The Author's Big Mistake

I thought that this novice writer's reaction to a poor review was bad. But last week Alice Hoffman claimed the prize for The Worst Ever Reaction To An Unfavourable Book Review by posting the reviewer's email address and phone number onto Twitter and encouraging her fans to harass the reviewer concerned.

In Hoffman's favour she has now apologised, and her Twitter account has been deleted: but I'm amazed that she saw fit to put someone else's personal information up on the internet in order to get others to make contact. It's an appalling thing to have done.

I loved Hoffman's book Blackbird House, and I've enjoyed a good few of her other titles, too. But as a direct result of this, I will not be buying any more of Alice Hoffman's books.

You can read a good account of this at the wonderful Galleycat; Gawker mopped into all the corners with screenshots of all of her terrible Tweets; The Book Maven told the story and added some more background about a previous Hoffman overreaction. You can read what Lynn Price (of Behler Publications) has to say about it here; Editorial Ass has picked up the story, too; AuthorScoop mentioned it; and (inevitably) it's now being discussed at Absolute Write.

In an attempt to be fair, I have to point out that Alice Hoffman isn't the only writer to spew her objections to a bad review onto the internet. Anne Rice introduced her new and exciting paragraph-free style when she objected to an Amazon review of one of her books, while Laurell K Hamilton took us Christmas shopping for her characters and along the way revealed how much work her editors have to do.

This kind of reaction to a review has been called The Author's Big Mistake for a very good reason: it can't change the review, and the results are going to hang around for an awfully long time (as is shown by the links I've given above). If an author is determined to respond to a bad review but would like to keep some dignity intact, then the only possible course of action is to thank the reviewer for his or her time, and hope that they like the next book better. It's possible to do this with grace and style, as was ably demonstrated when I reviewed a book called We'll Always Be Pals on my other blog, The Self-Publishing Review. I wasn't terribly keen on the book but its author, Tom McManus, left a few very gracious comments, including this:

It's all good Jane, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and you have yours. I am not hurt by it. As you know, when you put something out there like a book, you take the good and the not so good in stride.

I just wish that Alice Hoffman had spoken with Mr McManus before she visted Twitter. She could have learned a lot.

But the last word here must go to John Scalzi, who has written an excellent analysis of The Author's Big Mistake. Some people are indeed crazy screechy monkeys, and some writers are asstards.


Edited to add some more linky heaven:

Thanks to Daniel Blythe, here's another writer reacting to a poor review. She's switched off the comments to her blog so there are no reactions there: we'll just have to make up for that here.

Pub Rants has now blogged about it too.

These ones come courtesy of AuthorScoop:

When Richard Ford shot Alice Hoffman's book: "it's not like I shot her." That's OK then.

There are some scary stories about more writers who have overreacted to bad reviews at The Salon.

And here Alain de Botton reacts to a very negative review. I've not read the book, but I am backing slowly away: here it's the reviewer who scares me the most.

Arrghhh!

I'm SO frustrated. Not one of the posts I'd scheduled for this week has appeared, and each time I try to post anything else those posts just don't appear. I'm trying to update my blog once more (having finally managed to make a new review appear at my self-publishing review blog), and if this post appears here I'll be thrilled.

If my silence continues, please don't think I've gone away: it's my youngest son's ninth birthday this weekend and we have many festivities planned; I'm struggling to get anything published here; and I'm working on two absolutely cracking proposals, and if either or both of them get picked up I'll be dancing like a mad woman: you have been warned.

Talk amongst yourselves while I try to get this sorted. Like Arnie, I'll be back.

Guest Review: Ron Carlson Writes a Story

I'd not come across this book before Caleb J Ross submitted his review, and it's a real treasure: I strongly recommend it. If you have your own favourite book about writing or publishing do please consider sending me a review, and I'll put it up here as soon as my schedule allows.


Instead of waxing on aspects of craft or grammar as so many instructional writing books do, Ron Carlson’s (author of the collections At the Jim Bridger and A Kind of Flying among many others) Ron Carlson Writes a Story opts for a focus on the process of organically discovering a narrative. Using his story, “The Governor’s Ball,” as the book’s foundation, Carlson takes the reader on his journey from word one to THE END, emphasizing the discovery above the planned technical route that many of us may be used to.

Carlson champions this organic process of discovery, rooted by what he calls a “collision,” which is an idea, event, anything that strikes his attention in a memorable way. This is the seed of a story, pre-outline, pre-pen to paper. In the case of “The Governor’s Ball,” this collision is between the actual event of Mr. Carlson losing a mattress from the back of his truck during a move, and an actual governor’s ball that the author and his wife attended years ago. Now, with this seed, or collision, where does he go?

Carlson dismisses detailed outlines and otherwise structure in favor of the story’s already present inventory. As he says, “I’m constantly looking for things that are going to help me find the next sentence, survive the story”. Simply put, he promotes using every word laid down as an inventory of possibilities for following words, until reaching the end of the story. Seems logical, and it is. But so often forgotten.

Ron Carlson Writes a Story is not a typical Writer’s Digest, prepackaged how-to. This is something useful, something with the potential to truly influence a writer’s storytelling abilities, but beware of control, As Ron Carlson says, “Writing is exploration, it isn’t neat”.

Caleb J Ross has published fiction and non-fiction all over, most recently in Flint Hills Review, Vestal Review, and online in Dogmatika, No Record Press, Word Riot, 3:AM Magazine, and Cherry Bleeds. He is the co-editor of Colored Chalk and a co-editor for the Guild of Outsider Writers. He loves ACID cigars.

Editors And Publishers

Just about every publishing company has its own website, which you can find without too much trouble: the ones that I've listed here are those which seem particularly useful to me, or particularly interesting. If you have your own personal favourites and don't see them here, do let me know so that I can add them to the list.

The Abbeville Manual of Style is exquisite. Read it every day.

Behler Publications is an independent publishing house founded and run by Lynn Price, who comments frequently here. Behler used to have a Blogspot blog but has now turned to the dark side and gone over to Wordpress. Both blogs are worth trawling through, as they're dense with information.

Bluechrome, independent publisher of lovely literary fiction, short stories and poetry, blogs. Which is just as well because lovely though Bluechrome is, I can barely read its website because of the colours of the text.

Ebury Publishing has a blog, a balcony garden, and a lot of lovely books. Each time I see pictures of the balcony garden I wonder how long it'll be before the whole thing plunges off the face of the building, ripped away by the weight of all those sodden grow-bags. But the strawberries do look wonderful.

Editorial Anonymous is the blog of an American children's book editor who blogs almost daily about the publishing business, what editors and agents want to see from writers, or cake. It's a winning combination.

Editorial Ass is the blog of a New York-based editorial assistant who writes about her work and her life. It's funny, informative and insightful. Lovely.

Little, Brown's blog is little more than a catalogue of its forthcoming titles and various author events: I would do so much more with it, and I'm afraid it's a missed opportunity for them.

Me And My Big Mouth is Scott Pack's blog. You'll find lots of reviews there, lots of talk, and a fair amount of publishing information and gossip too. Mr Pack used to run Waterstone's, and now he runs The Friday Project, which is an imprint of HarperCollins.

Monday Books publishes mostly non-fiction with a slant towards politics, satire and memoir, and all of the Monday Books titles that I've read have been bloody brilliant.

The Penguin Blog has some interesting content related to its books and I like it: but I found little there concerned with writing or publishing.

Picador, which is part of Pan Macmillan, blogs.

Salt Publishing specialises in publishing anthologies of short stories and poems, and I've not yet read a bad collection from them. Gorgeous books, the lot of them.

Snowbooks. Beautiful books, lovely people, and a great blog.

Two Ravens Press publishes lovely literary fiction, and has a very interesting blog.

Applying For Arts Council Funding

My thanks to Daniel Blythe for this piece.



I've applied for four Arts Council England grants in my life—three between 2000-2005 for community-based arts projects (two successful, one not) and one in 2008 for my own writing development (successful).

