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AuthorMBA Q&A with agent Michelle Grajkowski
© 2007 AuthorMBA -
All rights reserved.
originally posted
1/18/07
I'm very pleased to welcome today's special guest, agent Michelle
Grajkowski from 3 Seas Literary
Agency, for our first-ever AuthorMBA Q&A feature. The AuthorMBA Q&A
covers five areas of a writer's business: career planning, branding,
marketing, sales and distribution, and web sites.
We're absolutely delighted to have Michelle with us and can personally
vouch for her reputation as being warm, approachable, and business
savvy. And as if her fantastic Q&A insights weren't enough, Michelle has
graciously offered an added bonus for our blog readers. She will be
popping in later today to answer your business and career-related
questions, so take advantage of this great opportunity to be a
cyber-sponge for a day with this fabulous agent!
Welcome, Michelle!
AuthorMBA Q&A
CAREER PLANNING - How do you approach career planning with your
clients?
How hands-on do you like to be?
I am a very hands-on agent. I love to work with my authors to develop
career goals/plans and to do everything I can to help them achieve their
goals. However, just as every book is different, so is every author. So,
I really let them drive the relationship. Some authors I correspond with
almost every day via email, while with others we communicate whenever
the need arises. Some clients ask me to help brainstorm, while others
really want an agent for the business matters. Either way, I’m very
flexible and approachable.
What steps might you take to help your clients
grow their careers?
The most crucial step in growing a career is to carefully plan for the
future. So, as I mentioned, I spend a great deal of time working with my
clients on figuring out what would be the next great step in their
career – what project it makes the most sense to write next, what the
market is looking for, etc. From there, if an author is published, I
relate our goals to her editor to make sure that we are all on the same
page. It helps the editors to know how prolific an author is, or how
much work they want to take on. My job is to help facilitate my clients’
needs to help them grow.
How impressed are you by clients who take a
proactive approach to their career planning?
I am very impressed by my clients when they are proactive in their
planning. One of my clients, for example, presented me with a five-year
plan. It helped her to focus on what she needs to do to get where she
wants to be, and it helps me to see where she wants to go. We then
discussed her plan and figured out what would work and what maybe might
not. Another one of my clients wowed me with her fantastic
spreadsheeting ability. She produced an amazing grid that showed how
many pages she would need to write a day to finish the book, and then
how much time she needed for revisions and topped it off with giving ME
deadlines to read her work! I loved that sheet and showed it to an
editor who we were trying to sell her work to. The editor agreed that my
author showed a lot of professionalism and two months later, we got the
contract.
BRANDING - How does a writer’s brand affect your business
dealings?
How does a writer’s “personal brand” (image
and reputation) and “writing brand” (differentiating the work) factor
into your decision to represent him or her?
While “branding” might be a fairly new term in the business, it’s
something that we as agents have been doing for years. One of my
favorite parts to being an agent is talking about my clients. I love to
brag about them everywhere I can. And, to me, that’s what branding is
all about. Finding one special quality about an author and then
marketing that for all it’s worth.
For example, one of my top clients is an extremely prolific author.
Whenever I would talk about her to editors, I would tell them how
amazing she is – she can write fantastic humor with a terrific,
sophisticated style, and she can do it fast. She can write a full-length
manuscript in a month. Well, my “branding” of her as a professional,
amazing, prolific writer helped her move up the ranks quickly. As an
aside, she also is extremely career-focused, so between her keen
business sense and her wonderful writing, she really has been able to
accomplish so many things in her career and I couldn’t be prouder.
Therefore, I think it is very important for a writer to sit down and
figure out how they want to be seen in the industry. While diversifying
your portfolio down the road so not all your eggs are in one basket, so
to speak, it is extremely important when first starting out on the road
to publication to focus all your energies on the types of stories you
want to sell. If you really, really, really want to write historical
romances, but you hear there is a downward trend for them right now and
that paranormals are what’re hot, don’t automatically switch paths and
write a paranormal – unless your heart is in it. Rather try to “brand”
yourself as a historical writer. Immerse yourself in that world and
focus on your goal.
One author that I’ve seen at many conferences throughout the years
writes Asian fiction – she has branded herself perfectly as she wears
Asian silks to the events so readers can easily identify her as the
author. I think it’s an amazing hook, and one way to really show your
passion for your career.
How do those brands impact your ability to
market clients to editors?
They definitely help. If I can tell an editor that I have a great new
author who writes fairy tales for big kids, that’s a great way to garner
attention. Any way I can creatively talk about my clients and make them
stick in an editor’s mind is golden.
What role do brands play during contract
negotiations and in developing effective marketing campaigns?
The brands really don’t play a part in the negotiation – they help more
in the pre-stages to garner attention, and then come big-time into play
when the authors are marketing their books. The best way to reach an
audience is to make sure that they won’t forget you. Clever tag lines
and well-focused marketing campaigns are crucial to name recognition.
MARKETING - How important do you think it is for writers to
focus on PR and marketing?
How much does a writer’s marketing plan for a
book or series affect your interest in representing him or her and
influence the way you ultimately market the work?
