This program gives authors the chance to create and upload a query letter, a short synopsis, a manuscript sample, and a brief biography. By choosing a genre, you are then given a list of agents who currently represent that type of work. You then choose which agents you want your letter and work sent to. It’s basically another glorified technique and attempt at getting to the top of the infamous slush pile.

I decided to give the program a test run mainly so I could report it to our readers here who might be contemplating the traditional publication route.

First, I was a little disappointed with the questions that are asked in the personal bio:

• Education
• Professional/Personal Overview
• Published Work
• Work History/Expertise
• Awards/Honors/Associations
• Other
• Additional Marketing Expertise/Platform

While you can choose to skip some of these sections and leave them blank, I felt most of these questions were a bit too much and not subjects that most agents ask you to include about yourself in a regular query letter. Sure, most want to know who you think your target audience is or what makes you qualified to write such work.  Awards and previous published work always help when you are tooting your horn.  But marketing expertise?  For me, it just goes to show that most traditional publishers these days are relying on the authors to invest in the marketing of their own books.  Something self-published authors already know about all too well.

Most agents tell you specifically what they expect in a query letter, and we are told to follow those specifications to a tee. So, it seems odd that the Agent InBox bio kind of forces more information onto the agents, and gives authors more space to sell themselves than a traditional one page query allows. While this program is automated, and you the author can choose what you want to answer, it still makes me think the program might be a turn off because the agents will receive either too much or too little information.

My next problem with the program came from the upload of the query and sample. The copy and paste option for authors who are using Microsoft Word is meant to limit unnecessary html problems, but still created odd spacing issues that someone like me with limited coding experience couldn’t fix.  So, I was a bit worried with how the overall presentation would turn out.  You have to upload a query letter for each agent you choose from your list.  The system puts in an automatic “Dear ______” for you, and assumes you’ll adapt your query letter to the specifications of each agent.

There’s a bio for each agent where you hope to learn what they are looking for, or at least to find tips about honing your letter for them. However, just as you would expect from a busy agent, most haven’t taken the time to fill out the information for you.  Instead, there are links to redirect you to their own websites where you are encouraged to go to learn more. Here, I found links that didn’t work, agents who were closed to submissions, and agents that didn’t accept genres that they were listed for on Agent InBox. So, you are suddenly back to searching agent sites and doing the homework for yourself, which you can do without the WEBook program anyway, and might as well since you’ve gone this far.

So, after uploading your information, you have to wait for WEBook to approve it.  I expected the absolute worst but received approval the following day and notification that my submission had been sent to the agents I chose. Supposedly, agents receive notification and have to sign into the InBox program to check their submissions as if they were emails.  They can pick and choose which parts of the submission they want to read, and they can also choose whether or not to reply.  Each time an agent opens the submission, WEBook sends you a notification that the status of the submission has changed.  Here’s a screen snapshot of the information I received.  I have removed the names of the agents:

I thought this part of the program was pretty nifty since you can actually see the date they opened the submission and what parts they read.  Like traditional querying, sometimes you get replies and sometimes you don’t.  The second from the top opened it but didn’t reject it. Sometimes agents don’t read past the first sentence, as seen in the second from the bottom who didn’t get past the short synopsis (My synopsis was three sentences and less than 40 words). I appreciated those who gave explanations, even though they are pretty cookie cutter. But so is the traditional querying route, isn’t it?

So, in the end, I wasn’t overly impressed with the program, but didn’t find it to be any different from the traditional query letter/email process.  I still sweated bullets over trying to cater my uploads to each specific agent, and still cursed at the lack of information provided and worried over if I was providing too much information or not. And when it was all said and done, I sighed with relief and still found myself lost and blind in a query snowstorm.

Authors should know that 99% of the business is rejection.  Just ask any literary agent how many emails are in their in-box, and how many blanket rejection letters they send each day with no explanation besides “not interested.”  As an author, it’s best just to take the rejection for what it’s worth and move on.  And certainly don’t give up! Authors should also remember that reviews are opinions and readers are certainly entitled to them.  It has always been our policy here at LLBR that if we were to rate a book anything less than 3 out of 5 stars, we would not post a review of it because bad reviews do NOT help self-published authors.

From time to time, many Lulu authors who we reject feel the need to reply to us.  The replies are often understanding or may ask for tips on how to improve their work.  If we have time, one of us will reply to their requests.  Lots of times we get a reply telling us that it’s “our loss” and it just might be.  What follows is a detailed reply to one of our rejections which I feel is a perfect example of how NOT to reply to a rejection if you want to be taken seriously as a writer (names and titles have been removed, of course, but misspellings and grammatical errors have been left intact). One can only wonder what would have happened had this author sent this letter to a traditional publishing house or literary agent seeking representation…

Please forgive me, but what am I supposed to make of that kind of ridiculous reaction? How can you even pass on such a childish, uninformed and irresponsible comment from one of your Reviewers?

Good luck in the future. I will not allow your organization to come anywhere near my next book, due out later this year.

