Self Pub to Trad Pub Tips & Why Word Count Rules Exist w/ Literary Agent Thao Le!

hello everyone Alexa done here and today I am super excited to be doing another agent interview today with Tali a literary agent at standard Dykstra agency where she has built an impressive list of kid lit through adult taos books all walk the line of beautiful and commercial with lots of heart and some of her clients include Rashi chachi Sandhya Menon Emily Scott ski Jamila Angeles Julianne winters Amelie Howard Jessica Kim and Emily Duncan many of her clients have shaped and are shaping what ye is today and I am so thrilled to chat with you hi welcome thanks for having me ah so excited I actually think you were one of the first agent interviews I ever did on my old blog Wow really the last was like a baby and that's how we met so to speak meaning I just reached out to you like because I had a lot of hooks by gotta hustle right and you hustled hard I mean legit I feel like I've like watched you grow cuz you went from like new agent to like megastar true you're like do you hire people I talked to her like how is my dream agent I'm like oh good to hear I still feel weird hearing that because I think you know a part of me is still like always learning and you know the industry is always changing for sure like I have a lot more experience now but you know like the kind of landscape of publishing is always changing so almost trying to keep up like you know finger on the pulse of what's happening well speaking of you have indeed come a long way and everyone always wants to know how does someone get into agent hang and I know you had a particularly interesting path or I find it interesting kind of how you ended up at Sandy Dykstra and your agent in literary agent career yeah um for me my agent path was really like serendipitous it was honestly to me like somewhat of accidents for those who don't know my background is actually in economics and that's what I went to school for I was planning to go to grad school either business school or law school that's what my parents expected from me I knew nothing whatsoever about publishing I was looking for a position that would kind of combine my like you know the interests of my hearts versus like the things I've been kind of like studying and preparing for and I kind of land under bag shows agency completely by accident really they had like an ad open for someone to assist with their sub rights and their financial person and it's like you know - baby towel it was like oh this is kind of economic slash accounting or my like somewhat related and I know that I've learned what like I did a bunch of research I'm like what is a Larry just yeah I had no idea what it was before I met with cap Ron who is very much like my you know even now mentor and everything at the agency and just learned what publishing really is and I was like oh people can actually work in publishing people actually were in publishing so it was kind of like a weird way of getting to job and for a very long time I did not think I was gonna be an agent at all I was going to be my I thought what my career path would be is a royalty manager or like you know something in subsidiary rights that's kind of what I kind of like entered the industry doing but like my boss and my colleagues were like really just so supportive and at the time I was such an avid reader of young adults and children's literature I was like a big fan of sci-fi fantasy and so my boss was like you know no one at the agency is doing those genres and that type of markets untapped here why don't you give it a shot and so I was like okay sure I guess but I you know like again my love for like reading kind of like really shone through and like I found some products I really loved and I decided to say okay let's do this give this a try and you know those authors decide to take a chance with me we sold some you know made some book deals and I was like oh my gosh this is like actually a something that could happen like you know it could be a actual career and job and again was like all the support from my agency I started to take on more clients and really build my list and what I really loved about Sandra Dykstra is just you know how much she championed like in particular Asian American Voices before I was you know vogue you know from the very beginning I always felt heard and those type of stories I wanted to champion she never really been my about them which is really great because you know as you know I really pride myself in having a diverse list in kind of busi marginalized voices especially as a woman of color and publishing like you know we're very rare still although I you know fingers crossed the industry's changing and our numbers are climbing but it was just you know again kind of like miraculous accident of sorts another interesting thing for me is that you are now and have always been based in San Diego so this all went down in sunny Southern California and not New York yeah so I always get that question where you know cues like how's it like being an agent in the West Coast instead of in New York and I have to say from my experience not much as affected I think with technology today you know we're seeing this now with the quarantine you know we've moved so far in terms of like able to connect with one another virtually I do a lot of things on email I do a lot of things through phone calls and now video chats so a lot of the logistics of my job hasn't been affected at all from where I live I think the only thing that's kind of like you know people might be like oh but you miss out on like the lunches with editors and things like that and like lots of face to face time that's true but you know at least before the pandemic hit there were a lot of conferences a lot of events that