In today’s fantasy and science fiction publishing, Pierce Brown one of the best-known authors. His Red Rising series is a best-selling science fiction saga about Darrow, a rebel leader against those who enslaved his people on Mars.
But even the most successful authors have faced obstacles to getting representation from agents. Brown recently talked about taking a different tactic than writing his query letter in the typical third person summary. Here’s what he did in his own words:
“… Let this be your sign to keep going. I wrote six books; I queried 130 agents. I had zero takers. Then I wrote Red Rising and I thought I had something special. I queried 30 agents. None were interested, still. And then I disobeyed a central tenet of query letters which is ‘do not write from your main character, your protagonist’s, point of view. Well, I did that and then I had five agents interested and found an agent within two weeks because I began it from Darrow’s perspective saying, ‘They hanged my father, then they hanged my wife.’ Let this be a sign to you that common sense wisdom and defeat is not necessarily the last law.”
The lesson, claims Brown, is to take risks when it comes to selling your manuscript. Sometimes, it seems the most famous authors had no problem selling their first manuscript right away. It’s nice to know that is not the usual case at all.
The takeaway? As Brown said: keep going. Take risks.
