How Publishing Really Works

I'm Sure You Know This Already, But I've Moved

2010-06-22T10:00:00.000+01:00

How Publishing Really Works has now moved to its own domain which you can find here. In order to keep everything tidy I've closed comments on this blog, but the discussions continue at the new location. I look forward to seeing you there.

Following My New Website On Blogger

2010-06-17T10:00:00.000+01:00

I've received a few emails over the last couple of weeks from readers who were used to following my this blog from within their own Blogger dashboards, and who now can't tell when I've posted something on my new site because it has no "Follow" widget there.

If you come into this category, and would like to make my blog updates appear in your Blogger reading list, it can be done. You just have to add my new site's address manually to your reading list: it's very easy, and will only take you a minute. Here's how you do it.

First, go to your Blogger dashboard and scroll down until you can see your own reading list. At the bottom of that section you'll see two buttons: "add" and "manage". Click on the "add" button: your screen will go pale and a dialogue box will open which is titled, "Step 1: Add Blogs To Follow".

Make sure the first option, "Add from URL", is selected and then, in the box below it, type in the URL for my new website, which is "http://howpublishingreallyworks.com" (only without the quote-marks). Then click on the "next" button, and you'll be asked if you want to follow publically or anonymously. Then click "finish", and you're done. From then on, all the posts I make at my new address will appear in your reading list, so you need never miss one again.

There. I told you it was easy. Now all I have to do is work out how to work the trick in reverse, so I can follow all of you lot from my nice new Wordpress dashboard. There has to be a way.

(This post is duplicated on my new site: you won't be able to comment on it here as comments are closed here now, but if you would like to say something just follow this link and you land in the right place.)

Does Everyone Have All Their Bags?

2010-05-07T20:06:00.003+01:00

How Publishing Really Works is moving to its new home! I'm going to start moving things over there tomorrow, so while I do that you should all bookmark our new address. I'll be disabling comments over here to make sure that nothing gets left behind.

I'll see you all at the new place very soon. Bring your party hats.

Guest Post: No Idea Is Wasted: Nicola Morgan

2010-05-03T10:00:00.002+01:00

I am a big smug show-off because I have lots of writer-friends. But I almost never ask my friends to discuss their own books on my blog because it gets embarrassing when I don't like their books.

There's no danger of that happening today. When the wonderful Nicola Morgan (who we all know, right?) asked me if I'd host one of the stops on her blog tour I was pleased to say yes because I knew it would be a good book; now I've read Wasted, I know that it's a fabulous one. Wasted is one of the best books I've read all year and if you feel even slightly put off by the idea of reading a book for young adults, don't be: if ever there was a crossover title, Wasted is it.

Right. Nicola now owes me at least a tenner. Over to her.

First, thanks so much to Jane for letting me visit her blog! [I should hope so too! -J] I've never done a blog tour and it feels like a lot of fun. Since Jane's blog is about publishing and how it works, I thought I'd say something about ideas and how they work before publication - and if any of you writers are at that horrible stage of feeling that your idea just isn't going to work or isn't going to be published, I hope you'll take heart from what I'm about to tell you.

***

In theory, I don't believe that "everything has a purpose". In practice, I make damned sure it does.

It was a simple chance event on a London underground station that got me thinking about luck, chance and randomness and led many years later to my new novel, Wasted. It wasn't an earth-shattering event but it got me thinking. Obsessively. So, I began a novel for adults - I'd two unpublished ones languishing already - about chance, quantum mechanics, and unpredictability, involving repeated multiple possibilities. The idea was that if there is a god - which I know there isn't - he will either play dice or at least have a lot of fun observing. But halfway through, a completely different idea hit me, this time for teenagers. I abandoned god and quantum
physics.

That new idea became my first published novel, Mondays are Red. And then came others and suddenly I was a YA novelist and left the adult stuff behind. The other book lay half-written somewhere. But ideas are never wasted. They become other things. They strengthen the foundations of our writing lives. Sometimes, later, they seek sunlight. So, after 15 years, thedormant seed sown randomly in a London underground station began to grow and I began to write it. I didn't look at the first version because this one would be different. I was different by then, though still fascinated by chance and luck.

A bit of my heart is in all my books, naturally, but Wasted has all of me. When I started it this second time, I didn't care about publication. I decided not to show my editor and or get my agent to ask for a contract. It was a case of, "If you like it, you can have it; if you don't, I'm writing it anyway and sod anyone else." This was my story and no one could stop me writing it.

She loved it, as did my agent. It was a wonderful feeling: writing the book I always wanted to write. And although I want some people, enough people, any people, to love it too, the odd thing is that I slightly don't care if lots of people don't. Obviously, I hope readers don't say horrible things...

I guess you want to know about the incident, the random event on a London Underground station? I had travelled from Edinburgh, where I live, to London for my first ever business-trip, first public-speaking event. (I was a dyslexia specialist then.) I'd done the event and my head was spinning; I was high on adrenaline and seeing things in a brighter light. For some reason which I will never understand, I decided to take a different underground route from the obvious one. So, I was on an escalator at Charing Cross station, when I should have been at Victoria.

What happened was trivial really, the sort of thing that happens all the time: you see someone you know, somewhere they shouldn't be. So, I saw a friend from Edinburgh, on the same escalator. We were both shocked, laughed, and had that "fancy meeting you here, 350 miles from home" conversation. Nothing happened - we didn't have an affair or even a drink!

Now, maybe it was my heightened adrenaline, something getting the creativity going, but I had a light-bulb moment, a kind of "thought experiment" which has absolutely obsessed me ever since. It was: "What if there was something like a god, who could observe every human and know everything about them; and what if he could see everyone passing and meeting and mostly not meeting and weaving unpredictably from place to place, NEVER aware how narrowly they had just missed an important encounter with someone they knew or someone who might influence their lives? What if humans could be tracked like radioactive particles, bobbing around in a kind of Brownian motion, in patterns, and that the god was sitting there cackling at the powerlessness of these poor humans as they went down that street or took that turning or missed that train or smiled at that person or had this thought caused by that sight or sound or breath of air on their face? What if he could show us all that, and we could observe the almost happenings, the near-misses, and if we could, just by observing, change the tiniest things that affect lives invisibly? And what if we could then tell the story of some of those things, show the inner workings of our world?"

And that, essentially, is the idea behind Wasted. And if it hadn't been for that trivial coincidence on a London escalator, in my state of heightened adrenaline, I would never have written it.

To all writers: when you have to give up an idea - if it wasn't working, didn't get published, whatever - it's not wasted. One day, you might see how to write it entirely differently, and better. If not, the seed can lie dormant for as long as it's needed, and when the right time comes you will find a way to grow it. Or if you don't, it will still strengthen you. So, never view an idea as wasted.

Nicola Morgan

Wasted is Nicola Morgan's new young adult novel, published today. She has created a special blog for the book, with competitions and stacks of background information, ideas, snippets and fascinating discussions about chance, risk and luck. Do visit it for some really interesting fun!

Five Things Phishing And Literary Scams Have In Common

2010-04-30T10:00:00.000+01:00

Today we hear once again from my online writer-friend Marian Perera, who has supported How Publishing Really Works ever since it first appeared, and runs an excellent blog of her own. Her debut novel, Before the Storm, is a fantasy that combines steam engines and a steamier romance. You can read an extract of it here.

A few days ago, I received a message that I thought came from my bank’s security department. The email asked me to verify my account information so that my service would not be interrupted. It provided a link which I could click to enter a few details.

The return email address seemed like my bank’s. I looked closely at the logo in the email, and it was identical to my bank’s.

1. They imitate the real thing.

That reminded me of some literary scams which pass themselves off as legitimate. Fake agents may take kickbacks from vanity presses to make it appear that they have sales, or they claim to have “worked with” commercial publishers. Many vanity presses will say they’re not by any means vanity presses – they’re co-publishers, subsidy publishers, traditional publishers, etc.

2. They rely on social compliance.

Society trains people not to question authority. Hustlers exploit this “suspension of suspiciousness” to make you do what they want.

From a presenter of The Real Hustle (1)

I don’t understand a great deal about banking, so I trust whatever my bank tells me. If they say there’s a security problem, I’ll believe them and do whatever’s necessary to have it fixed.

Many writers do the same thing with people or companies whom they perceive to be in a position of authority over them. Literary scammers play on that. They know that many writers find publishing complex at best, and trust their publishers and agents to deal with the intricacies of the business on their behalf. So they’re likely to comply even when faced with requests for money, as this writer did:

…soon after I signed the contract, they called me home and wanted me to pay with my credit card the sum of $49 saying it was necessary to cover the cost for priority production.

3. They cast their nets far, wide and indiscriminately.

I read through the email a second time (it was pretty short) and noticed that it wasn’t addressed to me.

Oh, it began with “Dear my-email-address”, but that’s not my name. Could whoever sent it have just used a mail merge program and a database of email addresses?

There are phishing scams which target specific victims (spear phishing), but many of them will send out such mass, impersonal emails. It provides the maximum return for the minimum effort. The same thing applies to author mills, which rely on churning out content for the least amount of work… on their part, not on the writers’ part. So they accept almost anything, and their correspondence tends to be form-letters or copy-and-paste.

4. They make it easy for you to comply.

To verify my account’s security measures the hard way, I would have had to look up my bank’s phone number, call them and then wait on the line for someone to answer. On the other hand, there was a convenient, clickable link in the body of the email…

If you want a real agent or a real publisher, you may need to spend years honing your skills and more time undergoing the grueling process of submissions and rejections. It can be difficult and disheartening. And even after the book is accepted, the work is by no means over. I spent most of my Christmas break struggling with edits.

But a fake agent or publisher will be more than happy to accept your manuscript as-is, and will do so quickly. They’re unlikely to ask for edits or changes. They will make it very easy for you to be maneuvered into a situation where you end up paying them.

5. They can be defeated with a little research.

I don’t remember where I first read of phishing scams, but I was pretty sure that banks don’t ask you to provide details of your accounts in emails, just as legitimate agents and publishers don’t ask you for money.

So I called my bank and spoke to a nice customer service agent who confirmed that the email was a scam and suggested I forward it to the bank’s actual security department. He also persuaded me to open another account with them, the smooth talker. But on the whole, this story has a happy ending and I hope any writer faced with a literary scam will also deal appropriately with the scammer.

1. Stajano F, Wilson P. Understanding scam victims: seven principles for systems security. 2009 (retrieved April 3, 2010). University of Cambridge. Available at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-754.pdf

Will I Get Published Any Other Way?

2010-04-27T10:00:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I corresponded with a frustrated writer who was considering vanity publication. When I advised her against it she replied with words to this effect:

“I can see why you don’t like it. But I can’t get my book published any other way. There are millions of writers out there, and only a few of them get a publishing deal. It’s luck more than talent these days.”

It saddened me that she considered publication some sort of lottery, rather than the meritocracy it really (mostly) is. It also saddened me to think that she valued her work so little that not only was she prepared to give it away, she was also prepared to pay someone to take it off her hands. This has to be wrong: we all work hard at our writing, and we should recognise its true worth. Even if our work is not appropriate for mainstream publication it still has value, which can be measured by the efforts we’ve put into it and the satisfaction we’ve derived from writing it: why hand it over to a company which is only interested in how much money you give it, and not how well your book reads, looks or sells?

There will always be books which are not appropriate for mainstream publication, because of their subject matter or their writer’s lack of experience or talent. I would never recommend that the authors of these books use a vanity press: such presses are almost always exploitative, costly and ineffectual when it comes down to producing a high-quality book and then selling those books to anyone but their authors. So what alternatives are out there for writers who are desperate for publication, but who are not likely to attract the attentions of the mainstream press?

This is where self-publication comes into its own. It is available to everyone and needn’t cost a penny if you choose a POD provider like Lulu, CreateSpace or Lightning Source (and yes, I’m well aware that there are other options out there and I hope you’ll suggest a few which aren't vanity publishers in disguise). POD providers allow you to download your text into a book template and add your own cover art or image (or they provide you with stock images which are copyright-cleared). The book will be available for sale through the POD provider’s website, and if you pay for an ISBN to add to the package you can also get it listed on Amazon and other online retailers. You’ll be able to correct or amend the book at any time, without paying any extra cost (although substantial alterations require a new ISBN, which you will have to pay for). But doing that will give you everything that a vanity publisher will give you, at a far lower cost.

How I got published: Marian Perera

2010-04-16T10:00:00.000+01:00

I am very fond of Marian Perera: she is a knowledgeable and prolific member of Absolute Write, has supported How Publishing Really Works ever since it first appeared, and runs an excellent blog of her own. She studies medical laboratory technology when she isn’t writing, or blogging about writing. Her debut novel, Before the Storm, is a fantasy that combines steam engines and a steamier romance. You can read an extract of it here.

She works tirelessly at her writing, and puts a huge amount of effort into helping other writers improve. I was so glad when I learned that she'd sold her first book: here's how it came about.

170,000 words.

That was roughly the length of my first manuscript, and it was the first in a projected four-book series. Even for fantasy, it was… ambitious.

I’d meant it to be a grand Tolkienesque epic: traditional in story, sweeping in scope. Selling such an opus would not be easy, but among the polite rejections was a request for a full from Tor.

That turned out to be a mixed blessing. It kept me persevering through more rejections, but I also took it as a sign that the epic was good. Even when the full was rejected I kept writing sequels – sequels which, of course, couldn’t be submitted anywhere.

It was disappointing and began to wear down my interest in the epic. So I started playing with a quirky idea for an unrelated fantasy. Since that wasn’t the start of a doorstopper series, I thought of it as a small, self-contained story that took second place to the epic.

But it was surprisingly fun to write. Because it wasn’t a strict fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien, it could involve science as well as magic. I’ve always been interested in chemistry – well, in blowing things up – so the characters used calcium carbide cannons and steam engines in a battle. And there were also some steamy encounters that didn’t involve the engines.

At that point, I realized the little project had grown into a standalone novel. Leaner and better-written than the epic, it stood more of a chance of meeting agents’ and publishers’ submission guidelines as well.

So I sent it out, revised, resubmitted and signed up with an agent.

That turned out to be a mixed blessing too. The agent’s advice improved my manuscript, and I learned something else in the process – what writers should and shouldn’t do when searching for representation. But in the end, the steam engines were spinning their wheels in that particular situation.

By then I’d also learned to reconsider anything that didn’t further my career, whether that was a grand epic or an agent. It helped that steampunk was increasingly popular, and I decided to submit the manuscript myself. I looked for a publisher that didn’t require representation, such as a small press.

This time around, I did the research before submission, rather than after acceptance. Some writers recommended Samhain Publishing for speculative fiction with romantic elements, and there are independently compiled sales stats and royalty figures on Samhain and other romance e-publishers at Show Me The Money and EREC.

Samhain had a thread over twenty pages long on the Absolute Write forums and I read through that. Given the choice of sending a manuscript to a general submissions address and targeting someone in particular, I picked an editor who said she liked strong worldbuilding and characters from different cultures. She responded a month later, accepting the manuscript.

There isn’t too much mixed about this blessing, maybe because I finally started doing things right. My first novel, Before the Storm, has just been released by Samhain and I’m very pleased with its design and production. My editor expressed interest in a sequel, but while I’ll start that very soon, I’ll also query agents about another standalone fantasy with a scientific twist. This time it’s dragons and clinical psychology.

Yes, I figured out what I do best – which isn’t to write like Tolkien, it’s to write like me.

You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover

2010-04-04T10:00:00.008+01:00

A book jacket has a lot to achieve.

It has to be eye-catching enough to stand out from all the other books on bookshop shelves, but not so different that it scares off its book’s potential readers.

It has to provide information on several levels: the title and author name must be clearly legible; the book’s genre has to be immediately apparent; the illustration or design used has to do have some connection with the book’s plot, or central theme, without giving away any essential plot points; the jacket has to make it clear if the book is part of a series by conforming to certain design elements of previous books in that same series while also distinguishing the book from others in the series; and the jacket also has to establish or continue to uphold the style for its author, in order to help promote future sales.

There’s a fascinating discussion of the psychology of cover design in Lynn Price’s book, The Writer’s Tackle Box, which I urge everyone to read: it's already available in America from Behler Publications, and will be available in the UK at the end of May, published by Snowbooks.

Unsurprisingly, authors rarely get any say in the design of their book jackets (although some independent presses are fantastic about listening to their authors when it comes to jacket design). The major retailers will have more say in the design of the book jacket than an individual author will: if a senior book buyer doesn’t like a jacket it will almost always be redesigned.

Some designs break the rules: Scarlett Thomas's novel The End of Mr Y had a jacket design that rendered its title almost unreadable, but its striking design and original oversized format more than compensated for that (even though the ink from the gorgeous matt-black edges rubbed off all over me as I read it).

Let’s put this to the test. Sally Zigmond is a good friend of mine and she comments regularly on this blog. Her first novel, Hope Against Hope, is published today by Myrmidon Books and its cover appears at the top of this article. What I’d like you to do is suggest what genre Sally writes in, and hazard a guess about her novel's subject-matter, just by looking at the cover. You're not allowed to look it up on Amazon, because that would be cheating. And no, Mrs Zigmond, while you’re allowed to comment you’re not allowed to play because you already know all the answers!

Guest Review: The Anatomy Of Prose, By Marjorie Boulton

2010-03-29T10:00:00.000+01:00

The Anatomy of Prose is a rigorous 1950s analysis of prose, seeking to classify different elements of prose as you would classify insects or flowers. From the broad divisions of types of prose (narrative, argumentative, dramatic, informative, contemplative), Boulton proceeds to smaller divisions and sub-divisions, for example listing and defining 36 different rhetorical devices. Despite the intense detail, it was an easy read—the writing, as you’d expect from an anatomist of prose, was quite stylish and always very clear.

The part I found most interesting and useful was the chapter on prose rhythm. Boulton explains how to scan prose in the same way as poetry, breaking it down into “feet” and then analysing where the stress falls within each foot. For example “become” is an iambic foot, because the stress falls on the second syllable, whereas “outcome” is a spondee, because both syllables are stressed. There’s a great listing of all possible combinations up to the five-syllable dochmiac, and then examples of passages scanned for rhythm. For example in a Bible passage (Psalm 90, v1-9), she shows how the rhythm builds up to climaxes such as the molossus (three syllables, all stressed)—“Thou art God”. Important parts like this are surrounded by weaker stresses to highlight them. When the passage speaks of man’s weakness, the rhythm is faltering, using weaker paeons (four syllables with only one syllable stressed). The rhythm, in other words, reflects and amplifies the content.

I don’t think I’ll spend much time analysing the rhythm of my prose, or anyone else’s, in that much detail, but it’s wonderful to have that knowledge in the back of my head, as a way of understanding why a particular passage may or may not work.

The explanations throughout are clear and well illustrated with examples, mostly from older literature like the Bible and 18th century writers, but also some more contemporary (for 1954) writers like Hemingway, Steinbeck and Woolf. I’ve never seen writing analysed so scientifically before. I’ve noticed that a sentence can sound immeasurably better when the order is altered a little or a word is taken out, but never knew why. This book helped me to understand it much better, and I think it will make me a better writer and reader.

Andrew Blackman's debut novel, On The Holloway Road, won the Luke Bitmead Writer's Bursary and was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize. He recently moved back to the UK after living for six years in New York, where he worked as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

How I Got Published: Karen Schwabach

2010-03-19T10:00:00.001Z

Today Karen Schwaback explains how a combination of her membership of a professional writers' association and a very sensible sister led to her eventual publication despite her efforts to scupper her own success.

My middle-grades historical fiction manuscript, A Pickpocket's Tale, won the Sydney Taylor Manuscript contest, which is open only to unpublished writers and is free to enter. There's a nice prize, but it doesn't include publication.

Then I joined SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators). They have a bimonthly journal which lists market updates at the end—often the contact information for editors who are reading. In one 2002 issue, a young editor at Random House was listed as interested in middle-grades historical fiction, so I sent her Pickpocket.

It was a year before she contacted me—via my yahoo email address, because by that time I'd moved from Alaska to North Carolina and had completely forgotten having submitted to her. She said she liked the story but wanted to see revisions. When I sent those, she sent them back with what I now recognize was an editorial letter (a detailed request for revisions)—but at the time I thought it was a rejection. Now I wonder how many writers receive such letters and go off in a huff as I almost did.

Fortunately my sister talked sense into me, I did the revisions, and they made an offer for A Pickpocket's Tale, which was published in 2006, and was followed by The Hope Chest two years later. I definitely had no connections, but did have two important assets that I recommend to anyone trying to break in:

1. Join your genre's professional organization if there is one, so that you can get constant market updates

2. Enter contests, including those open only to unpublished writers, so that you can get credentials

Good luck!

How Books Are Sold

2010-03-17T10:00:00.001Z

Commercial publishers achieve their high sales levels by ensuring that they have a good stock of books and an efficient distribution system which will get their titles from warehouse to bookshop shelves as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

This backs up the efforts of their sales teams, which use a combination of telesales calls and store visits to take orders from booksellers across the country.

The sales staff are supported by the publisher's marketing staff, who produce full-colour catalogues for the sales teams to refer to. These catalogues list all titles from backlist to front runners, including books planned for publication in the future, and are sent free of charge to distributors, wholesalers, bookshops and anyone else in between. The marketing staff advertise books to the book industry via the trade press, and promote the books to potential readers by buying advertising in national and niche publications; by producing promotional goods like posters, postcards and dump-bins; and by arranging special promotions and book signings. On top of that, the marketing staff also supply all and any relevant publications with advanced reading copies (ARCs) months before each title is published, in order to tie in with the periodicals’ own publication schedules and allow the reviewers plenty of reading time.

Together, the sales and marketing teams operate a double-sided attack which ensures that just as a book becomes available in bookshops across the country, its potential readers will become aware of it, it so maximising its sales.

When I consider the huge orchestrated efforts that commercial publishers make to promote and sell their titles, and compare their sales figures to those of most self-published books, I am surprised: not by the gulf between the two different levels of sales, but by the fact that so many self-published books, none of which have anything like the same level of support that commercially-published titles receive, manage to sell more than five or ten books each. Such sales figures are a testament to the cleverness, creativity and determination of those self-publishers, and should be applauded.

How To Win Your Arguments

2010-03-15T10:00:00.001Z

There are several strategies which can be employed in order to win your arguments.

One is to state your view then immediately run in circles with your fingers in your ears while shouting "la la la, not listening!" This can be very effective if you can sing very loudly (as can I), or you have plenty of stamina and a higher boredom threshold than those you are arguing against.

Another is to state that there's no point trying to discuss something with someone whose mind is so obviously closed. This tactic provides no substance but is a useful exercise in meaningless point-scoring, and can sometimes lend an air of superiority to a stance which only really deserves attention from The Point And Laugh Brigade.

A better strategy is to ensure that your argument has a substantial logical basis and is presented in an appropriate way, and there are some books which can help you with this.

For a gently humorous exploration of the subject, you'll not find better than Madsen Pirie’s How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic. It's an easy read; it's entertaining, well-written, and witty; and it's very informative.

Anthony Weston’s Rulebook for Arguments is a slim book which provides a slightly more serious read and discusses the various forms an argument can take.

If, however, you're prepared to go really hard-core then The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph is the book for you. It is dry and dense and at times almost impenetrable: I doubt it contains a single joke. But it's rock-solid, rigorous, and absolutely reliable and if you're brave enough to tackle it, it is a fascinating and transforming read.

