Oct. 28, 2024
Query like a Pro: Agent Amy Nielsen Tells Us How
Episode Summary: In this episode of Writers With Wrinkles, Beth and Lisa chat with Amy Nielsen, a literary agent at Purcell Agency and a published author, about her experiences with both. Amy shares invaluable tips for querying, editing, and how to handle the ups and downs of the publishing industry.
Guest Bio: Amy Nielsen is a literary agent with Purcell Agency, specializing in young adult and picture books. A former youth librarian with nearly two decades of experience, Amy penned her debut novel, Worth It, while working at her library’s circulation desk. In addition to being an author, she is a freelance editor and a passionate advocate for helping writers polish their submissions.
Key Discussion Points:
- Amy’s journey from librarian to literary agent and author.
- How fictionalizing personal trauma when writing can create emotional distance and help the project.
- Essential do’s and don’ts of querying: research agents, follow submission guidelines, and treat rejections as passes.
- The significance of building a writing community and being a good literary citizen.
- Amy's editing process and her belief in the value of delivering polished work to agents and editors.
- Amy's free resources for self-editing, including developmental and line-editing guides available on her website.
Conclusion: Amy emphasizes perseverance in the querying process and the importance of building a support system within the writing community. She also highlights the role of agents as collaborators and champions for their authors' work. For those looking to improve their submissions, her editing resources are a must-see.
Mentioned Links:
- Editing resources: Amy's website (self-editing, developmental, and line-editing guides available)
- Twitter for updates on Amy’s query status: Amy Nielsen Twitter
- Manuscript wish list
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Chapters
11:51 - [Ad] Tiny Bar Chats
12:13 - (Cont.) From Librarian to Novelist: Amy Nielsen on Courage, Editing, and Finding the Right Literary Agent
Transcript
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Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmidt, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles.
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This is season three, episode 37.
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Today we're excited to talk to Amy Nielsen, a literary agent with Purcell Agency.
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Amy spent nearly 20 years as a youth librarian.
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Daily immersion in story took root and she penned her young adult debut Worth it behind her circulation desk.
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Amy is also a picture book author, literary agent and freelance editor helping authors polish their submission packet for querying.
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I love so much that you wrote this book at the circulation desk.
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I love that I have to admit to my principal that you know there was many times I was sitting back there acting like I was working and I was writing.
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But, honestly, you know writing when you're in the publishing industry, whether you're a librarian or an editor, when you're writing you're still immersed in that space.
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You know, and my students knew I was writing and so I would read things to them and they would help me come up with names for characters, et cetera.
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So that was fun.
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That's amazing.
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I love that.
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Can you tell us a little bit about this book that you wrote behind the circulation desk?
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Sure, and then I revised it for 10 years after.
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Okay, now that's like the hard truth that everybody should pay attention to out there, the provision Exactly.
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So I'll just read the back real quick.
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So this is a young adult novel and it is inspired by my lived experiences.
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It is a fictionalized retelling, so that's important to know.
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17-year-old Angela Carter intended to pick out prom dresses with her best friend and fill out college applications during her senior year.
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But her father abandons the family and her addict mother kicks her out.
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The now pregnant teen's new normal is keeping her pressure cooker older boyfriend, Dale, from erupting.
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When an intoxicated Dale loses control of her car one night, Angela fears she'll never hold her unborn child, Desperate for what little stability he provides and for fear of his retaliation.
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Angela lies to the police when questioned about the accident.
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Her lie not only protects him from a DUI but also conceals a darker secret what happens behind the closed doors of their single wide trailer Set in Central Florida in the late 80s Worth.
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It is a story of courage, redemption and the power of becoming your own hero, so it has some tough social themes in there.
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One of the things that I'm most proud with that book is that I've partnered with a local nonprofit in my area that helps teens in crisis, and so a portion of the proceeds of my book go to that organization.
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I've already helped several teens and it's just a wonderful feeling, knowing that I'm using a time in my life that was challenging, to help other teens in similar situations.
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That is remarkable.
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How difficult was it for you to write?
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Because you said it's a fictionalized account but drawing from a lot of personal experiences, Well, I encourage authors to fictionalize your past trauma, because it does put some distance between you and it.
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It becomes fiction.
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So at first I was writing as memoir, not knowing anything about the publishing industry.
