I was answering submissions this last weekend and had a string of authors who were trying to convince me to acquire their novel because of who they were, or the social trend they were putting in the book. I had several stories that were being hyped because of the ethnicity of the author, or the fact the author was LGBTQ+. I had other stories that were being promoted because their story included these same elements. While we do know that publishers are putting out there that they are looking for projects in these areas, what authors seem to forget is that these characteristics of the book or the author do not sell the book. It is always about the quality of the book.
As I looked at the premise of some of these stories, or the partials they embedded into their query letter (which they were told not to do), I found the same thing over and over again. The writing was awful. The premise was terrible. What was worse is that these authors went over the top to always drop the fact that either they or their characters were part of these cultural groups.
If you listen to what editors and agents always say they want in a story, they will always come back to the same things. We want stories that are well written. We want characters we can connect to. We want a plot that keeps us turning the pages. We want writing that is amazing.
Did you notice that not once did we say, we want an author of a specific ethnicity or characters that are of a specific sexual preference.
We want good writing.
If, when you think about what you would tell n editor or agent what we want to know about your book, and you keep coming back to these ideas and not the story, you need to ask yourself, is that all that this story is about? If so, then it is probably not going to be marketable.
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