What do any of these books have to do with publishing? Not much. But if a writer cannot formulate a coherent and logical argument then at best they're going to make themselves look foolish and at worst they're going to fail, no matter which genre they favour.

How I Got Published: Lesley Cookman

2010-03-12T10:00:00.001Z

Today we hear how Lesley Cookman got herself into print while not really trying, and realise how working at our craft can bring far bigger results than expected.

When I was young, I had a vision of how and where a lady writer would work. In a dark panelled room, with french windows hung with yellow patterned chintz and a desk, unaccountably in the middle of the room, with, naturally, not even a typewriter, let alone a computer (a what?). This owed a great deal to dear Dr Brewster’s surgery in a grand Edwardian house, where I was taken for the usual childhood ailments after the passing of even dearer Dr Patel, with his tiny shopfront surgery in Trinity Road. Gosh, we were ahead of our time.

Of course, I eventually learnt that this was not How Publishing Really Works. Or even writing. I scribbled away as a young person, mainly pony stories, in brown covered Woolworth’s exercise books, narrow-feint (lines close together, in case you didn’t know). Then I grew up, realised that writing was not what I could do as a living and embarked on a varied, if not variegated, career, encompassing modelling, acting, DJ-ing, being a cabin crew member with BA and, after marriage, a personnel consultant (Brook Street Bureau) and lowly minion at The Observer.

Then I had two children. At this stage of my life my late husband was still a professional musician and we were very poor, a state to which I have become accustomed. When he gave up the business – or rather, it gave him up – he returned to the career for which he was trained and became an art director with a magazine publishing company. One day, when I was pregnant with our third child, he came home with a very large cardboard box and said “There you are. Open it, put it together and write an article on it.” It was one of the very first personal desktop computers, and I did as I was told. The subsequent article was a commission from Which Computer and it started me on a new career.

Over the next twenty years I wrote pieces on science parks, computers for the disabled, computers for the classroom and new water sports. I edited Poultry Farmers’ Weekly. I wrote pantomimes, (luckily still performed across the British Isles, and, occasionally, The World) and a commissioned book on how to do it: How To Write A Pantomime, now in its third edition. A friend at a conference pressed a copy of her new book on how to write twist in the tail short stories into my hands and, having had no previous interest in weekly magazines or, indeed, short stories, I wrote one. Hey Presto! Another string to the writing bow. I was now that familiar thing, a writing whore.

Then, for no other reason than I wanted to prove something to myself, I decided to do an MA in Creative Writing in Wales. These were still newish, in that there weren’t many of them. Now you can find one on every corner above the newsagents. It turned out that I knew far more about the publishing world than any of the tutors, and even gave the class a lecture on the Romantic Novelists’ Association, of which they had never heard (!) and of which I had been a member for some years. However, at the end of the course, a fellow course member had the idea of producing a book of short stories in aid of Breast Cancer. This too was still a newish idea, and we did the whole thing between us. It was called Sexy Shorts for Christmas, and the company was called Accent Press. I asked all my friends in the RNA to contribute a story, and bless them, they did. My husband designed the cover and we had a fabulous launch at The Groucho, followed by a mini-tour of venues in Wales, including the National Library in Aberystwyth.

I then sank into obscurity once more until, shortly after the death of my husband, my friend from college asked me if I had done any more to the mystery novel of which the first twenty thousand words had been my dissertation. She had seen and liked it. I hadn’t done any more, of course, but I hastened to do so, and after another few thousand words, she offered for it. And so Libby Sarjeant and her less-than-believable adventures was born, with the publication of Murder in Steeple Martin.

Libby is about to appear in her sixth adventure (Murder in the Green will be published in early April), with her seventh, Murder Imperfect, in October and her eighth next year. Accent Press, under the aegis of my friend Hazel Cushion, has gone from strength to strength, I’m glad to say: so, in a way, that MA in Wales did us both some good.

I do not work in a panelled room, I stare at a blank wall and I write straight onto a Mac G5. My hair, as once I had envisaged, is not in a neat and classy French pleat, my clothes not beautifully tailored Chanel. I am a scruffy, slapdash individual who never ceases, not for a day, not for a moment, to be glad and grateful that I have this new career at a time of my life when other people are beginning to think about the funeral plan and the bus pass.

And this is not How Publishing Really Works for everybody. But it was for me, and if Libby’s first book hadn’t been received well by a certain section of the reading public, then there would never have been any more, so all the honing of the craft over the previous twenty-odd years was necessary. It always is. Good luck!

How Writers Could Effect Real Change

2010-03-10T10:00:00.002Z

Last spring, a writer called Mary Walters suggested that literary agents are killing literature by rejecting work which they consider unmarketable (she provided a nice piece of meta-analysis by simultaneously discussing the discussion which followed over at Authonomy*). Mary proposed that as the work that agents reject doesn't get seen by editors, it doesn't get published; from this, she concluded that literary agents are preventing all sorts of talented writers from reaching their potential readers. Her blog post notched up hundreds of replies and, according to Mary, several thousand views. Several agents and editors linked to her post and she was interviewed by UK literary agent and head honcho at Litopia, Peter Cox.

Good for Mary, I say: she got herself noticed, albeit not entirely in a positive way.

The problem is that her argument about literary agencies is based on a misunderstanding of how the publishing business works: and so when you begin to strip it down and look for solutions you get tangled in a maze of assumption and confusion: there is no clear resolution to her problem because (with all due respect to Mary) her argument was flawed.

Mary is not alone in her reliance on fallacy to prove her point. If you care to indulge in a little light Googling, I’m sure you’ll be able to find plenty more similar articles which insist that mainstream publishing is failing and suggest ways in which it could be made to succeed.

It seems to me that those suggestions focus primarily on the commentators’ own agendas. Often, the publishing failures they report aren't failures at all—just a misunderstanding on their part, or a feeling that publishing has somehow failed them, often by simply rejecting their work.

Almost all of these articles are eloquently written, passionately argued and contain a good few useful ideas, and some of them make suggestions of staggering brilliance; but they also demonstrate a huge misunderstanding of how publishing really works. Consequently, the few people who read these pieces and who work in publishing and who therefore have the access and contacts required to change things are likely to dismiss the articles as ill-informed nonsense; the good points are lost with the bad. The doubly-rejected writers will have their cynicism reinforced and nothing will change.

I urge anyone who considers that publishing is broken to do their best to first understand the business properly before announcing how it should be fixed. If you're convinced you know how it could be changed for the better then make sure you understand the full implications of that change; because that way you might get listened to by the people with the power to make those changes, and you could make a truly significant difference.

*I can't find a link to that Authonomy discussion now but if anyone knows where it is, do please add a link to it to the comments and I'll edit it in--thank you.

Guest Review: Bird By Bird, By Anne Lamott

2010-03-08T10:00:00.006Z

The final semester of my senior year had come, and one thing stood between me and a Bachelor of Arts in English—the dreaded capstone course. Part thesis, part professor’s pet project, the capstone centred on a theme such as “The Role of the Fool in Shakespeare” or “Archetypal Literary Theory.” Sometimes it proved interested; often it did not. I ended up with one of the latter, a nebulously named course titled “Life Writing” that was helmed by a professor who refused to define the topic (“Life Writing is whatever you want it to be”), had more ambition than sense (“If you don’t read every word of the twenty-three assigned books, you cannot expect a good grade”), and possessed an ego to match (“I am the god of this class”). Not exactly enjoyable. But somewhere in the middle of it, I found something that was: Anne Lamott’s delightfully messy writing manual Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life.

If it sounds strange to have read a book about writing narratives in a course that dealt with autobiography, well, join the club. But Bird By Bird fit the bill in that it intersperses Lamott’s literary dictums with bits about her own life. Well, more than just bits, really. Lamott lays on the personal detail pretty thick. Page after page can pass before she breaks away from discussing the execrable psychological short story she penned as a child or how she trained her toddler to recite anti-war chants on cue or her cancer-stricken friend Pammy’s final days and gets back to the practical stuff.

This will annoy those who want technical details on the finer points of plotting or easily avoided grammatical errors. Two things, though, keep the book from becoming an exercise in self-indulgence, the first being that the stories usually relate quite well to whatever Lamott wants to expound. Take the chapter “Short Assignments,” for example. To illustrate how writers need to tackle tiny tasks, she relates how her then-ten-year-old brother was trying to complete a humongous report on birds in a single evening. Panic threatened, but her father sat down, “put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
The second is Lamott’s delightfully screwball sense of humor. “The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth,” she says. “We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write very little.” Rare is the volume on writing that can wring a smile from you. Bird By Bird squeezes out belly laughs, and in doing so, reminds us that writing involves more than toil and tedium. It contains joy, too.

My thanks to Loren Eaton for his review: this is of one of my favourite writing books. There is also an audio version of the book called Word by Word, a pun which doesn't quite work for me but which fills me with delight, nevertheless.

100 Stories For Haiti: Buy The Book!

2010-03-04T10:00:00.004Z

Hi, my name is Lorraine Mace and I’m here to tell you about one person’s dream to help those who suffered as a result of the dreadful disaster in Haiti. That person was Greg McQueen and he decided he would find a way to raise money for the Red Cross.

His idea was to ask his writer friends to each donate a story, which would go into an anthology with all proceeds going to the charity. He also asked for some behind the scenes worker bees. The response he received was truly astounding. Writers told other writers, who in turn told other writers, and the stories began to flow. The project received well over four hundred stories from writers worldwide.

Everyone who sent in a story, whether eventually chosen for the anthology or not, did so in the knowledge that they would never be paid a bean for their efforts. The worker bees donated their editing and organisational skills free of charge. In fact, the writing community from several countries came together via the power of social networking to donate their time, their knowledge and their craft for nothing more than to be part of something that would help the survivors of Haiti’s disaster.

Greg’s idea came to him less than two months ago. In that short space of time the stories have been collated, edited and, as of today, published – which in itself is an incredible achievement.

Greg has been on a blog tour to promote the anthology and one of his stops was on my blog, which you can read here. His post contains a moving section written by Susan Partovi. She's a Family Physician from Los Angeles who visited Haiti over Christmas, working with four medical students in a rural clinic in Cazale, a small village not far from Port-au-Prince. Her account of her time in Cazale features in 100 Stories for Haiti, and you can read an extract on the project's website.

More details on the 100 Stories for Haiti project can be found here, and information on where it can be bought is available here.

Finally, I’d like to thank Jane for allowing me this space on her blog. I think I can safely speak for everyone involved in the 100 Stories for Haiti project when I say that we really appreciate her kindness.

Lorraine

You're welcome, Lorraine. Thank you. Lorraine has featured on my blog before, when she discussed her own particularly torturous route to publication: she's the author of the excellent The Writer's ABC Checklist, which you should all have on your shelves already. And now, everyone, please:

BUY THE BOOK!

Happy St David's Day!

2010-03-01T13:34:00.004Z

Happy St David's Day to you all. Here's a little treat I found on YouTube: I have just sung along with it, I even went up at the end, and my extremely Welsh mother would be proud of me.

To continue with our Welsh theme, I've just signed up for a place on this writers' retreat at Ty Newydd in North Wales and have been told I'll be sleeping in the room that Lloyd George slept in when he stayed there (apparently he died downstairs, though. Which is, I think, a relief). There are still a few more places left, if anyone else fancies a week of writing and reflection in the company of me, and some bloke called Patrick Gale: let me know if you're planning to attend.

Fiona Robyn's Blogsplash!

2010-03-01T10:00:00.001Z

Ruth's diary is the new novel by Fiona Robyn, called Thaw. She has decided to blog the novel in its entirety over the next few months, so you can read it for free.

Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat; books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about; princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.

I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say; ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for’, before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.

Continue reading tomorrow here...

Guest Review: The Writer's Essential Tackle Box, by Lynn Price

2010-02-22T10:00:00.001Z

We all know the lovely Lynn Price of Behler Publications, and her fantastically useful and funny blog: now you can get your hands on a great big chunk of her advice in this beautiful and fascinating book, The Writer's Essential Tackle Box: Getting a Hook on the Publishing Industry. This review, from Lyndsey R. Davis, is for the American edition of the book: but in May a UK edition is going to appear from prizewinning independent publisher, Snowbooks (who, regular readers will know, happen to be one of my absolute favourite publishers). Watch out for it!

With the abundance of ‘how to write’ blogs and books on the market, Lynn Price, of Behler Publications, tackles the issue from a fresh perspective in The Writer’s Essential Tackle Box. It’s not a fishy story. She deals with issues that others do not cover.

For a published author re-entering the game, or the newbie bursting with story ideas, the process can be daunting. Ms. Price gives an insider’s view of the industry using a Question and Answer format, interviewing the Who’s Who of the publishing world; her pithy remarks clarify while engaging the reader. Many books present an author’s single point of view how something should be done; Ms. Price’s experts corroborate—in their own words—what works.

Navigating the book is easy. The four sections have subheadings which direct the reader to specific topics—no need to use the index. However, the latter avails a quick search.

Section 1: The Interviews offers over two hundred pages packed with pragmatic approaches. Agents such as Andrea Brown, Rita Rosenkranz, Peter Cox and Laurie McLean elaborate on procuring representation. Wilda Williams of Library Journal, Jim Cox of Midwest Book Review, and Lauren Roberts of BiblioBuffet suggest ways to use their services in expanding a book’s exposure. Jerry D. Simmons clarifies the murky waters of publishing: the pros and cons of big and small houses, explaining the complex system of book sales and returns. Amy Collins and Sharon Goldinger detail what a Book Shepherd does for those who elect to self-publish, and how they are distinct from vanity presses. Writing on tours and bookstore signings, Gayle Shanks adds to Ms Price’s tips for the prepared author. George Foster illustrates the secrets of cover design. Greg Snider answers questions about distribution, while Ingram and Lightning Source disclose warehousing facts, information excluded from most ‘how-to’ books for writers. Mike Sirota promotes the independent editor’s role in producing a polished work. Victoria Strauss and Peter Cox shed light on how to connect with the cyber world and internet resources. Anita Halton and Annie Jennings spell out why authors need publicists and public relations specialists. Website creation is no longer the elusive fish with Cathy Scott’s design. Ms. Price hooks the reader with her introductions and simplifies with her summaries.

Section 2: “Forget the bait, pass me the Maalox”: The Submission Process provides the prospective author with a step-by-step, hilarious approach to the often painful journey. Here, the pragmatic lessons begin: busting the myths that are foisted on anxious writers, enumerating instructions on The Log Line, the Pitch, the Author’s Bio, query letters, synopses, and the fateful rejection. However, this section ends on a high note with the Promotion plan.

Section 3: “Chumming the Waters” distinguishes between commercial publishers, vanity presses, and print on demand, and adds to Jerry Simmon’s interview on publishing. Ms. Price itemizes the nitty-gritty issues in succinct nibbles: cash flow, print runs, pricing, reviews, marketing, sales force, disclosure and more. With this information, the aspiring author can recognize the pitfalls and make informed choices.

Section 4: “The Writer’s Survival Style Guide” is packed, like sardines, with the ‘worst and best examples’ of writing. Ms. Price updates the standard that was set by Strunk and White’s Elements of Style with this lexicon of contemporary editing because it’s more readable and humorous. In this text, a writer learns to recognize a ‘sick’ submission and give it a proper four-part autopsy. However, a worthy submission may emerge after the surgery on the Fluffitis, Backstoryosis, Dialog Tagococcal, and Pointofviewicemia and overloaded descriptions with a heavy emphasis on telling instead of showing. Though she doesn’t state a resurrection is possible, her examples offer hope that rewrites will distill the essence of a good story and if mixed with a balance of description and dialog, it may be possible to recover from a case of Dullitis.

Ms. Price anticipates questions that a reader, unfamiliar with the industry, might have. She presents a lexicon that includes more than a glossary of terms. Her clear examples show how it should be done, and complex definitions become understandable. Though this book serves a new writer well, the savvy author will enjoy the sage reminders, profound insights, and recommendations, to say nothing of reveling in her wit.

Some books lend themselves to becoming dog-eared—no doubt supported by the margarita-making beagle. Thumbed pages and bent corners reflect its usefulness. This book meets that criterion because it satisfies a need in every writer. Unfortunately, for those who claim they can only afford a single comprehensive reference on writing, Ms. Price has removed any excuse for someone not to tackle the writing and editing of a piece.

Lyndsey Davis writes fiction and non-fiction, since retiring as a US Navy Chaplain. She has published non-fiction articles for newspapers, magazines, websites and co-authored two books: Daily Devotions for Advent and Christmas, Daily Devotions for Lent and Easter. An irregular blogger, she twitters and writes articles, devotionals and stories for several online services and publications, while juggling several Works in Progress. Of course, the real balancing act is saved for home life, with a husband, two sons, four cats, one dog, twenty fish and a turtle.

Now Charlie Needs Our Help

2010-02-18T18:01:00.003Z

Now that we've found Brenda Carter, we need to find someone else. Someone who could offer Charlie a lovely new home.

Charlie is an eight-year-old neutered male cat, who looks to me as though he contains a fair amount of Maine Coon heritage, and here he is in his sex-kitten pose. Charlie is sociable, happy, and clean around the house, but sadly he needs a new home as his owner is having to move to a new home where she can no longer keep him. Charlie likes to go out, so needs a home where he'll be safe from traffic. He has a slightly runny eye as he had cat-flu when he was a kitten, but he is otherwise fit and well. As you can see from the photograph he is a nice clean boy who enjoys a bath (so long as you remember not to put any water in it) and he has an oversized joke tail which he wears to cheer everyone up.

He lives in Leicestershire at the moment, and at a push I can collect him from there and get him to Leeds, Sheffield or Manchester if that would help.

Can anyone offer Charlie the loving, appreciative home that he so richly deserves?

Calling Brenda Carter!

2010-02-18T10:00:00.001Z

A short-story writer called Brenda Carter has written a story called Past, Present and Future and sent it off into the big wide world all alone.

And I mean all alone.

Brenda's contact details have become separated from her story, which is a shame: because an editor wants to buy the story, but can't find Brenda to let her know.

So, if anyone out there knows Brenda, could you please ask her to contact me? Or if you ARE Brenda, do a little happy-dance ever so quickly and then contact me, so I can tell you who you need to contact!

Persistence Or Desperation?

2010-02-15T10:00:00.000Z

In the relatively short life of this blog (I began blogging in June 2008), I've told just three people that they are not welcome here.

One was a writer who argued with me about YouWriteOn's vanity-publishing scheme. I didn't object to his arguing: we are all entitled to express our own opinions. But I did object to his sneering and insults, and to his somewhat abstract leaps of logic, and they led to me telling him to leave.

Another was a writer who repeatedly used to this blog as a forum in which to insult and libel others. I deleted his comments and warned him that I would delete anything else that he contributed. He has now mostly shut up, although he does still try his luck from time to time (without any success, I’m glad to say).

The third was a writer who asked me for help in finding an agent or a publisher. A quick look at her work confirmed that she was nowhere near ready for publication; and the publishers who had asked to see more of her work were both of the pay-to-play variety. When I advised her to revise more, and avoid those publishers, she sent me several angry emails and wrote a couple of long blog posts about how rude and discouraging I had been; and when I tried to reply to her blog-posts, she deleted my comments.

She made potentially libellous comments about me on a few other blogs; she visited the blogs of bannee number two and tried to poke him into action again; and she emailed friends of mine, warning them against me.

A couple of months later she emailed me, asking for advice on a couple more (you've guessed it) vanity presses; and ended with a postscript which explained how she had forgiven me for my rudeness towards her.

I ignored her email and a few days later she emailed me again only her tone was a little less friendly. I continued to ignore her; she continued to email me every few days, becoming ruder each time.

When her e-mails finally became threatening I replied. I told her I wouldn't respond to any more of them, and that I didn't want to hear from her ever again, and that was pretty much it. Until yesterday. Guess who I had an e-mail from?

Hello, Jane, remember me? It's your old friend [name withheld] here, wondering why I haven't heard from you. The good news is that I got a publisher interested in publishing my book. The printing is going to cost me £2,750 but I think my writing is worth investing in. What do you think?

She's not going to like my reply.

How I Got Published: Vivian Swift

2010-02-12T10:00:00.000Z

I think that Vivian Swift is being just a little too self-deprecating when she places all of her success on leverage: from what I've seen of her book, she has a remarkable talent and a welcoming style which probably played a far bigger part in her success than she realises. Here's her view of her rather original path to publication, which just shows that sometimes things work out just fine when you ignore all the rules!

I've since learned that the word "quirky" is publishing-world code for "unpublishable", but when my quirky book was published by BloomsburyUSA in 2008 I thought it was because my illustrated travel memoir about staying put was JUST what editors the world over crave: a really different kind of reading experience. Turns out that no, that's NOT why I got published (did I mention that I've learned that editors loathe "quirky" books?): I got published because, as a complete and total nobody in the publishing world, I wisely leveraged a single teeny bit of biographical research into a golden "in" with my FIRST choice of powerhouse agent who got my manuscript read by all the best houses in New York City.

The total time from the day I first mailed my query letter (to my one and only agent choice) to the day I got a publishing deal was three and a half months—which includes the delays caused by my bad timing; my new agent had to send my manuscript proposal out during the Christmas holidays.

Here’s my story: I was a fifty-year old unemployed gemologist who had spent two years putting together the first three chapters of a book I had long fantasized about writing, a modern version of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. If you don’t remember that book, that must mean that you weren’t alive in 1977 when it became a publishing phenomenon (to date, five million copies have been sold). Not that I expected to out-do The Edwardian Lady; I just wanted to write my own homage to a book that I had greatly admired since I was twenty years old.

The manuscript of my first three chapters was fifty-three pages long, and it was entirely hand-lettered. I bound it into an eight-inch-square booklet, illustrated with over one hundred small watercolour paintings. It was exactly the kind of manuscript that one is forbidden to toss over the transom. But I didn’t know that at the time; I had never taken a writing class, attended a writing workshop, read a publishing industry blog, or had face-to-face contact with anyone remotely connected to the book publishing business. Only from reading my local newspaper years earlier had I learned about the one “insider” guide I used to prepare myself for becoming an author: Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, a former top editor in New York City. The reason I read about Betsy Lerner in my local newspaper was because she was a famous local author: Betsy and I happened to be living in the same small town on the shore of the Long Island Sound at the time. That article in the local paper also mentioned that Betsy had recently become a literary agent. Good to know, I remember thinking; if I ever get around to writing that book I’ve always wanted to write….

So, half a dozen years later, I have this fifty-three-page hand-lettered illustrated manuscript and I have only one agent on my mailing list. I had done a little follow-up research on Betsy Lerner and found out that she had a stellar reputation representing hip, urban, literary writers; yet I was still sure I wanted only her to read my cozy, suburban, un-literary manuscript. She represented Neil deGrasse Tyson! My hero! The coolest astrophysicist ever! So like any starry-eyed wanna-be writer doofus, I sent her my query letter with my home-made manuscript attached.

But I’m not a complete doofus: I made sure to mention, in my query letter to the formidable Ms. Betsy Lerner, that she and I had a connection: we had once lived in the same small village on the Long Island Sound.

Leverage, my friends; I was looking for leverage. I was dumb enough to think that name-dropping a town with just seven thousand households in it was leverage. And the funny thing is, it was.