I would attend and fly to and that's where I got to get like lots of FaceTime with people and again like with technology and I think you know myself being introvert and a lot of publishing people being introverted a lot of us are very used to having like online friendships and online relationships and that's kind of you know having worked out well for me here in San Diego without having to deal with New York Life which is fun as a visitor but maybe not so much personally hi Megan cost factors and everything like that well we have high living cost factors in Southern California but we also have the beach so it's true that's true I will have to say like you know speaking about that in like you know financial barriers for the industry like I I feel very privileged that you know I had a lot of family support financially in order to like make this kind of career work I know that doesn't apply to everyone and continues to be a struggle which is why it's like you know oftentimes if you can't make it to New York it's really hard to get your foot through the door you know luckily sandy was based here in San Diego sandy actually has a huge like literary like community so I was able to find my footing luckily in my hometown I know it can be much more difficult if you're like somewhere else that's far-flung from any you know literary circles well related you stayed in the finance position at your agency for a while you didn't transition to full agent is what I mean until a few years ago yeah so I actually did not transition to being a full agent until last year like I think April last year so it's been almost like one full year only now like fully aging and not doing any royalties or anything like that for my agency and again like you know talking about the financial like with like realistic look at our you know industry in this career I think a part of me was always although nervous about letting go you know having that office portion of my job meant you know steady payroll you know with being with each inning you work off of Commission you work inspect a lot so it's a lot of fluctuating things so I think I was just you know for a very long time weary about like how far I can take that you know my passion career versus kind of like comparing it to a steady paycheck so I would love to talk about the breadth of what you represent you rep a ton of different categories and genres so I'd love to talk about essentially what you look for in like middle grade and picture-book why a adult like manuscript wish list yeah so I have a lot of mazes of wish lists if you go on my Twitter I have like a bazillion tweets about my wish list items I think ultimately though I'm always looking for that you know that unique voice something heartfelt I think in the end even if like I mean I love fast paced tightly plotted stories I love twists but in the end if there's no heart or emotional like stakes to it I think I can easily lose interests I'm here for like character driven kind of like in the order to lose I think the reason why I love a series is because I get so heavily and emotionally invested into characters and see what happened to them so so for me it always comes down to those characters the voice otherwise I'm pretty eclectic in terms of my taste like you know I'm like bubbly like rom-com stories I like dark gritty like horrific dark fantasy you know I like space opera and like robots so my face is kind of like all over the place but ultimately I have to really care about these characters so speaking of genre I've gotten a ton of questions about word counts so I was curious to hear your take on what is too much word count like what's too high on a Y fantasy versus an adult fantasy and then why sci-fi vs. adult sci-fi like what's a red flag for you in the inbox basically yeah so I just want to preface this that you know these workouts aren't supposed to say arbitrary there's like actually a lot of reasoning behind the word counts mostly it's because with debut books you know publishers have to think about at what price point are they going to sell these books at and that's different between you know y8 market and adult market you'll notice that if you go into above story to go to the ye section a lot of ye hard covers are usually under $20 when adult books a lot of hard covers for $20 or above so that's just the way the market pricing has worked with those two different age groups and so when you see you know agents or editors talking about word count for ye we typically want a lower workout than we would if it was a fantasy with ye we typically don't want to go over a hundred thousand words the reason being is because the longer the book is the more expensive it is to produce and that means rising the price point above what consumers away are used to like you know if you were to publish a light book and have it be like 25 bucks a lot of ye readers will balk at that and wouldn't want to buy it which makes it more difficult to sell where it's like with an adult market there used to a higher price point so usually a lot of fantasy and sci-fi in adult realm can be over a hundred thousand words there often are they're usually like you know I feel like average is like at least a hundred thousand two hundred two hundred sometimes because you know publishers are able to sell at that higher price point so in a way like you know it's not just about like yes I want like tightly plotted ye there's there tends to be an ye a bit more attention to how hooky and best piece a story is that's kind of like the vibe of ye where with fantasy you can you know I feel like the adult fantasy readers are much more willing to have that slow burn to have that world building where it's like why a needs that action needs that plot not saying that adults readers don't want that