1. Read everything you can about Arts Council grants on their website.

2. You don't have to be a published writer. What you do need to do is to demonstrate that the project you are undertaking is a "literary" contribution and that it represents a turning-point in your career—that completing this work will enhance your artistic career and take it off in an interesting direction. In my case it was my first novel for children after fifteen years of writing for adults. In the case of a friend who was also awarded a grant, it was his first full poetry collection, for which he already had an offer to publish.

3. Give your local Arts Council office a call and talk through your idea for a project with one of the development workers. They want to help you and should be able to tell you if it sounds viable or not.

4. If they sound at all enthusiastic about it, then go to the "funding" page at the Arts Council website and download their application form and notes.

5. Be absolutely sure you know what the budget for your project is going to be. If this is going to be a book or script you are working on at home, this will include things like what proportion of utility bills you will be using, your stationery costs, etc.

6. You need to find 10% of the cost yourself, and be very clear where this is coming from. I funded mine through my private work teaching and critiquing manuscripts.

7. At some stage, talk to someone else who has done an Arts Council grant application. I found it very valuable to speak to another published writer who had just received notification that his application was successful. He let me look at his application and supporting statement so I could see an example of something which had got the nod.

8. If you want a quick response, go for one of the smaller grants (less than £5,000), as they turn those around within three months. A larger one (£5,000 and over) will take six months.

9. One tricky thing on the application is the question of the numbers of artists, participants and audience. This is easy-ish to answer if you are putting on a play or a community writing project. It's not so easy if you are writing a book and don't even have an offer to publish yet, let alone any idea of the print-run. If you've been published before, then I can only suggest working out the audience from what a reasonable print-run would be based on your previous career. If you haven't, then I'd suggest asking a published writer or the Society of Authors for advice.

10. Sometimes, the Arts Council will come back after the application is in and ask you for more information on your project outside the boundaries of the application form—this is usually a good sign. It happened to me and I ended up writing an extra 1000 words on the project. I was grateful for this opportunity—I thought it could only be a good thing, and I was right.

11. You are more likely to get the award if you seem professional, focused and on top of your material. Woolly, vague applications are no good. Also be able to say exactly how long it will take you and how you will evaluate it at the end.

12. If you are successful, you may be asked to do some publicity. I've not been asked to do an awful lot. I was featured in some local newspaper articles and I have been happy to put an Arts Council Funded logo and link on my website. I wasn't asked to do the latter, but it just seemed polite. And of course I will mention the grant in the Author's Note at the start of the book, if and when it is published.

Reported Sales: Selling In vs. Selling Through

There are two different levels of sales for books: the numbers that sell from publisher to bookshop; and the numbers which sell on from bookshop to reader.

That first number, which is usually referred to as the sell-in figure, is always the higher of the two, because a few books will always get lost, stolen or damaged; and so long as returns are allowed, many of those books will eventually find their way back to the publisher: sadly, returns rates of 30 or 40% are not unusual.

The number of books sold from bookshops to readers is usually called the sell-through, or the sell-on, and it's a very different thing. Readers tend not to return books unless the pages fall out as they turn them, or a segment of the book is bound the wrong way around. As the second figure is more fixed than the first it is a far more reliable indicator of a book’s real sales, even though it is usually much lower.

So while publishers will often use the sell-in figure to trumpet a book’s success, writers should not rely on it when estimating what their royalties are going to be like, as those will usually be calculated from sales figures even lower than the sell-through, thanks to the joy of the reserve against returns. Which deserves a whole series of posts of its own!

Reader's Reports

When an agent or an editor requests a reader's report on a manuscript which has been submitted to them, they'll usually send those reports onto the writer once they've made a decision about the manuscript concerned, whatever that decision is—and whatever the reader has reported.

Reader's reports often contain some strong criticism and discuss the manuscript in very frank terms, and if you're not able to deal well with constructive criticism they can be very painful to read. But if you're keen to make your work the best it can possibly be, and can overcome the initial disappointment and hurt that you might feel, these reports can be extremely helpful: they focus closely on a manuscript's flaws and so make very clear how it could be improved.

Reader's reports are very valuable tools for a writer who is serious about improving his craft, but agents and editors only ever request reader's reports on a tiny proportion of submissions: the ones which show real promise. And as most submissions are rejected a long way before a reader’s report is even considered, relatively few writers will ever get to see one.

Trios: Diary Of An On-Call Girl, By PC Bloggs: From Blog To Book

This is the final piece in the Trios series about Diary of an On-Call Girl: True Stories from the Front Line, the memoirs of an anonymous police officer, P. C. Bloggs. A couple of weeks ago Dan Collins, the publisher at Monday Books, discussed TV options and rights sales; last week, he looked at the importance of the right title and cover design. This final article, by P. C. Bloggs, considers the problems of writing an anonymous blog and book while still working full-time as a police officer.

P. C. Bloggs is going to be interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour this morning, and her book is going to be serialised on the same programme all week. You can listen to the serialisation between 10.45 and 11am each morning, Monday to Friday, and there will be a repeat each day at 7.45pm so there's no reason for you to miss it!


If there are people who join the police in order to publish a book, there must be easier ways. I didn’t become a police officer in order to get published, and nor was that why I started my blog—a therapeutic but initially light-hearted diatribe against the foibles of my work.

So when I was approached by a publisher within three weeks of my opening post I went with it, but was inwardly sceptical.

Having grown up on a diet of classic fiction, the concept of a “blook” was alien to me. But I had a lot to say about the police, and I’ve always enjoyed making people laugh, so there didn’t seem any harm in combining the two if someone was interested enough to print it.

Actually sitting down and writing it, as well as doing some publicity, and keeping myself anonymous, was another matter. At times I felt like I had two full-time jobs, and two completely separate personalities that did not overlap in any way.

There were frustrations—as a secret public sector blogger you try to reflect up-to-the-minute facts about your job, but you can’t use real life examples that are too recent in case you inadvertently identify someone. But as an author who purports to tell the exact truth, nothing but real life will do, and yet it has to be woven into some kind of coherent story.

The two skills are completely different, and keeping both going has been intellectually exhausting. I do feel, however, that I’ve clung to the principles on which I started: that the book would be true to life, true to the blog, and ultimately none of it would be taken too seriously. The whole thing has to some extent been tinged with disbelief: I didn't actually believe that the book was being published until my mother ordered it on Amazon and it arrived!

I’ve enjoyed my small successes, the opportunity to appear on radio and television, and write for broadsheet newspapers, and the fact that I have an online audience for the frustrations I can’t air at work.

But whilst writing has become a more-than-hobby, a commitment, and a passion, my job—my vocation—is as a police officer. If the two became mutually exclusive, the writing would go. Of course, the decision may not be mine: I serve two different audiences, both brutally honest about how they receive my efforts.

If one day, one or other of them tires of me, I will still look back at these years with incredulous pleasure that they lasted as long as they did.



Thanks to Monday Books' generosity we have three free copies of Diary Of An On-Call Girl to give away. If you'd like one for yourself you have to answer this question: what is PC Bloggs' day job? Email your answer to Dan at "dancollins at mondaybooks dot com" along with your address, and next Monday he'll pick three names at random to send those copies off to. It would be much appreciated if you reviewed them in a couple of places once you've read them and if you do, remember to post a link to your review here.

The Deathwatch Dash

Nicola Morgan is today hoping to set the world record for the greatest number of separate school-talks given by one author in one day, by talking at six different schools about her latest book, Deathwatch.

I bet she wears gorgeous boots to do it in, too.

Good luck, Nicola. Remember to eat plenty of chocolate through the day, or even you might begin to fade.

Writers' Message Boards And Online Communities

There are lots of places on the internet where writers gather: I've written some general posts about them here. Many writers' message boards include a discussion forum and an area where writers can receive feedback and criticism on their work, but some of them are far better than others: it all depends, I think, on what the writers who populate the place are like. If a writers' site has a good proportion of accomplished, well-published writers in its membership then the advice there is likely to be above average; if the members are all aspiring writers with little or no experience of publication, or there's a high proportion of vanity-published writers among the membership, then it's very likely that the advice that's on offer isn't going to be quite so good.