Less than a week after I’d sent her my manuscript I got a voice mail from Betsy Lerner herself (which, by the way, is the single most validating moment of my entire writing life, even now, a year after my first book is published). Quaking, I dialled her phone number. She picked up after two rings. I was speaking to Betsy Lerner in person.

“How did you know that I used to live in [small town on the shore of the Long Island Sound]? was the first question she asked me.

And then she said that she liked my manuscript but, she warned me, my book was very odd and she wasn’t at all sure she could sell it, but she wanted to give it a try. That was in November, 2006.

“This is so not my thing,” was one Editorial Director’s response when Betsy first sent him my manuscript [translation: It’s too quirky for me]; “I’m going to give it to another editor here who does more of this kind of thing [translation: An editor who likes lost causes].” And then, a few days later, he emailed back: “I can’t get this book out of my mind. I’m keeping it.” And then we knew we had passed extensive internal review about a month later but by then it was almost Christmas, and then it was New Years… I had a signed contract on Valentine’s Day 2007, with my dream publisher, BloomsburyUSA.

There’s only one agent, I am convinced, who could have got such a fabulous publisher to look at such a quirky little book as mine, by dint of her reputation for good taste and keen eye for good writing, which she was willing to squander on my behalf: My agent, Betsy Lerner.

Not that there weren’t struggles, over the cover (I fought to keep Bloomsbury from re-designing it), and the fact that it’s a very quirky book to market in a very a tight economy (An illustrated book for adults? A travel memoir about staying put? With cats?? No wonder Borders put it in their Self Help section.). And of course I’ve had my usual first-time-author indignities: my first book event at Barnes and Noble where I was shuffled off into the Children’s Department to sign books at a knee-high kiddie table under a poster for Captain Underpants was merely a harbinger of things to come.

But now, as a published author, I am invited to speak to audiences of unpublished writers about my experience and the one thing I have to tell them about getting the right agent is leverage. See above. Which may or may not be helpful. Because, usually, stupidity doesn’t get you very far in life, except when it does.

Publication in November 2008 of my first book, When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put, has been such a marvellous experience of stupid perseverance and dumb luck that I’m going to try to do it again, with an even quirkier book, one that even Betsy Lerner has doubts about. It’s an illustrated travel memoir about a road trip through France. “A book about France is a hard sell right now,” she tells me.

Wish me luck.

No One Edits Any More? Ha!

2010-02-10T10:00:00.000Z

I just came across literary agent Andy Ross's lovely interview with Mary Norris, copy editor at The New Yorker.

There are some lovely details in it, and it shows just how meticulous editors are (and yes, I've heard the myths that editors don't edit any more and I just don't believe it). I particularly liked Andy's note at the end of the interview, in which he discusses how Mary edited the blog article once it was finished. I bet it's all the better for it.

Guest Review: Twelve Short Stories And Their Making

2010-02-08T10:00:00.000Z

My thanks to Paul Lamb for bringing this lovely little book to my attention, and for letting me reproduce his review of it, which originally appeared on his blog last year.

I’ll confess at the start of this post that I don’t have a high respect for most how-to writing guides. I’m not sure that fiction writing can be taught. Having said that, though, I do think it can be learned. In my experience this is done in two ways: extensive reading and exhaustive writing. We’re on our own for the second part, but occasionally we can find a little help with the first part.

I recently finished reading 12 Short Stories and Their Making, an anthology collected by Paul Mandelbaum and published in 2005 by Persea Books. Within are twelve richly textured short stories followed by interviews with their authors. Among the writers included are familiar names like Sandra Cisneros, Ellen Gilchrist, Gail Godwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Tobias Wolff. Each author’s story is presented first, and it is followed by a conversation between Mandelbaum and the author. The conversations provide insight into the varying creative processes of these diverse writers.

This isn’t a book telling you how to write your short story. Rather, it is a book telling you how these authors wrote their short stories. The conversations describe how the stories came to be written the way they were as well as how they couldn’t have been written in any other way. We see what their motivations and intentions were. Sometimes we see what other writing has influenced them or what incidents in their lives found their way into the stories and why. Mandelbaum also manages to tease some technical discussion from each writer. By offering these insights, this book lets all of us see how it might be done and so perhaps plumb our murky depths to find our own motivations. It gives us a sort of permission to venture down new creative roads.

The anthology does not try to be all things to all writers. Rather, it takes a more measured approach, offering two selections for each of the categories: character, plot, point of view/voice, setting, structure, and theme. The stories are arranged by which category they best illustrate. With a breakdown like this, and with the in-depth interviews that follow each story, this book might deserve a place on your reference shelf.

For my part, I always like to read anthologies because I get introduced to writers I have not tried before. Often I find a new favorite among them. Persea Books has several other writer-focused anthologies that might merit your attention as well.

How I Got Published (Part II): Tommy Donbavand

2010-02-05T10:00:00.000Z

Last week we heard all about Tommy Donbavand's metal balls and how they helped him get four non-fiction books published in the competitive how-to market. This week he tells us how he sold his first novel, turned it into a series, persuaded his publisher to double the length of his contract and picked up a few sundry books deals along the way. I am in awe.

I began to teach writing to adults in the evenings and set up a web forum to enable people in the classes to stay in touch. Before long, an established writer posted on the board said that Egmont Press was looking for writers-for-hire for a new children's horror series, but that only writers with published fiction to their name need apply. It was steel balls time again....

I called the editor and convinced her to let me write a sample chapter. I was successful and soon chosen as the first author for the Too Ghoul For School series, eventually writing five titles for the range: Terror in Cubicle Four, Silent But Deadly, School Spooks Day, Attack of the Zombie Nits! and A Fete Worse Than Death. I was paid a one-off fee for each book, and no royalties — and it wasn't even my name on the cover — but it was published fiction, and a step in the right direction.

My school events continued apace and I soon spotted an ad looking for a new writer-in-residence at Seven Stories, the UK's centre for children's books, based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. I applied and got the gig, ready to spend the next twelve months running workshops and writing exclusive material for visitors.

It was time to take a leap of faith so, in September 2006, on the day my son was born, I quit my job at the theatre company and became a full-time writer. I started writing to agents again, pretty much to deaf ears until one of them suggested I contact Penny Holroyde at Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency. I sent her my latest manuscript — a comedy space adventure for kids — and waited for her response.

Penny asked me to come to London for a meeting and explained that the book wasn't what she was looking for, but asked if I was working on anything else. I pitched an idea I had for a comedy horror series of my own and she liked it. I signed with the agency and settled down to write what would become Fang of the Vampire, the first title in my Scream Street series.

I worked for almost six months on refining the manuscript and redrafting until it was in good enough shape to submit. Penny's notes were invaluable and, eventually, the series was picked up by Walker Books for publication in the UK from October 2008 onwards.

Now the hard work really began and, with my new editor Emma, I got stuck in to writing the series while doing as many school events as I could. Book two was called Blood of the Witch. Part way into book three, Heart of the Mummy, I had an idea for a 'second' Scream Street series and, whipping out the metal orbs again, I pitched it to Walker at their annual sales conference. The six book series was now doubled to twelve instalments (later upped again to thirteen so I could drop a longer 'hinge' book between the two sets of adventures). Eight books have either been published so far, or are available for preorder from Amazon: Flesh of the Zombie, Skull of the Skeleton, Claw of the Werewolf, Invasion of the Normals, and Attack of the Trolls.

My regular school visits paid off when I was approached by Reading Is Fundamental (part of the UK's National Literacy Trust) and asked to become the first RIF Ambassador, attached to a primary school in Middlesbrough and charged with the task of getting the pupils into reading and writing. It was a great experience — and the school even initiated the 'Tommy Donbavand Writing Hero' award!

Scream Street began to sell to other countries around the world, including Australia, Italy, Sweden and Japan. In August 2008, the series was launched in the US, published by Candlewick Press.

In January last year, I contacted seven other UK children's authors with the plan of setting up a joint website called Trapped by Monsters through which we could promote books and 'share' readers. The premise is that we were on our way to write the ultimate anthology of monster stories — when the monsters got to us first! Now held captive in dark, damp caves, we're made to blog about great kids books in return for food and toilet paper!

So, that's where I am today. I'm busy putting the final touches to the 10th book in the Scream Street series, and have added events at literary festivals to those I still run in schools. I've written two novels for Barrington Stoke, a publisher specialising in books for dyslexic and reluctant readers, and have just been asked for a third. I've even been invited to the Houses of Parliament at the end of this month to discuss getting kids excited about reading.

I'm not sitting on my laurels, however. I work hard at promoting my books online through websites, guest blog posts and Twitter — and the old steel balls are always polished and ready to use, should the need ever arise...

The Scream Street books have their own websites: you can find the UK one here, and the American one here.

One of the things I like about Tommy (apart, of course, from his books) is how he makes this all sound so easy. It's not, of course: he writes a lot, he writes very well, he always has a few new ideas up his sleeve, and he delivers his manuscripts on time and in good order. If you can do that too, then you might get published just as "easily" as he has!

Why We Have Gatekeepers

2010-02-03T10:00:00.001Z

In fiction and in life there are often gatekeepers who guard the entrance to the castle or the enchanted kingdom. Consider St Peter, standing guard at the pearly gates, or those big blokes in dark glasses and wash ’n’ wear suits who stand outside the nightclubs and only let the pretty girls in. In both cases there are good reasons for them to be there: the big blokes are fulfilling a health and safety function by ensuring their nightclubs don't get overcrowded, and a public relations function by only allowing the prettiest admission (thereby establishing their club’s reputation for being a hot totty spot); while St Peter makes sure that heaven doesn't get filled up with non-believers and troublemakers, and therefore remains heavenly.

These gatekeepers do an unpopular but necessary job. So when people complain that literary agents are no more than self-appointed gatekeepers who are preventing writers from reaching editors they fail to consider what would be the result—to writers, publishers and readers—if agents stopped carrying out their literary gatekeeping role.

Editors are very overworked. A lot of their time is taken up by reading, and close reading at that. In order to do their job well they cannot skimp on this: editors were already horribly overstretched year ago; in the last year many have lost their jobs, and the books that they were responsible for have been handed over to the editors who remain employed, adding to their already too-heavy workload. This lack of time is nothing new: but it has been compounded recently, to a horrible degree.

No wonder, then, that editors prefer to work with agents. Doing so frees editors from the tyranny of the slush-pile; and they know that anything an agent submits is likely to be both publishable, and appropriate for their lists. It gives those editors time to work more closely with their writers, and to do their best to ensure that their books are the best that they can be. This means that we, as readers, have better books to read; and also that we, as writers, are displayed to our very best advantage.

There is a cost to the publisher: the contracts that agents negotiate are usually far more beneficial to the writers who sign them than a standard publisher’s contract, and so the publishers’ shares of income is cut: but the advantages of not having to deal with the mountain of slush outweigh this by a significant degree.

Guest Review: Writer's Café

2010-02-01T10:00:00.001Z

My thanks to Jo Stafferton for this review of Writer's Café, a computer program which helps writers organise and develop their work. Some very well-regarded writers have praised it: if you don't believe me, just take a look at the Writer’s Café website. You might see a familiar name on its front page.

My current work-in-progress is a children’s novel set in Ancient Egypt, an idea that has been going round in my head for some years. Now, I am no Egyptologist, so as you can imagine, attempting a project like that required a lot of research, a lot of note taking. I started out using notebooks to scrawl down my notes from books, the internet and museum visits and I got myself a giant piece of paper, upon which I printed out and stuck relevant photos from the internet (I don’t have space for a pin board at home). But I found myself overwhelmed by the volume of information, the notebooks got lost and the large piece of paper became crumpled down the back of a bookshelf, all progress in my work-in-progress stopped, for months bordering on years.

Then by chance I discovered Writer’s Café; you are able to download a demonstration version, which is pretty much fully functional with a few limitations (notably in its plot lining function, which is why ultimately I upgraded to the paid version) but it does give a good idea what it can do. I was able to go back to the photos I had found on the internet and place them on a ‘virtual’ pin board alongside notes and ideas for my story. Good websites I had found and wanted to preserve in their entirety, away from the muddle of the rest of my ‘everyday’ bookmarks on my internet browser, were placed in a ‘virtual’ scrapbook. Lengthy notes from my Egyptology textbooks were written in the program’s notebook feature. Everything was basically kept in one, well organised place, which was invaluable to me, as I lack space in the real world to store those things on paper.

What really saved my story though was the program’s Storylines feature, an electronic version of a very long corkboard and some index cards, you would put your plot points on a series of cards and place them in the order you wanted them, dividing them into chapters as you go. Having my stalled storyline out in front of me like that, enabled me to see the holes in my plot and enabled me to plan in a way that I had struggled with before. Consequently my project, which had stalled prior to me discovering Writer’s Café, at approximately 15,000 words, is now, as I type at 34,000 words and unlike before, I am fully confident that I am going to finish it.

There are other features in Writer’s Café to, that I use less frequently if at all; a journal, a names generator, writers’ tips, writers’ prompts and an eBook ‘Fiction: The Facts’, written by Harriet Smart, the published author behind the program.

So, ultimately there’s not much you can do on Writer’s Café that you can’t do in real life with a pen and a piece of paper, but if you’re disorganised and lack a space of your own to store and display your notes and plans as you work on them, Writer’s Café is a big bonus, particularly for any writer who has a large volume of notes and ideas to organise, such as someone writing historical fiction or for anyone having a whole new world to create.

How I Got Published (Part I): Tommy Donbavand

2010-01-29T10:00:00.002Z

I first came across Tommy Donbavand's books in the Barrington Stoke catalogues and, when I spotted him on Twitter, I pounced. I blagged a free book from him and then insisted he write something for my blog. I knew it would be good.

One of the questions I’m asked most often (aside from ‘what are you doing in my garden?’) is how I got published. What’s more interesting than the question itself, however, is the belief and/or hope that there is some sort of magic formula or shortcut that I have found and can give the questioner to stop them having to do it the hard way.

Guess what? There is no magic formula. You have to do it the hard way.

I started writing while still at school, eschewing the teenage norm of hanging out on street corners to sit at home and practice my art. Thankfully, I hit the library (no Internet back then…) and knew enough about how books were made not to submit my first ever attempts (although I did send some sketches out to Spitting Image, Stephen Fry and Ben Elton, getting very kind ‘keep it up’ letters in return).

After college I made the obvious career move — and became a clown called Wobblebottom (no, really). I worked first at holiday centres around the UK and later on cruise liners, entertaining children.

A few years later I joined the cast of a musical in London's West End — Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story — and even that was down to one-part perseverance and two-parts metal balls. I went to see the show with my parents, spotted a part I thought I’d be good at and wrote to the producer that night, claiming I would be a much better choice than the current guy. That landed me the audition — but, when I got there, they asked me to read for a different role. I knew I would only have this chance once in my life and so I stopped halfway through and told them they should let me audition for the character I wanted. They did, I got the part, and stayed with the show for the next eight years.

While in Buddy, I continued writing and continued being rejected. Neither agents nor publishers were interested in the fiction I had to offer. So, I turned to the old phrase 'write what you know' and put together all the games and activities I'd created and developed during my work as a children's entertainer. I pitched the book far and wide and, soon after, Quick Fixes for Bored Kids was published by How To Books in the UK.

Three other books — More Quick Fixes for Bored Kids, Quick Fixes for Kids' Parties and Boredom Busters — followed. Before long I was running events in book shops and being interviewed on both local and national radio as an expert in keeping kids entertained. It wasn't what I wanted to write, but it was a foot in the door, nonetheless.

Then the door closed over my foot.

Buddy ended, I left London, and the events dried up. The books weren't selling very well at all — partly because parents who buy books telling them how to keep their kids from being bored don't generally have the type of kids that get bored — and partly because the publisher insisted on classifying the books as 'parenting' titles, instead of 'activities'. I would often go into book shops and find my work far away from the children's section, sandwiched instead between toilet training guides and books of baby names.

I worked for a few months on a computer tech support line, then auditioned for a role in a small-scale children's show visiting schools over Christmas. I did the tour, and stayed with the production company afterwards in order to write their next shows — for next to no money at all. But hey, at least I was writing again. I often found myself playing a part in show ‘A’ while writing show ‘B’. It was exhausting.

I was still writing fiction in what little spare time I had, sending off my work to publishers and agents, and amassing an impressive collection of rejection letters in return. Apparently, my four previous books (now rapidly dropping out of print) counted for nothing. I was back on the outside, forcing my work into the bottom of the slush pile.

You can read the second part of Tommy's story next week, so long as I manage to squeeze pictures of all his book covers onto one short post. Perhaps next time I should ask a less prolific writer to share his story!

Fiction Masterclass, 2010

2010-01-28T10:00:00.000Z

I don't often endorse writing courses here: there are so many of them, and so many are of very questionable value. But the "Fiction Masterclass: Make Your Novel A Reality" from London Writers' Club looks absolutely fabulous, and I have no hesitation in advising you all to consider signing up. Just be warned that it begins next Monday, February 1 so you'll have to move quickly to make sure of a place (there are just a few still available). The Masterclass takes the form of a phone conference so you can take part no matter where you are in the country (or, possibly, the world!); and the people behind London Writers' Club are established publishing professionals with years of editing and agenting experience behind them. It's bound to be good.

There are many good creative writing classes and writers retreats but at London Writers' Club we wanted a modern, time-effective and practical solution to help people to get their books written.

We also thought, wouldn’t it be fab if we could give budding writers access to first-rate publishing industry advice without leaving their homes.

Learning from the sofa. How noughties can you get!

We decided that a teleconferenced series of classes with the opportunity to ask questions of the speakers was the way to go.

And so Make Your Novel a Reality in 2010 was born.

Over the four-week course we've developed, we’ll take writers from concept through structure and narrative and then we’ll make them aware of the publishing process and finally, let them into some secrets of how to secure an agent.

Lots of authors don’t have agents and will find it near impossible to get one nor can they afford to hire an editor so we're excited to create this opportunity for authors to get close to a prime selection of publishing professionals – be they author, publisher or agent. We've got them all on this course.

There's Matt Whyman who is a master of writing sustainably. He writes young adult fiction, is an agony uncle and has just signed a major book deal for a book on living with minipigs.

And Emma Rose who has commissioned and edited many fabulous books with Arrow.

Naomi Wood, whose debut novel, The Godless Boys, will be published in 2011 by Picador. Naomi has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and continued with a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing.

And last but not least, the hugely experienced, Kirsty Mclachlan who has been agenting for over twenty years – and now works at DGA Ltd as a literary and film/tv agent.

Together they will tackle nuggety issues such as:

* How do you know your idea will work?
* So many ideas, but which one to choose?
* When to give up, when to persevere.
* How do you know if an idea is good enough to go with?
* Do blocks and skids mean the idea is no good or do you push harder to make it work?
* Writing goals and good habits, how to knuckle down.
* How do you take your novel from dream to reality?
* How important is the zeitgeist?
* Are there identifiable trends and if so how can you be sure you are
writing something that will sell?
* What is this thing called concept and why is it important?
* And as for writing in a fresh and unique voice, how on earth do you
get that right?

They will also explain:

* How to ensure you’re hitting the right note.
* How to get your idea to market.
* How not to blow your chances by pitching in the wrong way.

And we'll delve into what publishers are looking for, how much work will an agent do on your manuscript, what happens once an agent takes you on and then what will an editor do for you?

Phew, there's even more.

We understand that publishing is a large impenetrable beast to those wanting to break in and we'll do our best to lay its secrets bare.

You'll find more details here.

We are limiting numbers to make this course cosy so do submit your booking enquiry now if you would like to apply for a place.

On with the writing then, and good luck with it.

Jacqueline Burns
London Writers Club

How I Got Published: Josa Young

2010-01-22T10:00:00.001Z

Josa Young is a writer more used to magazine publishing than book publishing, but last year her debut novel was published by independent pubilsher, E&T Books. You can find Josa on Twitter, at her own website, or via her novel's website.

How did I get published? Well, it started a long time ago with an obsession with fairies. I was a tomboyish child, so the gossamer ones did not sit well with my desire to climb trees. But I was convinced that when I was ninety-nine, those bony wings on my back would sprout (being a child of the skinny Sixties they were not immersed in fat) and transport me somewhere or other. So I wrote extensively on the subject; before I could read, in fact.

At prep school, the games mistress also taught English. She hated me so much on the pitch that she once threw a rounders ball at me which hit me smack in the eye as I dreamed at fourth post: but in the classroom she loved me as I wrote delicate haikus about the moon, and drew pictures of Gollum. My first encounter with pedagogic schizophenia.

At Cambridge I wrote very poor imitations of Roald Dahl short stories, published by my friend Roger in his amusing magazine. Later, I applied my fictional gift to preventing myself from dying of boredom while writing about conservatories for a magazine: 'Emerald swept into the double-glazed Amdiga conservatory, her satin dancing slippers making little noise on the Fired Earth terracotta tiles.'

Later still, I went on an Arvon course because although I had been suppressing and sublimating my passion it still had to find an outlet and there, on a windswept moor in Devon, it did. The midwife was Beryl Bainbridge, the doctor Nicholas Shakespeare (who accused me of verbal diarrhoea — Beryl said he was jealous of my typing speed).

She told me I should write a novel while stirring powdered gelatine into her tea. So I did, in the five weeks between two magazine contracts (Slimming, and Pregnancy — one leading inexorably to the other). So excited was I with my 100,000 words that when I bumped into a rather grand publisher who was now doing a little light agenting, and he offered to read it, I was overwhelmed. Particularly when he rang two weeks later and told me he loved it. I thought all that writing about hitherto very fat ladies standing in one leg of their trousers was over at last. That was in the mid-1990s. I have a few dry and withered rejection letters, but nothing else to show from that episode.

In 2006 I was writing a piece about self-publishing, vanity publishing and publishing for a magazine. I contacted self-publishers AuthorHouse, who had just landed in Milton Keynes from the US and they asked me if I wanted to give it a whirl for my piece. I didn't even think the manuscript was in an electronic form any more, but managed to get it converted to disc and sent it off. When the galleys came back, I could see all kinds of wince-making glitches and set to work with a will on a couple of new drafts — again between editorial contracts.

Then I forgot all about it again. It sat on the AuthorHouse website. I designed a cover (heavily influenced by 1980s Virago), and mucked about with editing, putting quotations at the top of chapters, typefaces and all, but I did not publish. While Acting Features Editor at Tatler I was approached by Lorne Forsyth, who had just taken over publishers Elliott & Thompson. He wanted to grill me about internet matters, as that is the other thing I do (CondeNet, ivillage.co.uk, AOL UK etc) and I just wanted a nice lunch. Ever a girl to sing happily for Zafferano, off I went.

While I confidently expounded on SEO, blogging, social networking, interactivity and all that stuff to this highly competent and intelligent person, he gently probed me on the subject of my own writing. Instantly I shrank back like a snail. Detecting this, he pointed out that he was always astonished by how sensitive people were when it came to their own creativity. Could he see something I had written? I shyly handed over the password to the Authorhouse PFD.

That was in 2008. In 2009 he relaunched Elliott & Thompson as E&T Books and requested One Apple Tasted for the launch list. To begin with I was quite stunned. In January of last year we had our first proper meeting and there was One Apple Tasted all nicely marked up by editor and publisher with comments. All I had to do was take it home and 'run it through the typewriter'. Then we were off. I suggested Lawrence Mynott, a brilliant illustrator and book designer, as well as an old mucker of mine from that glorious decade, the 1980s. And there it was — the pink, black and white cuboid of my dreams.