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And then you know it's like I don't know if I can write this as real life because, first off, who's going to want to read your memoir if you're a librarian in Central Florida, you know.
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But I was writing it for me and then, as I started learning more about writing, I'm deciding to fictionalize it and started learning about story beats and story structure and could throw in some things that made it more interesting and more believable.
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There was never times that was tough for me to write it.
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There have been many times that people that I know it's been tough for them to read it, and so I had one guy, a friend of mine from high school, and call me after he read it and he goes no-transcript.
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But it is a good way to kind of compartmentalize some of that and to tell the story the way you wished it would have happened, you know, or wished it would have ended.
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So I'm very proud of it and it's been getting great reviews.
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And it's just, you know, and it's exciting for me as an agent to have gone through that writing process so I know what it is like for my clients and I can have that empathy.
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I was a librarian for 20 years.
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I've published nonfiction fiction, picture books and then an editor, so I feel like I bring a lot to the table for my clients and I think that's important.
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Yeah, I think that's huge actually, just to be able to know what the experience is like for yourself.
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Are you ready to be in the hot seat, Amy?
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Absolutely.
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I'm in Florida, I'm always in the hot seat.
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Okay, so I'm just gonna.
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This is just one we kind of just ask everyone, because it's really basic and it's good information.
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I think everyone always has a different answer.
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What are the do's and don'ts of querying?
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Because I'm sure you've seen them both, but maybe just give us an example of a really good do and a really bad don't.
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Well, I have a list that I'll quickly run through.
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They're mostly do's.
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I only have two quick don'ts, but I do think it's important to be a part of the literary community.
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You know, writing is a solitary experience, but it takes a community to help get you across that finish line and also for people to be there for you when those challenging times do come.
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I do think it's important to study the craft of writing.
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I think to me, the most important do is to follow the agent submission guidelines and especially where an agent requests where they want the submission sent.
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I've had submissions sent to my LinkedIn, instagram DMs, twitter DMs, personal email, private email, and they're all over the place.
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And the reason why and it's not to be, you know for us not to be accessible, but if I, if an agent, asked them to be sent an inquiry manager, then I know all of my queries are in one place.
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I can sort by date, title, I can search for an author, If someone said someone queried me.
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So it really is in the author's best interest to make sure that they send that submission where the agent wants it and that you're doing things like making sure that your submission does fit what's on their wishlist, etc.
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I think that sticking to a standard query structure is very important To me.
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This isn't the place where you get creative.
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This is the place where you're giving the information about your book so the author knows if it's worth their time and yours for them to read it.
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Because if in that query we see that you're subbing us something that's epistolary and we don't rep that, we can quickly give you a pass so you can check us off your list and then we don't have to take time from other authors by reading that.
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And so those are just really important.
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And I think when you had Kathy on not so long ago, she walked through how to write a query.
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I believe that was an excellent episode.
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By the way, I'm one of her biggest fangirls, so she was my dream agent and I was lucky enough to get to be her assistant and she's still my support system as far as you know, being a new agent.
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So she's wonderful.
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But I wanted to kind of review that again because I have a very easy template that is on my website.
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I have an article called polishing your submission packet for querying.
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It also has a presentation down there for free.
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It's like a free mini course and there are only four parts for query needs.
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That is it four, and they're very simple.
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And the first one is agent personalization.
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Why are you sending this to me?
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Did I meet you at a conference?
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Did I tweet something?
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Did we have an interaction somewhere?
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Just why?
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Very briefly, so that way I know the agent knows that you've done your research.
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Very briefly, so that way I know the agent knows that you've done your research.
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It's better for an author to spend more time really researching agents and submit to less than to send to a bunch that you haven't researched.
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So use your time wisely.
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And then the metadata is paragraph two.
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That's the title, in all caps.
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Word count, age range, genre, comps very important.
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And I also encourage authors to put in a unique structure.
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So if your book is, as I said, epistolary, dual timeline, anything like that, put that right there in the beginning, because, again, you're going to get a pass quicker if the agent knows what this is, if it's not something they're interested in.
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And I know how it is as an author to have all those unread queries and you just don't know where you are in their inbox.
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And then the third paragraph is the plot.
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So who is the main character what do they want, what's standing in the way of what they want and what's at stake if they don't get it?
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And so, quite simply, this can be if they choose choice A, they risk X.
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If they choose choice B, they risk Y.