Here are a few of my favourites. I'd be grateful if you'd provide links to the places you like in the comments, and let me know what's so special about them.

AbsoluteWrite is probably the best writers' site on the internet. It's got a fabulous message board and it seems to me that the people who comment there have a higher-than-average level of intelligence and publishing expertise. It's American, and lots of the information it contains is restricted to that continent: but there's still an awful lot of good stuff there for anyone who is interested in writing, revising, and getting published. It's free to read, free to join, and free to take part in, and I love it.

Authonomy is HarperCollins UK's interractive writers' site. There's a sprawling message-board (which takes forever to load on my dial-up service), a large selection of work on view; and every month the five (I think) most well-received pieces of work get looked at by HarperCollins editors, and are commented on. This is not to be sniffed at: but do bear in mind that so far not one of any of the top five books has been published by HarperCollins, and only one book has been taken from the Authonomy slush-pile for publication.

Litopia has a good reputation, and several of my friends are members: however, I've never stuck with it long enough to gain access to its inner workings, and so cannot vouch for its quality (although I'm sure that a few of my readers will be able to advise).

WriteWords is a UK-based site which charges an annual membership fee but which does have a very high proportion of published and successful writers in its members: consequently, the advice that you'll find there is well above average, and very valuable. It's very writing-focussed, with an excellent peer-review system across lots of genres.

YouWriteOn. What can I say? It began with the excellent premise of providing writers with an online community and the chance for the best writers there to get a critique of their work from a professional editor or agent; but then in the autumn of 2008 it introduced a vanity publishing option which was neither well thought-out nor well-received. I really don't like its vanity publishing scheme; and from what I've seen, the standard of writing and advice on its boards are not nearly as high as you'll find on other boards.

Zoetrope has sections for novel-writing, short fiction, screenwriting, and all sorts. It has a slightly confusing system of public message boards with a subculture of private rooms, which any of its members can set up and invite people to join; it's well thought-of, and has a reputation for producing excellent writers through strong criticism and robust comment. I have taken part, but found the system of private rooms (where most of the action goes on) made it a little too scattered and time-consuming for my liking.


Further recommendations from our readers:

The Backspace Forum

Critter's Bar

The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror has a mixture of published and yet-to-be published writers. Also the chance to have your work critiqued by well-known authors or editors.

Scrawl: The Writers Asylum has a number of talented and helpful writers in several genres.

The Writer's Chronicle

I Have A Very Clever Cat

This is Tink. She is my cat.

She is a Balinese (a long-haired Siamese), and for several years she served as a breeding queen for a breeder who no longer wanted her once she was too old to reproduce. She came to me then: she was a bag of bones, scared of everything, and knew nothing of Other Rooms, let alone The Great Outdoors.

She has lived with us for three years now, but is very timid still. She never introduces herself to visitors, she can slalom higher than the light-switches if she feels she needs to avoid anything, and she has the most mournful meow that I’ve ever heard. To comfort herself, she chews plastic bags; and she collects all the rubber tyres from my sons’ toy cars and drowns them in her water-bowl.

Despite all this wimpishness, this week Tink has revealed herself as Super Cat. Because she has decided to start using the toilet.

Yep, you read that right. She has decided, all on her own, to use the toilet.

She was first spotted doing it last Sunday; we thought it was a fluke. On Tuesday she did it again; and since then, she’s been a regular visitor to the smallest room in the house. This morning she woke me up at six AM with her ablutions, and she’s used the toilet twice more already.

She's very neat in her approach. She jumps up onto the seat; faces the back and straddles; dips her elegant, furry bottom just a little below the seat; and wees. Once she’s finished she turns around, checks all is OK; and jumps off. She has never missed or left the seat wet, and I’m sure she’d flush if she could operate the lever.

I hope that she’ll teach the other three cats to do the same. I wonder if anyone else has a cat who has decided to do this, all on its own, without any training or encouragement; and I just wish that my children and my husband were so reliable.

Clever Tink.


(And here's another of our cats, especially for Lynn Price: not only do I have a very clever cat, I also have a very useful one. This is Mabel, our very slightly brain-damaged Siamese, who wouldn't pee in the toilet if you paid her but who will serve as a coaster if you ask her nicely.)

How Readers Drive Publishing

Publishing is a business which produces books in order to sell them. It depends on writers, agents, editors, designers, illustrators, copy-editors and printers to produce those books; and on marketing staff, publicists, sales agents, wholesalers, distributors, bookshops and booksellers to sell those books.

All of the people who are involved in the production and sales of books depend on one thing to fund the work that they do: the reader. And because readers fund publishing, they drive the whole of the publishing process. When readers don't buy books, the publishers lose money and everyone involved in that supply-chain suffers.

So when publishers recognise that a particular type of book doesn't sell well they stop publishing it, or they stop publishing so much of it and get really picky about the books in that genre which they will consider.

Conversely, when publishers notice that a particular type of book is selling very well, they will look for others of that type to publish.

If publishers won't consider a particular genre, agents won't be able to sell it to them; so agents quickly learn what publishers will and will not consider. As those agents don't eat if they don't make sales, they don't take on books they don't think they can sell no matter how much literary merits those books might have.

So please: don't suggest that literary agents are unfairly stifling new writers because of their own personal agendas, or that publishing is ignoring whole swathes of talented writers because those writers write stuff that is somehow too contentious or unpopular to make it onto their lists: agents, editors and publishers all look to the reader when deciding what to take on, and if readers aren't prepared to buy a particular type of book, then that type of book is very unlikely to get published.

It comes down to this: to stand a chance of being published, your book has to be well-written, but that’s not enough on its own. If readers are likely to buy your book and it is well-written, then it has a good chance of getting published; but if publishers know from their years of experience that a book like yours is unlikely to attract enough readers to make it commercially viable then it is not going to get published no matter how well-written it is.

Trios: Deathwatch, by Nicola Morgan: Book Launches

Nicola Morgan writes for teenagers and has the unusual habit of involving them in the marketing of her novels. Her new thriller, Deathwatch, is being launched by pupils from The Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, who also helped write the book and appear in the story. One of those pupils, Ailsa Innes, wrote the following article for this Trios series.

Last time Nicola told us about her extraordinary efforts to promote this book; next week we'll have a contribution from bookseller Vanessa Robertson, from The Children’s Bookshop in Edinburgh, which will complete this particular trio.

If you'd like to be in with a chance to win your own copy of Deathwatch then answer this question: in which UK city is Deathwatch set (my more resourceful readers will realise that the answer might well be found on the Deathwatch page of Nicola's website). Email your answers to "n at nicolamorgan dot co dot uk", and a week after the final piece in this particular Trio is published, Ms Morgan will pick one name at random out of her virtual hat.

And now, over to Ailsa.

For a couple of years I had really enjoyed books by Nicola Morgan, especially The Passionflower Massacre and Mondays Are Red, and was very excited to hear that she was coming to talk to our year. I was even more excited when I heard that she was looking for helpers to write her new book about a stalker (the name ‘Deathwatch’ had not been created yet). I put all my effort into writing what I thought was the perfect letter to Nicola, describing why she should definitely choose me to help, and was pleased when I and thirteen classmates from The Mary Erskine School, Edinburgh, were chosen.

One of the first things we did was meet Nicola at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and listen to her read part of what she’d written, although it did help that we had ice creams as part of the deal! We set up a messaging board on Yahoo! and used it to discuss issues—everything from the words a teenage girl would use when she was irritated, to the best name for an invented social networking website. We also said that stick insects weren’t scary enough and decided that Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches were better!

Another early job was to help at the official launch of The Highwayman's Curse, a sequel to Nicola’s hugely successful The Highwayman's Footsteps. We took people’s coats, prepared and served appetisers and ticked names off a list as guests arrived. Two of us also performed a dramatic curse for the audience! I was selling Nicola’s books, and was kept busy trying to calculate change! It was a very fun evening and made us even more excited about our own book’s launch.