E&T gave a hilarious party at my mother-in-law's house — where Peter Pan was written — on a lovely July evening. And people started buying it, and reading it, and saying things on Amazon and elsewhere that made me hide my blushes behind my fan. I compounded the problem by writing a piece about sex for the Telegraph, which caused a flurry. I had to explain that I could not write as I wanted to until after my beloved mother died — but then when my father died as well, I found caches of letters dating from WWII which indicated a very different emotional landscape. I am really sorry they are not here to share the fun.

Now Sail Upon the Land, the next one, is bubbling around in my head night and day, and flying out of my fingers when moving house, childcare, building websites and writing for some reason many brochures about chalets, will let me.

The Real Value Of Mainstream Publishing

2010-01-18T10:00:00.001Z

Last spring, the lovely Sally Zigmond linked to this interesting article on her blog. It's a great piece about the value—or not—of publishing by non-mainstream routes.

It's essential reading for writers—particularly those who believe that some sort of Great Publishing Conspiracy is in operation to stop new writers from getting published, and that Indie Publishing is the Next Big Thing.

How I Got Published (Part II): Nicola Morgan

2010-01-15T10:00:00.002Z

Last week Nicola Morgan told us a little about the writerly struggles she faced in the days before she was published. This week she reveals how she found herself an excellent agent, moved from not-really-published to very-well-published-indeed, and discovered her heartsong.

Ok, so there I am ridiculously pleased with my boring government documents but horribly desperate to be published “properly”. What happened next?

The school where I’d taught had lots of kids with dyslexia, and I’d learnt quickly about specific learning difficulties. I’d become fascinated. So I did a diploma in teaching pupils with dyslexia. That sparked an interest in the brain (which is a huge strand of my writing and speaking now) and a chance to be a recognised “expert” in dyslexia. As well as this work, I started another entrepreneurial idea: Magic Readers, which in 1999 became a website, The Child Literacy Centre (I actually only closed this down a few weeks ago after deciding that I no longer had enough time). Magic Readers was fabulous fun and very rewarding — groups of 4-year-olds in my house, having brilliant fun with books, games and activities to develop their pre-reading skills, but answering many, many emails from parents needing free advice and support was just too much for me on top of everything else I now do.

Although this had nothing to do with me becoming a novelist, it led to my first book contracts. See, (and here comes another secret, because I always forget that this is how I started) I self-published (badly) the Magic Readers books. I sold the first print run of 1,000, but sent some to the educational wing of Egmont. By chance, they were about to commission a major home-learning series. They asked me to write the whole series, for a glorious fee and my first experience of a nightmare deadline: twelve books in three weeks… (that series is called I Can Learn and there were many spin-offs which I also wrote. They are still market leaders, twelve years later — and I’ve had more dosh each time they reprint [I've shown the covers for two editions of just one book to emphasise this—Jane]. Recently Egmont paid me to allow them to put some material on their website. No royalties but no complaints).

Suddenly, I could call myself an author. I was published. I was earning. I was valued. My books were in shops. I was well.

But I wasn’t A Novelist. My second novel was still coming back. I’d had near-misses: a fabulous letter from Collins; a story being short-listed for the Ian St James Awards; several times when the novel got as far as acquisitions meetings. But nearly being published is still failing.

I started a third novel. I was full of hope. Sent the first part to an agent, got a lovely reply asking for the rest. (More rules broken — don’t send a novel out before it’s finished…). Went back to it, but didn’t finish it because...

… I read a new children’s novel. I’d been writing for adults and had never thought of writing for kids. Why would I? I wanted to break boundaries with language, not be held back by simplicity. Oh how wrong I was! The book I read was Skellig, by David Almond, a beautiful writer with an extraordinary voice. He expresses deep ideas in language which is only simple because it is perfect, not because it’s trying to avoid complexity. He is unselfconscious and his words are crystalline and generous where mine were convoluted and self-indulgent.

This was what I wanted to do. I’d been so tangled in prose that I’d forgotten about story, about plot. And now I could do both.

So I began to write Mondays Are Red. When I’d written about a third of it I became impatient and broke that rule again: I sent it to an agent and two publishers. The agent and one publisher wanted to see the rest. I explained to the agent that I hadn’t finished but would do so NOW, and to the publisher that I had interest from an agent and would be in touch soon. I then wrote furiously and sent it off to the agent. The agent said a) she loved it but b) she was ill and had decided she couldn’t take anyone on. Gah! I told the publisher that and sent them the rest of the book. Meanwhile, the second publisher, Hodder, said no. (Hold that thought.)

The first editor was very excited but wanted changes. She also suggested that I got an agent. I contacted two agents that day, one by letter because she had no email address and one by email. I included in my covering letters some glowing quotes from the editor.

The agent whom I’d contacted by snail mail phoned the next day and said she wanted to take me on. Just like that.

When I opened my emails, I found a reply from the agent I’d emailed, apologising for not contacting me immediately. She was interested. Yikes!

I contacted first agent, explained and said I needed to know if we were definitely going to be working together. Yes, she said. I got to turn an agent down!

To cut a long story short, my new agent and I worked on Mondays are Red, got it to the state we wanted it; but the editor wanted one change too many and my agent advised that we go elsewhere.

Which publisher took Mondays are Red? Hodder, who had turned it down when I’d sent it on my own… Useful things, agents.

Anyway, I did four novels with Hodder but when my editor left and went to Walker Books, I followed. I’ve written four teenage novels for Walker (including Wasted, publishing in 2010), a younger novel (Chicken Friend), and three teenage non-fiction books: The Leaving Home Survival Guide, Know Your Brain, and Blame My Brain. And around 80 home learning books for Egmont, including Thomas the Tank Engine books. Do I earn a living from all that? No. It’s the public speaking that provides the bread and butter. It’s amazingly hard to earn a living as a children’s writer, especially if you write mainly fairly literary stand-alone teenage novels as I do. It’s not how to earn a living but it’s how I feed my soul.

Do I wish I hadn’t had those years of failure? No. They stop me taking anything for granted or thinking too highly of myself. They are crucial to who I am now; they are also why I understand what gets published and why some perfectly wonderful writing does not.

Now, I am wholly well. I put that down to having repaired my bruised soul. In the dark days, a clever medical person told me we need heartsong in our lives and that the key to health was finding my heartsong. When he said that, I knew what he meant and where I needed to find it. That’s why I spend time blogging for talented, hard-working, non-delusional writers: because if you have that same need for heartsong, I understand.

Yes, The Internet Does Count

2010-01-13T10:00:00.000Z

I read two very similar blog posts last week: this one from Janet Reid, and this one from The Rejectionist.

Both make the point that it's important for writers to take care over their writing: to use the words they mean to and not ones which sound the same; and to check their work carefully before submitting.

I'd add that writers should extend these habits to include all written work they make public. And yes, that includes emails, tweets, and comments on message-boards and blogs, because those online comments are tied to our names. They stay around for a very long time and just supposing that an editor or an agent types our names in to Google, do we really want them to discover that we're often sloppy and careless with our words?

Snow Pictures

2010-01-11T10:00:00.001Z

We had a lovely New Year's Eve this year, part of which was spent following our sons as they sledged down the mile-long track which separates our house from the road. Here are a few pictures which I took along the way.

The stones in the foreground are the topstones to an eighteen-inch high wall which borders our front lawn. The snowdrift just visible to left of the picture blocks the path to our front door (which is roughly opposite that tree), so when there's snow we have to park a distance away from the house. Oh, and look: there's our wind turbine. It's a 6kW Proven, was one of the first in the Peak Park (and has since been trumpeted as a brilliant installation by the Peak Park, despite several objections to our planning application). It provides us with almost all the electricity we need, and a lot of our heating too: our house is completely off-grid, so when the wind doesn't blow (which isn't often, here) we use a diesel generator to make our own electricity.

Half-way down the track is this cattle-grid, now up to its ears in snow. The good news is that the snow also fills the many potholes in the track: the bad news is that although I drive a Discovery, it isn't entirely dependable on snow as deep as this and I've spent the last few weeks slipping about far more than I'd like.

The trees are pretty, with their skirts all full of snow: but the weight of it hangs heavy on them and brings them down. Just two so far this winter, and we do have a chain-saw and the wood comes in handy: but that's two too many when I have to get the boys to school.

The last third of a mile down to the road is pretty straight, and all downhill. The snow wasn't too deep when this was taken: you can almost see the track breaking through in the bottom of our wheel-ruts. I long to see it again!

On the right here is our neighbour's field, which was home to a trio of guard-geese before the fox got to them in November. Part of me is glad they didn't have to endure these weeks of bitter cold; part of me misses the geese's constant grumbling, their low-slung, swaying behinds, their curious presence. Despite the gander's frequent wide-winged attacks, his his dry-mouthed hissing always delighted me--so long as I was in the car!

A little further on, on the right, we reach our neighbours' houses. Then there is a stretch a few hundred yards long where there's a drystone wall which borders a nasty drop, into water. Every year I worry I'll lose traction in the snow, crash through the wall, down the slope, and into the stream. I've not done it so far. Fingers crossed.

And here we are at the road. On the left of the picture there's usually a reservoir but right now it's drained, while maintenance work is carried out (it's been drained, off and on, for the last three years for this work, but there's been precious little evidence of any work going on). The road is a dead end and luckily, the way out is in the other direction otherwise those giant snowballs which have been made on the road would stop us getting out when we need to. Despite all this snow, people still come up here to have a look at the countryside: on New Year's Day we towed a couple of cars out and ignored a few more. Why do people think their little hatchbacks will cope with snow which is over their axles? I don't understand.

Since New Year we've had more snow, got the car stuck a few times, got the boys to school five miles away when their friends who live within yards have stayed at home, and I've managed to kill my mobile phone by using it when it's far too cold for pretty red phones to be outside: but for now, these few snow pictures will have to do. If I get the time I'll post a few more pictures in a few days: but in the interim you'll have to make do with more of my usual publishing nonsense.

Happy Blog Birthday To Nicola Morgan!

2010-01-10T10:00:00.000Z

Today is Nicola Morgan's very first blog birthday. I'm somewhat flabbergasted to realise she's only been blogging for a year: it seems like we've been benefitting (benefiting? gah...) from her wisdom for far longer than that, such is the reach of her fabulous blog.

To celebrate, Nicola is hosting a blog-puff. Everyone is invited to promote their own blog in her comments, on the understanding that they visit several of the other blogs so puffed. It's a great way to boost your own blog's comments, and it's a wonderful way to discover several new and wonderful blogs. So get yourself over to Nicola's birthday celebrations, puff your blog, and wish her well. And if you've not read her blog before then you have a whole year's worth of brilliant writing and publishing advice to catch up on, you lucky things.

How I Got Published (Part I): Nicola Morgan

2010-01-08T10:00:00.002Z

We all know the many-times-published, human-whirlwind, footwear-obsessive that is Nicola Morgan. Our favourite crabbit old bat recently posted this beautiful piece about getting published, inspiration and support on her own blog: it is now my great pleasure to give you Nicola's own account of how she first got published, and how that publication has changed her life. This is the first part of her moving and inspirational two-part story, which will conclude next week.

It took me a horribly long time to get published. Twenty-one years. I blogged here about why I failed for so long. Now I pinch myself. Was that really me? That screwed-up, jealousy-riddled person who wanted to strangle every hot-shot debut author after a prolonged session of torture?

How did I get from that darkness to here, where I find myself invited to write things? And sometimes say no. No?!

Aged twenty, wondering what the hell a Cambridge degree in Classics and Philosophy was for, I decided that I wanted to be A Novelist. I knew I couldn’t earn a living immediately (hollow laugh) so I needed a job. I went to London, where streets are paved with all manner of wondrousness, and got a job cooking for an advertising agency, and dinner parties for Belgravia ladies who wanted strawberries only in December and smoked salmon if it was twice as expensive as the stuff their neighbours had.

And I wrote. Stories aimed at women’s magazines, none of which got published, because they were completely wrong for their market. I got something published in Reader’s Digest — incredible payment: £150 for about 50 words. My photo was on page one — fame and fortune, I thought. I was almost right about fame: on a bus, I saw a man reading it, looking back and forth between the picture and me; I grinned; he asked me to sign it. My first signing!

Meanwhile, I was writing The Novel. And revelling in the sound and fury of my own prose. Meanwhile, meanwhile, I had one of many entrepreneurial ideas: I would devise a creative writing course and offer it to schools. (I did have some teaching experience — long story...) One school asked me to see them, and I found myself being interviewed by the head and deputy. At some point I realised that they thought they were interviewing me to be an English teacher (actually head of English, as the school was so small that there was only one teacher in each subject). I explained their mistake... but got the job.

Between terms, the novel grew and was finished. I sent it off. And received it back. Often. Each time I “improved” it. Trouble is, sometimes they said it was too long, and sometimes too short, so I was confused. One praised the original plot and another criticised its traditional nature. There was no internet and little advice available. I knew no one in the business, no one who was published, no one who was even trying.

Every time it came back, I dissolved. To most people, I seemed fine. But inside I was devastated that I couldn’t find the key to publication. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I failed every target I set myself. I felt useless.

For three years I handled the English department in that little school. But I decided to give myself a year of writing full-time, really going for it, because being a teacher was incredibly exhausting and time-consuming and I couldn’t write enough. I also wasn’t particularly well — I had glandular fever, toxoplasmosis and a couple of knee operations. So, supported by my lovely husband, I gave in my notice for the end of that third year.

A month before term ended, I discovered I was pregnant. So, I didn’t get my full year of full-time writing — what I got was a lovely daughter. But, that’s no excuse — and I was still sending off that bloody novel, still getting it thrown back. I’d revised it endlessly and didn’t know what to do. So I did the right thing and started another one.

We moved to Edinburgh and soon had daughter No 2. I tried to carry on writing. But my health wasn’t good — I now believe that this was down to the gnawing pain of failure. I wanted publication so much; I was trying so hard. I felt I was good enough, so why wasn’t it happening? It wasn’t enough to be a mother/wife/perfect houseperson — I wanted more and I wanted it so much that it was making me ill. Postnatal depression was diagnosed, followed by a wrecked thyroid, followed by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. OK, the thyroid was true, and I still take thyroxine, but the rest wasn’t: it was Bruised Soul Syndrome. I was damaged where it matters. I was happy as a mother and wife, loved my family, (should have been grateful for all that) but I had a chasm where “myself” should be. The odd thing was that to everyone else I was Mrs Efficiency, Mrs High-Achiever, Mrs Get-Christmas-Sorted-in-October — all the failure was hidden inside.

Then, a dull government organisation offered me work, writing documents. Oh joy, I hear you say, but I sailed out of that interview feeling fantastic. Energy flowed through me. I still remember that. God, those documents were boring but they gave me my life back.

But that is obviously not the end of the story....

You can read the second part of Nicola's story next Friday, and if you're anything like me you'll need to get your hankie out before you start. It's a wonderful piece. But I'm not surprised: Nicola Morgan wrote it.

Distributor Or Wholesaler? Writer Beware Explains!

2010-01-06T10:00:00.000Z

If you're considering submitting to a smaller publisher, one of the things you should investigate before you send your work out is what sort of distribution deal that publisher has. Because if it doesn't have a proper distribution deal in place, its books (for which you can read your books) just aren't going to sell.

But what does that mean? How does distribution work, how does a distributor differ from a wholesaler, and what implications does all of this have for your work? Over at Writer Beware, bestselling author Cathy Clamp explains. Read it now, bookmark the article, and next time you're considering submitting your work to anyone other than a major publisher you'll know what questions to ask, and how the answers might affect you.

The Christmas Box

2010-01-05T10:00:00.001Z

Every writer I know feels a certain bitter thrill when they hear of a story like this one. An unknown writer writes a beautiful story, which he self-publishes. He prints only a handful of copies, which he gives away to family and friends as Christmas gifts: word quickly spreads and he prints up another batch, and before you know it he’s sitting on a publishing sensation. He makes a deal with one of the biggest publishers in the world and goes on to make a fortune from the sale of this single short book.

Despite myself, I love stories like this. I resist the books concerned for as long as I can because I don’t like getting caught up in all the excitement, in case it clouds my judgement: and when reading a book which has already earned millions I find I’m constantly looking for that trick—the reason behind its amazing success. I do usually give in and read them once all the fuss has died down (I only read the Da Vinci Code once the DVD of the film was in the discount bins, not that it took very long to get there) and I can usually see something of merit in the big-fuss books which explains their huge success. A new twist to an old story, perhaps; or a writer who might not produce the loveliest prose there is but can nevertheless make the pages turn almost on their own. No matter how cynical I become, I’ve always managed to spot that important detail. Until now.

After years of hearing about Richard Paul Evans's book The Christmas Box I finally gave in and bought it despite the reverential sentimentailty which tinged many of the Amazon reviews. As I read the book I was amazed that it had done so well: the story is predictable, draw-droppingly sentimental, and pretty badly written too, full of oddly-formal dialogue and exposition. It took me less than an hour to read through to the end; it was simplistic, sentimental tosh. Despite the many shortcomings of the text it was a very pretty book, I thought, with its small size and gorgeous design: but making a best-seller has to involve more than binding a short story up into an odd-sized book, designing an elegant, uncluttered layout and printing it on heavy cream stock. Perhaps it was the delicious, jewel-like dust jacket heavily laced with gold which appealed to me: I'm a sucker for a pretty design. I just don't know why I reacted as I did. I will grudgingly admit that while I found The Christmas Box a ridiculously sentimental story, full of lacklustre writing and clumsy technique, there is something about it that I loved.

Now all I need is for someone to explain to me why I found this little book so very covetable, so that I can write my own international bestseller in just a few thousand words.

Pulped Fiction

2010-01-04T10:00:00.000Z

This article from the Mail Online which suggests that books aren't selling and that most end up at the pulping-station is chock-full of fallacies. The article leaps from one incorrect statement to another; it builds conclusions on assumptions which are inherently unsafe; and it cobbles together quotes and snippets of information from various unrelated sources to present an argument which just doesn't hold water. It's a cringe-making example of bad reporting and has been discussed on several writers' message boards: here it is at Absolute Write.

Despite the article's many flaws I don't accept the argument "it's in the Mail, what do you expect?" I've written for the Daily Mail and know how hard-working and professional my editors were. I think that this is yet another case of someone not really knowing how publishing works, and consequently being unable to recognise the mistakes that they've made. And if their editor didn't understand book-publishing either, then those mistakes just wouldn't be noticed. It's a shame, as the central premise regarding returns and book-pulping is an important issue for publishing right now, and needs to be addressed. I'll save that for another time, and will be writing about the article's many errors in the next week or so; but meanwhile, join me in a round of Spot-The-Problem. I found a stonking twenty-eight troublesome phrases in that single article: what score did you get?

Dreams Can Come True

2010-01-03T10:00:00.000Z

There are all sorts of myths which vanity presses and self-publishing companies encourage. Two of the most enduring are that publishers won't consider debut authors; and that publishers don't promote their writers' books any more.

If that's the case, someone ought to tell Jamie Ford so he can stop making such obviously delusional posts.

(He's living the dream and deserves every wonderful moment of it. I hope that a few of us get there too this year.)

How I Got Published: Lorraine Mace

2010-01-01T10:00:00.003Z

We've all heard that you need talent, hard work and determination to get published and Lorraine Mace and Maureen Vincent-Northam proved it when they got their co-authored book published not once, but twice. In this piece Lorraine is kind enough to give me some of the credit for their success but trust me: Lorraine and Maureen did all of the hard work and I'm thrilled that it's paid off for them both.

In these credit crunch times it’s harder than ever to get a publishing deal, far less have the same book published twice by two different publishers, but that’s exactly what I and Maureen Vincent-Northam, my co-author of The Writer's ABC Checklist, managed to do. We didn’t set out with that intention, but sometimes life makes you work harder at your dreams than might initially seem fair.

Maureen and I ‘met’ on a writers’ site many years ago and enjoyed (still do) a great online friendship. When it came to co-authoring a book, we were the perfect match. We share a sense of humour, have similar writing styles, and were already proofreading each other’s articles for various magazines. We’d also critiqued and edited each other’s e-books and non-fiction titles prior to publication.

One of the things that we both felt strongly about was that a book containing advice on how to present your work to the industry would be useful to any writer. Not a book on how to write, but a guide to presentation, because it is this area, more than any other, that causes so many writers to lose sales. We searched, couldn’t find what we were looking for, and so decided to write one ourselves.

The first publisher we approached liked the idea enough to take it to the acquisitions stage, but it was ultimately rejected. The second publisher was so impressed by our proposal (practising what we planned to preach) that he invited us to a meeting to discuss taking the idea forward. Until this point, Maureen and I had no idea what the other one even sounded like. Not only had we not met, but we’d only ‘spoken’ through messenger and email. We met in person for the first time in a hotel lounge while waiting for our publisher to arrive.

Once we’d sorted out a deal, signed contracts and received the first half of our advance, we settled down to complete The Writer’s ABC Checklist. Everything in our writing garden was rosy. Not expecting anything to go wrong, we worked hard and delivered the book ahead of schedule. The ms winged its way to the publisher. Corrections, amendments and additions were requested – we complied and the final ms was accepted well ahead of the contract’s delivery date. If only the same could have been said about the remaining payment due on our advance!

The first intimation we had that something might be wrong was when the publisher asked if would agree to an amendment to the contract, which would mean he didn’t have to pay us the outstanding amount. We politely stuck to our guns – and the wording of the contract – and, after advice from the Society of Authors, finally received our long overdue payment plus interest.

The book appeared later than planned, but at least it appeared. At one stage we’d feared it might not. Despite no advertising whatsoever, the book sold well. Word of mouth and some great reviews on writing-related websites and in writing magazines took care of that.

But then requests for review copies to be sent out went unanswered. Phone calls and emails were ignored and all contact with the publisher ceased. When we finally tracked him down, it was no surprise to find that he was on the verge of going under.

Thanks to some great advice from Jane [you're welcome!] and the Society of Authors, we were able to get the rights reverted to us prior to his business folding.

After a brief period of feeling sorry for ourselves and a fair amount of wound licking, we decided to try again. We believed in our book and, if the emails we’d received were anything to go by, then so too did the writers who’d bought it.

It was at this time that an email from Accent Press, promoting their forthcoming titles, dropped into my inbox. When so many independent publishers were going to the wall, here was one that appeared to be doing okay. Although exercising due caution (they were closed to new submissions) it seemed Accent Press was thriving.

I sent the MD an email telling her about The Writer’s ABC Checklist, explaining what had happened to our publisher and giving a full history of events, and she replied by asking to see the manuscript. She liked the book enough to take us on and a new version is published today.

So, what is the purpose of this blog post? Basically, there are two important points I want to make. The first is that if you have a book you really believe in, no matter what goes wrong, or how impossible achieving the goal might seem, you should never, ever, give up. Believe in yourself, believe in your book, and don’t allow anyone or anything to take your dream from you.

Secondly, if things go wrong, always seek professional, informed advice. Don’t listen to what the bloke in the pub, or the woman in your office, has to say. Ask someone who knows the publishing industry and who is able to give impartial recommendations. Without the excellent guidance Maureen and I were given, we might not have been in a position to have our book published the second time.

