Close to submissions again.

Heads up: As of September 1st, I'm once again temporarily closed to submission.

An urban fantasy book giveaway bonanza!

I think it's time for a book giveaway here at The Swivet, and today I'm giving away a quardruple bundle of urban fantasy/paranormal romance goodness to one lucky winner!

• 1 ARC of Kelly Gay's forthcoming debut urban fantasy THE BETTER PART OF DARKNESS
• 1 ARC of Seanan McGuire's forthcoming urban fantasy ROSEMARY AND RUE
• 1 ARC of Molly Harper's forthcoming paranormal romance NICE GIRLS DON'T DATE DEAD MEN
• 1 ARC of Skyler White's forthcoming erotic urban fantasy AND FALLING, FLY (this ARC won't be ready for about eight weeks, but don't worry! You'll get it as soon as it arrives!)

All you have to do to win is leave a comment and recommend one great urban fantasy or paranormal romance book you've read this year. (YA UF or paranormal recommendations are also welcome!) Winner will be chosen randomly by alchemy and math. (U.S. only, please! Sorry!)

Contest closes on Thursday, September 3rd. Winner will be announced on Friday, September 4th. Good luck!

Thank you!

To the mysterious unknown person(s) responsible for nominating The Swivet for Best Publishing/Industry Blog for Book Blogger Appreciation Week, thank you!

But I have my own list of favorite Publishing/Industry Blogs, so if these folks are nominated, I say go vote for one (or all!) of them, because they're invaluable resources to writers and readers, and frankly, they all talk about their cats a whole lot less than I do:

• Best Agent Blog: A tie between Jessica Faust's Bookends Blog and Rachelle Gardner's Rants & Ramblings. Both are must-reads for me everyday.
• Best Editor Blog: Hands down, the best insight into how an editor's thought process works and what his or her day is like is to be found in Moonrat's hilarious Editorial Ass blog. I never miss this one!
• Best Book Review Blog: My favorite place to go for reviews and features on books that aren't your everyday fare is Colleen Mondor's wonderful Chasing Ray.
• Best New General Publishing-Related Blog: Undoubtedly my favorite new industry blog is Follow the Reader, hosted by Charlotte Abbott and Kat Meyer. Here you'll find in-depth interviews and feature-length pieces about challenges the book and publishing are facing.

Those are just a few at the top of my list. What are some of your favorite book industry-related blogs?

Arbitrary backlist policies on the NYT bestseller list?

Publishers Lunch noted today that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking - a backlist title for nearly fifty years - has reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Now, step with me into the Wayback Machine if you would. It's time for a lesson in publishing history:

When Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy was in theaters several years ago, both the mass market AND trade paperback editions (published by Del Rey Books and Houghton-Mifflin, respectively) of The Hobbit and the various editions of the Lord of the Rings were selling more than enough copies to warrant being listed on the NYT bestseller list. However, the New York Times refused to list any of the books in the series, stating categorically that they do not list backlist titles on the bestseller list.

This is absolutely true: the NYT doesn't list backlist on their bestseller list.

Unless you're Robert Ludlum.

Or Jane Austen.

Or Julia Child.

When real life gets in the way of agenting...and why it should.

The plan: spend all weekend finishing a copyedit for a client's book, and get caught up on queries from the open submission period in August.

The reality: spend all night Friday moving my belongings out of my room, which was in the process of being flooded. (For the fifth time since December, by the way. Because of the roof that our landlord refuses to fix. Much like he refused to turn on the heat in December until we threatened to withhold rent.) So, like yesterday, today will mostly be spent on documenting and throwing away the waterlogged books and papers, then multiple trips to the laundromat to rid my clothes and bedding of the disturbingly brown water that came through the roof. Then trying to clean the room. Which will most likely flood again next week, so really a Sisyphean endeavor at best.

(I did read and respond to more than 100 queries last night, by the way, so the night wasn't a total wash.)

Why am I telling you this? Because sometimes - a lot of the time, frankly - new writers seem to think that an agent's job is a 24/7 occupation. That we should be reading queries and partials to the exclusion of all else in our lives. That we should not have outside hobbies. That we should not blog or Twitter. That we should not write our OWN books. (Quite a few agents I know are successful authors.) That we should not see movies or read books for fun. That we should not have husbands or wives or kids or pets or personal lives. That we should not take sick days or personal days or vacation time. That we should not work other jobs in order to be able to pay the rent while we try to build up a client list for a career that does not include a salary or health benefits. That we should not take time off when we have a personal emergency like, say, your roof opening up and dumping gallons of rainwater on your head.

Well, guess what? An agent's job is just that: a job. One that s/he is really only obligated to spend 40 hours a week on. But the reality is that for most agents, 40 hours a week working on agenting is considered a part-time job. Most of us - myself included - spend about 70-80 hours a week doing our job. And unless we are lucky enough to have an employed spouse or partner, we also work other jobs to pay the rent. (My good friend and agent colleague Diana Fox has an excellent blog post about this, by the way. You should read it.)