I was one of the girls lucky enough to read the first complete draft, months before the final version was ready. It was a very heavy pile of A4 pages, but even then I was gripped by the storyline, and the occasional spelling error! [Thanks! NM] When the final version was ready, I first read it on my computer, but then Nicola gave us each a signed copy of the actual book and our names are in the acknowledgements. Nicola had also asked me if she could use another girl’s name and mine as friends of the main character, and of course I agreed! All members of the team have their names in minor roles in the book, which we find very exciting.

We have been extra busy this term, dealing with publicity: reviews, press releases, getting libraries and other schools involved, and my task was to write this blog.

The launch was an extremely enjoyable night for us, and we were so excited to see our book finally out there and going into bookshops. It was a huge success and many important and exciting people were there!

I started this project when I was 12 years old (I am now 14) and am amazed at how long a real book takes to be produced—there’s so much more than just writing it! I think this whole experience will be something that I will be amazed about when I am older—rarely do teenagers get a chance to help a writer produce a book, let alone get a character named after them in the deal! I am very pleased that I saw this project through and am sure it will be a complete success.

My thanks to Ailsa Innes for this: I hope some of the girls on the team, some of whom are shown with Nicola in the photo above, manage to drop by and comment here: it would be great to hear some dirt on Nicola Morgan from the people who really know. I bet she hogged all the ice-cream at the party.

Problems With Logic

No matter where I look on the internet lately, I find people making complete arses of themselves.

I recently reviewed a book in which the writer had based his entire premise on a data-set which didn't actually prove his hypothesis. Instead of wondering if the lack of supporting data indicated that his hypothesis might be flawed he worked with the 25% of the records which did support it and ignored the rest. Now, I can see the problem here; you can see the problem here... poor bloke. A whole book.

YouWriteOn's ill-advised publishing scheme provided several excellent examples of odd logic with (among other things) its insistence that all rights would be returned if the writers chose to cancel. It was kind of them to make this offer: but it’s nonsensical, because you can’t do the same thing more than once and consider it a first time each time; so they couldn’t return first rights to any of the books that they published no matter what they promised.

The discussion which followed this blog post over at the Guardian relied very heavily on sweeping generalisations, opinion presented as fact, and assumptions based on untested or pick-and-mix data; and it spilled over in a little way to a post on this blog, where a well-meaning self-published writer tried to support her argument with facts that didn't actually prove what she thought they did.

I could go on: I have hundreds more examples, but I think you've got my point.

I am so tired of watching these lapses ooze across the internet that I have decided to write the occasional post here about logic, fallacies, and proper research.

What has this got to do a with publishing? A whole lot. When a writer relies on fallacies to make his point, and cannot support his assertions with solid research, he not only makes himself look foolish: he ensures he’ll never get his work published by any reputable press.

Trios: Diary Of An On-Call Girl, by E E Bloggs: Cover Story

Here's the latest installment in the Trios series about Diary of an On-Call Girl: True Stories from the Front Line, the memoirs of an anonymous police officer, P. C. Bloggs. Following on from his discussion of TV options and rights sales, today Dan Collins (Bloggs' publisher at Monday Books) examines the importance of good title and cover design. The final article, written by P. C. Bloggs herself, will appear next Monday and looks at the problems of writing her blog and book while still working full-time as a police officer.

Diary of an On-Call Girl is going to be serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour next week, following an interview with PC Bloggs on Monday 15 June. You can listen to the serialisation between 10.45 and 11am each morning, Monday to Friday, and if you miss it (as if you would) there will be a repeat each day at 7.45pm.



They say you should never judge a book by its cover. Sadly, people ignore this. The story of Diary Of An On Call Girl actually starts with another book, our second. Called Wasting Police Time, it was based on PC David Copperfield’s Policeman’s Blog. It was all about the Gogolian, Orwellian and Kafka-esque scandal of bureaucracy as it affects the police – and therefore, the public – and it sold very well (nearly 80,000 copies to date, which is ‘very well’ by our standards).

After BBC1’s Panorama called to ask for our help in making a whole show about the author, we decided we were onto something; having struck brass with Wasting Police Time, we decided to try to repeat the trick.

WPC Ellie Bloggs, author of the PC Bloggs blog, wrote about similar issues to Copperfield – the pointless box-ticking, the cowardly arse-covering and the mindless management – but from the perspective of a woman officer.

Some of her stories were amazing – like the one where a mum reports her four-year-old son missing and then declines to join the search for him, saying she has a hairdressing appointment and demanding that the cops bring the child to her at the salon if they find him.

Her blog had a reasonable readership (if not quite PC DC’s tens of thousands), we had lots of people clamouring for a follow-up to Wasting Police Time… what could go wrong?

Well, something did: Diary Of An On Call Girl has sold far fewer copies than Wasting Police Time, despite being (I think) a much better book.

Why?

It’s not about the words in the book, which manages to be both extremely funny and also very moving.

As proof of this, take the reaction from TV companies: within a few months of publication, we had received six approaches from production houses eager to buy the rights so they could turn it into a policing comedy. They included Hat Trick (Have I Got News For You, The Armstrong and Miller Show) and Talkback Thames (Da Ali G Show, I’m Alan Partridge), and we eventually did a deal with Clerkenwell Films (this is John ‘Rebus’ Hannah’s production company, and they are currently working on a pilot episode for the BBC).

I mention this astonishing response not to boast (well, just a bit) but to show that, objectively, other people with great experience in judging literary works for their commercial value thought it was a good read (the BBC are making it a Book of the Week on Woman’s Hour this month, too.)
Could it be that people had just lost interest in the subject? I don’t think so – the national debate about police bureaucracy which Copperfield did so much to create continues apace, and a third book, Perverting The Course Of Justice by Inspector Gadget is selling very strongly.

Partly, I think the smaller sale is because Bloggs is a woman; a chunk of the title’s market would be police officers themselves, and they are mostly male, and, for some strange reason, men don’t seem to buy books by women (while women are happy to read books by men).

Mostly, though, I think we (by which I mean Monday Books) screwed it up.

We did this by getting both the title and the cover wrong.

The ‘On Call Girl’ bit of the title was meant to be a sort of play on the Belle Du Jour books. The jacket, equally, had a model (that’s not PC Bloggs) looking at the camera in a way which was supposed to convey the idea that she had a secret of some kind, but ended up just looking mildly suggestive.

Based on the two, I fear the potential reader may have been expecting the memoirs of a hooker who specialised in punters who like uniforms.

In the worst of all cases, many people wouldn’t be interested, and those who did buy it would have been rather disappointed.

So, misjudgments all round, though, in our defence, it was quite hard to get right. It is the novelised truth about life as a modern female police officer which attempts to make serious points about crime and society in a humorous way: how do you suggest that?

If we were back in 2007 and I could do it all over again, I think I would have called it Life On Venus (as a counterpoint to TV’s Life On Mars) and would probably go for a more ‘chick lit’ cover – probably illustrated and possibly pink… but I still don’t know if that gets it, either. We’re currently working on the follow-up (which I think will be called Life On Venus) and may well reissue DOAO-CG in a new cover. So any and all ideas for both are more than welcome! (The Gadget cover returned to the Copperfield style.)


Thanks to Dan's generosity we have three free copies of Diary Of An On-Call Girl up for grabs. If you'd like one for yourself you have to answer this question: what is PC Bloggs' day job? Email your answer to Dan at "dancollins at mondaybooks dot com". Make sure to put "HPRW Trios competition" in your subject line and include your address, and on Monday June 22 he'll pick three names at random to send those copies off to. It would be good if you reviewed them in a couple of places once you've read them: if you do, remember to post a link to your review here.

Don't Forget The Pitch Party!

As my bloggy birthday party draws to a close, all I can do is thank everyone who has taken part. I've posted all sorts of guest posts today and through them I've learned more than I need to about Michael Malone; I've been worried by Google Wave; I now know how cats approach writing; I've seen the issue of voice beautifully explained; and I realise that how ever bad it might be to be a writer, being a teacher has to be worse.