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It's very formulaic, but it works.
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And then bio short and sweet, about 50 words who are you If you have any writing credits, but you don't have to If you're members of any professional organizations.
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What's your day job?
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And this is also the place you can be kind of voy.
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At the end of my bio I usually say when I'm not reading or writing, you can find me boating the waters of Tampa Bay with two canine co-captains in Mermaid Life Fest.
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So you can put a little something cute there at the end.
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A lot of authors do that.
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So I think those are my big do's.
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And then my only two don'ts are don't take a personal.
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When you get a pass, you are in the game and those first few hurt.
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And when you get two and three in one day, it can be frustrating.
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But you two probably remember this was a couple of years ago there was an author on Twitter that had a piece of picket fence that every time she'd get a pass, she'd paint a flower.
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So she's building this garden of showing her how much work that she's doing to get herself published.
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And I did hear that she eventually did get an agent.
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So I just think you know, if you get a pass, that means agents are reading your work.
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Did you ever think before you wrote a book that an agent would be reading what you've written?
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So I think, even if it's a pass, I think that's important to just really hone in on the positive, the positive aspect of it.
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And then my other don't is don't give up.
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If you really want this, keep at it.
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This is a game of tenacity and so keep at it, don't give up.
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Those are my, those are my two don'ts.
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Oh my God, that is so good, like it.
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Just, this is like the ultimate pep talk.
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If you are queering out there right now, you know, pause for a second and take that all in, because, amy, that was such good advice, but just across the board, and it was similar in nature to what Kathy said, but you added your own spin on it, which was really important.
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So, all my queering friends, there's your pep talk for the day and anytime you're feeling down and out, go paint a flower on a fence, which I never saw.
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That and I love that so much.
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It's better than you know.
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I don't know kicking ourselves and then laying on the bed and crying, which is what I used to do.
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Go paint a flower, that's awesome.
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I loved it.
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I loved following her as she was doing that.
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You know the writing community was like.
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I hope she gets another pass and paints another flower.
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And also, notice I use the term pass.
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I do not use the term rejection.
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It is not a rejection, it is simply a pass.
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No one's rejecting you.
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And you do.
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You have to be ready for a lot.
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That's just the name of the game, and after you get through the first few, you're like, okay, that didn't work, turning my focus elsewhere.
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But yeah, that's very, all, very important and necessary advice for those who are in the querying trenches.
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So we understand that you are an editorial agent.
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You're also an editor, so that makes sense.
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With that in mind, what is your process when you're working with a client on a project?
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How editorial are you with them and what does that look like?
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because I go deep in my editing and not all agents are editorial agents and they don't have to be.
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An agent's job is really to match.
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We're matchmakers, we're to match your work with an editor that wants it and get you a sell and walk you through the negotiation, the contract, et cetera.
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But some of us do editorial work and a lot of the newer agents, like me, do more editorial work because we're getting more debuts in our inbox, which we love.
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And so my process is I go through developmental edits, line edits and copy edits, and so typically I do those separately.
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If there's not much developmental work, I'll do it at the same time.
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And then of course, copy edits come at the very end, because anything that you change is going to affect that last part.
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So I I've already read their manuscript, so I'll open up the document and I start putting notes, comments in the, in the document, as opposed to creating an edit letter at this stage.
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So, and I do a lot, and so if I start saying filtering, I'll comment on.
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You know this is filtering.
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I'll explain what it is and I'll give an example of a revision for that sentence without filtering, and I'll do that a couple of times and then I'll expect that they'll go through the rest of the manuscript and address that.
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So I do a lot of those comments, a lot more in the beginning than at the end.
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But I read the whole thing through and then I will go open up a document and do like big picture if it's necessary, like if there was a ton of, you know, misuse of dialogue tags and action beats and grammar.
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I'll say you know, this was a.
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Do some research on this.
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Here is a resource.
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I'll put what's working, obviously because we need to tell them what we love and what's what.
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A second look is kind of how I do it with what's working, what needs a second look, and then I'll go back into the document for a second time and I'll go through and make sure that I have some compliments that you know in there because that's important.
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But I don't spend a lot of time on that because they already know I love their work, because I accepted it and so I don't want to spend too much time telling them how beautiful these sentences are.