to but I think they have like you know the white a little bit more impatient or something like that and so they need something a bit more PC and so just because of those elements that's kind of what has forced word counts to be the way they are to make sure that it makes sense both like pragmatically and you know stylistically for those those markets and so that essentially means that when the publishers do publish longer yaa which they do they're taking a hit on the per book cost and they're counting on volume of sales which would explain why established authors can often push that word count higher can offset it with economy of scale yeah it's definitely like if you go back and look at any like you know series like the Harry Potter series you'll notice that the very first few books are usually very much in the like shorter more typical word count range of that genre or that market and then as the books become more and more popular later books in the series become like bigger and bigger tones because at that point they know that you know if it's a Harry Potter book it's going to sell so it's okay if they you know take more of a hit in terms of production costs and it's okay to charge the book a little extra because they know the fans will come to those books you also mentioned earlier loving series and you've sold many series recently in a time when there's been a lot of you know conventional wisdom thrown around at querying writers not to pitch a series so what's what are your thoughts on the sale ability of say a trilogy in why a right now or also adults that's a good question I feel like you know it's kind of fluctuated throughout like publishing history for me though ultimately I always judge a book you know for whatever for what it is so when I get a query in I usually don't care if it's the first book in this series or not but I need to love that management right in front of me then and there if the ending is a cliffhanger that's fine if the inning is like you know more standalone that's fine too but what dictates whether or not we'll be successful as a series depends very much on that very first book and just how invested leaders will be with those characters in that world so I I personally have you know felt that I'm never going to say like no I'm just gonna be close to series because they're not selling I always you know like like I said like throughout publishing history that has fluctuated back and forth like series of popular sees aren't popular here's a popular again it's always going to like it always will depend on that story so my advice in terms of like should you buy a series should you not I think ultimately you have to decide on just how well we can write that first book and whether that book can be a standalone or not that's kind of up to the craft and execution of the writer but I wouldn't make decisions based on you know an agent that are saying like oh series are selling or stand-alones aren't selling I think anything can technically sell if it's done right so another thing that I know about you is that you are a very editorial agent so how do you approach working with your clients editorially and generally do you have any self editing tips for writers before they query like to get the manuscript where it would need to be for an agent like you to take it on yeah so working with my clients ill vary depending on who I'm working with I think each writer has a style and so as an agent I tend to be trying to be flexible to kind of accommodate those things my general or like go to default way of editing is usually notes on two pages themselves like you know all highlights things I'll even do line editing I'll ask questions throughout the manuscript where I'm like I need clarity here or I'm confused by the sentence things like that or you know I feel like this character should show up sooner rather than later and then when I actually send out my notes to my clients I usually include like a brief kind of edit letter to kind of summarize my overall thoughts and like to address big-picture development that we might need to do for you know writers who are looking to query and who are looking to you know submit full or partials to agents and editors my suggestion is always to kind of like ask yourself big questions about the book like you know clearly like you know the top things I can think of and you do is like characters and their goals and stakes you know we need to understand the characters motivations and everything I think well tell me I always go back to the characters and like digging deep into like what make them what makes them who they are I also always like ask them to like think about like what would a reader who has no knowledge of this book ask and I think that's something that's very difficult to do especially as a writer who's so deep into the world that they're writing about so this is where I think you know spending some time away from your manuscript before your hitting send it's always helpful it kind of gives you that distance so you can kind of you know take yourself away from the story forget a little bit of the details that you've been kind of like obsessively thinking about and then by the time you go back into that manuscript reading of a fresh eyes and of course having like beta readers you know petite partners are so important I know a lot of established authors continue to have you know he second leaders that help them work through their stories and you know I think that's always good to kind of like look at your story objectively so you can see how someone who has no knowledge whatsoever of your book or characters can come into your story and see you executed on the page and still come away with the feelings you wanted to invoke in them essentially their job in querying you is to make