Victoria Strauss has rounded things off with a few wise words, which I wish more writers would take note of; and I'll direct you all once more to visit our birthday blogging pitch party. I've got a drink in my hand and there are more to follow. Thank you all for your encouragement, help and humour over this last year. It's been absolutely wonderful, and I couldn't have done it without you.

Guest Post: Avoiding The Conmen, by Victoria Strauss

The final guest blog post today comes from Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware. She's very well informed about writing and publishing and has been quite ridiculously supportive of me and my blog this year; and she works incredibly hard to educate and protect writers and in so doing, presents herself as a target for a lot of people who occupy the nastier side of publishing. She takes a lot of criticism, rudeness and downright abuse, and never fails to respond with grace and humour. I am profoundly grateful to her for all the support she's given me this year.

This piece isn't even something she wrote as a special post: it's just one of the many helpful posts she makes every week over at Absolute Write. As usual, she's got things bang-on. Thanks, Victoria. I owe you.


It's incredibly easy to avoid the conmen (and women). Query only agents with verifiable track records of commercial book sales (which you should be able to find on their websites. No track record, no query). Approach only publishers whose books you've found on the shelves of bookstores and libraries. If writers would just stick to those two simple rules, most of the conmen (and women) would go out of business.

The reason the conmen (and women) survive is not just because writers are inexperienced, or don't know their names from reading them on a blog somewhere. It's because so many writers assume that all agents and publishers are essentially equal. This makes no sense at all. In the real world, would you hire someone who had no skills that qualified them to do the job you wanted them to do, and could offer you no references? Probably you wouldn't. So why should agents or publishers be any different?

Guest Post: Voicing Concerns, by Dan Holloway

I've been wrestling with a couple of blog posts about voice: what it is, why it's important, and how to get a good one: and along comes the lovely Dan Holloway with this great post, especially for my blog's first birthday. Thank you Dan.


One of the commonest causes of “hands raised in horror” syndrome amongst members of the website Authonomy, is Harper Collins’ (who run the site) failure to publish any of the “beautifully-written” books that reach the site’s upper echelons (the Editor’s Desk). Yet, in the site’s forums, respected literary professionals endlessly repeat (and whenever I ask an “insider” the question, I get the same answer), what the industry looks for above anything else is “a fresh, original voice”.

It occurred to me that the continued prevalence of HRIH syndrome may actually be attributable to the belief that “beautifully written” – or its qualitative synonyms “tightly-plotted”, “exquisitely dialogued”, “masterfully characterised” – MEANS “fresh and original.” It doesn’t.

Let me explain.

After spending too many years studying there (10 – don’t ask), I spent a few more preparing students for Oxford interviews. It’s an infuriating truism that what Oxford looks for in would-be students is indefinable “but you know it when you see it.” I always thought “voice” was the same.

Which is why I was surprised to find it isn’t. I made the discovery whilst at a gig in Southampton a couple of weeks ago (we’d made the considerable journey to see our favourite band, The Boxer Rebellion). My regular readers will be rolling their collective eyeballs (“when he talks about marketing, it’s all music”, “social media and publishing – more music”, “even on sentence construction – it’s arpeggio this and cadenza that”), but music really is the perfect illustration of “voice.”

I’ve been to a good fistful of gigs in recent months. One of the delights of gigs (serendipity being my favourite word) is going to see a headline act and discovering some wonderful support bands (I met my Facebook novel’s “house band”, InLight, that way). It’s always interested me the way the first band comes on and the crowd thinks “great.” Enter main support and it’s “wahey, they’re fantastic!” But then the headline act comes on and everyone else vanishes.

Listening to the opening drums of The Boxer Rebellion’s “walk-on” number, Flashing Red Light Means Go, I realised why that was – and why it explained “voice.”

I’ve seen (checks his website to count links…) lots of support bands this year. They all perform excellently. The songwriting is uniformly exceptional. The frontmen have real charisma. But when you hear one song, then a second, you realise if you heard a third song, in a different context, you’d have a hard time saying whose it was. Any number of people could have written them.

On the other hand, every headline act I’ve seen writes songs that couldn’t have been written by anyone else. Within a bar (a note, even – just the tuning of their guitars is often enough; or if you prefer your music older and more German, think “Tristan chord”) you know exactly whose music you’re listening to.

And that, in a nutshell, is voice.

How do you write voice? Don’t ask me. I don’t have an original voice. Just a loud one.


Dan Holloway is a theologian by training. These days he pushes pens by day and writes by night. Author of several published short stories and two as yet unpublished novels, Dan writes literary fiction about life in modern Europe. Also an academic writer and presenter, on June 12 he will be speaking on "The Ghost at my Shoulder: Literary Reflections on Coming of Age in Post-Communist Hungary" at a conference hosted by the University of East London to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Dan is writing his current novel, The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's shoes, interactively on Facebook. He blogs regularly on literary futurology, is co-founder of the avant-garde collective Year Zero Writers, and is widely rumoured to have invented both time travel machines and bionic fingers in order to accommdate his schedule.

Guest Post: Writing Worries, by Michael Malone

This blog post of Michael Malone's catches a good few of my writing worries, so with his permission I'm quoting part of it here. You might also want to take a look at this other blog post of his, which discusses his friendship with Margaret Thomson Davis, a delightful and persistent writer.


70,000 words down on the current work in progress and I’m in the home strait. So I will be concentrating on that for a few days. In fact I need to have a rest from this blogging malarkey. I really enjoy the chance to be a bit irreverent, but it diznae pay the mortgage.This novel is based on fact and set on a prison colony during the middle of the last century. It’s a story of a young man who was sent to the worst prison on the planet. His crime? Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

If I tell you any more, I’ll have to kill you. With a sharpened teaspoon. While you’re sleeping. You’ll just have to lie very still so I can get some purchase on your jugular. So maybe I’ll tie you up first. With barbed wire. So I might need to waken you up first. And I’ve just taken this too far, haven’t I?

So, thank you for reading my blogging efforts so far and for those who can be arsed commenting, thank you for your comments – I love receiving them, makes me feel less like I’m indulging in a literary form of masturbation. Writing is like sex, much better when there is more than one person involved. To those who don’t leave a message, this is me with my tongue sticking out blowing a raspberry.


Michael Malone's poetry is published by Makar Press. Performance number sixty one was completed last weekend, and he's and currently working on novel number five. Novels three and four (crime) are with an agent and are currently amassing an impressive number of rave rejections from an impressive group of publishers.

Guest Post: Writing – A Definition For Cats

One of my regular commenters, Catdownunder, sent me this little snippet. I'm not sure that she meant me to post it here but I liked it so much I have. So there! You might also like to take a look at this blog post of hers in which she discusses her incredibly serious day-job: I wouldn't know where to start.


Writing – A Definition For Cats.

Writing is a self imposed invasion of your purrrsonal private space.

It is much more difficult than fur scrubbing or catching your dinner. It takes more courage. You bravely present your innermost pawsonal mewsings to a human: they would rather you presented them with a dead mouse.


Publishing – A Definition For Cats.

The reason humans cut down the trees we like to climb.

Guest Post: Being A Writer, by Dave Dittell

Few writers make much money from their writing alone, and most depend on other work to provide them with a living wage. Dave Dittell is one of many writers who amazes me: how can he be as productive as he is with so little writing time available? I offer him my thanks for this contribution to my blog, and my admiration for all that he achieves.


Wake up, shut off alarm, don't snooze. Used to be a snoozer, but now you're not. Now you're a teacher. It seemed a perfect fit for a budding writer, a chance to immerse yourself in the English language. Your day job would be related to your dream job; it felt like cheating.

Yesterday: taught all day, wrote all afternoon, prepared and graded papers into late night. Now it's early. Still dark out. Four hours sleep. More papers to grade. You spend five minutes per paper max, but it's still too much. Can you really help someone become a better writer in under five minutes a day?

Coffee. Bathroom smells like coffee-pee. Spit out showerwater yellow with caffeine. Never spend more time showering than it takes to grade a paper.

