START BUILDING YOUR CAREER NOW

By Deb Werksman

I recently added another criterion to my romance fiction submission guidelines (you can see them in detail here: www.sourcebooks.com).

Now, in addition to looking for:

• a heroine the reader can relate to
• a hero she can fall in love with
• a world gets created
• a hook I can sell the book with in 2-3 sentences

I'm also looking for:

The author has a career arc.

It has become more and more difficult to acquire just one book. That doesn't mean every contract will be a multi-book deal, but it does mean that I'm looking for authors who have ideas for further books beyond the one being submitted. It takes 3-4 books to build readership, and those books have to come out regularly, whether that be once a year, once a season (2 seasons per year), three per year, etc.

So as you submit your work, please be sure to include the ideas for the next couple of books (even if they're not part of a series). The better sense I have of how you see yourself growing in the category, the better pitch I can make at the editorial meeting.

Keep in mind, it's nearly impossible to build an author with books that are in different categories/subgenres. So, you need to decide which category/subgenre you want to start in (or stay in, or move to) and plan to be there for as long as it takes to build your readership.

I've been to a lot of conferences lately, and I run into authors who have a romantic suspense, and an historical fiction, and one YA and then there's a non-fiction manuscript. It may be an extreme example, but each one of those actually goes to a different buyer and a different section of the bookstore.

I tell these authors to pick one direction and plan to stick to it until they're well enough known to be able to make a leap to another subgenre or category. However, readers will not necessarily follow you from one subgenre to another. So it may be easier to branch out and add another subgenre/category, rather than move altogether.

At that point, and all along, you'll want to be thinking about your career and planning for it. People ask, but should I write in the most popular subgenre even if that's not the one I excel in? My answer is, you should write a book with a hook that so strong that no matter what the subgenre is doing, that book will break out!

In this publishing environment, it's tougher and tougher to succeed, but being career oriented--looking at the big picture and being in it for the long haul--are going to make a difference--at least when your submission hits my desk!