Lorraine Mace is a columnist with Writing Magazine (UK). A former humour columnist for Living France and Spanish Magazine, she was the winner of the Petra Kenney 2006 Award (comic verse category), she writes fiction for the women’s magazine market, features for monthly magazines, is a writing judge, and a tutor for the Writers Bureau. She is the author of The Greatest Moving Abroad Tips in the World (Oct 2008) and co-author, with Maureen Vincent-Northam, of The Writer’s ABC Checklist. Her children’s novels are currently being submitted to publishers by her agent.

My Favourite Books Of The Year

2009-12-31T10:00:00.009Z

My recent vision problems have cut my reading-time to almost nothing, and I've felt lost without a book in my hands. Now my eyes are a little better I'm reading again, although at a slower, more measured pace, and here's a short list of the most memorable titles I've read this year.

My favourite general non-fiction title has to be Ben Goldacre's Bad Science which answered all sorts of questions I had about how research can be rendered unreliable by poor practise, and how results can be manipulated and designed. I consider it essential reading for all writers, whether they write fiction or non-fiction, regardless of whether or not their work has a scientific bias. It's informative, clever, beautifully-written and laugh-out-loud funny, and not to be missed. My other non-fiction pick of the year comes from Robyn Scott, who I met when we both took part in Sue Cook's The Write Lines radio show. Robyn was kind enough to give me a copy of her memoir, Twenty Chickens for a Saddle: The Story of an African Childhood, which I've now read twice. It's an absolutely stunning book which deserves to win handsful of very significant prizes. My only criticism of it is that I wanted it to be longer!

Onto novels. Sue Gee's wonderful Reading in Bed delighted me. It was so beautifully-paced, so carefully-drawn: I loved it (and my friend, Sally Zigmond, felt the same). I've now read most of Sue Gee's books and am watching out for her next one, ready to snatch it off the shelves as soon as it appears. Patrick Gale's Notes from an Exhibition also had me spellbound: I'd not read him before I found this one on the three-for-two tables at Waterstone's. Gale is a beautiful writer, capable of using great lyricism and emotion without dipping into sentimentality, and I am looking forward to working my way through the rest of his books. As for Paul Torday: I resisted the urge to read his Salmon-Fishing book, popular though it was: the title didn't appeal to me, and I thought the cover was a little dull. Then a friend gave me a copy of The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce, and I was enthralled. It's a beautiful, sad, wistful book, and I love it.

The two most beautiful books I've bought this year have to be John K Bollard's companion pieces, The Mabinogi and Companion Tales to the Mabinogi. Bollard is a noted authority on the tales of the Mabinogi, and he tells the stories in his typically sparse and very Welsh style; his books are illustrated with stunning photographs of the Welsh landscape which come from Anthony Griffiths, a prizewinning photographer with an exceptional eye. I love these two books, and hope that more will come from this particular pairing. Lovely stuff.

I am particularly fond of short stories and this year I read two fabulous collections, both from Salt Publishing: Carys Davies' Some New Ambush, and Tania Hershman's The White Road and Other Stories. Both books show the short story at its absolute best and even now, months after reading them, the stories are still fresh in my mind: both Tania and Carys are expert at implication and their styles, while different, are sparse and poetic. They are now both on my list of must-buy writers.

I've read over a hundred books this year, and it's been difficult to pick out my favourite few: but as I've written about each one here, I've wanted to pick it up and read it again, right now. For me, reading is a constant, reassuring joy, and 2009 has been a wonderful year for books and for blogging: I thank everyone who has taken the time and trouble to read my blog this year, and look forward to reading my way through 2010 alongside you all.

While I'm Away...

2009-12-11T10:00:00.000Z

...you could be writing.

You could let me know how much you've written, if you liked (I've written two articles this week, a handful of rough blog posts, and about 3,000 words of fiction, none of which are on my computer yet).

And if you spot any interesting publishing-related articles or blog posts, please post links here so I can catch up with them once I'm back to full strength. I am SO VERY BORED with not being able to play on the internet, watch TV, or read. It would make me very happy to come back here and find all sorts of juicy links.

Taking A Short Break

2009-12-07T10:14:00.002Z

I'm going to have to take a short break from my blog as my vision is failing again; I have posterior vitreous detachment, and it's going through one of its periodic flare-ups. I don't want to do any permanent damage to my sight, and over the last couple of days using the computer has become increasingly problematic: I'll be back as soon as I can, but meanwhile play nicely without me.

Max Dunbar Is My New Best Friend...

2009-11-30T10:00:00.000Z

...because of a single line in an article of his in 3AM Magazine called The Great Underground Myth: Why Self Publishing Doesn’t Work.

"Jane Smith is a lonely Cassandra in a sea of frothing bullshit."

I have to admire his perception. The rest of the article isn't too bad.

Self-Publishing Sales Statistics Clarified

2009-11-29T10:00:00.000Z

When I appeared on The Write Lines last week I mentioned that the average self-published book sells between forty and two hundred copies, depending on which set of figures you consult. Compared to mainstream publishing, where sales of three thousand copies for commercial fiction are considered by some to be disappointing, these figures are terribly low and the reaction from the other studio guests (a literary agent and three successful mainstream-published writers) was obvious: if you listen to the recording you can clearly hear them gasp.

After the broadcast I caught up with the reaction on Twitter, and found that a few writers were discussing the figures I quoted and reaching some rather unsound conclusions. While I'm not going to quote anyone here (it’s just not appropriate to single anyone out), I do think it’s important that I respond to their points. But first, a very quick primer on how sales figures are usually gathered in the book trade.

Nielsen Bookscan collects the sales figures of various online and physical retailers, then collates those figures and reports them to the book trade (it’s Nielsen which produces the best-seller charts we're all so envious of). However, as relatively few copies of self-published books are sold through bookshops, and quite a few self-published titles don’t even have the ISBNs which are essential for books to be tracked by Nielsen, the majority of self-published sales aren't included in Nielsen’s sales reports: therefore, if you rely on Nielsen to provide sales information about self-published books, you’re likely to be way out of whack with the real picture.

The Tweeters seemed to assume that I was relying on Nielsen, and that therefore my figures had to be way off.

They would have had a very valid point if I had relied on Nielsen’s reports for my statistics, but I used a far more generous source for the figures I quoted on air: the publishers themselves (there’s an obvious difficulty here: my figures came from companies which style themselves as self-publishing service providers, which many consider to be vanity presses: but for the purposes of this discussion I’ll ignore that issue, which is a little off-topic here. I shall return to it at another time, have no fear).

As most publishing service providers of this type offer only print-on-demand services, copies of the books that they publish are only ever printed in direct response to an order; a copy printed is a copy sold, no matter who buys it. So long as a book is printed and sent out from their premises they consider it a sale—when these companies report sales what they’re really reporting is the number of copies printed. You can see that there is not going to be a hidden stash of sales which fail to get included in the sales statistics: if anything, these companies are likely to over-report, rather than under-report, their sales.

As the sales figures I quoted came directly from POD-based self-publishing service providers, not only do those figures include all copies sold in bookshops or by Amazon, etc.; they also include all copies subsequently returned by bookshops to their authors (because with self-publishing the author is the publisher, and so they have to credit the bookseller’s account for those returned books even if they’re no longer in a sellable condition); they also include as sales every single copy that the authors bought and then sent out, for free, to reviewers, or gave away to family and friends; and every single copy which all those hopeful authors ordered, only to have them left mouldering away in their garages when they found they couldn't sell them—of which there are far too many.

Which means that it’s impossible for the sales figures I mentioned to be under-reported: unlike Nielsen's figures, they are going to be higher than the sales which really count in an author's career: the sales made to interested readers who considered the books potentially good enough to pay their hard-earned money for.

Special Congratulations To RJ Frith!

2009-11-25T19:18:00.004Z

RJ Frith has won the War of the Words novel-writing competition with The Nemesis List. The competition was organised by publisher Tor UK and Sci Fi Now magazine, and attracted a high number and standard of entries.

My warmest congratulations to RJ Frith for this significant win. It's richly deserved, and I hope it will be the first of many. I look forward to buying The Nemesis List as soon as it's published: and I cannot stress enough how very pleased I am about this!

If Self Publishing Really Is The Future....

2009-11-23T10:00:00.000Z

During last week's outrage over Harlequin Horizons, one comment really caught my attention and remained with me for days. It appeared in the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog site but came in part from an earlier blog post. I reproduce it now with permission from its author, the brilliant Stacia Kane.

When self-publishing becomes the only option, only the rich will be able to publish. When publishers can make more money taking cash from aspiring writers than by selling books to the public, writers and readers both suffer. Writers who can’t afford to publish will be lost, or we’ll have to go back to the 18th century model and whore ourselves out to rich “patrons” who might agree to pay for our publishing—not pay us, but pay to produce the books themselves.

Imagine a world where the only books on the shelves are those written by people with enough money to pay to have them published. Very little quality control, no attention paid to whether or not the book is actually worthwhile. How much fun will reading be then?

From my blog:

We’d have books written exclusively by those who could afford it. Much like in the 18th century, when so many books were diaries of some peeress’s trip through Europe with titles like, “My Gleanings.” FUN. I know I can’t wait to read books written exclusively by the wealthy, with no viewpoints other than their own. I’m sick of hearing what baby boomers think already; I can assure you I don’t want to read more of their “Gee, the sixties were sooo great!” back-patting. I know I can’t wait for a world where books written by those from other cultures have no chance to be translated into English and released here, when we become even more ignorant of the lives of those in the world outside because there’s no way to get their books in front of English-speaking audiences. Oh, and of course, given that self-published books tend to be much more expensive, thanks to POD technology, I can’t wait for a world when reading and books are even less available to the poor. When they don’t have the same opportunities thanks to their inability to get hold of books.

Oh, what’s that you say? Oh, right. The internet will provide all of that. Of course. Because I know when I want something to read I’d much rather spend hours and hours slogging around online looking for something decent than just go to a bookstore. I know people who can’t afford books totally have the money for laptops and ereaders and the internet. So in seeking to democratize literature, what you are actually doing is STEALING IT from those less fortunate than you.

We’d also have a lot more unreadable books. I’m sorry, but it’s true. For every excellent work of self-published fiction–and they are out there, make no mistake–and for every one that’s not bad, just not terribly polished or professional or interesting, there are dozens of horrible ones. Really.

Let’s not forget that the way most people learn proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling isn’t through school. I mean, we do learn those things at school, but we develop those skills by reading. So you tell me, how literate will we be as a society when there are no professionally written books? When there are no people to judge if a work is even readable or not before it gets published? When anything goes? Would you like to go back to the middle ages, when words were just spelled however they sounded? Because I wouldn’t.

If you'd like to thank Stacia for this piece, buy her books.

The Write Lines

2009-11-21T10:00:00.000Z

Broadcaster and writer Sue Cook has a short series about writing and getting published running on Sunday evenings on BBC Radio Oxford. It's called The Write Lines: last week's episode is available to listen to again, and its next episode will run live tomorrow evening, from 9 to 10pm GMT.

Tomorrow night the discussion will focus on how to find an agent and get your work into print. Guests include literary agent David Godwin; literary agent and founder of the London Writers' Club Jacqueline Burns, and writers Katie Fforde, Caroline Smailes, Elizabeth Chadwick, Robyn Scott, and Miriam Wakerly. Writer Ben Johncock (who blogs for The Bookseller) will be tweeting live from the studio; and some woman called Jane Smith will be there too, butting into the conversation from time to time and generally making a nuisance of herself.

Even if you live outside the range of the BBC's Oxford transmitters you should be able to listen along on the internet from the links I've given above. If you'd like to participate and you have a Twitter account, please Tweet your questions to @theWriteLines before and during the programme, and we'll do our best to answer as many as we can. Meanwhile, you can prepare for the show by reading up on the participants either by following the above links to their websites, or by following them on Twitter: all our user-names are below. I'm looking forward to hearing from you: and please forgive me if I mumble or giggle uncontrollably, I'm not used to radio and Sue Cook provides free wine--it could be a dangerous combination.

@theWriteLines
@SueCookcom
@MiriamWakerly
@Caroline_S
@Chadwickauthor
@robynscott
@KatieFforde
@writersclub

@hprw

Harlequin Horizons: An Update

2009-11-20T10:00:00.001Z

Harlequin’s venture into “self-publishing” (I use the inverted commas because although that’s what they’re calling it it’s not self-publishing, it’s vanity publishing) has gathered a huge amount of criticism since I blogged about it earlier this week.

Jackie Kessler has written a very good overview of the situation here (my thanks to Janet Reid for directing me towards Jackie's thoughtful piece).

The Romance Writers of America has stated that as Harlequin is now providing vanity publishing services, Harlequin will no longer be eligible for RWA-provided conference resources (I can't provide a link to the statement, as I'm not a member of the RWA). Harlequin's response appears in full on agent Kristin Nelson's blog and includes this assurance:

"...we are changing the name of the self-publishing company from Harlequin Horizons to a designation that will not refer to Harlequin in any way. We will initiate this process immediately. We hope this allays the fears many of you have communicated to us."

It's something, I suppose: but renaming the imprint doesn't stop it being a vanity imprint, so most of the problems with it still stand.

The Science Fiction Writers of America has condemned Harlequin's new imprint (its statement also appears on the Writer Beware blog):

"The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA) finds it extremely disappointing that Harlequin has chosen to launch an imprint whose sole purpose appears to be the enrichment of the corporate coffers at the expense of aspiring writers."

The Mystery Writers of America has issued a statement which includes the following pointer:

"Offering these services violates long-standing MWA rules for inclusion on our Approved Publishers List."

Literary agent Rachelle Gardner sees raw submissions every day, and understands how bad many of them are: she expresses her concerns about the implications of such schemes here; literary agent Ashley Grayson voices more concerns in this blog post, and makes this rather lovely comment:

"The offer is reprehensible: For between $600 and $1,600 you can pretend to be a published author. You won’t be, really published, because no commercial publisher liked your book well enough to bring it to market. They will just pretend to offer it for sale if you pay the costs."

Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware has asked why people are getting so riled up about this particular vanity-publishing scheme when other similar schemes have barely raised a ripple.

Finally, a big gold star goes to writer Stacia Kane, who seems to have spent the whole week explaining why Harlequin Horizons is such a bad idea. I've lined up one of her many comments to appear as a blog post here in a couple of days: it's a treat. She's been absolutely inspiring, and I applaud her.

Edited to add some more linky goodness:

John Scalzi: Writers’ Organizations to Harlequin: If You’re Not Going to Act Like a Real Publisher, We’re Not Going to Treat You Like One

Making Light: RWA Walks The Walk

The Examiner: Harlequin Horizons to change name to appease its critics

Dawn Metcalf: What's New on the Horizon?

E-Reads: Harlequin, "Surprised and Dismayed" by RWA Action, Defends Decision But Moves to Change Program Name

Harlequin Horizons: Looking To The Future, Or Exploiting The Naive?

2009-11-18T09:43:00.003Z

The news that Harlequin has teamed up with Author Solutions (owner of Author House, and several other pay-to-publish services) to create a new "self publishing" imprint called Harlequin Horizons is perhaps not surprising. A few weeks ago, Thomas Nelson transformed its existing West Bow Press imprint into a similar "self publishing" scheme alongside Author Solutions; earlier this year HarperCollins formed an alliance with Blurb, Accent Press began its own pay-to-play erotica imprint, respected UK-based military history publisher Osprey took a similar route with Author Solutions; and for some time now US literary agency Objective Entertainment has been referring the writers it rejects direct to Author House with a letter which suggests to those writers that such publication could be their route to mainstream success. While Author House used to offer a commission of $100 on all successful referrals I have seen no evidence that this is part of the deal here: but while it's probable that the publishers taking part in these schemes will make a reasonable amount of money from the books which are sold, without that referral fee it's difficult to tell what's in it for Objective Entertainment.

With publishers in the grip of a financial squeeze, we are likely to see more and more turning towards such publication schemes in an attempt to transform their slush-piles from time-drain into a lucrative income-stream: the problem with the way it's being done here is the implication that this is a route for the writers involved to find real publishing success. And despite Author Solutions' attempts to position itself as a self publishing service provider and not a vanity press, it still charges writers for publication: in some cases several thousand pounds, which is a significant sum considering that the average Author House book sells just fifty-four copies (which for the authors who go ahead with Harlequin Horizon equates to a cost to the author of $11.00 per copy sold—a dismal result which becomes even more chilling when you consider that figure is based on their cheapest package of $599, and their prices go much higher than that).

There is a way for publishers to make real money from their slush piles without steering aspiring writers towards vanity publishing, and with relatively little upfront expense of financial risks to the publishers concerned.

It would entail a new imprint which offered print on demand printing only, standard template typesetting and jacket design, and basic levels of editing available only at a cost. Sales and promotion would be down to the author; all the publisher would have to do is download the text to the printers system and assign an ISBN—at no cost to the writer. Writers being what they are, they would almost certainly buy enough copies of their own books to move each title into profit under such a scheme, as the proliferation of vanity presses which work to exactly this model has proved.

The more astute among you will now, of course, all be screaming at me that this brave new system that I've proposed is nothing more than reverse-end vanity publishing: a scheme where no up-front costs are charged, under which writers fund their own publication by buying copies of their own books to resell (think PublishAmerica). You're right, of course. Which is why any publisher seriously considering creating an imprint like this would have to commit to two conditions, which it would have to be stringent about imposing.

It would have to make clear at every opportunity that such publication would be unlikely to lead to mainstream publishing success, or to result in any significant financial reward for the writers concerned, and to provide accurate and honest information about the realities of self- and vanity-publication and the differences between them and mainstream publication;
It would have to take steps to ensure that it only published books which were unlikely to do well if published by the more usual mainstream routes. Because, with all due respect to the writers who I would expect to see targeted by such a scheme, it would be a shame to see a good book appear on a list like this, as the lack of publishing support would make it highly unlikely to see it fulfil its true potential. It would be possible for this filtering to be carried out without employing teams of slush-readers: all that would be required is a big-enough stack of form rejections from reputable agents and publishers.

There are all sorts of bells and whistles which a canny publisher could add to this model in order to add value for the writers involved, and increase the publishers' financial return: online courses in writing and promotion, an online forum to encourage reciprocal sales efforts between writers; conferences where publishing professionals speak to give writers a chance to expand their knowledge and increase their expertise. To make it even more valuable, editorial assessments and critiques could be written by any willing writers which the publisher already had signed up, which would provide those writers with some welcome extra income too (which the publisher could take a commission from, in order to cover the administrative costs of running such a scheme). All these possibilities would result in better books, more sales, and an improvement in income for the publishers involved.

While I don’t think that this business model is perfect, it has to be better than the one which Harlequin Horizons works to; and there would be two further benefits would should not be overlooked.

The first is that slush piles would significantly reduce in size, as books with little mainstream potential were published through the new imprints.

The second is that by offering this more-ethical route into paid-for publication to the writers without real mainstream potential, the number of writers available to be exploited and swindled by the vanity presses would dwindle away. The publishing business could kill off this blight by beating vanity publishers at their own game. Which has to be a good thing.

I have banged on about a scheme like this before: you can read my earlier post here. And if you'd like to read more about Harlequin Horizons there's a shocked-and-stunned discussion of it over at AbsoluteWrite, Kevin A Gray of Author Solutions steps into the fray at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books; Dear Author voices an opinion; and literary agent Kristin Nelson adds her views to the discussion.

Learn Writing With Uncle Jim: A Celebration

2009-11-13T09:42:00.003Z

Six years ago today, a discussion called Learn Writing With Uncle Jim began on the Absolute Write message board. The Uncle Jim in question is SF writer James D Macdonald, who is perhaps better known as Yog, of Yog's Law fame. Learn Writing With Uncle Jim has now expanded into a second volume, and has grown into one of the most useful discussions about writing that there is.

If you write fiction then you will find things in it which will help you. If you write non-fiction, then you probably will too. If you're not sure it's for you, have a look at this partial index of the discussion and I'll bet that you'll find something there which interests you; if you'd like to read all of Mr Macdonald's posts without comments from other readers you can find them here; and if, confronted with all that linky goodness you find the discussion's length and detail a little daunting, just dip into it. Start reading. You'll soon see what I mean.

And while you're at Absolute Write, have a little look around: you might find a celebration or two going on. And if you would like to thank Mr Macdonald for his help and encouragement, then there's a something you can do which is guaranteed to please him: buy his books.

I Am Working On A Website!

2009-11-02T10:00:00.001Z

I know, I know. As if I don't have enough trouble maintaining this blog without tearing my hair out, I now have a website.

There's not much in it right now, and it looks rather, well, dull. But over the next couple of weeks I'll be stuffing it chock-full of all sorts of publishing-related goodness, and will do my best to glue some sparkly stuff onto it so that it looks a lot nicer.

If anyone would like to volunteer their technical expertise to help me make it look just a little more interesting I'd be thrilled. It would stop me bunging up the internet with Copydex and glitter, too.

A Horror Story For Halloween

2009-10-31T10:00:00.000Z

Over the years I’ve read lot of publishing-related horror stories. I’ve read about writers who cheated and were cheated, publishers who ran away with wives as well as money and rights, and literary agents who ended up in prison for their sins. But the one story which stands out for me is the one about a writer who in her attempts to get published managed to hook up with a dangerously clueless agent, an incompetent ghost-writer (who also happened to be an incompetent literary agent), a vanity publisher and a plagiarism charge. Along the way she attracted negative attention from just about every publishing- and writing-related website, offended many people including the high-profile writer whose work was plagiarised, had a few wiccan curses thrown around on her behalf, insisted none of it was her fault as she had high blood pressure, and provided me with one of the most absorbing demonstrations of How To Look Foolish On The Internet that I have ever encountered. I have to admire her dedication: but her determination to be published no matter what, and her refusal to even consider that she’d done anything wrong makes her attempts to be published a failure of quite epic proportions. I give you the story of Lanaia Lee.

Two years ago, a writer called Lanaia Lee sent her novel, Of Atlantis, to the Dear Author site for possible review. One of Dear Author’s readers duly began to read it… and wondered why the text seemed just a touch familiar. After not much digging at all, the reader realised that Lee’s opening chapter was almost word-for-word identical to the best-selling David Gemmell’s book, Dark Prince. Compare the two:

Lee: The golden-haired child sat alone, as he usually did, and wondered whether his Father would die today

Gemmell: The golden-haired child sat alone, as he usually did, and wondered whether his father would die that day

Dear Author reacted with typical style and published a fantastic blog post in place of its review: its now-infamous Top 10 Tips For Plagiarists. The post was quickly picked up by Making Light, and by Absolute Write, and slowly the story unfolded.

It turned out that Lanaia had paid a ghost-writer $400 a month for nearly two years to write her book for her, and that the ghost-writer had been responsible for the initial plagiarism. That ghost-writer was Christopher Hill, of the Hill and Hill Agency, a Scotland-based literary agent who had worked hard at making no sales at all.

For some time Hill had represented Lee but had failed to sell her books: with hindsight this is not surprising as although Hill reported in some depth to his author-clients, listing publishers’ comments and providing detailed lists of revisions which those publishers had apparently asked for, he never once made a sale. Many of his clients believed that they were on the brink of being published by major houses but shortly before the Lania Lee story broke one of his clients learned that the publishers who had, according to Hill, offered him a book deal, had never even heard of him, his book, or Hill. A little investigation revealed that this was true for all the writers Hill represented, most of whom believed they were about to be signed: at that point Hill claimed to have left the country, although I’ve been told that he actually remained at home in his Scottish bungalow throughout the whole fandango.