you care yeah exactly like I'm here to fall in love with characters you to hate characters I love villains and I love to hate them as much as I love to love them like there's always those billion boyfriend's but there's also those that are just scary and terrifying and you really want to see like you know them destroyed or overcomes so yeah awesome well speaking of queries everyone always wants to know for you personally do you have any Auto rejects things that just like you're like bye no that's a good question I try not to auto reject people as much as possible especially because I think career writing is a very specific skill that's different from actually writing you know a story so I usually just scan most of my career letters to get adjust of the premise and the concept with the story before I jump into the pages themselves so I think the key things in a query letter is just to be not fancy but to be concise and succinct about what you're trying to convey like I want to know immediately what the hook is who the characters are you know I think just having like very fundamental things like one genre and like age group a project is is really important I think that's the only time when I kind of auto rejected a man script is when I've read it declared like you know I looked at the career letter and it's obviously a job I don't represent or it's you know a project that obviously is not like clearly it's not a fit for me otherwise I always give like even bad query letters a chance because again like I think it's just such a different skillset and you know someone might be bad at pitching a story they might be amazing at telling it you know I always feel like there's almost too much pressure in a query letter to like impress when I think for me I see basics like I just need to know that they can kind of quickly convey the premise and you know what kind of genre and book this is and then hopefully that's enough for me to jump into into the pages speaking of pages so let's say you've jumped in you like something you request what tends to lead to an O for you as you're reading just people always want to know how do I get an agent so that they were talking about the rejections I just want to say it's actually really painful for me to say to reject a full or partial - well because usually there was something there reading you know the sample pages that made me want to request and sometimes I this is this is probably why sometimes take forever to get back on get back to your writer on their partial or their sole manager any question because I've been so on the fence about something I think for me it's very much almost a gut feeling I've had I've had a lot of projects which were well-written you know the premise was good but for whatever reason I didn't have that must stay up all night reading and I think with being an agent is that we're gonna have to reread this story over and over and over and I have to feel that excitement every single time I read that manuscript again in order to advocate for and champion it to editors who will also be reading it over and over will be sharing it with their teammates who will be you know reading about this like or hearing about this project over and over and still maintain that excitement so if I can't maintain excitement I don't think I can convey to somebody else and I know that sounds really vague and subjective and it totally is but that's kind of one of the reasons why I said no to a fall and again it's it's something that's just really difficult for me to particularly I think agents feel this way though where it's like it's good it checks all the boxes of things I like but there's just not that chemistry and I really need that just natural spark to happen with me the writer and story and sometimes it's it's not the writer itself but maybe just that particular story I've had you know various scenarios happen where I've actually rejected a story from a client that I later on took on with a different story so you know and like revised and you know resubmits do happen where you know an initial version of the book it didn't spark something for me but it did still like you know again check all those boxes of the things I'd loved it was just maybe missing some crucial element or something that needed to be tweaked and once the you know the writer was able to do that and send that back to me I felt that connection and was able to you know when we have to match them so the next thing I want to talk about is a little bit unusual but I find it really cool and that is that you have in the past and recently as well literally scouted some of your clients you found them in other places like Sonya Menon was self-publishing and you also recently signed someone who was writing fan fiction and you're working with them on original fiction now and I'm fascinated by this that I would agree to talk about it yeah so you know again like I didn't come into publishing expecting to like I had this career path I was like studying to do this in school I came into it again kind of because of my passion for books and my passion as a reader so I think the reason why I you know have reached out to those type of authors or writers is simply because I'm trying to find pleasure reading everywhere and I'm very much like if you can tell from like my background I'm kind of a big fan girl I am into a lot of fandoms and TV shows and movies I have a fanfic reader wave or I was in publishing and I continue to you know dip my toe into those kind of communities because those were the places that kind of spot Joey for me especially when you know you work in publishing I think it's easy to get jaded about the you know about writing and reading and you know manuscripts and editing and things like that so it's always just kind of fun to kind