Young adult author Sarah Dessen has signed a deal to pen her twelfth novel Saint Anything. The story stars a young girl named Sydney who deals with the despair and consequences that follows from her older brother’s incarceration.
Viking Children’s Books, an imprint at Penguin Young Readers Group, will publish the book on 2015. Publisher Ken Wright negotiated the deal with Writers House literary agent Leigh Feldman. Editor-at-large Regina Hayes will edit the manuscript.
Dessen (pictured, via) had this statement in the press release: “This book has a bit of everything I love to write about: the joy and complications of family, first love and how one friend can sometimes change everything. I’m so excited for next summer, when I can finally share it with my readers. It’s going to be hard to wait!”
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Former editor/publisher and now Writers House agent Ken Wright answers any business-related questions from the room. (He notes-he's not a financial advisor.)
Six months before one of his client's book comes out, Ken holds a marketing meeting with his author an their publisher.
There's no rule of thumb on advances. It's market driven. He's not fan of big advances, because of the risk of not earning them out and then not looking like an success to your publisher.
Advances for first time novelists can range from $15,000 to in the hundreds of thousands. He says first-time nonfiction authors would likely get a higher advance than for fiction.
He's a big advocate of promoting your book through school visits, but said that he has a few clients who do a little TOO much of that, which takes away from their writing. Every book and every situation is different, but self-promotion is always important and necessary.
It's OK to take work-for-hire or technical writing or other kinds of gigs if money is an issue. And you don't necessarily need to use a psuedonym--that's on a case-by-case basis.
In addition to the initial negotiation, as an agent, he takes care of sub-rights, flow through (release of money to the author), and contract delays that affect the writer.
Agents definitely increase the response time from publishers. As a rule, he checks in with editors about his submissions every two weeks.
What's a good persentage of your earning to spend on marketing? The rule of thumb is 5%.
Good Morning Conference Goers and blog followers!
Ken Wright moderating, and left to right: Tanya Lee Stone, Elizabeth Partridge, Deborah Heiligman, and Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Early this Sunday Morning we have something worth getting up for... the Narrative Non Fiction is hot Hot HOT panel with multi-award winning author for her nonfiction titles Susan Campbell Bartoletti, National Book Award Finalist for "Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith" Deborah Heiligman, Golden Kite winning author Elizabeth Partridge, multi-award winning author (with an upcoming "The Good, The Bad, and The Barbie: A History of the Doll and her impact on Culture) Tanya Lee Stone and it's moderated by Writers House agent (with a passion for nonfiction) Ken Wright!
As Lin is saying in her introduction, it's a genre that's finally getting it's moment in the spotlight.
Ohh - the panel's about to start!
The Agents Panel is starting!
From Left To Right: Ginger Clark (Curtis Brown), Ken Wright (Writers House), Josh Adams (Adams Literary), and Lisa Grubka (Foundry).
Team blog is covering each agent individually - look for those posts coming up in the next minutes...
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Yeah! I'll be looking forward to the upcoming posts.