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My time is limited so I'm going to focus my time on what we can do to improve your story that I already love, but I do go back and make sure I have those positive comments and then I'll read through it a third time, proofreading myself, basically, and to make sure that I'm clear that I didn't miss something, because I, you know, I just so.
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I usually read those comments three times.
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I take about a month to do a full edit with an author.
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I'm hearing more and more editors expecting super polished work.
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I just had a meeting with an editor last week and she said she appreciates polished work.
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I just had a meeting with an editor last week and she said she appreciates polished work and she says that it is more likely to get through acquisitions than work that is unpolished.
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And yes, the editor at the publishing house is going to edit your work again.
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You're going to go through three more rounds over there, or four more rounds, because they're going to catch things we didn't.
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So that's just part of it To me taking an author's story and their unique, creative, wonderful idea and helping them, helping them get it as polished as possible.
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It's just, it's an honor, quite honestly.
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The one last thing that I was thinking about related to that, is that these editors at Big Five publishing houses and other places are so overworked.
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They have so much responsibility that just runs the gamut from editing to actually sales and marketing.
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They have all these things that they're trying to do.
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So it makes total sense to me that if I was an editor sitting there and somebody gave me a nice polished manuscript that I didn't have to spend inordinate amount of times to get ready for market, I would definitely choose that.
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If it's like between one that's like kind of similar, but this one needs a lot of work, I'm definitely going to lean into the one that's like almost ready to go 100%, one of my friends.
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One of my longtime writing friends is on.
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Her.
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I don't know what number book now, but we were there in the beginning, before either of us had publishing deals, and we learned the craft of writing together, taking courses together, critiquing each other's work, listening to podcasts like this for years, and her first few manuscripts went through a lot of editing before they got out there.
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She now has an agent Her work that she just got the agent for.
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The agent had spent one week reading it and giving her a few bits of editorial advice and then it was out in submission one week.
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So that's another reason why the more polished your work is when it gets to us, the quicker we can get you on sub.
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And I do have two other resources I want to share with you.
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I created a self-editing guide, a developmental.
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What did I title it?
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It's a developmental self-editing guide, so I just posted that last week and it's pretty thorough and it has little checkpoints at each section that I talk about whatever you know back info, dumping, backstory, whatever.
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I have little checkpoints for how authors can look at their manuscripts through that lens, and so I've been getting some good feedback on that as a free resource and my line editing, self-editing guide is done.
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I'm posting that one today and I really dive in on a line level and I look at when I'm line leveling or line editing.
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I look at every word, even the word the.
00:17:14.241 --> 00:17:20.490
If we can say this sentence without the word the, we're cutting it, and so that's something that I really enjoy.
00:17:20.490 --> 00:17:21.913
So that resource will be available.
00:17:21.913 --> 00:17:31.294
And then I'm going to do one on copy editing, like commonly misspelled words, you know, homonyms used incorrectly, things like that.
00:17:31.294 --> 00:17:36.853
And then I'm going to do a final one on different writing resources that I've used over the years in courses that I've taken that have helped me learn the craft of writing.
00:17:39.459 --> 00:17:41.002
Wow that's a lot.
00:17:41.002 --> 00:17:46.613
Wow, that's a lot well, and these are all free resources.
00:17:46.633 --> 00:17:46.933
That's amazing.
00:17:46.933 --> 00:17:50.810
As you were speaking, I'm like I'm gonna go check that out because you know, sometimes I'm going back through.
00:17:50.810 --> 00:17:57.976
I'm like on the last chapter of the, the book I'm currently working on, and I say that, but I know, don't laugh bath, because I keep saying it's the last chapter and then it doesn't turn out to be.
00:17:57.976 --> 00:17:59.420
But it's just, it's always good to think about that when you're going.
00:17:59.420 --> 00:18:05.798
It's the last chapter and then it doesn't turn out to be, but it's just, it's always good to think about that when you're going.
00:18:05.798 --> 00:18:09.980
It's going over to my critique corner, but then I'm going to go back through it before it goes to my agent.
00:18:09.980 --> 00:18:13.160
So I think I'm going to check out a couple of those resources.
00:18:16.453 --> 00:18:35.279
Yeah, I think it's important and that's what you are doing is to give back to the writing community, because there was a time in my writing journey where there were authors, agents etc giving back to me, critique partners, and that's something that's really important to me is serving the writing community.