of like find something that's you know maybe undiscovered and just being like feeling that obsessive addictive quality from it so for me I don't actually actively go out scouting per se when I let go into you know a Oh three or fanfiction.net I don't go and deal with it eyes like I'm an agent I'm here to look for a writer to sign I'm there as a fan and I'm there looking for stories that will again keep me up all night long and sometimes I will find a library of work from a writer who I feel have a lot of overlap with traditional published you know authors and writers and that's kind of when I kind of will reach out usually I can tell there may be interested in traditionally publishing which is a very different animal than like you know fan fiction writing by like the comments the author notes they've kind of made and like seeing their interactions and like you know their fandom community so again like it's it's me kind of consciously reaching out to someone who's fanfic work I really enjoy but who seems to have indicated an interest and a willingness to kind of learn about publishing too and so that's when I kind of have found my successes there's been definitely so fanfic writers who I really admire and think have done amazing work and they continue to like amazing fan fics to this day but I could tell there were not they were not interested in like you know being a published author which is again like that's you know not necessarily like the career path they wanted that's totally fine again very different animal so for me for me it's just kind of like do I have that chemistry but like the writing and the writer and also too I have kind of like a strategy in mind and how their writing could fit a traditionally you know published marketplace so just because I know that you have signed clients who previously self-published do you have any advice for self-published authors when they are querying agents for traditional publishing in terms of how to address their self-published career in their queries if at all yeah so I think my biggest advice would be to not query something that's already self-published I'm more I'm definitely open to people who have you know publishing sales history and everything like that but what I'm looking for is something that is kind of will be fresh so rather than trying to you know revive a book that has been self-published maybe a year or two ago that you did kind of like you know maybe in a rush maybe not but maybe it has great of a sales track as one would hope I think you would get much better luck you know going to an agent with new projects I have nothing against self-publishing to be quite frank I think it's the perfect Avenue force like many writers I just have a hard time convincing you know publishers to invest in a book that already has the sales history or may have already tried to tap into the market but wasn't able to break out so it's much easier from an agent point of view to break out something new and something that no one has seen before and build excitement over uplinks leap rather than something that has again maybe has a reference you know I had four readers you know months or years previously so you know you mentioned me taking on send him and then a few years ago I can't believe it's been that long we've been working together during that time to self-publishing was such a different landscape it was kind of new kid on the block in terms of like you know a lot of writers were self-publishing it was a brand new avenue for writing and it also exploded for certain you know indie self-published authors and I think traditionally traditional publishers tried to tap into that by trying to repackage some you know very popular self-published books I think though what we came out of that kind of time period is that a lot of publishers realized that once a published its kind of reached you know an audience that it already could have and so it's kind of difficult to repackage a product that's already been out there as something like newer for like new people to take on like if you already like self publish a book for $0.99 and it's reached like you know a hundred thousand readers that's amazing that you reach a hundred thousand meters but they were also only really to read that for 99 cents if a publisher took that project same same book and you know spend money to package it into like a whole new packaging but want to sell it at even like $9.99 or you know holistically if it's gonna be hardcover then like at least like $17.99 that's price point that's very drastically different from that 99 cents or 199 or $2.99 price point that your readership wanted wanted to consume the material act so they were I think a lot of publishers found that you know it was very difficult to break through and find new readers who would pay more for basically the same content so this is why you should tell people like if you were a self-published send something fresh and new to agents because then we can be like this is a brand new brand new story rather than trying to take something old and repackaging it as something different that's that's a lot more for us to overcome I think and so if someone is creating something brand new but they have like a past catalog in the queer do you want to know things like sales on those past pieces or conversely let's say there's a past book or two but they didn't sell well at all should the author just leave that out of the query entirely that's a good question I don't feel like they need to share their entire history in a career letter I think a simple line just to state like you know I previously self-publish X Y Z and leave that that and then you know as long as I know that the project I'm looking at doesn't have a history that's totally fine I don't think it's something to