Teaching is two jobs. The in-class job and the out-of-class job. Your third job is writing. You need at least four hours of sleep, so writing is only part-time, even though you'd do it all day if you could.

You have meetings, you have projects. Projects move forward, projects fall apart. Class goes well, class falls apart. Every day, inside your class room, you stand before them and provide hope and strength and knowledge. You represent opportunity; you represent it so well that your class has a future fireman, a future astronaut, a future Air Force pilot. And eleven future engineers, which you think is funny. There are no future writers, but then again, you're a future writer.

Should they want this?

Grade papers. Run-on sentence, run-on sentence, fragment, fragment, run-on sentence, past/present inconsistent, run-on sentence. Same mistakes every week, but they're getting it. Some of them could barely write in English when they first walked through the door. Run-on sentence, fragment, fragment, singular/plural inconsistency, run-on sentence. How can you get Jake to try, Sarah to stop thinking about her mom's cancer, Frank to stop disrupting class? Can you really bring yourself to mention ADD to a twelve year-old's parents?

When you write, you think of them.

When you teach, you think about your stories.

Mouth tastes of reheated coffee. You used to drink coffee and not sleep for hours. Now you sip right up until the moment you collapse.

Get to school early and jot a few notes on your lesson plan. Come up with a good line, an important plot point, and tuck it into your back pocket.

Class starts in twenty minutes and it's the only time of the day when you have absolutely nothing to do. No papers to grade, no blank page, no vocabulary words to pretend you didn't look up the night before.

This is the twenty minutes of the day you most look forward to, more than the writing, because, during the writing, all you can think about is how it's still just the part-time job.


Dave Dittell is a 25 year-old screenwriter currently at work adapting a comedic novel for 363 Entertainment. He operates Alphabet Soup Kitchen, a blog dedicated to young and struggling writers, and has volunteered and worked in education throughout the past five years.

Sally Zigmond's Short Break

Last week I mentioned that Sally Zigmond was in hospital, nursing a broken thigh. I'm very glad to know that she is now back at home, complete with some fancy new metalwork installed in her femur. Wish her well here. But don't go on holiday with her, because she's going to set off all the metal detectors in the airport.

Guest Post: Google Wave, by David H Burton

David H Burton writes about a number of things, but focuses primarily on writing and technology, with some leftward politics and other fun stuff thrown in for good measure. My thanks to him for this contribution, which originally appeared on his own blog. I've not been able to check out all the links he includes, as I only have dial-up: so please tell me about them in the comments section!


While those in the writing world were focusing on BEA in New York last weekend, the Google I/O Developer Conference was taking place on the opposite end of the country in San Francisco. These are rather unrelated events, unless you pay attention to what Google Wave will offer when it is released later this year.

"What is Google Wave?", you ask. I'll let their own presentation speak for itself. See below, but heed the warning, it's 1 hour and 20 minutes long. There's also a great post over at Mashable that's worth reading.



If you're not likely to watch the whole thing, let me give you some highlights.

1. Live translation in 40 languages, as you type.
   
2. Search, including Twitter search
   
3. Document Sharing/Word processing
   
4. E-mail
   
5. Instant messaging
   
6. Twitter
   
7. Embedding into blogs
   
8. Social Networks (i.e. Facebook)
   

It's basically a conglomeration of all of your favorite web applications, but on steroids.

So what does this translate to for the publishing industry?

This is where it gets interesting.

Wave will allow people (authors) to collaborate on documents/emails/blogs/microblogging and keep it organized. You break it apart, mash it with other waves, and readers can replay the course of events if they've come in late in the game and want to see what has occurred over time. With the move to an electronic medium for books, novels can now become living documents that authors can update at will.

So what would this book look like?

In electronic form, it could do the following

• It gives authors and readers a direct line of communication. Readers can give feedback/comments on any part of the book. Do they want to know more about a character? Do they absolutely hate how that character died?
  
• Authors can comment on particular sections and/or links/content of interest. And {gasp} authors could make changes to the novel.
  
• Imagine downloading a Wave-based novel onto your Sony Reader or your Kindle (or any other device) and instantly getting those comments/changes seamlessly. NOTE: this also integrates with Android, Google's operating system for mobile devices. And imagine providing your own comments as you read. (Just think of what reviewers and editors could do with this.)
  


• You can insert elements into the Wave. For nonfiction, this has huge implications since authors can update their books as new information/research becomes available. For fiction works, you can draw the readers in with images, videos, links, or for those SF/F fans, games! As an author, if you sell the gaming rights later, you can insert the links or the games themselves into the Wave at a later date without having to be concerned.
  
• Imagine opening yourself up, as a writer, to writing/editing LIVE! an hour a week for your readers to see the process. And you can let them give you feedback as you do it.
  

Does this seem a little overwhelming? Perhaps there will be a new role for publishers as the Digital Concierge for authors, so they can focus on content.

I don't know about you, but I believe there are big changes coming for publishing. I watched a video of Mike Shatzkin speaking at BEA 2009 and I think the man is brilliant and bang on.

So brace yourself, the Wave is coming. It's going to bring together two worlds that I love in new and exciting ways: books and technology. And I intend to surf it for all it's worth.

Birthday Pitch Party!

How Publishing Really Works is one year old today and to celebrate, I'm having another blogging pitch party!

The last time we had a pitch party there were comments flying around all over the place: a good few bloggers who participated ended up hundreds of extra visitors to their own blogs; and most of us discovered several brilliant new blogs to add to our reading lists.

All you have to do is pitch your blog in the comments section and add a clickable link to it (instructions below), and then visit and comment on at least three of the other blogs which have been pitched by my other readers.

If you don't have a blog of your own you're welcome to pitch other people's blogs; you can write and post as as many pitches as you like; multiple pitches for just one blog will be fine so long as each pitch is different, and pitching for multiple blogs is fine too. Just remember the rule about commenting on three other blogs for every pitch you post, though, otherwise it won't work.

Please keep each pitch to twenty five words or fewer, and make each one as compelling as you can: funny, scary and outrageous will all be encouraged, but anything obnoxious, libellous or otherwise nasty will be deleted. Bear in mind that the better your pitch, the more visitors and comments you'll draw to your blog.

To make it as easy as possible for everyone to click about, please include a live, clickable link with your comment. There are two ways to do this: if you're anxious about it, you can compose your comment as a new blog post, add the links in the usual way, then copy it, HTML code and all, into the comments section here; or you can write it yourself like this, which links to my blog:

[a href="http://howpublishingreallyworks.blogspot.com/"]name your link here[/a]

Replace my blog's address with yours; add a name for your link; then replace those two pairs of square brackets [ ] with pointy ones < >, or the link won't work.

Now go and get pitching!

I'm Redecorating

If you notice links going missing over the next few days or various bits and pieces changing, don't worry: I'm just moving things round a little. I should have it all done in a week or two. Meanwhile if anyone would like to suggest improvements to the layout I'd be happy to hear them. I'd particularly like a good image to use in the heading to the blog, if anyone could suggest something. A printing press; a pile of movable type; something like that. Nice old publishing stuff. Lovely.

Guest Post: Your Search For A Publisher, by Jonathon Clifford

Every wary writer will have heard of vanity publishing. It occupies the shadier side of the publishing business, and involves less-than-scrupulous publishers charging writers for publication. In vanity publication, the quality of the work is never considered, just the willingness and ability of the writers concerned to hand over large chunks of their cash. The books are often shoddily produced and rarely make any decent level of sales: the good writing is published alongside the bad, and while the vanity publishers make money out of the deal, the writers almost never do.

Jonathon Clifford came up with the term of "vanity publishing" a few decades ago, and has worked ever since to expose the truth about vanity publishing. He's written numerous articles about vanity publishing for the mainstream press, and is widely acknowledged as the primary expert on this nasty subject.

My thanks to him for this post.



As an aspiring author it isn’t writing your book that is the problem, it is when (without guidance) you come to search for a publisher that you risk being ensnared by those determined to take your money while giving you little or nothing in return.