Meanwhile, back to Lee. Because she hadn’t committed the initial plagiarism by copying Gemmell’s work into “her” book, Lee insisted that she was not guilty of plagiarism. She left Gemmell’s chapter up on her website to showcase “her” work and when she was urged to take the work down she issued the following statement on her website intended for her (by now, many) critics:

I have erractic hypertension, you keep dogging me I could have another stroke, contact my agent and attorney, I’m sure no one wants mt blood on their hands. [sic]

And then Lee’s new literary agent stepped into the ring: one Cheryl Pillsbury, an author who had published one of her own books with XLibris, another with Outskirts Press, and two more with PublishAmerica. Those three publishers have more in common than just publishing Ms Pillbury’s books: they’re all vanity presses. Accounts of Pillsbury’s agenting sales vary: but all report a very low number, and all report sales only to vanity presses. Perhaps realising that she couldn’t make a living with such a paltry record Pillsbury began AG Press, the pay-to-play imprint which was going to package Lee’s book in order for it to be published by Roval Publishing which was, you’ve guessed it, another vanity press. With this grounding in publishing quaking beneath her, Pillsbury arrived at Making Light with her fists up, and commented,

For people who throw stones at glasses houses should be very cautious about speaking before they know the truth. Slander can cause a major lawsuit from the author and the publisher mentioned, because I will make sure they know about this and dear Jane will have nightmares in 10 fold. Yes, I'm Wicca.

I was just informed, the author has already set the motions for the lawsuit, be prepared. You were told by the lawyer not to post anything related to this issue, first amendement does not apply. I have made a copy of this site for proof, see you soon. Have a ducky day.

(The Jane who Pillsbury referred to there is from Dear Author.) While several online writing communities were outraged by Lee’s actions, Victoria Strauss took a kinder view. She had already written extensively about Christopher Hill and when the Lee story broke cover, Victoria wrote,

I find it completely plausible that the ripoff of Gemmell was Hill's work, not Lanaia's. It would be absolutely typical of Hill to do something like this to screw over a client--especially one who'd twigged to his scam.

Even today, Lanaia Lee is promoting that plagiarised book, Of Atlantis. A book she paid Hill thousands of dollars to write; which was represented by a fee-charging agent with a history of vanity publishing; which was published by fee-charging Roval Publishing. She is a wheelchair-bound stroke victim who has wasted thousands of dollars on this book and in the process has become infamous. I doubt, however, that she’s sold more than a few copies of “her” book.

See, I told you it was a horror story.

How To Test A Copy Editor

2009-10-30T10:00:00.000Z

A good copy editor can significantly improve a book in all sorts of subtle and beautiful ways; a bad one can slash-and-burn their way through a manuscript and render it almost unreadable.

If you've ever considered hiring a copy editor to look at your work before you send it off to publishers or agents, here's a handy list of questions to ask before you trust them with your book. Read every word. Learn it off by heart. This is why professional editors are to be respected and adored.

How To Find A Good Literary Agent

2009-10-29T10:00:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago, a thread began at Absolute Write about a new and as-yet unproved agent. Said agent rocked up; questions were asked; a magnificent bun-fight ensued. After a few frustrating days the uproar moved to a part of Aboslute Write's forum which is not Google-cached (I doubt that the agent concerned realised how lucky he was with that); and it culminated in this particularly unprofessional tweet from him here.

This witty and concise livejournal post from Beth Bernobich provides a treasure-trove of linky background about the agent concerned: it's pretty safe to say that he has a history of being argumentative and confrontational online which doesn't bode well for how he might behave when negotiating a particularly difficult contract, or when dealing with editors who reject the books he represents; and I'm not convinced that a few years working in the book division of a product-licensing company is extensive enough experience, or is even appropriate, for anyone intending to embark on a career as a literary agent.

If you read through all the links supplied, you'll find plenty of reasons not to submit to the agent concerned: his lack of experience, his argumentative nature, and the extraordinarily bad advice he gave about children's books all count against him. But without all those things on a plate in front of them, how can writers avoid the agents who might not serve them best?

To paraphrase James McDonald, the job of a literary agent is not an entry-level position. If you're looking for a literary agent you'd be wise to avoid submitting to the new and unproved, no matter how well-behaved they are online. Wait a year and see how well they do: the bottom line is that a good literary agent will make sales to good publishers, at no up-front cost to the authors they represent.

I Think I'm Back

2009-10-28T13:12:00.003Z

Many apologies for the long break in transmission.

Thanks to odd things happening with my blogger account, my ISP deciding I didn't really know who I was, and a particularly nasty troll, I've been unable to do anything with my blogs for a couple of weeks now.

I think I've got everything nearly back to normal: forgive me if you've commented over the last few weeks but your comment hasn't yet appeared, I'll be trawling through all comments and slowly approving them as I get time. I've lost a couple of weeks' worth of planned blog posts, so have some work ahead of me to get back on track: meanwhile, I appreciate your patience. I've been venting a little on Twitter if anyone's interested.

Now, where were we?

How I Got Published (Part II): Daniel Blythe

2009-10-10T10:00:00.001+01:00

A little later than planned, here's the second part of Daniel Blythe's account of how he became a professional, published writer (you can read the first part here). Read and it and boggle.

No publisher, no new book on the horizon and a dearth of new ideas and enthusiasm – that's where I was when we left my publishing career in 2000, with a new baby taking up a lot of the spare time anyway. I was down, but didn't really have time to think about it.

During this time my agent tried, and failed, to sell my novel for 8-to-12-year-olds to every children's publisher in town. They just didn't want to know. I had no idea what I was doing wrong. It felt like when you get on a losing streak at Scrabble and just can't get back into that winning groove. I wanted to scream from the rooftops "I am PUBLISHED, for God's sake. Four novels! Count 'em! Do you think I am some newbie wannabe?" At one point (such was the state of my confidence) I remember saying to my agent, "You are *telling* them about my previous books, aren't you...?"

However. One of the publishers with whom my agent had made connections was David Shelley at Allison and Busby, and I started to talk to him about an 80s film book – which turned in to an 80s music book. Despite David being a few years younger than me we shared similar musical tastes and the book, a 500-page whopper, slowly took shape during 2001 and was published, first in hardback and then in paperback. It got extensively reviewed in regional papers up and down the country, got me lots of radio interest and even, thanks to an enterprising chap at BBC Leeds called John Ryan (who is now running BBC Radio Manchester) a co-presenting slot on an Eighties radio show. Suddenly, I was not only a non-fiction writer but also a DJ too!

Thanks to The Encyclopaedia of Classic 80's Pop, I had re-invented myself. More non-fiction followed – Dadlands: The Alternative Handbook for New Fathers for Wiley, about my experiences of fatherhood, and I Hate Christmas: A Manifesto for the Modern-day Scrooge for Allison and Busby. Both still get a bit of media interest to this day. My agent was doing a great job – putting me out there, matching me up with editors who liked my ideas. And now, a new novel finally came to fruition, in the form of a manuscript called Cruel Summer which I had been working on since 2003. Another 500-page whopper, it ended up being called This Is The Day (my agent suggested Cruel Summer was "a bit too Bananarama") and it was sold to Allison & Busby in 2006, appearing as a trade paperback in 2007 and – hooray! – this time, finally, a paperback a year later. A wine-and-nibbles launch at Blackwells helped shift a few copies, as did some more radio slots. Although the half-promised Richard and Judy appearance for I Hate Christmas hadn't materialized, I had good reason to be thankful to my new publishers.

Diversity, survival, eclecticism – these were my new watchwords. I started up a novel class for the Workers' Educational Association, still running to this day. A chance encounter with some Writers In Schools and a conference workshop by the inspirational Two Steves got me inspired to go into primary schools, delivering workshops and doing author "appearances". The paying gigs began to pile up. More non-fiction commissions came along – the latest being two books for Pen & Sword. My agent sold my idea for X Marks the Box: How to Make Politics Work for You, a political book for non-political people, to Icon Books – a small publisher in the Faber distribution network. That was written with the support of the Authors' Foundation, and will be out soon. And I successfully applied for an Arts Council award in 2008 to write my new children's book – which my agent still believes in, and is still trying to find a home for.

I also returned to the Doctor Who fold when the BBC's Creative Consultant, Justin Richards (himself a writer of hugely popular books for young people) invited me to write one of the Autumn 2009 books featuring David Tennant – last chance to write for the Tenth Doctor before he stands down! I jumped at the chance, and wrote Doctor Who: Autonomy in an intense 7-month period. The "Doctor Who" books are a very different proposition now – they are written by invitation, rather than the editors accepting unsolicited ideas. They are shorter and punchier than the chunky 90s novels and aimed at a younger readership. They have, of course, a huge publicity machine behind them, "Doctor Who" now being a massive, populist, multi-media success story (rather than the slightly embarrassing anachronism it was seen as in the early 1990s). And – somewhat less in the authors' favour – they now pay on the basis of a fixed fee, rather than an advance and royalties. So, not much wiggle-room for my agent to negotiate on. But it is a good fixed fee, and there is a bonus built in once the title sells over a certain number of copies. And, for goodness' sake, I needed the work, and I know I can write "Doctor Who" – I have been a fan since I first cowered behind a cushion at Davros in 1975.

So now, here I am – a working and teaching writer, an educator, an Author In Schools, a sometime radio presenter, and still a would-be children's writer. What have I learned from all this? That you need to diversify to survive, and never take anything for granted. That you just keep plugging away. And that if you have a good agent, hang on to them through thick and thin – this spring, I mark thirteen years with mine, and I'm hoping neither of us is going anywhere else in the foreseeable future.

My thanks to Dan for suggesting this series to me, and for kicking it off so very well. If any publishers are reading, Dan's two excellent children's books (both with good series potential) remain unpublished; and if any writers reading this have a good publication story to tell, I'd be very pleased to hear about it.

I May Be Some Time (Again)

2009-09-30T17:27:00.002+01:00

Here's the thing. Remember that new computer which rescued me from having to undergo a complete internet withdrawal a couple of weeks ago? Well, it's slowly collapsing under the weight of its own short circuits, and so it looks like I'm going to actually have to buy a new computer now.

If I don't appear for a few days, then, don't worry. I'll be back. And mean while, here's an eye-watering new plagiarism story to keep you going. I can't understand why writers would do this but still it happens.

How I Got Published (Part I): Daniel Blythe

2009-09-29T10:00:00.001+01:00

Daniel Blythe is one of those rare creatures: a writer who makes his living from his writing work. He's also a regular contributor to this blog, and can be found in the comments-streams on many of my posts. His latest book is Autonomy, and is a Doctor Who novelisation. Here's the story of his route into publication: I hope that it will be the first of many to appear here.

I've learned a few lessons from my years of being published – not all of them pleasant. They are:

1) Philip Pullman was absolutely right when he said that the three things you need are talent, luck and hard work, and that the only one you have any control over is the hard work.

2) You probably aren't ready to be published when you think you are.

3) Even after you have become published, most people in publishing will treat you like an annoyance, a lackey or an irrelevance. The fact that there would be no "publishing industry" without you and thousands like you is totally lost on them.

My breakthrough – after a couple of years of unpaid short stories in the small press and so on – came in 1992 when Peter Darvill-Evans of Virgin Books invited submissions for his range of original Doctor Who fiction, a new idea at the time. My proposal for The Dimension Riders was accepted in 1992 and the book came out in November 1993 in time for the 30th anniversary of Doctor Who. It was hugely exciting to see stacks (yes, really, stacks) of my books in bookshops – on shelves, on tables and even on the floor. And it was very satisfying to keep sneaking into these bookshops and moving them to even more prominent positions.

After that, I did a second book for Peter's successor at Virgin, Rebecca Levene, called Infinite Requiem, which sold pretty much the same – both books received a small advance (under £2k, as I recall) but did very well in royalties. Virgin knew what they were doing. They could afford to take on new, unknown writers and pay them peanuts, because it was the Doctor Who brand and Sylvester McCoy's face doing the selling. One more short story in a Virgin anthology and I moved on – very amicably. I tried them with a couple more ideas, I think, but nothing really gelled.

I was trying my "proper novels" with editors, and receiving often quite patronising responses. The fact that I was published – *published*! – and my books had sold tens of thousands of copies was met with an indifferent shrug from the Katies and the Melissas. But I'd been writing what became The Cut, and this helped me to get an agent. I queried ten, but the one I eventually found was young, keen, clever and seemed on my wavelength. We met up in London for a chat, and clicked. She took me on, read the first half of The Cut and seemed very enthusiastic about selling it. Over the course of the next few months, she tried several publishers and got the frustration of the "rave rejections" – i.e. "we love it, but..." Eventually it ended up on the desk of Tony Lacey at Penguin and it happened to be the sort of thing he was looking for. It was published as a Penguin paperback in 1998, and got decent bookshop exposure and went to a reprint. The advance was a mid-range four figures, but I was just happy to have anything. I had an agent, who had sold my novel to a big publisher. Things were up and running, and I was still only twenty-eight.

I'd like to say this started off a productive and long-running association with Penguin, but I'd be lying. They bought my next novel, Losing Faith – for about double the advance paid on The Cut – and then sneaked it out into the bookshops under cover of darkness, with about as much publicity as the Much Binding In The Marsh Fete gets. In fact, I'm sure the Much Binding Fete gets a lot more, as it would have a notice in the parish newsletter and a mention in the Binding Gazette. To everyone's feigned astonishment but mine, Losing Faith didn't do terribly well in trade paperback and Penguin declined a) the option on my next book and b) to do the B-format paperback of Losing Faith.

I am normally a mild-mannered person. But this is the only time I can recall actually screaming and swearing (most unprofessionally) down the phone at my agent. I literally could not understand how this had happened. It was in the contract that they would do the paperback. It was IN. THE. CONTRACT. So that was my lesson for 1999 – a publishing contract, when they want it to be, is not worth the paper it's written on. I'd been pinning a lot of hopes on the paperback – being told I was not having one really felt like being kicked while I was down.

I kept my agent. It wasn't her fault. (And where, after all, was I going to find another one? It would be like dumping a nice girlfriend just because she hadn't helped you not to lose your job.)

But it was my lowest point as a professional writer. I had assumed – naively – that once you were published, it opened doors. That you would no longer be ignored and treated like the least important cog in the machine. That the advances gradually crept up, sneaking towards "proper salary" level, until the big breakthrough novel on Book Five or Six, when it would all go mad. To say I'd had a major reality-check would be an understatement.

So there I was at the age of twenty-nine, feeling as if I was right back at the start again. Where did it all go wrong? Where would it go from here?

Luckily, an opportunity was just around the corner – one which would change my writing life for ever...

And no, it wasn't meeting me, as Daniel and I didn't become acquainted until much later on. You can read the second part of his story next Tuesday, and if you have your own story of publication which you'd like to see featured here, email it to me at "HPRW at tesco dot net". I'll look forward to hearing from you.

How I Got Published: Tell Your Story

2009-09-28T10:00:00.001+01:00

I keep reading comments online which insist that you can only get a book deal if you have mysterious connections in the publishing business; and how it's absolutely impossible for new writers to get published at all.

The logic of these arguments is fundamentally flawed, and they're just not true; but how to convince people of that? It must sound so very reasonable if you're an unpublished writer floundering around in the wasteland of the slush-pile, or drowning in a sea of rejections. I can waffle on all I like about the alchemical mix of talent, market awareness, persistence and luck which it takes to get a book written and published well from this side of the publication fence; but unpublished writers don't want alchemy, they want real information, something more concrete and clear. They want a magic key which opens publishing's door for them: they want to see what transforms an unpublished writer into a published one.

Daniel Blythe, a writer who comments here regularly, has had a stroke of brilliance (again: he's good at that). He's suggested that I start to include in my blog writers' own accounts of how they got published.

So, tomorrow the first in what I hope will be a new series: Daniel Blythe will tell us how he first got published. His is a cracking story which shows just how talent, wit and hard work can make you very lucky indeed.

If you've been published and would like to contribute your own story, just email it to me (my address is over there, in the right-hand column) with "HPRW: How I Got Published" in the subject-line. I'm looking forward to reading your contributions, and will use as many of them as I can.

For Unpublished Writers Everywhere

2009-09-26T10:00:00.000+01:00

I can understand your frustrations. I can understand your longings to be published. I can even understand you considering calling yourself "prepublished" in an ironic, post-modernist way.

But what ever you do, please don't actually do it. It's embarrassing, and will draw the attention of the Point And Laugh Brigade.

My thanks to Editorial Anonymous for making this clear.

Dashes And Ellipses

2009-09-24T16:12:00.000+01:00

Better late than never, we are now celebrating National Punctuation Day while simultaneously giving me a chance to indulge in a couple of my favourite obsessions: nitpicking, and dashes (and don't get me started on semicolons or we'll have to extend the event to last all week). This post first appeared on my other blog, The Self-Publishing Review, which is why it already has a few comments attached to it.

Somewhere in one of my comments, Sally has asked me for some more information about dashes and ellipses. Do, therefore, please blame her for the following rather boring post.

It's difficult to give exact rules for the correct usage for either the dash or the ellipsis as much depends on house style: the most important rule to remember is to be consistent. Choose one way and stick to it throughout your work. Use a "find and replace" to locate all examples once you've finished, just to ensure your consistency. And once you've done that don't get into a lather about them, as so much depends on the editor or publisher you're working with.

For the ellipsis, the usual convention is that it has a space after, but not before, or between each individual dot; and that if one ends a sentence, then you add a full stop so you get four dots in a row, and that full stop will naturally necessitate that a capital letter follows. So we use ellipses like this in the middle of a sentence... and like this at the end.... Ellipses indicate a trailing off (for example, in speech), rather than an interruption or abrupt halt, for which you use a dash.

Some houses prefer no spaces at all on either side of their ellipses and some (although happily, these are in the minority as I think it looks awful) prefer a space either side. I'm not sure which one I think is worse.

Dashes are more tricky. House style dictates, as usual. First rule is to remember that they are NOT interchangeable with hyphens, and that you need to show the difference between dashes and hyphens, usually by using two hyphens without a space between them to indicate a dash.

Whether or not you use a space either side of your dashes, like this:

text -- text

or don't, like this:

text--text

is up to you and the dictates of your style guide. I usually default to the latter, with no spaces, as it's what is preferred by the Chicago manual, which is what most American publishers default to when they're unsure.

Then you have to consider em- and en-dashes: the en and em refers to how much room they should take up on the line. The choice here is, once again, mostly a matter of house style although strictly speaking there are specific situations when each one should be used. If I'm in any doubt I usually default to the em-dash throughout rather than the en, as it's easier to differentiate from hyphens and so leads to a clearer text.

Finally, I'd ask everyone to use as few dashes and ellipses as possible as otherwise your text is going to look like the punctuation-spider has been sick all over it. Not a pretty thing, and very distracting to the reader.

There. I just hope Sally is grateful. After all--she asked.

Moving From Self-Published To Mainstream Publication

2009-09-23T10:00:00.001+01:00

If you've self-published then you've already tested your book, as a product, on the marketplace. If it failed to sell in any great numbers, then in the eyes of a lot of publishers, you’ve proved that it doesn't have the potential to sell in sufficient quantities for them to take it on. This might well be because you, as a publisher, don't have access to the same sales and marketing clout that the bigger publishers employ, but many of those big publishers aren’t interested in that: all they see is the numbers they find on Nielsen’s sales reports. As far as they’re concerned, your book hasn't sold well and so you've shown that it's an uncommercial product.

This probably means that those publishers miss out on a few books with real potential: but as publishers have so many titles to pick and choose from, it's no wonder they tend to dismiss books so easily.

Why Good Writing Gets Rejected

2009-09-21T10:00:00.000+01:00

I have a reasonable amount of experience of the publishing world: I worked as a non-fiction editor for a book-packaging company which gave me direct experience of editing for some of the best publishing houses in the world. In the process, I learned a little about the publishing business; the differences between good and publishable; and the horrible truth about the slush pile.

I've had a reasonable amount of non-fiction published and so have seen that it is possible for complete unknowns to get themselves good publishing deals with a little bit of luck and a lot of hard work.

I've also had all of the novels I've written so far rejected. I've won all sorts of prizes for my fiction and have received only positive comments from agents and editors, so I know I'm competent: but what went wrong?

While I'll agree that my second novel is overlong and far too quiet, I still consider my first to be good-to-excellent—but, having worked in publishing for so many years, I can understand why it hasn't been published, despite a few very near misses: it would have been very difficult for the sales reps to sell it into bookshops.

Without my editorial experience I would be far less able to understand why that's so important; and without my non-fiction publications I might have gone on to conclude that it's impossible for a newcomer to get published. I'm lucky: I can see this from all sides and while I would dearly love to see my novels in print, I can understand why they are not.

I can only imagine how painful it must be for good writers without similar industry experience to understand why their excellent work has been rejected.

Vanity Publishing or Self-Publishing?

2009-09-18T10:00:00.001+01:00

How can vanity publishers and self-publishers be distinguished from one another? And why is it important that we make this distinction?

When an author self-publishes then the copyright page of his book bears the name of his imprint; his publishing company—even if it publishes just one title—owns his ISBN and the publication rights to that book. As publisher he’ll know exactly how many copies of his book have been printed, where and when they have been sold, and who to. Consequently he remains in full control of both the production and distribution of his own books.

A vanity publisher, however, will usually have its imprint listed on the copyright page of each book it publishes, and will control most aspects of their production and printing; consequently, the author will not have authority in the publication of his own book, nor will he have immediate access to vital information about stock levels and sales records. While vanity publishers often masquerade as mainstream or self-publishing services, their books usually carry the name of their own imprint: and by definition, if the imprint doesn’t belong to the author, it’s impossible for them to have self-published the book.

If you're considering self-publishing your book then it's important that you understand this: otherwise you could end up making a very costly mistake, and losing your precious first rights to an unscrupulous vanity publisher.

I Might Be Some Time....

2009-09-17T07:20:00.002+01:00

My computer is struggling again: it seems that my hard drive is failing.

I've got plans for a replacement, which shouldn't take me too long to arrange: what will cause problems, though, is updating all my drivers and the operating system: downloads take AGES on dial-up.

I'll get it done as soon as I can: but it might well be a few days before I'm properly back online. Meanwhile, enjoy the few posts I've already scheduled, and play nicely while I'm gone.

How Much Can Writers Get Away With?

2009-09-16T10:00:00.001+01:00

We know that writers have to get their work as close to perfect as possible to get it published: but the fact that publishers insist on paying editors to then edit those books before they are published implies to some that books don't have to be quite as perfect as is commonly thought before they are submitted. And if that's the case, what mistakes can writers get away with when they submit their work and what can't they afford to get wrong?