Quite honestly, in today’s marketplace, publishers expect an author to
do his or her share of marketing. It’s vital to get your name out there
and to promote your book. One common misconception that many writers
have is that the minute your book is bought, the publishers are going to
open their checkbooks to help you promote it. That’s not often the case.
Rather it is going to take your time and your treasure to help the
cause.
If you have a tremendous marketing platform, like say for example you
are a syndicated morning drive D.J. and you are writing a fictionalized
tale on the day in the life of a disc jockey and the stations you appear
on have offered to give you free promo on their radio stations, then
yes! I really would like to hear about your marketing ideas up-front.
One of my clients currently writes picture books and he travels to
school groups and performs for them. He has a built in marketing
campaign that I can easily use to entice an editor. So for me, his
background was very important to know up-front.
However, if you are writing a fiction project, and you plan on promoting
by going on a book tour, that may not be so important to know up-front
in the query. Rather once we are working together and I am marketing
your book, your plans could make a difference. Therefore, you should
always be thinking in the back of your head how you can best market
yourself, but in a query, only mention the marketing plans if you really
think that your plan will generate a big audience for the publicity.
How much does a client's willingness to
actively promote a book or series affect your ability to sell him or her
to an editor or impact contract negotiations?
Again, editors are assuming that any author they buy will be actively
promoting their books. And, most of the time how they are going to
market a fiction project is not really a deal maker or breaker. In
nonfiction, however, editors want to know every detail on how you plan
to market your books. It’s a whole different ballgame.
What role do you play when a client hires a
contract publicist to complement the publisher’s efforts?
When an author hires a publicist, they normally work directly with that
person. I am there to help out with any needs that my author may have,
but the scheduling of events, etc. is done between my author and her
publicist.
SALES & DISTRIBUTION - What role do you play on the distribution
and sales side of your clients’ careers?
Where do you focus your energies?
Unfortunately, I really don’t have any control over how a publisher
distributes a book. The publisher and their sales force really are the
ones who are out there beating down doors trying to place as many copies
of the books as they can. That being said, I do work with the editors to
see what sort of preliminary responses the book is getting. We work
together to formulate ways to help each book grow, and talk about
different strategies to keep building my client’s career.
How aggressively do you lobby for specific
retail placement strategies (special displays)?
I lobby hard for promo. Paid placement for front of the store and
end-caps are key. I also advocate for longevity for those placements as
well. I also push for other ways to market, such as advertising, mailing
of ARCs to key accounts, internet marketing campaigns, paid placement in
online and print ads from bookstores and book trailers. There are many
ways to be creative, to push that marketing budget.
How do you track your clients’ numbers after
release?
It’s really hard to get a good feel for how a book is doing until about
6 months to a year after the release. But, I do ask for print run
information and also follow-up as the year progresses to see how the
book is still doing. I have a wonderful in-house database that I use to
keep track of all my royalty information, so at the touch of a fingertip
I can see how well the book is performing once the statements start
coming in. It’s a useful way to keep track of reserves and other crucial
reconciliation figures that I need to historically track a project.
WEB SITES - In what ways do you think a web site can enhance a
writer’s career?
When you read work you like—from published or
unpublished writers—do you review their web sites?
Sometimes – I normally don’t look at websites until I take on a client
because it is honestly their writing that I want to fall in love with.
Their marketing on the web is great, but the stories have to be even
better! :-)
That being said, I would caution writers about their blog postings. It’s
easy to vent out your feelings on a blog, but you never know who is
reading that post. I love blogs and I think they enhance a writer’s
website because a reader can really get to “know” the person. It’s a
wonderful tool – when used correctly.
When working with your clients, do you discuss
marketing ideas for their web sites to increase traffic and build a
strong readership?
Again, that really depends on my clients. Most of my clients are more
web-savvy than I am, so they are much more creative than I could ever
dream to be! But, we do talk about ways to market themselves, and the
web almost always comes up. And, many of my clients have asked me to
help them develop their sites and to come up with ways to increase
traffic. I do my best to offer advice.
What is your perspective on using a personal
blog as a marketing tool for writers? Does your view change if they are
unpublished vs. published?
Blogs can be an excellent, excellent tool for expanding readership for
published authors, and for hooking readers in before publication for
those who aren’t yet. The key is to be fresh and to offer readers
something that others aren’t. Advice maybe? A place to come and hang out
is another option. Blogs can be a fantastic way to play with your brand…
But, again, I would caution you to write your blog as you would like to
be seen. Fun, upbeat and perky is always good – sad, forlorn and
depressed may not be the best way to get the attention you are looking
for.
About Michelle
Grajkowski
From the moment
Michelle Grajkowski first opened her doors to the
3 Seas Literary
Agency in August of 2000, she has been living her dream. (What could
be better than surrounding yourself with great authors and their
exciting and imaginative books?)
Since then, she's successfully sold more than 200 titles to major
publishing houses including Harlequin, NAL, Berkley, Dorchester,
Kensington, Avon, Pocket, Random House (both here and in the UK), Knopf,
Andrews McMeel, Warner and HarperCollins.
Currently, she is looking for fantastic authors with a voice of their
own. Michelle focuses on romance, women's fiction, Chick-Lit young adult
and middle grade fiction.
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