like hide away or like be secretive about I think it's always important to have open honest communication with your agent so you can properly strategize together how to go about with a project but at the same time I you know when you're praying you're usually that's your first time like corresponding with an agent I don't think you need to be like here's all of like you know my entire my entire like sales history I would wait until like an agent has kind of like taking a bite of interest and you know maybe on the call has you know as an agent I would always ask at that point and then that's when they can be more forthcoming with more information or details but I would not recommend to do it in a career letter again I wouldn't hide it in a query letter I would just like keep it short and sweet just like I said a single line just to like saying you've been you self-published in the past and then I will make a note of that and if I'm interested in the manuscript and want to learn more about your history I'll ask about it once once we get all going awesome so another much asked question from a bunch of different people I gotta have a lot of international viewers and they always want to know how being from another country living in another country not being us-based impacts you in querying if at all it doesn't impact me at all I don't think I think the only thing that might be a hurdle for me is if English is not their first language and they're struggling with writing the story in English just because I work with american-us publishers primarily and they meet the work the manuscripts agreements in English otherwise I work with people all over the world I have clients in the UK I have clients in Asia the only thing that look kind of like complicate that is really like maybe like tax paperwork and that's something like again like agency will walk you through but otherwise as long as the writing is good and I love it I don't see a reason to not take on someone just because they're in Australia or something I mean if I'm able to do my job in San Diego I imagine writers can do their job in like you know in Russia and Germany in Asia so yeah yeah well unlike you never have to like meet your agent or your publishing team in person I've never met either personally never easier yeah so you know like what we're talking about how long it took me to become a full agent I actually did not go into New York until last year and so a lot of the editors I finally been person I've been working with them for like five years or more and again like technology is amazing into so much through email soon so much the phone calls and things like that that I think the possibility of like writing remotely and not being in New York is very real and just possible and too close I would love to ask you another viewer submitted question that I really loved which is what are a lot of editors asking for right now that's a great question and you know I think considering our current time period and you know just the state of the world I think a lot of people myself included and editors include are looking for escapist stories I'm not looking for like quarantine or pandemic stories I could say that for sure I've gotten a lot of editors reaching out and telling me they're excited for you know light-hearted rom-com me stories I think that's been true for a little while now it continues to stay true a lot of the I guess trends and what agents and editors like I think and sometimes we reflected from what you see us tweeting about we're consuming in terms of media so like a lot of TV shows that are hot sometimes that will get reflected in an agent or editors taste I think the boom in graphic novels lately have been really exciting as like a manga reader very excited to seem kind of like Western and traditional publishing really like sink their teeth into that and I see a lot of my colleagues who have similar you know love for like sequential arts and storytelling through comics and really excited about that so I've been developing a lot of graphic novels and I've been asked for a lot of models so that is its how thank you so much let people know where they can find you on social media and how they can query you so I am on both Twitter and Instagram zone Europe I see me on Twitter the most on Twitter at how they ate on Instagram at agent towel you can also creamy them close to submissions currently of this filming but usually I can have yeah but usually I use curry manager so there's a query meaning on both my Twitter profile page and as well as my agency's official website and usually I will update it to show exactly what I'm looking to see in order to submit to me and if I'm close there will be a kind of nice little note that says sorry temporary close please come back and another time and I often post to my crease statuses on Twitter and when do you anticipate reopening to queries maybe so fingers crossed that I catch up on everything I am anticipating to reopen in June or July depending on just my workload and again like I read every single query myself so it just takes a little bit of time for me to catch and you know considering my my client workload as well but hopefully June or July so thank you so much this is fantastic everyone give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and I will do more literary agent interviews and if you're not I described the channel go ahead and do that I post new videos two to three times a week and as always everyone thank you for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 6,945

Rating: 4.9467683 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, literary agent, lit agent interview, literary agent interview, thao le, thao le interview

Id: 75pJ2hlojiQ

Length: 40min 14sec (2414 seconds)

Published: Mon May 04 2020