So who am I to offer you guidance?

For eighteen years I have carried out a one-man campaign to clean up the world of vanity publishing. During that time I have been sent copies of hundreds of their promotional letters, editorial reports, quotations and contracts. Through this material it has been proved to the satisfaction of the courts that many vanity publishers are guilty of “gross misrepresentation of their services”. As a result many authors have—with my advice—successfully sued the vanity publisher with whom they had become embroiled.

In 1996 I was invited to our House of Lords for lunch to speak about the need to change the law to control vanity publishing. Fifty-eight Members of Parliament answered my call for support, but it wasn’t until 2008 that the law had been sufficiently altered to allow those bodies who wished to take action against dishonest vanity publishers. In 2000 I organised an Awareness Campaign backed by a website and free advice pack (which may be freely downloaded from my website) giving advice on Finding a Mainstream Publisher, Internet Publishing, the Market for Short Stories, Self-Publishing, Copy Editing, Proof Reading and Vanity Publishing

I have also made programmes for both regional and national BBC and Commercial TV, have taken part in a host of national and regional radio programmes and there have been articles about my work in magazines and newspapers both in the UK and around the world.


How (very easily) can you be taken in?

You find an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine which asks for manuscripts to be submitted. You send off yours and it is ‘accepted’.

But you do not appreciate that almost anyone who submits anything gets it accepted and, in the euphoria of that ‘acceptance’, your brain goes out of the window! You do not see the £ sign followed by the noughts. You fail to remember (if you ever knew) that the only publishers who ever advertise for authors are vanity publishers who are there to make money out of the unsuspecting author, not from the sale of copies of the books they publish - for once they have received your final payment they have all the money they are going to make out of you and promotion and marketing would cost some of it.

Along with the ‘acceptance’ of your manuscript you must also wary of two other phrases: ‘Print-on-Demand’ and ‘Self-Publisher’.

The honest print-on-demand outlet is extremely useful, but it is a phrase that can be misleading. If the publisher does not implement an effective promotion and marketing strategy for your book there is little or no demand for it, other than from your own efforts. He can then quite legally print only the very few copies ordered by your friends and family—whatever you may have paid!

Self-publishing cannot by definition be done for you by a third party and there have already been cases in the UK where vanity publishers masquerading as ‘Self-Publishers’ have been taken to task by the Advertising Standards Authority.

However the required payment is described, it is you who are going to pay for your book—not (as you are led to believe) a part of, or a share of, or a subsidy towards, but all of the cost plus a handsome profit and once it has been ‘published’ it will no doubt simply disappear into the woodwork.

Publishing your book should be an enjoyable and stimulating experience, not the fiendish nightmare created by so many vanity publishers. So before you answer an advertisement, go to my website and request a copy of my Advice Pack which is available to all—at no cost.


© Johnathon Clifford May 2009

Congratulations to Maggie Dana: Beachcombing Is Published Today!

Congratulations to Maggie Dana (who often comments here as Mags) on today's publication of her first novel, Beachcombing. I hope it's the first of many, and look forward to reading them all.

Guest Post: Avoiding Scams

When I began this blog I hoped it would help writers avoid losing their work to vanity publishers and fee-charging agents. Preditors & Editors has always been a useful resource for wary writers and here its editor, David L. Kuzminski, discusses how we can all take steps to avoid scams and protect our work.


Many scams depend upon the victim wanting something a lot and being relied upon to not inspect closely upon being given an offer. The more that someone wants something, the more likely the scam will succeed.

Many of us have seen or heard of the TV scam where someone offers a top of the line TV for a reduced price that would save the buyer a lot of money. All sorts of reasons are given such as the retailer accidentally sent two instead of one to the seller who's willing to share his good fortune by selling you the second TV. He even lets you look at his that’s still in the box so you have no reason to believe that the other identical box doesn't have a TV as well. Besides, it weighs like it has a TV in it and you even get to look through a hole in the sealed box so you can verify there's a TV screen in it. However, the box conceals that it's only an old picture tube and enough bricks to make the box feel right in weight.

Unfortunately, with publishing it's more difficult to inspect ahead of time because the physical product isn't going to be immediately available because it's your work that's to be published. In fact, the emergence of the Internet has made the process even more difficult because you have no idea where the other party is located or whether they can even deliver on the promise. This is made more difficult to discern between legitimate and scam operations because you're faced with the same problem from both. So, how do you know who to avoid and who to trust?

The first rule is never pay anything up front to publishers. Legitimate publishers do not charge writers to publish their work because they make their money from selling your work to readers. In fact, legitimate publishers pay you, the writer, and many of them even pay an advance while all of them assume the actual risks of publishing your work. Those risks are what make publishing so difficult to achieve because publishers aren't in business to lose money. They want written work that the public is willing to pay for. Consequently, they inspect what they're buying. If your writing isn't up to their standards or fails to fit the niche they fill within the marketplace, they're very likely going to pass off on your work.

The same advice about not paying anything up front to a literary agent is also true. Likewise, it's difficult obtaining an agent because they're taking a financial risk on your work from the moment they agree to spend some time reading your query. They don't have days with more hours than any of us and they have to use that time wisely. Therefore, they ignore anything that fails to interest them or anyone who proves to be too difficult to work with which could range from ignorance of the publishing industry to poor writing to unreasonable demands.

The second rule in avoiding risk is to conduct an inspection of your own. Look in a bookstore to see if the publisher you feel is worthy of publishing your work actually has any titles on the shelves. Don't just accept a listing in Amazon as sufficient because Amazon might be big, but it's not the entire market. Besides, readers still like to browse and that's not quite as easy to do online. Yes, it can be done online, but some publishers won't permit online browsing within their products. That's not a good sign. If the publisher is unwilling to permit the reader to see the first few pages, it could mean the publisher has something to hide such as poor or non-existent editing.

When you inspect a literary agent, look to see what the agent has represented before. Legitimate agents are quick to reveal their successes. Scams generally don't have any successes, though there are a few exceptions where agents found it was easier to just charge fees and not bother with doing any actual selling because the first couple of real sales turned out to be hard work. So that means you have to ask or check on when those sales were last made. If the agent can't point to any sales within the last twelve months, then you're better off without them on your list of who to trust.

Remember that the moment you seek publication, you're placing yourself in the ranks of professionals who get paid for their work. That makes you a target for scams so it's important that you question and research any and all claims anyone makes to you before you trust them. By the way, the really legitimate publishers and agents won't make claims about what they can do because they have more than enough offers coming in to them that they don't have to seek out manuscripts.

The third rule is to never spend money where your publisher or agent suggests. It's their job to see that your work is good enough to begin with before accepting it for publishing or representation. If they even bring up the subject of having you get your manuscript edited by someone else, then they don't have your best interests in mind. It's their job seeing that your work is shopped around to publishers or readers. It's not your responsibility to make a tour at your expense or to purchase promotion services.

The fourth rule is that their contracts must share the risks equally. They don't get to recoup their costs before you see any profit for your work. You're not in the business to support only them. You're entitled to fair compensation in the form of royalties aside from any advances which have to earn out first.

So far, we've ignored contests, editing services, and promotional services. Let's get to those now.

Contests are a definite ego trip. Beating out other writers is like winning a race and on occasion it can benefit the writer by influencing others to want his later written work. Of course, scams rely upon all that as well. They know writers have egos and are willing to part with money to enter a contest that might expose their work to more opportunities. However, only a few contests actually can deliver on that expectation. Scams rely upon that knowledge. They don't have to really produce any results other than offer a prize and that could come from the reading fee that many contests charge. After all, it seems reasonable to writers that they can't just expect judges to work for free to read thousands of entries and that's where it starts getting nasty. Many contests don't have knowledgeable judges to determine a winner. Some don't even name their judges. As well, the work is subjective and they can essentially name anyone they choose to be the winner. So long as an actual prize is awarded in accordance with the contest rules, they’re pretty safe from the reach of the law.