Somewhere in there we need to find time to do things that the rest of you may take for granted: do the laundry, buying groceries, paying our bills, taking the pets to the vet, going to the doctor, seeing friends and family, and - yes - move books and furniture out of a flooded bedroom.

The fact is? Real life - friends, family, pets, one's own mental and physical well-being - always comes first. As it should for everyone, no matter what your occupation.

Just so we're clear.

Win a scholarship to the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar in NYC!

Yeah, this is gonna be the best contest ever!

The good folks at Backspace (an incredible online writers community THAT YOU SHOULD JOIN IMMEDIATELY! GO! NOW!) have donated two (TWO! COUNT 'EM! TWO!) scholarships to their upcoming Backspace Agent-Author Seminar for a fabulous Swivet contest.

The Backspace Agent-Author Seminar - held on November 5th & 6th - is two full days of workshops, panels and small-group breakouts with more than twenty of my coolest agent colleagues (people like Holly Root, Michelle Brower, Janet Reid, Stephany Evans, Scott Hoffman, Jeff Kleinman, Jason Ashlock, Emmanuelle Alspaugh, Joanna Stampfel-Volpe and Diana Fox, to name just a few). It's a chance to have your query read and critiqued and to have agents see the first two pages of your novel. The conference itself is held at the Radisson-Martinique in Midtown Manhattan, walking distance from Penn Station and virtually every subway line in NYC. (If you were to pay for the seminar yourself, by the way, it would be $500! I told you this was the best contest ever!)

So how do you enter? Pay attention:

First, two caveats:

• First: You MUST have a finished novel that is ready to query. No exceptions.
• Second: The scholarship covers admission to the conference only, not travel or hotel expenses. If you're coming from outside the New York-area, bear this in mind.
• Third. The contest is open only to fiction (any genre, adult, YA or middle grade) and narrative non-fiction manuscripts.
• Fourth: Your humble judges? Myself and my inimitable and completely awesome colleague Joanna Stampfel-Volpe of the Nancy Coffey Agency.
• Fifth: That was way more than two caveats.
  

The Rules:

• One entry per person, please.
• Print out your query letter plus the first two pages of your finished novel, the same two pages that you want to have critiqued at the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar. The query letter should be single spaced; the two pages of your manuscript should be standard manuscript format: 12-point type and double-spaced. (Remember, only the first two pages, even if it ends mid-sentence.)
  
• Mail your entries (yes, on paper, with a stamp - no email entries for this contest!) to my attention at FinePrint Literary Management, 240 W. 35th Street, Suite 500, New York, NY, 10001.
  
• Your envelope should have the word BACKSPACE marked prominently on the front so that I know it's a contest submission.
• Although you are welcome to submit projects that you'd like us to consider for representation, do understand that your contest entries won't get a response. Only the two winners will be hearing back from us.
  
• Don't include an SASE; it'll be a waste of a stamp. (See above.)
  
• Don't call or email to follow up on your entry. Trust in the U.S. Post Office. They've been doing right by your mail for 150 years.
  
• If you do call or email to follow up, your entry will be disqualified and a voudou priestess somewhere in the wilds of the Louisiana bayou will ensure that you get a nasty rash in an unspeakable place for at least a year.
  
• Entries must be postmarked by Friday, September 4th. Entries received with a postmark later than September 4th will be disqualified.
• The two winners will be announced on Thursday, September 17th.
  

Thanks so much to the wonderful and supportive faculty at Backspace for making these scholarships possible. I'm sure the winners will put them to good use!

To read more about the Backspace Agent-Author Seminar, click here. And to read a full list of the agents who will be attending, click here.

Good luck, everyone!

FinePrint Literary Management welcomes three new agents!

FinePrint Literary Management is thrilled to announce the addition of two new literary agents, Laura Wood and Ward Calhoun, as well as a new in-house subsidiary rights director, Jacqueline Murphy!

Laura Wood comes to FinePrint with more than twenty years in the publishing industry, including stints at Crown’s Harmony Books, Duke University Press and Columbia University Press. Most recently, Wood was Associate Publisher of Council Oak Books. She holds a Master’s Degree in Publishing Studies from New York University. Wood will be specializing in serious nonfiction, in the areas of science and nature, business, history, religion, and other areas by academics, experienced professionals, and journalists as well as commercial fiction with a fantastical twist and high-concept science fiction.

Ward Calhoun got his start in publishing at John Boswell Associates, a literary agency/book packager. While there he helped develop several best-selling humor titles including French for Cats and O.J.’s Legal Pad, as well as the HarperCollins 365 Ways to Cook… series. His next stop was Bishop Books where he acted as both a writer and editor on several books for Sports Illustrated. Most recently, Ward has been working as a Senior Editor at Hylas Publishing in Irvington, New York. Calhoun will be specializing in nonfiction titles in the areas of sports, humor, and pop culture.

