~~~Lara Zielin~~~

I haven’t posted anything for a while because Rob and I got married! More pics to come soon …

Oh, I totally forgot to say that I made an audition tape for Deal or No Deal. I submitted it several months ago and haven’t heard squat, so probably they don’t want me. But it was fun to do regardless. And, even though it makes me look like a ham, I AM a ham (Sam I am), so there’s truth in advertising after all.

Enjoy!

http://www.trulynormal.com/lara_dond_audition_lo.mov

My agent (I loooove saying that!) just emailed me and let me know that the contract with Putnam is in the mail. Yay! I know I promised a blog on what changes I had to make to my manuscript to make it publishable, as well as more about Putnam and my editor there. I promise I’ll get there, but for now I thought a quick blog about contracts would be cool — and because they’re on my mind. My mind, my blog. My blind, my mog. My bind my … well, you get it.

So here’s the quick and dirty about contracts.

First, there’s the contract lite. This is when your agent and an editor (from a specific house) agree that everyone will work together, that you won’t sell the book to anyone else, and they solidify what the advance is going to look like. Apart from the call where your agent tells you that, yes, they will represent you, this is THE phone call that you wait for. Once that agreement is made, you get a one-page document (usually an email suffices) where the editor puts, in writing, just a few specifics including:

• The advance amount
• The percent of hardcover royalties
• The percent of trade paperback royalties
• The territory (mine is “world” though I’m not sure what this means yet since I know I get more money if the book is published in, say, Egypt)
• The rights, which are usually first serial, audio and bookclub

This is kind of nerve wracking because you won’t know lots of specifics until later. Like, when the book will come out or when they want the first round of edits done. All that stuff is spelled out later in the BIG contract where you sign in 34 places and it’s all official. This is the contract that my agent called about today and said was in the mail. Yay!

A February 9 blog from Pub Rants (Agent Kristin Nelson) talks about what you should make sure is in your contract to cover you when you do the BIG contract. As far as the contract lite, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. As long as the advance money looks decent, and you’re with a reputable publishing house, you should be okay — and, what’s more, these are things you and your agent will talk about before you ever say “yes” to a deal.

So, here’s the scoop. I totally got an agent. And a book deal. And I was going to start a whole new blog about what it’s like being a writer, now that those two things are in place, but I thought that the posts I’ve put here, to date, are really important. The process of getting to this place is as valuable as arriving. So I’m going to keep the posts and just update from here.

So, um, I GOT A BOOK DEAL!!! OMG, OMG, OMG.

Here’s wha hoppened:

During my November (2006) trip to New York and to the Backspace Writers Conference, Susanna Einstein of LJK Literary was gracious enough to meet with me over lunch and discuss my two books, DONUT DAYS and THE DISAPPEARED (see previous posts). She pointed out the problems with each of them, which were numerous and varied and … significant. I’m just being real here because I want every writer to know that just because a book has problems doesn’t mean it’s not fixable or that you can’t overcome said issues.

Ahem. Anyway, I asked her if she would re-read the books if I fixed the problems and she said yes. This was totally and completely gracious of Susanna and, if I were her, I might have kicked my butt to the roadside by this point, but for whatever reason, Susanna was willing to keep my number in her Rolodex — metaphorically speaking. I was lucky, lucky to have this occur, but I’d also networked my butt off to get to her. I’ve written a book about networking (shameless plug here) and I really believe in it. I’ve got a previous post about networking and I stand by my belief that connecting with people is as important as doing good work. Nuff said — I’ll get off my mini soapbox now.

I focused on fixing DONUT DAYS, which was the stronger of my two books IMHO. This took until late January. That might seem like a short time to many of you reading this, but please see my previous posts about jumping the gun and submitting works before they’re ready. It took everything I had to sit on my novel and make sure DONUT DAYS was strong enough before I sent it back to Susanna. Very soon, I will write a post about what was wrong with the book and what I had to fix. I think it might be valuable for some other writers out there.

I emailed Susanna the new text and she told me it could be six to eight weeks before she’d get to it, which was very understandable. She’d already read the stupid thing once. How could I expect her to move quickly on a new draft? Thing was, four days later she emailed me and said she wanted to represent it.

Eeeeeeee!!!!

So, my next post will be about the changes she requested and how we wound up selling it to Putnam. And all the good stuff about advances, etc. I hope this information might be helpful to writers trying to pursue that golden burrito in the sky: a published book.

More soon!