• Punctuation, spelling, and typos – none of us are perfect and every book has flaws, but your Lulu storefront/book page can not afford to contain these as people will take one look and decide that if you can’t put together a short blurb without errors, your book is too flawed to read. Editing has always been a dark cloud over the POD world, which is why accomplishing complete accuracy on your Lulu book page is an absolute must!  Have someone review your work prior to releasing for distribution.  If there are major errors, then it is too late to pull it back without paying for another distribution.  Plus, you don’t want a reputation for releasing material that is not ready for prime time.
• Know your characters and where they are!  If his big blue eyes are so important to point out on page ten, they better not be brown eyes on page twenty.  If she’s drinking a beer on page seven, she better not be finishing scotch on page eight.  While these mistakes should really fall under rule #1 as typos, I bring attention to them only because I’ve seen this happen quite a bit.  If you have a lot of characters to keep up with, I suggest buying a notebook and writing out character sketches or outlines of everything about them you need to know.
• Formatting, formatting, formatting – Books are not emails or business letters.  They have an expected format. If you know nothing about formatting a book, pull about 10 traditionally published books off your shelf and study their layout. Or go to a library or bookstore and just thumb through some popular books. Pay close attention to the number of blank pages between title pages, copyright pages, dedication pages, and Chapter 1. Also pay attention to page numbering (something my very own book fell victim to earlier this year). Are the numbers at the top or bottom, centered or flushed to the right? What page does the first chapter start on?
• It is necessary to have distinction between the header and footers and the text.  Either by ensuring that there is a line space between information in the header/footer and the manuscript text or at the very least a line that indicates separation.  It is not only confusing, but becomes quite annoying to read someone’s work and at the bottom of every page, looking like it is part of the text of the book is the author’s name or a page number.  Visually, these things must be separated.
• Speaking of those blank pages, format your Lulu book preview so that those blank pages are eliminated. Your book preview should be just that – a preview of the story itself. Too many times LK and I go to look at a Lulu book preview and its 15 pages consisting of a title page, blank pages, a copyright page, a dedication page, more blank pages, 6 pages of preface, 2 pages of an introduction, and then maybe 1 page of actual story. Even if I’m possibly considering a book for review based on the Pick Me query alone, if the Lulu preview lacks at least a good 4 pages of the story, I usually reject it. Since Lulu allows limited number of pages for preview, create a custom review by removing all of the blank pages and acknowledgment, etc. pages from the preview so that the reader gets the most value content from the preview possible.
• No preview at all is a No-No! It’s like putting your book in a glass box in an actual bookstore and expecting someone to buy it based on the cover alone. Even Amazon.com allows browsers to peek inside the book on line before purchasing it.
• In the synopsis on your Lulu book page, don’t be personal. Don’t tell how all of your friends/family loved the book and think that you are the greatest author.  These people might think your book is crap, but they’d still tell you it was gold just because you are related. This definitely tells the reader that you are a rookie and have not had an objective assessment done.  Maybe one of your relatives who read it and thought it was great was Uncle Joe in Butte, MT.  So what?  If Uncle Joe turns out to be a freelance writer/editor, or working for a major publishing firm, or anything involved in the writing game, then refer to him in that guise and not as Uncle Joe – it carries more weight.
• Justify the alignment of your manuscript. Too many times I see that jagged right edge in PDF files, and it drives me crazy. This is a quick fix in Word documents with just one click of the mouse. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here’s a sample of work not justified. Check out the right margin…

A severe headache woke me from my dreams. I dabbed at my tongue with my fingers, thinking I tasted copper. Maybe it was just the wine we’d had with supper—but wait— Lorraine and I had not shared a bottle of wine in years. I sat up in bed and for several seconds I did not know where I was. I did not recognize the aging beautiful woman sleeping soundly beside me. She was nuzzled into my arm like she knew me. I pulled myself from her grasp, threw back the sheets, and put my feet on the floor. My sudden movement woke her.

Now here’s the same text, but with a justified right edge…

A severe headache woke me from my dreams. I dabbed at my tongue with my fingers, thinking I tasted copper. Maybe it was just the wine we’d had with supper—but wait— Lorraine and I had not shared a bottle of wine in years. I sat up in bed and for several seconds I did not know where I was. I did not recognize the aging beautiful woman sleeping soundly beside me. She was nuzzled into my arm like she knew me. I pulled myself from her grasp, threw back the sheets, and put my feet on the floor. My sudden movement woke her.

• Invest in a decent book cover, whether that be time or money…or both. Pulling up a “kewl” photo of yourself or a friend in Paint and typing red letters across the face is not enough. Also, too many times I’ve seen plain book covers that are just solid colors with words centered across them – BORING! If you have a computer and you are using Lulu to publish your book, then you also have unlimited access to art, photography, and online programs, a lot of which are free, right at your fingertips on the internet. Lulu does offer cover art and will generate your title and name on the cover for you, but if you are investing in a global package chances are some other book on the market has the same cover art as you. If you aren’t creative or don’t have artistic friends who can help, check the Lulu forums. There are lots of people out there who can help, myself included. I’ve designed over a dozen affordable covers for authors this year.
• Make the most of your Lulu storefront.  It’s not just a place to list your available work.  This is a free webpage where you get to promote yourself and your work, so use it to do that.  This is the area where you can put anything that you had to leave out of the description section of the book page due to length limitations.  If there is something that you feel you want to share with the book buying public such as the acknowledgments we recommend leaving out of the preview, this is the place for it.  If you have a blog, use the RSS block to add your feed.  Use the text and html blocks to add additional information.  Use it to advertise your author website or book website should you have those.  The sky is really the limit – take full advantage!

While attention to the above 10 common boo boos does not guarantee an increase in sales, and still won’t guarantee a review, it will definitely increase your potential for sales and ultimately provide you with a better product to offer. It also strengthens your validity as a serious author.

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