FinePrint’s third new hire, director of subsidiary rights Jacqueline Murphy, brings with her more than 19 years of experience in subsidiary rights, licensing and editorial. For the past four years she was the executive audio editor for HarperCollins’ Harper Media; prior to that she was longtime director of subsidiary rights at Harcourt, with past stints in sub rights at National Geographic, Walker & Company and Scholastic Book Clubs. Jacqueline’s experience in both adult and children’s sub rights is extraordinary, and she brings a depth of publishing experience and a willingness to share it that has enriched all of us at the agency.

These three new hires further the expansion begun by FinePrint at the start of March 2009 with the hiring of former Weinstein Company exec Brendan Deneen as a literary manager and in-house dramatic rights agent, and the formation earlier this summer of FinePrint Productions, a sister company that focuses on feature film/television production of book-to-film and graphic novel-to-film properties.

Please join us welcoming Laura, Jacqueline and Ward to FinePrint!

FinePrint Literary Management is looking for Fall 2009 interns!

Yes, it's that time of year. Our beloved interns (or "godsends" as my colleague Janet Reid calls them) are off to the four corners of the Earth to finish their schooling or find full-time jobs and we agents find ourselves in need of a new group of interns for the Fall semester. (And this is an unpaid internship, just to clarify upfront. Most agency internships are.) So if you're located in the NYC-area (or will be here over the Fall semester), here's an opportunity for you!

What does an intern do? A little bit of everything. At FinePrint, we actually combine our intern program with that of Nancy Coffey Literary + Media Representation, the agency that shares our suite of offices with us. That means our interns reap the benefits of working with two sets of agents, learning the similarities and the differences in how we operate as well as working with three of the most experienced agents in the business: Peter Rubie, Stephany Evans and Nancy Coffey. In addition to basic agency administrative duties, our interns learn how to read queries with a discerning eye, what questions to ask themselves as they read a new manuscript and why, and how to translate those questions and answers into a thoughtful readers report. As an intern at FinePrint, you'll sometimes accompany agents to industry functions, where you'll meet writers as well as other industry professionals. (Our summer interns got to attend BEA, an RWA dinner and several AAR lunchtime talks!) And you'll sit on on weekly in-house guest-lectures, Q&As and development workshops led by some of the best minds in the publishing industry.

What kind of people are we looking for? Well, contrary to popular belief, it doesn't matter if you're in school currently, although if you are, you'll absolutely receive college credit. But we also welcome those of you who may be in transition between one career and another. (Hey, you're never too old to live your dream!) The main criteria is that you must have a enthusiasm for commercial fiction and non-fiction. Hey, we love you lit majors, but if you come in and tell us your favorite writers are Kafka, Sartre, and Henry James, you won't be very helpful to us. If you love crime fiction, romance, historical fiction, fantasy, young adult, pop culture, graphic novels, thrillers, gripping narrative non-fiction, we want you! If you obsess over the New York Times bestseller list, if you spend your afternoons popping from one book blog to another, catching up on publishing gossip, if you eat commercial fiction for breakfast...email us!

The internship generally runs anywhere from 4-6 months. You'll be working anywhere from 12-16 hours a week, over 3-4 days. The agency is conveniently located in Midtown Manhattan, two blocks from Penn Station and near the A, C, E, R, F, V, N, Q, W, 1, 2, and 3 lines.

How do you apply? Easy peasy! If you're interested, please email Joanna Stampfel-Volpe at LiteraryNancy2 (at) gmail.com; cc Suzie Townsend at Suzie (at) fineprintlit.com. Include a resume with your cover letter, both pasted within the body of the email. Please address the subject line as FP-NC Internship. No phone calls, please!!!

Internship interviews for the Fall 2009 Program will be held between August 17th and August 27th. Deadline for resumes is August 20th.

Good luck! =)

Opening to submissions but there's a catch:

I'm reopening to submissions for a brief time: from now through the end of August. There's a catch: Unless you're coming to me as a referral from another agent, editor or writer whom I know, I'm only looking for the following things:

• Adult urban fantasy/paranormal romance
  
• YA urban fantasy/paranormal
• Realistic YA

If you queried me between March 19th and yesterday with any of these kinds of projects, please query me again, as your query was automatically deleted. If you have an outstanding query with me from before March 19th (and at least 200 of you do!), you will receive a reply from me by the end of August.

Here's what I need:

• Email only
• Query letter
• First 5-10 pages cut and pasted into body of letter
• No attachments please

We now have several other agents in-house who also handle YA, so if your query isn't right for me but I think it has merit, I will forward to another agent. However, if you have already queried and been passed over by a FinePrint agent, do let me know. It doesn't mean I don't want to see your query, but it will keep me from forwarding it onto someone who has already seen it.

Do note that if your project falls outside the categories above, I'm not interested at the moment. Thanks!