The Career Novelist: A Literary Agent Offers Strategies for Success

Check out Donald Maaas' website and you'll be able to download this book as a pdf for free.

Millions of people have written a novel and want to get it published. Some of them grow frustrated with the business of commercial publishing so they self-publish and have a garage full of product that they are trying to sell--mistake in my view. Others send out their novel a few times to an agent or publisher, gather some rejection slips and put away their dream work into a desk drawer. With the wisdom in this book, you don't have to take either step. Instead you can gain the wisdom and insight from this former book editor, novelist and successful literary agent. As Maass writes for the final sentence of his introduction, "Solutions, strategies, knowledge, practical plans, damage control, managing success . . . in short, the path of the career novelist. That is what this book is all about." Where you get your wisdom about novels and the business of publishing is critical in my view. Get this book. Read it once, flag pages and highlight them. Then read it again. It's worth that sort of careful study in my view. Highly recommended for the seasoned and would-be novelist.

I've read a number of books by agents, but none of them have focused on the needs, expectations, hopes, and mistakes of the fiction writer like this book does. Donald Maass is a triple publishing expert: a former editor, a published fiction author, and a successful literary agent. Reading the book, I felt like I had been introduced to my long lost uncle by marriage to my second cousin, who, upon learning of my interest in the publishing world, freely shared all his expertise. While dining at his favorite restaurant (my treat of course) he told me what really happens in the publishing world. How do publishers afford those astronomical advances I see in Publishers Weekly? How does he choose the query letters that make him want to see a manuscript? How do authors help, or more often, hurt their careers? Now I know. He also shares his formula for calculating when a published author can make the leap into full-time writing without undue fear of crashing back to earth and having to get a job at the local convenience store to meet the bills. The best non-fiction books educate while entertaining, and Maass' friendly, chatty style is the Madeira sauce on this highly satisfying, juicy slice of steak.

The down-to-earth, practical, useful advice in this book can't be had for money (or wait . . . it can be had for the price of this book . . .) Donald Maass has been an agent for longer than I can imagine and he has been a novelist in his own right for years. The man knows the market. He knows what kinds of lies writers tell themselves and what kinds of fantasies interfere with getting the job done -- writing and selling your novel. Far from being a commodity-centered approach to the modern market this book is a sympathetic account of how to do it and what to watch out for from a man with a lifetime's experience in writing, production, and sales. I keep buying copies to give to friends and acquaintances who have a novel and want to market it. While some of his information can be had from other sources, his depth of knowledge and all-round market savvy is worth its weight in gold for anybody with a novel who wants to know what's next.

Donald Maass is not only a wonderful agent, but a terrific author as well. His book is easy to read and invaluable for any serious writer. His knowledge and experience are extraordinary, but most impressive of all is his character and integrity as an agent. Buy this book!