Editing services are once more a subjective matter. So long as something is produced in the form of editing, there's little a writer can do as almost all editing services have caveats in their contracts making it clear that they don't guarantee their work will produce an acceptance by a literary agent or publisher. Besides which, the really good publishers have their own editors who do the same thing for manuscripts with minor problems and the publisher pays them, not the writer.

And of course, promoters make the same caveats apply to their work. They can only get the title and author's name out there. Any sales are dependent upon what the public or industry is seeking so it's basically a gamble with better odds for them than any of the games in Las Vegas because they always win. That's one reason why so few books are ever advertised in the media by publishers.


Preditors & Editors maintains a unique and fascinating database for writers. If you want to know if an agent has made any professional sales, if a publisher is worth submitting to, or if a writing competition is likely to cost you a lot more than the entry fee it demands, then you'll almost certainly find something useful in its lists—even if it's not what you want to read. My thanks to David Kuzminski for allowing me to use this article here.

Trios: Deathwatch, by Nicola Morgan: The Joys Of Promotion

Nicola Morgan writes for teenagers and has the unusual habit of involving them in the marketing of her novels. Her new thriller, Deathwatch, is being launched by pupils from The Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, who not only helped write the book but also appear in the story, by name. Later, one of the girls will write about their experience, and then bookseller Vanessa Robertson, from The Children’s Bookshop in Edinburgh, will complete the trio.

If you'd like to be in with a chance to win your own copy of Deathwatch then answer this question: in which UK city is Deathwatch set (my more resourceful readers will realise that the answer might well be found on the Deathwatch page of Nicola's website). Email your answers to "n at nicolamorgan dot co dot uk", and a week after the final piece in this particular Trio is published, Ms Morgan will pick one name at random out of her virtual hat.

Here’s Nicola:

My punishment today is to write out five hundred times: “Next time I have crazy promotional ideas, I will keep very quiet.” Trouble is, if I have an idea I have to act on it. I’ve just paid for a personality assessment, only to be told I’m a raging entrepreneur with “constantly flowing ideas.” This is news?

So, whereas other authors of Jane’s trio pieces (thank you, Jane!) will talk about the agony and ecstasy of the creative process, I will talk about press releases, podcasts and YouTube. And teenagers. I know you’re not meant to work with children or animals, but these are teenagers and beetles, which are entirely different sorts of fish.

Letting teenagers handle promotion may seem bold. True, it can get hairy. For example, to me, deadlines mean “do it now, in case you’re hit by a bus later”; to them, deadlines mean “outwardly, I will look as though I haven’t heard; inwardly, yeah, whatever.” So, last week, I was worried because my brilliant Deathwatch girls (one of whom will be writing the second item in this trio—with a DEADLINE, Ailsa…) had a deadline, because this week they would have exams, choir practices, time-table changes, school camp, climbing Everest (I may have got that wrong), and I was away. I needn’t have worried—I got back from away to find thirty-four emails, covering everything that they’d planned, and more. They’d designed posters, competitions and press releases; they’d written reviews and sent them all over; they’d done on-line wizardry and sent our viral downloadable bug and screensaver around. They’d had ideas that made more sense than mine and politely suggested them without making me feel like an idiot.

They have been charming and amazing and they haven’t finished. They’re organising today's launch-party (that’s where beetles come in) and are accompanying me on the Deathwatch Dash on 15 June, bearing chocolate, I hope. Certainly, Gill and Vanessa from the Children’s Bookshop hope so, as chocolate is essential not only to writing but also to book-selling, we feel.

Oh, the Deathwatch Dash—it’s been reported widely so I can’t get out of it now. To set a world record for the number of separate school-talks by one mad author in one day, I will talk in six different schools. Then die. Briefly, because I’m doing events the next day. Then going to London for three days and other places around the UK throughout June.

Yes, I’ve made a podcast, and a YouTube video featuring the lovely screensavers that my publishers made. Making the YouTube thing would have driven me mad but luckily I was already. So then I made a cartoon animation of an interview. I’ve designed postcards and other materials and… oh, this is getting tiring.

(Are you wondering what my publishers are doing? Fear not: they’re being brilliant in ways that I haven’t told you about. Connecting to readers is my job. And pleasure. That’s what writing is, after all.)

See why I wish I would keep my ideas to myself? But how can I? If I don’t care about Deathwatch, why should anyone else? Besides, it’s not nearly as hard as actually writing—the agony of that afore-mentioned and then ignored creative process is way tougher. And writing Deathwatch was hard, harder than anything I’ve written.

If you want to know: all this crazy promotion isn’t about confidence, but fear: fear that the book will die, fear that the writing struggle will be wasted, fear that people won’t like it or won’t hear about it. It’s that fear that keeps me going. Compared with that, teenagers and gruelling book tours are a doddle.


Regular readers will know Nicola best from her very useful blog. My thanks to her for this lovely piece. Now go and buy her book!

Congratulations to Nicola Morgan: Deathwatch Is Published Today!

My warmest congratulations to blogging fiend and writing friend, Nicola Morgan for today's publication of Deathwatch. Sally Zigmond (who also comments here regularly) has written a very favourable review of the book (and for once I don't think any chocolate was exchanged, so she must mean every word); and I'll soon be featuring Deathwatch as part of my Trios series. I'm only sorry I couldn't go to the launch party, which is happening tomorrow (so don't expect much sense from Nicola for the next couple of days!).

Is there anything else I could put into brackets there, do you think?

Trouble Getting Here?

Apparently a few of you have been having trouble getting onto the blog. Sorry. According to Blogger, this is a known issue which can be resolved by deleting the "followers" widget. So I've done that and hope that you can all get here now.

I'll reinstate the "followers" thing as soon as this is sorted out as I like looking at all your faces but meanwhile, welcome back to all of you who were locked out before. There's going to be a party on Sunday and you're all welcome.

Happy Birthday To How Publishing Really Works!

Next Sunday this blog will be a whole year old, and I've enjoyed just about every second I've spent on it.

When I first realised that it was attracting over 10,000 hits a month I considered stopping: it's good to go out on a high, but if I did that I'd be leaving the gates open for Nicola Morgan to steam in and take over the world and we can't have that: those boots of hers are very similar to jackboots when you look at them too closely.

Once I'd decided to carry on, I realised I should celebrate in some way: and what better way than throwing another pitch party? So on Sunday that's what I'm going to do. Hurrah! I know it's likely to be lovely hot sunny weather and you'll all have better things to do, so it's bound to be quieter this time; but if you're around, with time to spare, do drop in and participate: it was such fun last time, and I got to read and comment on all sorts of great blogs, many of which I still visit.
But that's not enough for me: no. I want MORE.

So I've asked a few people who have gone ridiculously far out of their way to help writers if they'd care to write a guest post for me and amazingly, they agreed: their posts will be appearing towards the end of the week and are absolute treats, I promise.

But when I thought about it, I realised that still wasn't enough. Because what has made this blog so brilliant for me over this last year is the people who have cared enough to read it, and to challenge me and argue with me and to keep me on my toes and sometimes, even, to tell me that I've got things roughly right (you know who you are). Most of you have done all that via the comments feature, although quite a few have emailed me to say so. However you've made your feelings known it's been a joy, even when you've reduced me to silence and shown me that I've acted like an arse. So here's the deal.

If any of you would care to submit a blog post of your own, to appear here on Sunday alongside the pitch party, I'd love to consider your work. If none of you send me anything (and I'll agree, it's a pretty sharp deadline) then that's fine. No more than 500 words, please; no libel, no porn (unless it's very tasteful, and doesn't feature me), no bad grammar; and nothing boring, for goodness' sake, or I might be reduced to chewing my arms off (which makes typing just a little difficult, and so might impact a little on the future of my blog). Include any links that you'd like me to edit in as I won't have time to go searching for anything on your behalf. Publishing-related and writing-related articles are preferred; and you have to be interesting, articulate and fun. Send your offering to "hprw at tesco dot net" with the subject title "HPRW birthday post", add a brief bio and a link to your blog if you have one, and I'll do my best to get it scheduled in time.

I wish us ALL a lot of luck!