The basics of spelling, grammar and punctuation must be there. If the odd error has sneaked into your work then you're not facing an automatic rejection; if you show a persistent-but-consistent error which is relatively easy to correct, like using a hyphen where you should use a dash, then again you're not doing yourself too much harm. But if you misspell several words on every page, you don't seem to understand the correct use of the comma, and you pepper your whole manuscript with extended ellipses then that is going to signal to an editor that your book will need a substantial amount of work to get right—and will probably lead to rejection.
It's always possible to strengthen something: if a character isn't quite believable a good writer can work them more deeply into their scenes; new scenes can plug holes in gappy plots; structures can be consolidated or broken down; and a swingeing edit can work wonders on a flagging story-line, increasing the pace and tightening the story. The problem comes when all of these things need a lot of attention: the book will be very time-consuming to edit and with so much in need of revision it's difficult to be sure that the book will end up publishable. Rejection is the probable result.
The story has to be good. There is absolutely no point at all in constructing the perfect plot around a story which no one is interested in, or a story which people find repellent. Your story has to be really good, not just good enough.
If you have a good story and have perfected the structure, plot and characterisation, you still cannot guarantee that you have written a publishable book. What you also really have to have is a good voice—a unique, engaging and enticing voice. And this is the one thing that you have to get completely right if you want to be published because it's the one thing a good editor cannot help you with. It infuses every page of your manuscript and informs everything that you write. The stronger your voice, the more leeway you will be allowed with the rest of the book, and the more likely you are to get published regardless of what errors might lurk in your texts.

Manuscript Display Sites

2009-09-14T10:00:00.000+01:00

The concept behind a manuscript display site is simple: provide writers with a forum in which to display their work, in the hopes that an editor or agent will come browsing and discover a literary gem hiding among the HTML. Over the years plenty of these sites have come and gone so that now, new versions are often referred to as a YADS: “yet another display site”.

Some display sites are just that: no frills, no extras, just a shop-window for manuscripts. Others have writers’ message-boards attached; some have review systems coupled with complicating rating systems. Authonomy comes to us courtesy of HarperCollins, and offers a manuscript display site, comment facility and message-board; while YouWriteOn offers vanity publishing in conjunction with Legend Press, which has put many people off what might otherwise be an excellent peer review facility.

These sites all have a couple of things in common.

The standard of writing on such sites ranges from good to poor, with that latter end making up the vast majority of the work on show. And despite what you might read online, I’ve only heard of a single book being published as a result of a browsing editor or agent spotting it in these electronic slush-piles: apart from that one title, the successes that have happened have all come about because the writers involved submitted their work in the usual way.

If you want to find out more about the history of manuscript display sites, then go to this post at Writer Beware's blog and make sure you read all the comments that have been made: there’s a fabulous discussion attached to it.

PublishAmerica Twitters!

2009-09-08T10:49:00.008+01:00

The infamous vanity publisher PublishAmerica has joined Twitter! This delights me because while PublishAmerica can (and apparently does) delete all critical comments or difficult questions from its own message board, it doesn't have the same power on Twitter; and while it can block people from following it there (and yes, it's already blocked me: I twitter as HPRW) it can't prevent the people it blocks from reading its tweets via a simple search.

If you twitter too and would like to help inform people of the truth about PublishAmerica, here are a few preformed tweets for you. All you have to do is copy-and-paste them into your tweet-box exactly as they are, and send them into the twitterverse. Here we go:

"Traditional" (commercial) publishers don't ask their authors to buy their own books. #PublishAmerica does.

#PublishAmerica on Writer Beware's "Two Thumbs down" list of publishers to avoid: http://bit.ly/2DUZ63 Please retweet!

#PublishAmerica should name bookstores which are buying its books + give titles too. Otherwise, PA is promoting PA and not its books. Right?

@PublishAmerica wrote, "203 new authors knocked on our door today": how many PA authors have to buy their own books to make any sales?

@PublishAmerica, you claim to be "america's number one book publisher": what's your authors' average royalty payment? How many get $0.00?

@PublishAmerica, you claim to be "america's number one book publisher": how many copies do each of your titles sell, on average?

@PublishAmerica, you claim to be "america's number one book publisher": how many PA books have reached the New York Times Best Seller list?

@PublishAmerica: how many sales make a bestselling #PublishAmerica book? And how many of those copies does the author pay for?

Anyone considering submitting to #PublishAmerica read this first: http://bit.ly/LULLc Please retweet!

Anyone want to know more about #PublishAmerica? Read "Bewares and Background Checks" at the AbsoluteWrite.com forum.

Are your #PublishAmerica royalty statements wrong? Contact the Maryland Attorney General. Please retweet!

Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea: deliberately terrible, #PublishAmerica still offered to publish despite claims to select the best. Please RT!

Before signing with #PublishAmerica, go to book store and ask if they stock PA books. If not, ask why, and LISTEN CAREFULLY.

Check out AbsoluteWrite.com forum, "Bewares and Background Checks". #PublishAmerica has its own section due to hundreds of complaints.

Check out how #PublishAmerica talks to its authors on the PA message board: http://bit.ly/1sMEwt

Considering submitting to #PublishAmerica? Google "Atlanta Nights" by Travis Tea, and "Crack of Death" by Sharla Tann. Please retweet!

Crack of Death by Sharla Tann: deliberately awful, and still #PublishAmerica offered to publish it. Please retweet!

Look here for accurate info about #PublishAmerica from professional writers and editors. http://bit.ly/1wRmoK

RT @HPRW How Publishing Really Works: PublishAmerica Twitters! http://bit.ly/ga2Qdb

RT @LJHatton: How #publishamerica treats authors who question PA's service. http://tinyurl.com/o6z98m Professionals DO NOT act this way.

RT: @P_N_Elrod: How PublishAmerica deals with its writers: http://bit.ly/11niR4

RT: @P_N_Elrod: How PublishAmerica editors deal with the books: http://bit.ly/p3nm3

RT: @P_N_Elrod: With Publishamerica accepting SO MANY new writers each week, [they can't] possibly give each a proper edit.

This from a pro editor: RT: @skyladawn: At the risk of being blasted...if you're a #PublishAmerica author, just don't query me. Please.

Try to find a story of someone being successfully published by #PublishAmerica. Let me know if you find one.

Vanity publishers make most of their money from their authors, not from readers. Guess where #PublishAmerica makes most of its money from?

What #PublishAmerica authors have to do to get booksignings: http://bit.ly/f8GDf Please retweet!

What professional writers, editors and agents say about #PublishAmerica: http://bit.ly/YAa2A Please retweet!

Why does #PublishAmerica ignore its authors questions on PA messageboard and delete all those which show PA in a bad light?

I'm sure there are plenty more that you can think of, but make sure that you don't get yourself into trouble: don't make any libellous comments, or confront or upset any of the authors who have already signed up with PublishAmerica: it won't help, and it could cause hurt and harm. Remember to include a #PublishAmerica hashtag in your tweets, and do copy them into the comments section below so that we can all use them if we want to.

Get twittering!

Edited to add: I've added lots more more useful tweets to the list (with the permission of the original twitterers, obviously) so you now have more to choose from. PublishAmerica has now started to block people from following them, and has hidden its tweets from anyone but those following it; but all that does is stop its efforts to use Twitter to publicise its business, while "our" tweets will remain visible to all who search for PublishAmerica.

Trios: The Einstein Girl, by Philip Sington: Selling Literary Fiction

2009-09-03T10:00:00.000+01:00

Samantha Fanaken works as part of Random House's sales team as a Senior Key Account Manager, and here she discusses selling literary fiction into bookshops.

One of the most enjoyable parts of working for a literary publisher like CCV is reading large piles of paper that will one day turn into books. Reading a book long before it has a cover means you come to it with no assumptions, only the enthusiastic description from the editor when they asked you to read it.

It’s hugely useful to have read as much of our fiction list as possible before presenting them to retailers. Non-fiction is easier to categorise, it’s usually simpler to assess whether a book will appeal to classic military history buffs or foodies etc, whereas fiction is much more subjective.

So, it’s helpful to know a book before trying to recommend it – so you can do the quick reductive ‘it’s a bit blah meets blah’ or ‘if you liked that, you’ll love this’ but then go on to talk about a book in more detail – the characters you can’t stop thinking about, the scenes that stay with you, the plot twists.

The Einstein Girl has much to offer. It has a rich seam of history, set in Berlin just before Hitler comes to power, and uses a little-known fact from Albert Einstein’s life as its core. There’s a mystery to be solved - a young woman is found naked in the woods outside the city with a leaflet to a lecture by Albert Einstein in her hand as the only clue to her identity. There’s a sweet sad love story between her and her psychiatrist, a man battling with his own scars left by the Great War. Slowly between their conversations and the psychiatrist’s own research, the greater story of Einstein’s family and its secrets unravel.

Enough sly pitching of the book at you. Read it, it’s great.

So, reading the book helps give me a steer on the potential readers and how we might best reach them through our retailers. When talking to a retailer like Waterstone’s, who are very supportive of new and developing writers, we have a good discussion around who might buy the book and whether that makes it a candidate for promotion front of store in its first outing in hardback or trade paperback, or whether it’s best to push the paperback a year later. In this instance, I’m pleased to report Waterstone’s are as keen as I am on The Einstein Girl and it is available in all stores in their 3 for 2 throughout August.

Philip's editor at Harvill Secker has kindly squirrelled away five copies of The Einstein Girl for us. If you'd like to be in the running for one of them, all you have to do is answer the following question: where did the designers find the photograph which appears on the cover of The Einstein Girl? Send your answers to "competition at philipsington dot com": next week, Philip will select the five winners at random and I'll announce them here.

A Public Service Announcement

2009-08-31T10:00:00.000+01:00

Nicola Morgan (also known as the crabbit old bat, and That Morgan Woman) has moved her blog from here to here.

If you follow her original blog you might want to start following her new one instead. Just so you don't miss any photos of her lovely boots, or talk about chocolate.

These Things Make Me Happy!

2009-08-30T10:00:00.001+01:00

Daniel Blythe, who comments here regularly and has a two-part series due to appear on this blog as soon as I get my act together and schedule it, has a new book out. It's called Autonomy, it's a Dr Who novel, and I think it's currently available at Waterstone's in a three-for-two offer. Buy yourself a copy now, before I rush out and buy them all in a fan-girl frenzy.

As if that wasn't enough, I heard yesterday that Marian Perera, who blogs at Flights of Fancy (which is a lovely blog full of writing help and scam-busting advice) has signed her first book contract: her novel Before the Storm will be published by Samain Publishing.

All this, and it's nearly the end of the summer holidays, too. No wonder I'm grinning.

Trios: The Third Sign, by Gregory A Wilson: Cover Art

2009-08-28T10:00:00.000+01:00

We've heard already from Gregory A Wilson, author of The Third Sign, and from his editor at Five Star, John Helfers. Now it's Joshua David McClurg-Genevese's turn in the spotlight as he reveals how he created this stunning cover image.

I first met Greg at a gaming convention in Indianapolis, Indiana. I was there as an artist sitting in my booth, and I remember clearly he came over and spoke with me about one of the illustrations I had up on the wall behind where I was set up. He talked about a book that he was writing, and that he was trying to find an artist to work with on the cover.

That was where our process began. He contacted me some time later and we began talking about The Third Sign.

The first step was to work with Greg and get a sense of what The Third Sign was really about. An overall appreciation of the book and of the setting are the first things that I try to develop, and after a few discussions the main themes and emotions began to surface. In addition, Greg was kind enough to send me a number of sample chapters so that I was able to actually read part of the book before having to develop concepts. This was extremely helpful in getting an understanding of the world that he had created, and a feel for the characters.

I read through the chapters, and he and I discussed them for a time. He had a good sense for certain scenes in each of the chapters that seemed the most visually interesting and that might be good candidates for the illustration. In the end, we chose two of them, and I began working on concepts.

The second step was to develop a series of rough sketches based on the scenes we chose. I was looking to develop the overall composition of the illustration, the camera angles, the dynamic elements and where the cover text would go. The characters were also roughed in, though again it was mostly to solidify the overall composition. The details would come later.

Once I had each of the scenes drawn out as a rough sketch, I sent them back to Greg. We talked about them and decided what worked and what didn't. We narrowed down the choices, I made a few more revisions, and then we decided on a final direction. In these initial stages of rough sketching there was a lot of back and forth between myself and Greg. I tried to make sure that the overall feel of the piece matched what he was looking for, while still maintaining a good sense of artistic composition and design.

The third step was to finalize the drawing. I again discussed the scene with Greg, focusing now more on the details of the setting and the characters. What color were the robes on Orrinell, how intricate were the markings on Sarrtax's battle axe, what species of bird was Squaar? The details are what really makes an illustration come to life, and establishes a firm definition of the setting. I wanted to make sure that the elements in the scene were accurate, and that the way I was depicting the characters was appropriate.

Once the drawing was finished, I again sent it back to Greg. We revised it a number of times to ensure that I was capturing exactly what he was looking for. Once that was completed, I moved on to the painting.

The final step was the painting itself. I transfered the drawing on to watercolor paper, mounted it to a sheet of masonite, and then painted it with oils. Once the painting was completed (and dry), I made a high-resolution scan that became my master working file. With the digital file I was able to make any last adjustments to color that I felt were necessary, before sending it on for the final review.

In the end, I think the cover turned out wonderfully, and I hope it captures the elements of the book.

Sales Statistics: iUniverse

2009-08-26T10:00:00.001+01:00

On March 17 of this year I posted some self-publishing sales statistics courtesy of Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware, and I thought it might be interesting to play around with them a little. I should have been an accountant.

In the article I quoted, Victoria wrote, "According to a 2004 article in Publishers Weekly, only 83 of more than 18,000 iUniverse titles published during that year sold at least 500 copies."

If you have a look at the link she provided you'll find this information about sales figures for iUniverse books in 2004:

18,108: Total number of titles published

14: Number of titles sold through B&N's bricks-and-mortar stores (nationally)

83: Number of titles that sold at least 500 copies

792,814: Number of copies printed

32,445: Number of copies sold of iUniverse's top seller, If I Knew Then by Amy Fisher

So 18,108 different titles were published in 2004 and a total of 792,814 books were printed, which gives a mean average of 43.8 copies printed per title. And as iUniverse relies on print-on-demand technology, and only prints books in direct response to orders, “printed” here is the same as “sold”.

If you take away the 32,445 copies that Amy Fisher's book sold and then do the numbers again, that average number of copies sold per title goes down to 41.9.

If you then consider that 83 of iUniverse’s books sold at least 500 copies, and take those 83 books and their sales out of the equation (for simplicity I’ve assumed that they sold bang-on 500 copies each but several will have sold more, and so reduce this average further), the remainder of the books published—that’s a whole 18,025 titles, or 99.5% of all books that iUniverse publishes—sold an average of 39.9 copies each.

Let’s assume that those books were priced at £10 each (which is a reasonable-ish price for a paperback right now). I don’t know what rate of royalties they’d have earned from iUniverse (anyone?), so can’t make a direct comparison here: but let’s assume that the writers had not self-published their books and had instead been published by a mainstream publisher, with a contract which specified a reasonable-to-generous royalty of 12% of cover price. On that deal they’d make £1.20 per copy sold: so on sales of 40 copies they’d earn a total of just £48 per book published.

I’d like to find out how many of the titles concerned sold under twenty copies: this would at least filter out a lot of the people who used iUniverse to produce books just for friends and family and had no intention of ever seeking sales for them (which is how I’ve used Lulu in the past). Because if I could take those books off the total it would push the averages up a little bit and give us a better idea of the average sales levels that iUniverse authors were achieving when these numbers were collated—but the numbers would still have a long way to go before they equalled the sales figures of the least successful books from a mainstream publisher.

On Talent, Rising To The Top

2009-08-25T10:00:00.001+01:00

If you want to know how editors feel on the rare occasion they find a good book in their slush-pile, then read this lovely post from Making Light which compares the feeling to that moment in Britan's Got Talent when Susan Boyle began singing and Simon Cowell's usually-cynical face lit up with joy.

(What isn't mentioned in the article is the months of auditions that the Britan's Got Talent judges had to endure before they discovered Susan Boyle among the ranks of the hopeful. Because while the televised highlights make those auditions seem cringingly funny you have to remember that they are only the highlights. Most of the auditions are talent-free, embarrassingly bad, and just plain boring. Just like most of the stuff in the slush-pile.)

Trios: Beachcombing, by Maggie Dana: What Editors Want

2009-08-24T10:00:00.000+01:00

Maggie Dana began this particular trio of articles with an account of her potholed path to publication; then Will Atkins, her editor took over and discussed Macmillan New Writing. This time Will considers the role of the author in the publication process, and nails down what authors can do to imrpove their chances of success.

Beachcombing was recommended to us by another of our authors, who was in a writing group with Maggie (‘recommendations’ sometimes make the heart sink, but in this case it was clear from the first page that Maggie was a real talent). Part of the fun of MNW is that we publish across all fiction genres—crime, thrillers, literary fiction, comic fiction, fantasy, historical, etc, etc—and so our criteria for publication are pretty simple: do we love it, can we sell it and does the author have a future? If the answer is yes, yes and yes, then we publish it. Beachcombing is a novel that fits rather neatly into its given genre (broadly: commercial women’s fiction; or ‘hen-lit,’ as Maggie calls it) and is, to abuse a cliché, a perfect beach read—as the title and cover suggest. But sitting neatly in an established genre isn’t, of course, enough to guarantee sales.

Beachcombing was MNW’s first paperback original—nobody wants to lug a jacketed hardback onto the beach, do they? It’s also worth mentioning that the publication date isn’t accidental—it’s a summer read. This enabled our sales team to present it to their key accounts—Waterstone’s, Borders, WHSmith, etc—as a straightforward commercial proposition: loveable book; nice, sunny cover; June publication date. There are now heaps of copies in the shops and, happily, it’s well represented at UK airports and rail stations, just as the summer season gets going. We’re fortunate that Maggie has energetically embraced digital marketing and self-promotion (she even Twitters, heaven help her); she’s made herself available for a fortnight’s worth of readings, interviews, signings and launches during her visit to the UK, and has also proved herself to be an energetic advocate and supporter of budding authors—of all ages—seeking publication (she spoke inspiringly on this subject at the Writer’s Handbook Live event recently).

What we are always looking for is an author whose writing ticks all the boxes: who can create engaging characters and settings; construct plausible and satisfying plots; write with fluency, grace and style. Plenty of the submissions we receive at MNW tick one of those boxes, or two—very few tick them all. We’re also looking for authors who are unafraid to get their hands dirty, who know their value as writers but understand the collaborative aspect I’ve mentioned; and who’re able to weather the knock-backs and dead-ends and ‘potholes’ that Maggie mentioned in her blog, alongside the highs. Above all, we’re looking for writers with a future—who can cast their spell once to capture readers’ loyalty, and then keep casting it, again and again. It’s the reserves of dedication, talent and sheer energy that all this requires that makes truly successful and lasting authors so rare.

Guest Post: Believe In Yourself, But Believe In The Evidence As Well

2009-08-23T10:00:00.000+01:00

This post is part of my very occasional series about logic and research: my thanks to Dan Holloway for writing it. In a very clever twist of scheduling (nothing to do with me, honest), his excellent follow-up piece to this appeared on his own blog a couple of days ago. Dan's book, Songs From The Other Side Of The Wall, is available from the Year Zero Writers' website.

“If you work hard enough at it, you’ll succeed.” It’s the mantra of motivational coaches everywhere. Mr(s) Motivator will follow up with numerous citations of people who made conquering the unconquerable their life’s work. The actor who auditioned for a thousand parts before landing their first call back. The inventor who patented a thousand useless ideas before hitting the one that netted her fortune. The writer who received a hundred rejections before someone spotted the bestseller.... It’s one of the most frequent quotes of the day. And it’s one of the most toxic examples of false logic there is.

It sounds so reasonable. But if I put the exact same argument in the following terms, you’d say I was nuts. “All humans are under ten feet tall. Mabel is under ten feet tall. Therefore Mabel is human.” Which of course, she isn’t. She’s the cow who lives in the field next door to me.

So how are these the same? Well, it IS true that if you are human you will be under ten feet tall. Likewise, barring a minority that is infinitely smaller than the tabloid cynics would have you believe, those who break through have worked hard to get there. But just as it’s true that being under ten feet tall doesn’t make you human, so it’s true that working hard doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. In logic it’s called the law of symmetry. Two properties are symmetrical if having either of them means you always have the other (a implies b, and b implies a). Take “three-sided shape” and “internal angles add up to 180 degrees”. These properties are symmetrical because all three-sided shapes have internal angles that add up to 180 degrees and vice versa. “Under ten feet tall” and “human” aren’t symmetrical. Nor are “successful” and “hard-working”. To put it at the most basic level, in both cases there’s many more of one than t’other.

So why does the “try hard” mantra sound so plausible? Because we want to believe it. If it were simply about hard work, we could all achieve our goal – because we’re all capable of hard work. What the guru’s doing is little more than preying on your dreams. It sounds plausible because you SO want it to be true. But it ain’t! And have you noticed how often “Just a little bit harder” is followed by “And I can help with that extra mile for just £...”?

That’s not the only thing that’s so unsavoury about this bad logic. Think for a minute what it implies. It’s amazing how few people realise the implication. But it’s there as plain as the slathering of ketchup on my fry-up. “I you work hard you will succeed” implies. “If you haven’t succeeded, it’s because you haven’t worked hard enough.” That’s not bad logic, by the way. In other words, if you haven’t made it, it’s somehow your fault. Well, sometimes maybe it is. But sometimes maybe it isn’t! I will never, repeat never, be an England rugby player. And if I’d started playing age two and trained every day since then with the best coaches and the best nutritionists and the best I don’t know what, I would still never make it beyond the local Sunday afternooners.

Which leads me to the last point I want to make. It is so important to learn when to draw a line. If you have one thousand rejections, it may well be that the one thousand and first will be successful. But it’s much more likely, as Sir Alan tends to say to the candidates in the boardroom for the seventh time, that “someone up there’s trying to tell you something.” Which doesn’t mean you should give up the writing you love. But it probably DOES mean don’t give up the day job.

I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t work hard. That would be bad logic on my part, because with these asymmetrical relations, the opposite of the false statement IS true. By which I mean, whilst it’s false to say “if you’re under ten feet tall you’re human” it’s true to say “if you’re over ten feet tall you’re not human”; and whilst “if you work hard you’ll succeed” is false “if you don’t work hard you won’t succeed” is true. Unless you’re the one in a million exception; but whilst I’ve read enough of “The Black Swan” to know never to rule that out, I don’t really think a “how to” book on being the exception is of much beyond curiosity value.

To sum up. Work hard. Work very hard (most of all, work smart, but that’s another post). But that’s no guarantee of success: you have to know when to call it quits. When I decided in January 2008 I wanted to make a living as a writer, I did my research and I did some soul-searching, and I drew up a five-year plan (not to have given up the day job by then, but to have given up one day a week, which for me is the tipping point: at the moment I have a pretty good idea that making it will follow on (again, that’s another post). I revise it at least every two months (without ever revising the end date) to make sure I’m not missing a trick, and to see what I can learn from what’s going to plan and what isn’t, so I can work smarter. I hope, once five years are up, if I haven’t hit my target I’ll take my own advice. Which isn’t to say I’ll stop writing. I’ll never stop writing – and as long as there’s an internet or whatever comes next I won’t stop sharing what I write. But I’ll owe it to my wife as much as myself to realise if I’m going to find a way out of the day job, it probably won’t be writing.

Some Notes About Rights

2009-08-21T10:00:00.001+01:00

Publication rights to a book reside in the book itself, not in the author—although the author will (usually) own the rights to the books that they write.

Once a book appears in print, the first print rights to it have been used up and cannot be retrieved under any circumstances. While other rights to that book might still be available, those first rights are gone for good and nothing, including a change of name for the book or for the author, can legally renew those rights. It's important for writers to understand this as while some publishers will consider republishing a previously-published book, many will not. Self-publishers: take note.

