“I’m eager to discover writers who aren’t famous yet but will be,” says San Francisco-based literary agent Elise Proulx.
“My mission is to promote literature and make some money for deserving authors,” said Proulx, whose five tips for unpublished writers appear below. “My specialty is both high quality fiction and what I call “pragmatic nonfiction”, meaning books that are useful and prescriptive, like good parenting books,” added Proulx, an associate at the venerable Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Literary Agency.
Titles Proulx has handled recently include I am Death by Gary Amdahl, Anxious Pleasures by Lance Olsen, Writing Through Darkness by Elizabeth Schaefer and due out in October, Twins 101 by Khanh-Van Le-Bucklin, MD.
Last month we interviewed Sandy Dijkstra, the superstar big-bucks agent whose business is always booming. Elise offers a different perspective:
How’s business these days?
It’s tough. Publishers tell me a lot of the formerly successful categories that I love aren’t selling, like literary crime fiction, but other categories are — like YA, young adult. So one of my best literary writers has just written a terrific YA that I’m almost ready to go out with.
Are you looking for new writers?
Yes, definitely. At this point I don’t get big mass market best-selling writers beating down my door, so I’m looking for writers who are just hitting their stride and ready to jump up on the lists. It still happens.
What do you offer aspiring authors?
I’m willing to take on unpublished, up-and-coming clients and help them develop their manuscripts, draft after draft. I’m also very dogged about ignoring a few rounds of rejections. I won’t give up after 7 editors have said “no thanks.” I only take on books I really believe in.
Do you want a query letter or will you accept a full proposal or manuscript?
I’d love to see the first few pages if it’s a novel, but I do want a query letter first. No full proposals or full manuscripts, please.
What do you tell your authors about marketing their books?
I recommend hiring an outside publicist and I encourage authors to establish a strong presence on the web, including blogging to their readers. It may require them to have optimum internet plans and a little consistency in posting articles or blogs, but it would all be worth it in the long run. Put simply, if you want potential readers to find your work then you need to be online! At the very least, setting up a website or a blog is a quick and easy way for aspiring writers to get their work out there. Moreover, thanks to online tools like WordPress, designing a basic website has never been easier. With this in mind, if you would like to learn more about setting up a website using WordPress, you can check out the video that has been linked for some inspiration.
Are you discouraged by the state of the book business today ?
Oh no. Definitely not. I love my authors and their books, and I’m passionate about selling them to publishers. It’s wonderful when you see good stuff getting out there and read by large audiences.
Some people say the book is dead. Do you think people will stop reading?
Absolutely not. I’m the Executive Director of Litquake, the big San Francisco organization that creates dozens of events where writers can read their work to thousands of avid readers. We pack big halls all over the Bay Area and we’re spreading to New York with a huge festival in October. Our Porchlight story-telling series has Jonathan Ames, Amber Tamblyn, April Sinclair, and others reading.
I see this as an extension of my work as an agent to promote good writers to book lovers. As we say at Litquake, we have “heart, guts, and a taste for the wilder side of the literary world.”
Elise’s tips for aspiring and unpublished writers
1. Your query letter should be three or four paragraphs long and only the last one should be about you. Hint…if you’re still “falling in love with literature” in Jr. High by the second paragraph, an agent probably isn’t going to read any further.
2. If your query letter gets a response from an agent, be prepared to send in a completed novel or full nonfiction proposal – and not just the kernel of an idea.
3. Find a writers group or a free-lance editor who can give you some real criticism. Don’t rely on relatives to edit your book!
4. Read a lot. Not just the classics, but what’s selling now. Don’t only compare your work to Virginia Woolf, the Catcher in the Rye, or Great Gatsby. Position your book on a contemporary shelf.
5. Go shopping! Buy books! Part of learning to be a good writer is committing the bucks to buying what you like. It’s an educational exercise. I’m always amazed that the publishing industry is in trouble when there are so many people who want to be writers and so many good books out there to buy and read.
Reach Elise at:
Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Literary Agency
1842 Union Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
415 -921-2910
News flash (12/08):
We’ve received word from Elise that she’s left the literary agency business. We’re very sad to see her go and wish her good fortune in all her endeavors. All of her authors will be absorbed and represented now by Bonnie Nadell at the Frederick Hill Bonnie Nadell Literary Agency.
Meanwhile, we’re leaving up this post so writers may still benefit from Elise’s good advice.
