you want to import your entire journal or blog over there, you can do it with a couple of clicks! They're still working out some technical issues, but I tested it by importing this blog there last night and it seems to have reproduced everything. Now we will see if it crossposts as well! And if any of you also have Dreamwidth accounts , drop me a comment there and say hello.

I'm out of town this week, but today is the official book birthday of Stargazer by Claudia Gray--congratulations, Claudia! Stargazer is a fantastic continuation of Evernight, and while I love the "sneak preview" aspect of my job and getting to read books by my authors early, I also kind of envy the readers getting to experience the story for the first time. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!

For those already familiar with Evernight, you can now buy or win some really cool stuff (t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc.) by going to the Evernight store or entering Claudia's latest Stargazer contest. (I'm trying to decide which kind of mug I want, and torn between the commuter and the 15 oz. classic white.)

Stargazer shares a release date with Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott, who is one of my favorite YA authors. I had the pleasure of reading Something, Maybe in manuscript form, and I highly recommend the rest of her books as well. Elizabeth is running a contest on her blog with some excellent prizes (like, good enough that I'd enter if I could) here, among them the chance to win a copy of any of her earlier titles... so if you are looking for a chance to try one of her books, go over and enter!

And now, I return to my regularly scheduled reading.

I’ve been seeing some comments around the Internet expressing surprise in response to revelations by agents (myself included) that they have day jobs. I am likewise surprised that anyone would think this was strange! I guess this is a post I should have made a while ago, but it honestly didn’t occur to me that there were people who were unaware that not all agents start out earning a full-time living as agents. In fact, most don’t.

Here’s something I know most of you will not be surprised to learn: publishing pays very little, especially in the beginning. There are always exceptions--particularly for those becoming agents after establishing careers elsewhere in the industry--but the vast majority of new agents are either working in some other capacity at a literary agency in addition to representing their own clients, are independently wealthy (or lucky enough to have a partner who can afford to support them), or have some other source of income. I know agents who are bartenders and bookkeepers, freelance editors and website designers, sales clerks and substitute teachers... basically, whatever pays the bills while they build their lists and start making enough sales to be able to give up their day jobs.

I had the honor and privilege of working with Robin Rue at Writers House for two years, and for that whole time I performed the duties of an assistant, as well as those of a junior agent after I began taking on my own clients. (This is roughly the same as how editorial assistants begin acquiring their own projects and eventually become editors, by the way.) It was an invaluable apprenticeship and I can’t say enough good things about Robin or about all the wonderful opportunities to learn the business that I was fortunate enough to have at Writers House, but I was still working forty hours a week doing something other than representing my own clients. Any time I had for reading my own slush, developing my own list, or selling projects for my own authors had to be made after I did my other work, and with the support and permission of my boss. Again, I was lucky that she was incredibly supportive, but for practical purposes a lot of my own agenting was still being done “on the side”.

Now that I think about it, I can of course see why the default assumption given the lack of any other information might be that all agents do this full time, but the reality is that it takes most agents several years to get to the point where they can support themselves on their commissions alone. The reality is also that not everyone can afford to pursue this career for that long, but I know people who work full time and/or support families while putting themselves through law school, medical school, and so on, and are successful at it. If they can do that, why would it be any different in publishing?

Finally, one of the things I think is important for me personally is not feeling like I have to take on projects which I consider marginal just to pay my bills, because that’s not the kind of agent I want to be. I don’t think being that hungry is good for either author or agent in the long term, and whether someone ultimately ends up being in this business for a few years or a lifetime, I believe it’s important to try to see the big picture in terms of the career longevity of every client I take on: not just, what books can we sell now, but where will that author’s career be in five years? Ten? Twenty?

Naturally the answers to this question will vary, and I’m sure everyone can think of cases of an author who only had one book in them--preferably an immortally beloved bestseller, for my money--but as far as I’m concerned succeeding as an agent is just like any other success in publishing: you try to always do your best work, and if you’re gifted and lucky maybe you will be one of the few to grab that brass ring, the bestseller (or better yet, series) that makes your career and gives you financial security. Or, you carve out your financial security by focusing on quantity and representing many books that might never make bestseller lists, but which will consistently earn out smaller advances and lead to more contracts (for example, with category romance the agent may only make a few hundred dollars per book after expenses, but people buy a lot of books in that genre and the money adds up). Or, you win the lottery. The good news is that until any of these things happens, you can still have a career in the meantime...

You’d just better be able to pay your rent.

My email is back, after over 24 hours of downtime. Needless to say I will be leaving Dreamhost and finding another company for my email service as soon as I can arrange for the data migration (I always picture flocks of birds made of numbers when I think of that phrase). I did receive some email from the past day, but am by no means sure everything came through--however, it should now be safe to resend!

Kindle news: I am loving the Kindle so far. I have already read several manuscripts on it, and transferred a bunch of other manuscripts and e-books to read at my earliest opportunity. Even better, Amazon doesn't appear to be billing me for any of the documents I have emailed to myself (I haven't done that much emailing yet--for the most part I've been converting various file formats to .prc with MobiPocket Creator and transferring them to the Kindle via USB--but having the ability to receive documents by email too is wonderful).

And now I am going to go back up all my email and collapse in an exhausted & relieved heap.

Continuing my trend of only updating around major holidays (and yes, today counts, especially this year), happy Election Day!

I am still insanely busy. I have been finishing up a long term independent project for my day job, and between that and dealing with boring stuff related to the collapse of Western capitalism as we knew it, I haven't had a second to catch up on slush. However, as of this coming Monday I will be taking a few weeks off to concentrate full time on agenting... so if you have something under consideration with me, I hope you'll be patient just a little longer.

I have been having a fantastic day today. This morning my brother and I drove up through the gorgeous fall foliage to vote in our suburban hometown, and I got to cast my vote in my old elementary school gym, the same place I have gone to vote my entire adult life. Then we went and bought cupcakes at the bake sale, where a little boy was earnestly telling us our money was going to help the school; I had flashbacks to standing in that same hallway a few feet away from where I was standing today and doing the exact same thing when I was his age. My brother confessed that he always gets chills pulling the lever back in the voting machine.

Then I returned to Manhattan and went to the office, where I sent out a bunch of submissions for various clients and made some phone calls. Then it was off to Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's for a free ice cream cone and coffee, and now I am sitting on my friend's couch eating takeout from Veselka, responding to queries, and watching the returns.

One more thing worthy of note about today: MY KINDLE HAS ARRIVED! Yes, I finally gave in and bought a Kindle. My strong anti-DRM sentiments aside, several agent friends convinced me that it would change my life and I wouldn't be able to live without it, and I look forward to proving them right.

How are all of you? I am looking forward to seeing the results of this year's NaNoWriMo in my inbox in a few months (after any necessary polishing and revision, of course), and I really admire all those who are doing it. I once tried to do my own version of NaNo in which I committed to making one blog post every day for the entire month of November, but I bet you can all guess how well that worked out.

Finally, a picture behind the cut ( cut for political content... and pastry! )

Okay, off to watch the Stewart/Colbert special now, and I plan to be back with some publishing-related posts later this month. Have a great night, everyone!

ETA: The CNN holograms are the best thing ever.