Yes, I personally like to read Science Fiction and Fantasy myself and I tend to do the kind of books I like to read. I probably am the only agent at Folio that works with Science Fiction and Fantasy, and the kind of books I gravitate towards aren’t your traditional space opera or sword and sorcery. They are more the ones that happen to be like literary fiction that also have elements of the fantastic or paranormal in them. Books like The Time Traveler’s Wife or the George R.R. Martin books or Philip Pullman’s work. Those books are beautifully written; large epic novels are the type of novels that appeal to me.

You mentioned during your presentation at the conference some things that an author should bring to the table when looking for an agent. Would you care to list some of those things for me now?

Ok, well first of all an author should bring to the table a beautifully written book, with a wonderfully innovative world and characters that people are compelled to read about. Beyond that it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a way already in place to tell the general public about your work. Constructing your platform before you send to an agent is a great thing to do. If you can figure out a way to bring the people off the street into a bookstore to buy your book, that would be a great way to break out.

You mentioned something else in your talk about American publishers being reluctant to publish books in which there are no Americans. I personally have suspected this bias—though the editors from the major U.S. publishing houses deny it. If you would care to be quoted, I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

I don’t think this bias is limited necessarily to the United States. I think people in other countries tend to gravitate towards books that resonate for them. French or Japanese publishers would I’m sure prefer to have French or Japanese protagonists with stories set in their own country. So, if American publishers want to do books with either American characters or stories taking place in America that seems natural to me. Does that mean that they are likely to miss a lot of great books? Absolutely.

You also spoke in your presentation about an author rarely selling their first novel, and that it was better to keep writing and not give up. Can you tell me more about that?

I think every author that gets published has at least one novel stored away somewhere that just wasn’t ready for “prime time.” Writing is a long involved process of trial and error. The things you learn writing the first manuscript will make the next one a hundred percent better. And, what you learn writing the second will make the third even better. So, it might not be until you have written that third, or even fourth or fifth book that your work is ready for the general public and a big publisher.

Some author friends and I were talking recently about editorial staff being let go and not replaced, and then how long it takes for even agented submissions to be read and commented upon. Do you have any thoughts on how the publishing industry is faring at the moment in this regard?

You know I think this problem tends to be worse in the science fiction and fantasy genre than elsewhere in the industry. I think this is a combination of two factors in particular. One is that some SF publishers, unlike other trade publishers, accept unagented submissions. This increases the amount of manuscripts they have to read. It can get to the point where it becomes unmanageable. For example most publishers dealing with literary fiction or nonfiction require agented submissions. So, an agent liking your work is the first gate you must get past. The other reason for the long time is that there are relatively few houses publishing fantasy and science fiction—and doing it well. There isn’t the urgency to get the book read that comes with a good literary novel. For example if I send out a literary novel and the editor doesn’t read it that week, the chances are that another publisher will read and buy it the next. But because there are only about five or six major houses specializing in publishing science fiction and fantasy, the competition isn’t there at the level it is with other sorts of fiction.

Give me some of your dos and don’ts about query letters.

They are all of the standard. Make sure there aren’t any spelling or grammar errors. In general three paragraphs about the book, and one more paragraph about yourself. It’s been my experience that this last is the most important, for I’ve found that interesting people write interesting books. The more quirky and cool things you can put in that paragraph—without going over the top—the more likely you are to interest an agent in your work.

Do you have any thoughts about the publishing industry, by accepting only agented submissions is, in effect, now using agents to read their slush piles? You must get swamped.

Sure, I get about five hundred query letters a week actually. For me this is great, because it gives agents like me a lot of leverage they might not have had in the past. Today the industry couldn’t function without agents separating the wheat from the chaff. An agent’s role is very important. Publishers rely on good agents to find them good products to feed the machine that is now trade publishing.

What do you look for when reading a submission?

For me it’s beautiful, lyrical writing. Then it’s great characterization, and after that it’s a compelling plot. And beyond that in speculative fiction, it’s a world that’s fresh enough, and interesting enough, to capture my attention.

Sometimes even when an author has an agent an author can wait more than a year or two without a sale. When that happens, is it time to look for a new agent, or is that just how the process goes?

If you have been fortunate enough to find an agent that you like and can work well with you, focus much more on the process than the results. What is he or she doing on your behalf? You should be able to get clear, coherent responses to such questions as: Who has seen your work and what they have said about it? As long as editors have seen your work and are responding, there really isn’t much more an agent can do. And if it takes that editor a year or more to respond, there isn’t much else that can be done. If an agent is reluctant to tell you where he has sent your work and what was said about it, then you might have a problem. As long as you know the agent is getting your book to an editor, then you are probably in pretty good shape.

But if an editor is taking a very long time to read an author’s work, doesn’t the agent have a responsibility to perhaps nudge him a bit, or submit elsewhere?

There are a lot of very slow editors in the fantasy and SF genre, for the reasons we talked about earlier, but an agent will do everything he can to get a submission read as quickly as possible, for after all that’s how we make our money. As long as your manuscript is sitting on an editor’s desk there is no money getting into our bank account. So, yes we will follow up with an editor as often as we feel we can without damaging the relationship. But sometimes the market is just slow, in a way that it isn’t for general fiction.

What is the difference between the fantasy and science fiction market and the general fiction market?

The fantasy and science fiction market is smaller, but its audience is also easier to reach. For a women’s commercial fiction title for example, there is an entire universe of people out there who might pick it up at the bookstore. For SF and fantasy there is a smaller number, but much more of an opportunity to develop an enthusiastic and devoted following. Which is probably why the genre lends itself so nicely to a series of books rather than just a single title.

Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Hoffman, it has been a pleasure speaking with you today.