Alan
I have been writing my memoirs since I was a preteen. An angelic presence visited me several nights as I was falling asleep and gave me challenges–like keeping my legs off the mattress for as long as I could and then going longer. When I went to UCLA ten years later, I took an experimental college class in Kundalini Yoga, where I learned the exact same challenges that gave me bliss as a child. I immediately knew this was my Path.
The following year, our yoga teacher told us to go home, do spinal flexes with a powerful breath, and then look in a mirror and we would see our soul. I saw many people until one appeared who was much older than me and so powerful, she scared me. Yet I was compelled to draw a picture of her. Her hair was drawn as individual strands full of energy. The power pouring from her right hand was so immense I simply drew a spiral at her wrist.
When my younger sister visited me–she had run away from home, I went to show the drawing to her but abruptly stopped short and told my sister, “It’s not her! She’s ME!”
That moment I was suddenly as high as the high ceiling of my old Spanish off-campus home, and felt like I could reach over and heal my sister from years of drug abuse.
Instead, I placed my hands over my eyes and cried–feeling unworthy of such power and beauty, and quickly shrank down to my normal size.
I spent the rest of my life trying different healing modalities and practicing Kundalini Yoga–living a powerful yogic lifestyle, in a search for my divine identity. It was only after my fourth marriage to a spousal abuser–the one who tried to kill me, that my spiritual teacher gave me his most powerful yogic techniques to rebuild myself. It took two years to come out of screeching and screaming in these meditations before I emerged stress-free.
I knew I was free of all sorrow when Guru Nanak’s son, the great yogi Baba Siri Chand, used his long arm to reach into the psychic pit I was in and pulled me out.
Now I know he was my beloved brother, who as a teenager lived with me and my husband in that lifetime..
Soon after this episode, Baba Siri Chand ceased coming to visit me in his etheric wondrous ways, It made me very sad, until I realized he was making way for the Beloved of all my lifetimes, Guru Arjan Devji, to come to me in his spirit body. That night we powerfully processed souls to enter the new millennium.
I now know that my core lifetime–where I was “Huge!” was as Durga, fighting demons with Rishi Dusht Daman–the Demon Killer, in the Himalayan Mountains. Rishi Dusht Daman returned as the tenth Sikh Guru. In that lifetime, as Father of the Khalsa, he made me Mother of the Khalsa–Mata Sahib Kaur, as I am to this day.
A deeply sacred lifetime as the Mother of Jesus, is played down in my memoirs, because I do not wish to be swamped by Christians when my soul has lifetimes as Durga–a Hindu goddess, is integral to the Sikh Gurus’ lineage and my present existence and purpose is to serve all souls’ highest purpose as we enter the new millennium.
Hello my name is ken hall an unpubished writer despert to see if i have what it takes to move on with my dreams of making a good writer into a great witer. I found that breaking into my passition of expression is harder then i ever amagin. you see i have no experience in what i’m doing. I wrote a noval to see if i was capable of doing so. Now writing has become apart of myself my ideals wont stop and i love it. I have no direction to were i’m going from here or much money to move foreward with my dreams if u could point me in the right directions i would surely apreiate it. Thank u for your time.
Ive been reading for a while. I never finished school but im bursting with ideas for books i want to wright. I’m working on a book wright now as i speak. I just feel with me not finishing school and doing my best to finish this work of art. by the time i do finish people will look in to my past and deside not to even bother reading it.
I just beleave god gave us all a telent and mine is to wright. and with the ideas i come up with i bet money would be a hit out in the world… i mean come one u seen some of movies there coming out with now adays based of books. it seems no one has anything new to push out so they are remaking all stuff.
I tell anybody dont give up on your dreams i published my first book FourWalls in June of last year getting ready to put out my 2nd book in March you can order it online at any book store you also can go to my website in order it
Sad to hear that Elise has left the industry! Does Bonnie Nadell also welcome query letters from new writers?
This is a very informative post. I will take all of this advice to heart while writing away. Thank you.
Vernon E.
I am a freelance proofreader. I am in the process of expanding my resume and would like to add fiction to my experience. I will proofread a chapter of anything you are currently writing at no charge. Materials should be no shorter than ten pages and no longer than thirty pages. I will return pages to you with corrections within 48 hours. I can indicate corrections either on Microsoft Word using the Track Changes feature or on a hard copy. In exchange, I ask that you allow me to add your name and the title of your work to my resume. I will not plagiarize your work or share it with anyone else.
Thank you,
D. Keefe
Hi Elise,
I have a finished manuscript I would like to eventually submit. How do you want the query – via email or snail mail? And, do you want a few pages at the same time? Thanks.
Regards,
Freddie Mesquit