00:18:35.279 --> 00:18:57.058
So I try to make a ton of resources that authors can just click on and have at no charge, because you don't know what you don't know, and so I really I've spent probably a month on the developmental editing guide just trying to get it as polished as possible and as easy to understand as possible, and the paragraphs are short and the checkpoints are short.
00:18:57.058 --> 00:19:07.875
In the one for line editing that I'm dropping today, I did put links to tons of resources in there, you know, so you can see an example of what filtering is, or show, don't tell and that sort of thing.
00:19:07.875 --> 00:19:09.339
But wonderful.
00:19:09.871 --> 00:19:11.596
And hopefully all authors listening.
00:19:11.596 --> 00:19:14.876
One day they will be in a position where they can give back to the writing community.
00:19:15.659 --> 00:19:16.961
Yeah, and that's the one thing.
00:19:16.961 --> 00:19:20.079
And that's again why you know, like, why Beth and I do this.
00:19:20.079 --> 00:19:25.451
It's just, it's fun.
00:19:25.451 --> 00:19:26.636
We learn a lot as we're going through these podcasts.
00:19:26.636 --> 00:19:29.672
I've learned so much when we're talking with different people Also.
00:19:29.672 --> 00:19:32.051
It's just, we've been there, we've been.
00:19:32.051 --> 00:19:36.122
You know, I've been there the most, in the sense that I've made the most mistakes.
00:19:38.049 --> 00:19:39.375
Mistakes is how we learn and grow.
00:19:39.375 --> 00:19:49.563
I've got a lot of war wounds, so anyway, I go look back at some of my early chap or early versions of my novel and I'm horrified.
00:19:49.563 --> 00:19:55.942
I've got to write a resource for authors out there so they can fix this if it's in their manuscript.
00:19:56.829 --> 00:20:11.719
Yeah, well, speaking of, let's move on to to the next question, because you are full of good information, and this comes really down to what is your decision-making process when taking on a new author, like, what are some steps that you go through?
00:20:12.369 --> 00:20:15.238
Well, first off, I'd love to sign everyone that's ever queried me, ever.
00:20:15.238 --> 00:20:16.902
I love you all, thank you.
00:20:16.902 --> 00:20:19.818
It's hard for us to pass on anyone.
00:20:19.818 --> 00:20:24.141
But obviously, first off, it's a compelling story and good writing.
00:20:24.141 --> 00:20:27.420
It doesn't have to be great writing, but a compelling story and good writing.
00:20:27.420 --> 00:20:27.770
You know.
00:20:27.770 --> 00:20:30.558
I mean all the parts of a story are there beginning and middle of end.
00:20:30.558 --> 00:20:31.401
It has a structure.
00:20:31.401 --> 00:20:33.376
It's on my manuscript wish list.
00:20:33.376 --> 00:20:34.736
It's something that I'm looking for.
00:20:35.869 --> 00:20:44.053
But digging deeper than that, obviously, if I have already an author that has a competing title and I have had to pass on some for that reason.
00:20:44.053 --> 00:20:47.319
And that's tough because you are, you know you like that.
00:20:47.319 --> 00:21:01.958
But the issue is and I ran into this I signed a lot of picture book authors really fast and then I'm stuck because I've got this picture book author at this editor, but this editor also would like this picture book from a different author, but they haven't responded to me on that one.
00:21:01.958 --> 00:21:02.941
So I'm waiting.
00:21:02.941 --> 00:21:08.556
So it becomes the cyclical waiting game of who did I send what to and have they passed, and then I can send this one.
00:21:08.556 --> 00:21:13.955
So I've got a lot of authors waiting on different manuscripts to be sent to different editors while I wait on them to pass.
00:21:13.955 --> 00:21:25.762
So signing a lot of authors in the same age range, genre, et cetera can just kind of clog up.
00:21:25.762 --> 00:21:26.686
There's only so many editors.
00:21:26.686 --> 00:21:27.210
So I found that out.
00:21:27.210 --> 00:21:42.021
And also this is really important to me when I sign someone, I want to sign people that are good literary citizens, and what I mean by that is that you're reading other people's work and writing positive reviews, that you're putting positivity about publishing out in social media.
00:21:42.021 --> 00:21:57.357
You know there's I've seen authors put content on social media that's negative about the publishing industry, and I'm like I don't understand why you want to say negative things publicly about an industry that you hope to be a part of.
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