Wendy Keller of Keller Media is the CEO of her company which not only includes her literary agency but also a speaking bureau. In our interview with Keller today, she discusses what she is doing actively to help authors build their platforms online, why she’s more excited than ever to embrace new technologies in the publishing industry and why she refuses to read any more memoirs.
Wendy, your agency seems different in that it focuses on building author’s platforms. How important is that now with your authors in order to keep them from eating Ramen noodles the rest of their lives?
What’s wrong with ramen noodles? We have broadened our focus from just a literary agency and speakers bureau to include a company that builds online platforms (www.BookPunchPublicity.com) and a service that helps authors invest in their future and configure their talents to the emerging boom (www.FameFinders.com) We believe the prepared will rule the new media world. We’re prepared and we’re handing out life vests!
So, your company really supports the Internet as a means to spread word about your author’s books and build their platform. What do you think about new technologies such as the iPad?
Bring it on! This is the most important invention to affect the common, literate man since Gutenberg! This is going to save trees, make books easier to buy faster, make them more interesting and make the entire publishing industry respond quickly to consumer demand. This is fantastic. It’s also the wild west and Napster all over again – the swift and clever will survive, and for now, nothing is truly “fair” – like the percentages paid to authors. But then again, 20% of 50,000 extra electronic sales is still good cash money. It always comes down to this: is your content good and your market huge?
What do you hear editors asking more for?
That’s is an impossible question to answer. The authors we specialize in have or want to have a massive platform – tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people they reach before, during and after publication. We look for people who don’t sit around dreaming of how they’ll spend the money once they’re on Oprah and instead are out there making things happen.
So, for all the writers out there reading this, how should they approach you?
Email queries to Query@KellerMedia.com. No attachments or embedded photos. If we want to see your NONFICTION project, we’ll let you know. We only handle nonfiction, which doesn’t include memoirs unless you’re a celebrity or cookbooks unless you have a show or a renowned restaurant or books channeled by aliens unless you have skin that glows green and funny shaped eyes. Pet peeves: the last three types of queries, as well as slow drivers in the fast lane and people who shout on their cell phones. Other than that, the world’s a lovely place to be (until I go back to my home planet).
And finally Wendy, what is something about you that very few people know?
Other than a cruel sense of humor? Hmmm. I speak some Italian, so I got to be part of an archaeological dig last summer in Pompeii and saw things that no one has seen since A.D. 79. THAT was on my bucket list.
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