Short Genre-Crossing Novella: Any chance at all of being published? Advice please!

[everisen]

Hi everyone,

I uncovered this gem of a site the other day while browsing some agents, and thought it'd be the best place to turn to for some honest, helpful advice.

See, I'm currently finishing up a book I've been working on called Fireflies in The Window. Here's a short synopsis:


In FIREFLIES IN THE WINDOW, a quietly precocious young Chinese-American girl struggles to find her own voice while dealing with conflicting pressures and values that are thrown at her from all directions. Her honest and thoughtful observations on the world she sees around her offer an intriguing glance into the things that make us who we are and how they all, inevitably, change.

The reader is taken along on a moving and often surprising journey through this collection of short stories and individual vignettes, all of which hover and occasionally dip somewhere in the realm between prose and poetry. This novella is not quite a coming-of-age story, but has certain elements that bring to mind something very much along the lines of Amy Tan meets The House on Mango St.

About the Author: Julie Leong grew up in a quaint, bureaucratic little town in New Jersey, where she spent much of her childhood practicing piano, wearing glasses, and pretending to love mathematics. Aside from several local essay competitions, school newspapers, and a poem on BBC.com, she has no previous literary publications. Still, she is looking forward to having her hopes and dreams trampled and stomped underfoot and is prepared to drown her crushing disappointment in dark, dark chocolate if necessary.

So there's the general picture.

My question is that at 15,000(ish) words, is there any audience at all for such a short multicultural/literary fiction/collection-style novella out there? Do I have any shot at getting an agent, or getting it published, or ANYTHING?


I should probably mention that I'm fifteen years old, as well.
Thanks in advance!

[Shweta]

First thing -- :welcome:

Second thing, you'll find a number of other awesome teenagers on this board. Something I've picked up from them is that it doesn't matter how old you are, it matters how you write. One who got an agent last year (who had agents fighting over her!) didn't tell the agent her age till she'd been offered representation. So it is totally possible, and your age certainly doesn't count against you in any way :)

Third, novellas are a very hard sell these days. And 15000 words is difficult. It'd come to less than 50 pages, which is almost impossible to market as a book. You might want to see if Aqueduct Press is interested -- they might be, if there is any speculative aspect to your novella. But if I had a 15,000 word piece, I'd probably try to figure out if a 7000-word part of it might be a standalone short story.

[James D. Macdonald]

While it would be hard to market as a print book, the length could work well for e-pubs. May I suggest looking at duotrope.com (http://www.duotrope.com/) for mainstream and slipstream markets?

Collections are very hard to market. You might consider individual publication in places that take short stories and poetry, then collecting them as a reprint collection (with some original bridging material).

When looking for markets, only look at the ones that pay pro or semi-pro rates. The others won't have any readers and may be out of business in six months (exception: high-prestige markets). The only thing worse than not being published is being published badly.

Your age is immaterial. Readers don't care, and editors only care about their readers.

[Shady Lane]

Hola--

My quick two cents about mentioning your age in your query--

Don't do it unless you're seventeen.

Seventeen is, according to my agent, the age to be if you want to be young enough to be quirky and interesting but old enough so they don't wonder if legal stuff is going to be way over your head or you're going to fall to pieces if they ask you to cut a paragraph. I actually had this conversation with my agent (who didn't know my age, until she offered, as Shweta said--I'm going to be self-centered and assume she was talking about me) right before we went on submission:

Agent: How old are you?
Me: Still sixteen.
Agent: How long until you're seventeen?
Me: Two months.
Agent: Okay...I'm going to tell editors you're seventeen.

So there you go.

(by the way, my novella was accepted by a small ebook publisher when I was fifteen. There's hope!)

[James D. Macdonald]

There is the question of being able to sign contracts. That's what parents are for.

If a real market wants your story (and all they care about is the story), they'll find a way.

[Shady Lane]

True--it was given for me that my parents were willing to cosign the contracts. I assume it's necessary to make that clear.

[Feathers]

I agree with pretty much everything everyone else said. My 2 cents is that you should try to publish the vignettes separately in various literary journals/magazines, then gather them later and try publishing them as an e-book, or wait until your agented for something else, and then bring your novellette thingy to your agent's attention.

Reasons: I think it would be reasonably difficult to get it published as is, or get an agents interest as is. It's really too small for a novella and can't constitute a chapbook. If you can get the pieces published individually, that could help your sales later on if you gathered them and published it as an e-book. You'll already have some kind of exposure and fan base. And if you try later on to publish the whole novelette traditionally, it would really help an editor/agent to see that some of these pieces have already been published.

Just MHO :)

-Feathers

[Shweta]

I actually had this conversation with my agent (who didn't know my age, until she offered, as Shweta said--I'm going to be self-centered and assume she was talking about me) right before we went on submission:

Of course I was. :D I was just avoiding names to protect the guilty...

Agent: How old are you?
Me: Still sixteen.
Agent: How long until you're seventeen?
Me: Two months.
Agent: Okay...I'm going to tell editors you're seventeen.:ROFL:

[everisen]

Right, thanks very much for all the input. Will definitely be taken into account.

[Gillhoughly]

Here's another thread on novellas (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114877)you might want to check out!