You Need to Read
My very obvious but rarely taken one-size-fits-all advice
I’m not paywalling this advice because I want everyone to hear it.
You need to read. Way more than you’re currently reading.
If you are writing a book, and you want that book traditionally published, you need to read specifically in the category into which you’re looking to publish.
It is my job to know what’s being published right now, what’s popular and what’s trending, so I read many recently-published books in the categories I represent. If you want to be a traditionally published author, you should think of your work as a part-time job. And now part of your job, too, should be reading recently-published books in your category. The agent you’re querying, if you’ve picked a good agent, is going to know a lot about the books to which your book is going to be compared; you should too!
At conferences and during one-on-one meetings, I am frequently asked about comp titles. When I’m being paid to give specific advice on a query letter, I often will suggest better comp titles than the ones in the writer’s query letter; sometimes, that’s because the writer didn’t quite understand the purpose behind a comp title, but often because the writer hasn’t read or heard of the book I suggest. The first situation is OK, fixable; the second one is a bigger problem.
Sometimes I hear, “I don’t read a lot of contemporary books [in this category], I actually prefer reading [a much older trend of your category or something completely outside of your category.] I always wonder when I hear that, well, then why do you expect readers today to read your book if you aren’t even reading your peers’ books?
As previously stated, I do earnestly believe that writing is valuable in itself. I journal about 3 times a week, in handwriting that’s illegible, and I’ve filled a box full of notebooks that I am never going to open again; the act of writing helps me process my life and think through decisions. Writing stories and essays feels similar to many people. But if you want to profit off of the thing you are writing, you need to take it more seriously.
That’s why I connect ‘writing with the goal of having a book traditionally published’ to ‘part-time job.’ Because there are many reasons you might not have leisure time to read: your family, your job, life is stressful and busy and you want to watch TikToks at the end of a long day. Fine! Reading books in the category in which you want to publish shouldn’t be part of your leisure time, though, it should be part of your writing time, the same way you would put ‘researching agents’ or ‘learning how to write the best query letter’ into your writing time. You are reading to better your craft of writing and to understand the marketplace you want to join.
When agents read your submission materials, we can tell which writers read a lot and which do not. The best books are written by writers who read a lot. If you want to write your best book, you need to read.
Welcome new subscribers! And a big thank-you to my client Andrew Boryga, author of the debut novel Victim, “a thrilling work” which “signals the arrival of a writer courageous enough to dive into the difficult head-on” (The New York Times) and the substack Dwell, for recommending Just Reading All Day. I’d also like to recommend my client Tembe Denton-Hurst’s substack Extracurricular; Tembe is a writer who reads everything, so you’ll also find some great book recommendations in her posts. Her debut Homebodies, “a deeply felt, assured literary debut by a writer worth watching,” is now out in paperback.