The Thrill of the Panel!

One of the best things about attending a big-time writers conference is being able to participate in panels.  When you sit on a writer panel you get a chance to reveal yourself to readers who may never have heard of you.  If they find you interesting, they may well find your books interesting, so being a panelist almost always leads to book sales and new fans.  Plus, you get to know other writers with whom you have something in common.

In July I’ll attend Thrillerfest in NYC and the panel I landed on sounds like great fun.  It’s called “ARE YOU COMBAT READY? PREPARING FOR A MISSION.”  That’s the subject I’ll discuss with five other authors on Friday, July 12 at 4:00 PM.

The way these things usually work (like the panels at the Creatures, Crimes and Creativity conference) is that someone is dubbed moderator, and that title is all the description we get.  It is up to the panelists to decide what direction the conversation will go.  It gives us all a lot of flexibility.

And I will be speaking with a pretty interesting group.  Bob Gussin, our moderator, was a medical researcher before he founded Oceanview Publishing.  His wife, Pat is the accomplished thriller author. Simon Toyne is a Brit TV producer and director who has written an international best seller and has been called the “English Dan Brown.” John Dixon’s first book isn’t even out yet, but it’s already the basis for an upcoming CBS TV show called Intelligence. Leo Maloney is a former Black Ops contractor who worked for a clandestine government agency for many years. And Guy Burgstahler has no military experience nor is he an author.  He IS the Chief Marketing Officer for 5.11 Tactical and has studied how marketing has been used as a tool to fuel military initiatives.

So what will our panel be about?  Maybe we’ll discuss how we would prepare to attack a well- guarded safe house in Kosovo and extract someone.  Or, how we would capture a target from a heavily guarded compound in the middle of the desert.  We may consider night attacks versus day, etc.  We could compare and contrast the mission prep we see in movies and TV with the more realistic view we try to give in our novels. Or how about comparing the preparation our protagonists have to go through with the ones the writer has to go through to be able to render them accurately on the page? We might explore the moral and emotional preparation for combat. Or discuss our writing methods.

There are so many possibilities, and it’s such a diverse panel, that I can’t wait to sit in front of that audience and throw myself into the mix.  Of course there will be a book signing right afterward and if we have enough fun, I know the audience will too!  And that will mean a chance to sign some books and make new fans. 

And then I’ll get to watch some other guys’ interesting panels.

My Agent and Why I Need Her

Susan Gleason is a real-life, honest-to-goodness New York City literary agent. What that means to you probably depends on where you are in your writing career. When I tell some authors they say, “Wow,” like I just told them I won the lottery. Others sneer like I just reminded them of every bad experience they’ve ever had as a writer.

And if I tell you that I e-mailed Susan in early February and she called to reply this week, you might ask why I would put up with such treatment.

The fact is that agents are part of the yin and yang of the publishing world. For example, there are two kinds of publishers: the small press and the majors. You can submit your manuscript to small press publishers and they may read it and even publish it. Advances, support and distribution will all be small or nonexistent. The majors pay substantial advances, have powerful distribution arms and can offer substantial backing if your book warrants it. However, they won’t look at your manuscript unless they get it from a reputable agent.

Hustlers and crooks aside, agents also come in two varieties. Some will invest the bulk of their time into finding a home for your manuscript. They can do that because you are the biggest name author they represent. But they haven’t brought any publisher a big money maker, so publishers don’t hold them in very high regard.

Then there are agents who HAVE brought money makers to the publishers they work with. They have proven they can pick a winner, so when they talk, publishers are more apt to listen. What that means, of course, is that these agents spend a substantial amount of their time on bigger fish and only take on newcomers if they really believe in their work. Having proven themselves to publishers, they won’t represent anyone who’s going to embarrass them. For this reason, I know that Susan believes in me and my writing.

I met Susan through one of her clients, Warren Murphy. She got another client, David Hagberg, to blurb one of my manuscripts. She’s representing Barbara D’Amato and has asked her to blurb another of my manuscripts.

When Susan called, it was to tell me that one of my manuscripts is with Kensington right now. And that she’s had another to Bantam and Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books). It was to share feedback she got from an editor at St. Martin’s Press who was kind enough to recommend changes that could make that book more commercial. To tell me that at Book Expo America she’ll be discussing a couple of my properties with a film rep. And that she’ll meet with me during Thrillerfest in July so we can present a manuscript or two to some industry names in person.

So this is why you need an agent. Not just because they can help with contracts or because they know which editor might want your work (yes, Susan has these attributes too.) But most importantly because, while writing is an art and a craft, publishing is a business and if you want to win big you need someone in your corner who is also inside the business.