If someone sells first rights to a book and then writes a second book, that second book will have its own full set of rights which the author will own (unless it’s been written under a work-for-hire contract, but that’s a whole new kettle of fish), including first rights.

If you sell full world rights to a book, you can't then sell that book into any other territories or in any other formats, but the publisher which bought those rights can. So if a UK publisher buys first print rights for the UK, US first rights and world electronic rights remain with the writer; if a UK publisher buys world rights to that first publication, they can publish it in their own territory and get their US branch to publish there, for example, or sell those rights to a different publisher. Generally, a writer would get 50% of the advance and royalties resulting from any such sale, but a lot depends on the contract.

Some agents prefer to only sell the rights that a publisher is definitely going to use, which means that the writer retains all other rights: but I think that the best place for rights to belong is with the person or business with the best chance of selling them. There's little point in a writer keeping hold of US rights if he or she has no hope of selling the book into America, when the publisher of their UK edition has a US branch too, or good sales contacts in that country.

Finally, if a book which has already been published is revised, extended, redesigned, and republished, then the resulting book would be a new edition of an old title, not a whole new book—because the main portion of the book would have been published in the earlier edition, so it can't be considered a completely different book.

It Must Be Awards Season....

2009-08-19T10:00:00.001+01:00

Michael Stelzner, of Writing White Papers, is now asking for nominations for his fourth annual Top 10 Blogs For Writers contest.

He asks for nominations to be made via his comments, and will allow only one vote per person. You have to provide a link to the blog you're voting for; and explain why you think it deserves a place in the top ten. To get into the shortlist, blogs will have to have more than one vote. Nominations close on 11 September, which will arrive far sooner than we all expect.

I shall nominate Writer Beware, or perhaps Nicola Morgan's blog (I'm struggling to decide which one to go for, because they're both great). It's up to the rest of you what you vote for: but anyone who votes for my blog will, of course, be my new best friend and receive virtual chocolate.

Trios: The Einstein Girl, by Philip Sington: Waterstone’s Perspective

2009-08-18T10:00:00.000+01:00

Last time The Einstein Girl appeared here, we learned how its cover was created; today, Rodney Troubridge (the Fiction Marketing Planner at Waterstone’s) reveals how he makes his decisions; and next time, a key account manager at Random House will discuss selling this sort of literary fiction to booksellers.

As a lucky retailer who gets sent a lot of proofs to read it is always enjoyable to think, 'what shall I read next?'

Looking back I think what interested me about The Einstein Girl was that it had been recommended by the publisher at a highlights presentation of their titles a few months before. I didn't know any thing about the author other than vaguely remembering his previous novel but I liked the plot line and so I gave it a go.

I have always liked reading books set in the interwar period in Germany and/or Central Europe and admired the way the doomed Weimar Republic is portrayed and the frightening spectre of the Nazi takeover beginning its terrible influence. I was also intrigued to see how the author would handle the giant figure of Einstein and how he would fit into the overall story.

Luckily my colleagues on the buying team felt equally enthusiastic and we will be promoting the title in branches of Waterstone's from publication.

Philip's editor at Harvill Secker has kindly squirrelled away five copies of The Einstein Girl for us. If you'd like to be in the running for one of them, all you have to do is answer the following question: where did the designers find the photograph which appears on the cover of The Einstein Girl? Send your answers to "competition at philipsington dot com": a week after the third article in this series appears, Philip will select the five winners at random and I'll announce them here.

How Writers Can Save Publishing, One Book At A Time

2009-08-17T10:00:00.001+01:00

When I visited Aberystwyth a couple of weeks ago, I did my usual thing: I left my husband on the beach to supervise our children, and I went for a walk around the town.

I've known Aberystwyth all my life: I have a lot of family there, and it's familiar to me in an infrequent, surreal way. I know the layout of its streets, but not the names of them; I know the history of the town as it appears in my family's folklore, which often juxtaposes oddly with the more widely-accepted versions; and I know a series of landmarks through the town which help me to knit together my own mental street-map, and which provide a framework for all those inherited memories I have of the place.

This time, though, one of those landmarks had gone. Galloway's, the independent bookshop on Pier Street, has closed. The space it left behind is now filled with racks of tracksuits and boxes of cheap trainers. There are other bookshops, of course (and the list you'll find in this link still includes Galloway's even though it's gone, which pleases me): there is a branch of Waterstone's on the main shopping street and a couple of hundred yards down from it the small but brilliantly-stocked Siop-y-Pethe, both of which are wonderful in their own ways, and there are a few others too: but Galloway's, with its top floor full of fiction, its racks of small-press books, its spooky, echoing basement full of textbooks and odd non-fiction: Galloway's, which I've never once left without a satisfyingly fat bundle of books—Galloway's is gone. Because, as several people told me sadly, it just wasn't making enough money to remain in business.

I stood outside the space-which-once-was-Galloway's and stared in at the bright white trainers and the young men fighting to get themselves the right sizes, the best designers. It was never so busy when it was full of books. I found myself thinking of the wonderful literary magazine Cadenza, which came to an end this year not because of a lack of quality or reputation, but because it didn't sell enough copies to pay for its own printing bill; and of Salt Publishing, which earlier this year asked us to buy just one book in order to keep it in business (which appears to have worked, I'm pleased to say).

So here is my point. It is difficult to get published: this we know. But imagine how much more difficult it would be if the market were halved. Fewer publishers in business translates directly into fewer publishing slots; and as bookshops close, books and literary magazines have fewer opportunities to get into readers hands, which reduces book sales even further.

Over the last year I've read a lot of blog posts which have bemoaned the perilous state of publishing today: the suggested solutions to publishing’s financial crisis have ranged from sacking all editors (and in so doing prevent them rejecting the Brave New Literary Voice Which Could Alone Save Publishing (which is usually, coincidentally, the voice of the person writing the blog post in question) to cutting literary agents out of publishing's food-chain (because in their role of literary gatekeeper—how I hate that phrase—they’ve rejected the Brave New Literary Voice Which Could Alone Save Publishing, and we know who that is, don’t we?). But very few of them have pointed out that writers could do a lot to help keep all these publishers and booksellers in business until business picks up.

Every time you submit your work anywhere, support your submission by buying a copy of the magazine that you’re submitting to, or a book from the publisher you’d like to publish you. If you’re writing a novel and are nowhere near ready to submit then think about who you would like to publish you once you’re ready to go and buy something from them.

Buy just one more book; subscribe to just one literary magazine; use your local bookshop if you can; and then keep going. Every single copy helps: and there’s no need to stop at just one. If you can afford to, buy an extra book or literary magazine every month or every week; if you can’t afford to then order books at your local library and read them all for free—the library pays for the books it lends out, and every little helps. Because every time a publisher ceases trading or a bookshop closes its doors, it becomes just a little bit harder for us to get published. And if we writers haven’t supported the independent publishers, the small imprints, the many tiny but wonderful literary and genre magazines which put out fabulous work, then we can’t complain when they close, and another opportunity is lost to us forever.

(The two stunning covers I've used to illustrate this piece belong to books translated by John K Bollard with photographs by Anthony Griffiths: The Mabinogi, and Companion Tales to the Mabinogi. They're both published by Gomer, and I bought them from Siop-y-Pethe. If you're interested in the Mabinogion, or in Welsh/Celtic literature, culture or countryside, buy them both: they are the most beautiful books I've seen in a good long while.)

If You've Ever Wondered...

2009-08-16T10:00:00.001+01:00

...what reading slush for months on end does to your mind, then just read this.

It is a bloody brilliant blog and I wish I'd written it.

(I wish I'd discovered the blog, too, but have to admit that Janet Reid got to it first. Now I know what her competitors feel like.)

Trios: The Third Sign, by Gregory A Wilson: The Editor's View

2009-08-15T10:00:00.002+01:00

Although Gregory A Wilson has already told us how he found a publisher, it's interesting to read a corresponding view from the other side of the fence. Here, Greg's editor at Five Star, John Helfers, discusses what he looks for in a writer, and how writers can improve the editing process. Next time we'll hear from the book's cover artist but meanwhile, my thanks to John for this revealling contribution.

I first met Greg Wilson at the 2005 GenCon. At first he seemed like one of the dozens of aspiring authors I meet at that convention and others around the country, but as our conversation progressed, I became aware of certain vital differences between him and the rest of the crowd.

Greg’s background as both an associate professor and avid fiction reader gave him an excellent grounding in the tropes of the fantasy genre, which was revealed when I first read an early draft of his novel The Third Sign. He also had the persistence and drive that marks a good author. However, before he could get to that stage, there was one last hurdle to overcome—I had to accept his book first.

Don’t get me wrong—as I mentioned above, the quality was there in his manuscript from the start. However, Greg writes in a crowded sub-genre—the high/epic fantasy. Having worked and written in the field (one of my favorites) for more than a decade, I’ve seen just about everything cross my desk while acquiring science fiction and fantasy for the Five Star line, so I have very high standards. And if an author wants to submit a high/epic fantasy to me, that’s fine, but it had better be something pretty damn special.

After reviewing his work, I saw the glimmerings of what the novel could be, but I knew it would take some hard work on both of our parts to get it there. I went back to Greg with the first three chapters edited, showing him both how I work, and outlining some of the major edits that I felt the book needed. I asked him to revise the manuscript (remember, at this point the book hadn’t been accepted yet) both to see if he could take what I had given him and incorporate it into his book, and, to be honest, gauge his reaction to my suggestions (there’s nothing worse than working with an easily-offended/haughty/balky/recalcitrant author, and often the results just aren’t worth the trouble in the first place). Greg was more than willing to revise and resubmit, and after seeing what he had done with my edits, I was pleased to offer him a contract to publish his novel.

This is not to say that after that first revision the manuscript was ready to go. Both of us worked very hard on polishing and strengthening the final version, deepening character motivations and relationships, working out the timeline so that events happening on opposite sides of the kingdom worked in the overall plot, etc. Happily, Greg was also excellent to work with during the editorial process all through the pre-production stages. I’ve always thought that the mark of a true, professional writer is that they can be open to suggestions and the alternate perspectives on their work, and that’s exactly what Greg was. Working with him to shape the manuscript into its final published form was a highly rewarding experience (for both of us, I hope!) I was very pleased to play a part in bringing Greg’s fantastic vision into print, and hope that his readers enjoy what is hopefully the first of many volumes about Calen’s adventures in his troubled homeland of Klune.

Nominate Your Favourite Writing Blogs!

2009-08-14T10:00:00.000+01:00

Maria Schneider has asked people to nominate their favourite writing blogs over at Editor Unleashed. Nominations are welcome until 18 August which gives you just a few more days to participate. Fame and fortune await the lucky winners: no doubt there'll be a few soggy sandwiches left over for the also-rans.

I know a few brilliant writers' blogs I'm going to nominate: Writer Beware, all those blogging agents like Janet Reid, Colleen Lindsay, Nathan Brandsford; Emma Darwin's This Itch Of Writing has to go on the list, of course; the Pitch Parlour, the Behler Blog, Nicola Morgan's fabulous blog and Sally Zigmond's excellent The Elephant in the Writing Room; but I'm sure I've missed one off that list.

(Does everybody agree that it's naff for people to nominate their own blogs? I think it probably is so I'm not going to nominate this one. It's up to you, boys and girls. Please remember to leave a link and don't mention my nastier habits. Thank you.)

Wanna Be A Writer? Vote For This Book Now!

2009-08-13T10:00:00.000+01:00

Thanks to the magic of Facebook, I've learned that Jane Wenham-Jones's book Wannabe a Writer? is up for a prize over at The People's Book Awards. It's a great book for aspiring writers but don't risk reading it while you're eating: it made me laugh so much I shot a piece of sweetcorn out of my nose (and you'd be amazed how far a snort-propelled piece of sweetcorn can travel).

The good thing about The People's Book Awards is that anyone and everyone can vote for the shortlisted titles. So, if you've read Jane's book and would like to support it, and her, then please follow this link, and cast your vote.

Robert Fletcher of Writers' Literary Agency Labelled Fraudulent And Frivolous In Legal Ruling

2009-08-12T15:47:00.005+01:00

Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss today announced that Robert Fletcher of the Writers' Literary Agency has not only lost the lawsuit he took out against them and James Macdonald eighteen months ago: Robert Fletcher's suit has been deemed frivolous in the judge's findings, and his business habits have been labelled fraudulent. Robert Fletcher brought the case because he claimed that the warnings that Writer Beware had issued about his company were defamatory, but the judge disagreed with him. I particularly liked the piece by James Macdonald, which Fletcher objected to, which you can read here (I did want to quote it here, but Blogger still won't let me copy and paste).

Robert Fletcher has now been ordered to pay Writer Beware's costs, and according to a lawyer over at Making Light he's going to find it very difficult to wriggle out of doing so. At this point I wish that Ann and Victoria had hired a more expensive lawyer, but we can't have everything.

Just in case anyone who reads this page is considering submitting to the Writers' Literary Agency or one of its many subsidiary companies, here is a link to the discussions about the Writers' Literary Agency and Robert Fletcher over at Absolute Write: and I'll finish with an extract from the judge's findings which I found particularly interesting:

The plaintiff, Robert Fletcher, sent multiple e-mails to both defendants, Crispin and Strauss threatening them both with physical harm and threatening them with this lawsuit. In fact, in two of his e-mails, he indicated that his purpose was not to prevail in the lawsuit but just to bankrupt the defendants, Crispin and Strauss.

Hands up anyone who fancies an agent who behaves like that. No one? Can't say I blame you.

My warmest congratulations to Ann Crispin, Victoria Strauss and to James Macdonald for winning the case. And yah-boo-sucks to Robert Fletcher. Frivolous and fraudulent has such a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Trios: The Einstein Girl, by Philip Sington: Cover Design

2009-08-12T10:00:00.003+01:00

Matt Broughton began designing book covers for the academic publisher Routledge in 1997, and moved to Random House in 2001. He is now a senior designer and continues to design covers for Random House's literary imprints, including Harvill Secker. Lily Richards has worked as a picture researcher at Random House for nine years, mainly working on literary book covers but also for some book interiors. I thank them both for the following piece, which describes how they worked on Philip Sington's book, The Einstein Girl.

Next time we'll hear how a buying manager at Waterstone's makes his decisions; and finally, a key account manager at Random House discusses selling literary fiction like The Einstein Girl to booksellers.

When people ask us how we design covers there is never one answer – ideas can come from any number of areas: authors, editors, and they all are considered along with a more formal brief. The brief is originally conceived by the editor of the book in consultation with Sales and Marketing. Things that would be considered at this stage are the format – is it a hardback, paperback or reissue, comparable titles, position we are aiming for in the market, print runs and artwork budgets.

The brief is for us very much a starting place and for fiction we like to also have something to read – a manuscript, or a book if it has previously been published. A decision will be made by the designer as to how to approach the artwork: commissioned illustration, photography, found images, typographical solutions etc. With that decision made, and with the brief, the book, and the various parameters in mind, we begin the creative process.

In the case of The Einstein Girl, it was clear that the cover would need picture research. We wanted to find photographs of 1930s Berlin, specifically the young woman in the book and the nightclub scene. These photographs would need to be strong in atmosphere as we wanted to achieve a design with film noir look to reflect the writing. We sourced the photographs from a German archive, AKG, and the design could then begin.

Various design solutions were taken to the weekly cover meeting where editors and people from sales and marketing all considered the options. Once we had settled on the present cover, author approval was also sought. Covers are not always straightforward and can change dramatically over the course of being worked on, but it is all part of the process.

Philip's editor at Harvill Secker has kindly squirrelled away five copies of The Einstein Girl for us. If you'd like to be in the running for one of them, all you have to do is answer the following question: where did the designers find the photograph which appears on the cover of The Einstein Girl? Send your answers to "competition at philipsington dot com": a week after the third article in this series appears, Philip will select the five winners at random and I'll announce them here.

I Wish I Lived In Edinbugh!

2009-08-11T10:00:00.000+01:00

Yes, I know it would mean that I would run the risk of bumping into that Morgan woman every now and then, but it would also mean that I could apply for the job of managing the Edinburgh Bookshop, the latest creation of Fidra Books' growing business empire.

I could be entirely wrong here, but I bet that the good people at Fidra are not necessarily looking for someone with years of retail experience. I'm guessing that enthusiasm, positivity, computer savvy, marketing brilliance and a familiarity with Facebook and blogging and books and bookish people would be of more interest. And I know that lots the people who read my blog fit that description well.

If you're wondering what good a job in a bookshop would do you just take a look at Fidra's reputation, and consider what their past employees have gone on to do (the Orange Prize website might be a good place to start).

Let me know if you apply, and good luck to you all.

Trios: Beachcombing, by Maggie Dana: Macmillan New Writing

2009-08-10T10:00:00.000+01:00

Last week we heard about Maggie Dana's potholed path to the publication of her first adult novel Beachcombing; this week Maggie's editor, Will Atkins, discusses the imprint which finally took her into print: Macmillan New Writing.

You might remember that there was a bit of a fuss when Macmillan New Writing launched back in 2006 [I remember only too well—I was very sceptical, but have been proven thoroughly wrong!—Jane]. We decided that, rather than fend off un-agented authors with a broom-handle, we would accept—in fact encourage—unsolicited submissions of debut fiction via our website; we also decided that our terms would be standard and non-negotiable (and this is what didn’t go down well with some): world rights, no advance, but 20% royalty on net receipts.

Macmillan New Writing is now an integral, and pretty uncontroversial, part of Pan Macmillan, and operates in the same way as the other imprints here, using the same editorial, design, production, publicity, marketing and sales staff. Several of our authors have ‘graduated’ to Pan Mac’s mainstream imprints, with multi-book deals, on conventional terms, with an advance. Macmillan New Writing was founded with the understanding that authors’ careers take time to grow. Fundamental to the way the imprint operates is a close working relationship between author and publisher: our authors are often un-agented; and therefore it’s vital that they have faith in us to a) not fleece them and b) publish them well. Successful publishing is about collaboration and mutual trust, and these things are vital when developing an author’s career over the long-term. We try to involve our authors in every stage of the publication process, and we’re fortunate that our authors are eager to muck in when it comes to promoting their own work (and the imprint itself). They are also a wonderfully garrulous and mutually supportive bunch, despite the breadth of the Macmillan New Writing church; and this sense of shared interest and community is one of the things that makes Macmillan New Writing special. All are in the same boat, all serious writers trying to develop a career, and genre snobbery is peculiarly absent, just as it is (I hope) in our commissioning policy. Good books are good books, after all.

In fact the business model is the least interesting thing about Macmillan New Writing – what is interesting is what we’re publishing: Brian McGilloway, a truly world-class crime writer, cut his teeth at Macmillan New Writing, and we’ve just published the double Orange Prize-nominated debut by Ann Weisgarber, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree. (And look out for Ryan David Jahn’s crime debut, Acts of Violence, in the autumn—a big new arrival).

But the thing we’re really excited about right now is Maggie Dana’s novel Beachcombing. One of the nice things about Macmillan New Writing is that we’re open to submissions from all over the planet, and at any given moment some gleaming gem can ping into my Inbox. Brian pinged his from Derry; Ann pinged hers from Texas; and Maggie pinged Beachcombing from Connecticut.

Next week Will reveals what he's looking for in the slush-pile and what he looks for in the authors he publishes; and how all this measures up to more than the sum of its parts.

That Morgan Woman Outed Me

2009-08-09T16:55:00.002+01:00

Yes, it's my 47th birthday today and Nicola Morgan has been and gone and told everyone (I knew I shouldn't have twittered about it).

I spent the morning sitting in the sun, writing in peace as my lovely husband took the boys off to a three hour archery lesson. I was very productive, and now feel smug.

I've been given an embroidered dark blue silk jacket, which I bought for myself from eBay but which Big Dave intercepted when the postman delivered it; and I've been promised an orchard with apples, pears, walnuts and mulberries (all to be planted in the autumn which is, apparently, the best time of year to plant them), a petrol strimmer (Big Dave's died a few weeks ago and apparently I need one of my own now, to compensate), and an electric screwdriver (ditto). A Chinese meal is apparently going to be cooked for me soon. Meanwhile I shall read: my joy knows no bounds. A perfect birthday, and it's not over yet.

A Techno-Crisis Strikes Again

2009-08-07T13:46:00.003+01:00

I've been trying off and on this afternoon to schedule some new posts here but each time I try, and no matter which computer I work with, Blogger is refusing to allow me to paste any text into the little box where my posts go. So while I have quite a few posts saved to Word and ready to go, I can't move them from my computer onto my blog.

I've tried right-clicking in Blogger's text editor but the "paste"option is greyed out; I've tried using CTRL-V but that doesn't work either. I have made sure that I've copied the text I want (by pasting it into an email, and a new Word document): I can't think of anything else I can do.

Does anyone else have this problem, or is it just me? And if it's not just me, can anyone suggest how I could get round it?

Moving From Self-Publishing To Mainstream

2009-08-05T10:00:00.000+01:00

I've heard a lot of self-published writers insist that self-publication is a good route to mainstream publication. But is that really the case? Probably not.

Literary agent David Fugate of LaunchBooks Literary Agency has written,

looking back at my PublishersMarketplace search, I noted that 29 deals were listed where the book had been previously self-published. That sounds like a decent number until you realize that more than 30,000 deals have been reported there over the last 2 years.

So out of every thousand deals reported by Publishers' Marketplace over the last two years, only one concerned a book which had previously been self-published: a statistic which effectively flattens the argument that self-publishing provides a good route to mainstream success.

I'd really like to find out how many books were self-published in that same time-frame, and how many of them went on to be published by mainstream publishers: but it's proved impossible to find anything verifiable and hype-free (if anyone knows where I can get such statistics for free, I'd love to have them). Because if we had those figures we'd be able to see just how likely it is for books to cross over from self-publishing to mainstream, and possibly how fast this trend is increasing.

None of this is meant to imply that self-published books can't be successful without making that transition: of course they can, under the right circumstances. Mr Fugate goes on to write,

Does that mean I think you shouldn’t self-publish your book? Not necessarily. There are circumstances where self-publishing - especially when taking advantage of the speed and ease of print on demand - makes a great deal of sense (generally when speed to market is very important and where the author has a significant marketing platform to draw upon).

Bolding mine. If you're going to self-publish, you're going to have to do a lot of marketing and promotion in order to see any significant sales; and unless you go on to make those significant sales, you're no more likely to find yourself a mainstream publisher than anyone else who has written a book. Unless your book is stonkingly good, which is, of course, a whole different discussion.

Reviewers Wanted!

2009-08-03T13:56:00.003+01:00

Last night on Twitter's Litchat several people asked if there were any software programs which could help writers work and while I suspect that most are no more than expensive procrastination tools, I bet that there are a few which are useful.

The thing is, I just don't know which ones they are. I'm relatively non-technical: I write most of my work by hand, using a real pen and real paper, and then I "type" up my work into Microsoft Word using Dragon NaturallySpeaking and a couple of associated gadgets which I've reviewed here, but I don't use anything else to produce my work.

So if you use any specialist writing software, hardware or gadgets, then I'd be grateful if you'd consider writing a review of it for me, listing its good points along with its bad, and explaining just who you think might benefit from using it. Email your review to me at "HPRW at tesco dot net", and put "HPRW review" in the subject-line so I don't mistake you for spam (and while we're at it, I would welcome some more reviews of writing-related books if anyone feels so inclined).