AIW Writers’ Conference
Yesterday, I attended the American Independent Writers’ Conference. I never actually saw much of the conference–I spent all day running the agent pitch room.
The conference started out with an agent breakfast, so I ate breakfast with one of the agents. She was a little late (had trouble finding her way to the conference; no surprise, since DC is very confusing!). The other writers just chatted while we waited. One had written only three chapters of her novel and was coming to pitch it. I told her that it she needed to have it completed, but she wasn’t really buying into it (never mind that writers pitching unfinished novels was something one of the other agents later complained about …). A male writer also showed up late, and I couldn’t help noticing that he’d brought his entire manuscript. No one at our table seemed to have done any actual research about the business.
The agent arrived, and that got very interesting. She reps fantasy and is interested in urban fantasy. She also reps middle grade. Things she said:
- She has seen an increase in submissions because of the economy (other agents have reported this on their blogs, so I asked this question). She gets 1,000 submissions a month.
- This agent requires writers send a query, a synopsis, and the first 30 pages. She said she hits the query, then looks at the first 30 pages. If she’s interested, then she hits the synopsis. She had someone send only the query and synopsis, which ended up being a pass because the writer hadn’t followed instructions.
- She said that for a first time novelist, you must have a completed manuscript done. And, obviously, to make it the best you can.
- One of the writers asked if an agent really had to “love a manuscript.” She explained that it was like when a reader picks up a book in the bookstore, reads the back or opens it up to look at the first page, and puts it back. She’s looking for books that make people want to grab them and get them immediately. I get this part–and why people either do really well at sales or do horribly. If you don’t start out believing in the product, you will never be able to sell it convincingly to the customer.
- The economy has caused some layoffs of editors, so the work has piled up on the remaining editors. Everything is backlogged at the publishing houses.
Off to the pitch sessions. I never see anything at the conference because I stay in the pitch session from 10:00 until the last session (4:15 for this conference), with a break for lunch. We had 14 agents, including several returning agents. Not as many as the last few conferences, where we had more than 20. Maybe the economy also?
The book room (where the conference sells books by AIW members) was also pretty sparse. It usually gets filled up with lots of books, and it was one small table this time. It was hard to to tell, but it also seemed like attendance was down.
And it was an odd crowd this year. AIW is a generally a non-fiction writing organization. Because of the area we’re in, we tend to draw seasoned writers. We do have writers who have ended up on the best seller list or have been published multiple times. It is so much focused on non-fiction that we tend to have a lot of non-fiction events–and we usually get a higher level crowd. This time, though, that crowd was not in attendance. One of the agents and another writer reported that the Fiction Roundtable got pretty basic questions (the kind you can find anywhere if you looked without much effort).
The Pitch Sessions: This was one of the best we’ve had so far. We didn’t have any rude writers try to crash the gate. Aside from speed bumps that caused delays–the end of the Fiction Roundtable and the end of lunch–we stayed on time.
I was sitting close enough to overhear one of the pitch sessions–wasn’t hard, since the writer spoke pretty loudly. It was also apparent that he didn’t know what his story was about. The agent asked him to tell her about it, and he started talking about his protagonist and antognist and giving backstory. I’m sure I must have sounded like that at my first one.
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MAGIC STUD update: I’m still wrestling with the ending. I’d hoped to have it done by the writer’s conference (not to pitch it; just as a deadline). I have an idea which might solve the problem, so I’m thinking that over now. It looks the most promising through because it doesn’t require me to add a subplot and more characters who have nothing to do with the rest of the book. I still have to add a character, but the scenes will fit nicely into the exciting story.
