Friday, November 19, 2010

What do you want?

by Lauren

Thanks to everyone who joined Jim yesterday for our first DGLM blog chat! If you missed it, check out the entry from yesterday to replay it and read the answers to all the great questions he got. Lots of good query information in there, especially. We’re going to be doing more of these, so if you have any suggestions for topics, please let us know in the comments!

More excitement that’s coming your way, dear blog readers, is a revamp and relaunch of our blog and website. Primarily we’re going to be combining the two into a single site, but we’d love to add some interesting and helpful new features in the process. That’s where you fine folks come in. What would you like to see? We’ve gotten some fantastic tips from all of you in the past, and we’d love to hear what more we could do that you’d find useful. As much as possible, we’d love to work the things that you want into our design!

Once the blog is moved, we’re also going to look to better integrate our blog and Facebook page (Related: do you like us, but not yet “like” us? If so, follow us here!), so if anyone has any thoughts or tips on that, we’d love to hear them.

Part of the revamp means a move to WordPress, because we wanted to be able to host our website and blog as one. I know we had some readers who hoped we’d stay on Blogger when we first suggested it (and that’s why we didn’t move then just to get more bells & whistles) so I’m wondering what we can do to make the transition easy. I suspect most of you can just as easily follow us on WordPress, but I think the problem will come for Google devotees who don’t use a Google Reader. Have things changed on this front in the last year? Anyone know of a way we can keep things simple for the Blogger fans?

Let us know your thoughts below!

And on a final note, with Thanksgiving coming up next week, it’s a perfect time to say thanks to all of you for making our first year of blogging in earnest such a fun one! We’re so grateful for all the feedback we’ve gotten: from technical help, to reading suggestions, to your thoughts on the issues of the day. Thanks to you all for joining the conversation and for forming a little community for us to take part in! It’s not always easy to find time or a subject, but you do make it a pleasure!

6 comments:

  1. Well, since you ask... ;) I'd suggest each one of the agents of DGLM to have their own update place, to put quick things, as queries status, what they've been looking for, closed time for queries, etc. And a space to your new releases - I know it's in the main site, but it could be more upfront.
    And, of course, a FAQ place - so nobody will ask the same questions over and over again.

    Of course these are all only suggestions. I love this blog and I'm a blogger fan, so it'll be sad to see you guys move...

    EEV.

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  2. Exciting! If WordPress works for you, we'll find a way to make it work for us, too. It doesn't sound like you're expecting too many major glitches.

    I second EEV's motion for a place for agent updates. Great idea!

    The blog chat Jim hosted last Thursday was awesome. Specific themes on the next round would probably be helpful (I was late to the party but did read every word).

    The query critique? More, please! And the thoughtful posts on everything from racism to picket lines to book packagers...makes me feel ungrateful asking for more when you're already giving so much.

    Thank YOU for sharing your insights with writers through this blog. It's nice to hear your enthusiasm about taking the next step forward and can't wait to visit your new "digs!"

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  3. I don't necessarily have a topic, but I do have a question which I suppose might translate into one.

    I have often heard agents discuss the fact that you need to "be in love" with a book in order to represent it. In fact, there are numerous examples on blogs of agents discussing how they might have liked something, but didn't feel passionate enough about it to represent it.

    So let's say you take on a client because you're in love with their first book, but you only like the next, or even the next few? Even my favorite writers are about 50% hit or miss for me. Some I love, some I just like, and some I even outright dislike. I imagine it would be unusual to really love every book someone wrote.

    So I guess my question is two-fold. One, as an agent, do you often find yourself liking some stories more than others, or are you so passionate about a writer's style that you tend to love them all, and two, what do you do if you aren't feeling the same passion for subsequent books?

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  4. I third anonymous's suggestions about agent updates. Particularly it would be fun to see what the agents are seeing a lot of in their query pile, in addition to what they'd like to see.

    I love to know what kind of queries are trending.

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  5. Thanks for the feedback! I'll look into the idea of an update section for agents and what that would entail for us.

    An FAQ is also a great idea, and one I bet we could put together pretty easily.

    Jennifer, that's probably too specific a question to spin into a blog chat topic, so Jim tackled it on the blog today. Check it out: http://dglm.blogspot.com/2010/11/wheres-love.html

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