For Unpublished Writers Everywhere

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.

Why Good Writing Gets Rejected

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.

On Talent, Rising To The Top

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

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.

How Writers Can Save Publishing, One Book At A Time

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...

...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

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.

Trios: Beachcombing, by Maggie Dana: Macmillan New Writing

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.

Trios: The Third Sign, by Gregory A Wilson: Getting Published

My thanks to Gregory A Wilson for this candid account of his route to publication, and for persisting with this series despite my hopeless lack of organisation! Contributions from Greg's editor and his cover artist will appear over the coming weeks, and if you'd like information about his upcoming readings, convention appearances and other events, just take a look at his website.


The road to publication has always been a long and winding one, as every aspiring author knows. But modern market circumstances and a crowded, competitive field has now made that road even longer and more winding than some might realize, and navigating it to its end now takes more than a good idea and good execution. It takes a bit of luck, a lot of persistence, and an overabundant amount of patience.

I started writing my first novel, a work of epic fantasy entitled The Third Sign, in 1996—or at least the first couple of chapters of it. But as I usually did in those days, I got buried in a host of responsibilities and let it go. Six years later I graduated with my doctorate in English, and wanting a break from academic work I went back to those early chapters, revised them substantially and this time, having learned in the process of writing my dissertation that I could actually finish something I started, stuck with the book until it was completed—which didn’t happen until the summer of 2004 (I moved, started two new teaching jobs, and got married in the interim, so I was a little busy!).

When I finished the novel I breathed a big sigh of relief; I knew there was more work to do, but figured the big job was over. I got my Writers Market books, got familiar with Jeff Herman’s agent lists, and started querying agents, ten at a time, adjusting my query as I went. Nearly eighty queries later I took a step back and took stock of my situation: a number of partial manuscript requests, a few fulls, and a couple of very near misses—including one agent with whom I had discussed a number of aspects of the manuscript before she finally decided to pass, not (according to her) because of the quality of the book but because epic fantasy was “oversold”; she told me she had seriously considered taking on my book anyway, but ultimately decided the market would have been too difficult. At that point I was stuck—I could either put the novel in a drawer and forget about it, going on to something else, or I could go another route.

One year later I attended GenCon, the largest fantasy, science fiction and gaming convention in the world; it had a significant writing track with a number of well-known authors, editors and publishers in attendance, and at a small press panel I ran into one of them: John Helfers, editor (recently nominated for a Hugo award) at Tekno Books, which handles speculative fiction acquisitions for Five Star, an imprint of Gale Cengage. John was interested in my book, and I liked what he had to say, particularly his point that the reason the market for epic fantasy books was allegedly “oversold” was because people kept buying them! So in January of 2006 I decided to submit the manuscript to him. We went back and forth a few time discussing revisions and the like, which I made; I resubmitted the manuscript in early 2007, and in late 2007 he made the offer. I accepted in early 2008, and here we are, only a few weeks from publication in 2009.

I’d be lying if I said I was happy with the incredible time delay in this business. There’s a lot more work involved with getting a book in print than simply writing and revising it, though I believe those have to be your primary tasks: I’m a writer, not a salesman or marketer, and it’s important for me to keep that in mind. (The best thing I can do to sell my first book is write an even better second one!) And the time lag from initial conception to actual print—in my case seven years, thirteen if you count my first dabblings with the book—can be discouraging when you want nothing more than to share it with a larger audience. But I’m very happy that I didn’t abandon the book, or accept the idea that it just “wasn’t meant to be.” Getting this published has opened a number of doors for me in terms of future novels (I’ve already completed a second book and am working on a third) and an editing project, and I’ve been fortunate enough to receive a number of very positive pre-publication reviews thus far. I’ve also been very happy with Five Star in particular; they’re a smaller but well-respected press which has handled a number of prominent authors in the past, and all of the people I’ve worked with there have been both professional and supportive (including the two others who have contributed articles to this series, my editor John Helfers and the cover artist, Joshua David McClurg-Genevese). None of this would have been possible if I had fallen prey to the temptation to self-publish, or even worse to go with a vanity publisher; I was warned away from those options very early in my career before I could ever seriously consider them, and it was an important warning.

Ultimately, despite the difficulties and setbacks, the opportunity to share publicly a world I have long imagined privately has been well worth the time and effort. I’m excited about the prospects for both this book and my future work, since my intention is not simply to write one book but to build a career, and I feel fortunate to have been given that chance—but I think the moral of my story may well be that publication by a reputable press is not the result of divine intervention or random chance, but rather hard work and patience. And the opportunities are out there, if you’re ready to take advantage of them.

Trios: Beachcombing, by Maggie Dana: My Potholed Path To Publication

Maggie Dana, author of Beachcombing, comments regularly on this blog; she wrote a wonderful piece about typesetting for me a few weeks ago, which resulted in a spectacular spike in my reading statistics; and she's recently had her first grown-up novel* published. Here's her own account of her tortured path to publication, in which she demonstrated dedication in the extreme. Following pieces in this particular Trio will come from her editor Will Atkins, who will discuss the success of Macmillan New Writing and explain what he looks for in an author—and it's not just the writing.


When asked what got them started writing, quite a few authors will say they were bitten by the bug at an early age, six or seven, or even as late as twelve. But not me. I was a ripe old thirty-nine before I began writing, and only because my job for an absentee boss at a U.S. children’s publisher left me with little to do. So, to keep boredom at bay (and to look busy), I wrote a kid’s book—on their time, their paper, and their typewriter, and then (oh, sweet irony!), I turned around and sold it to them for $1,500, a decent chunk of change back in 1979, especially for a single mum with three teenagers, a dog, two cats, and a horse to feed.

After writing five more books for children, life intervened and it was another fifteen years before I got back to writing again. Women’s fiction this time. I’d had no trouble finding a publisher for my kids’ books; how hard would it be to find one for a novel? (Do I hear laughter? Snorts of derision?)

A year later, my first effort weighed in at 180,000 words. Feeling rather pleased with myself, I fired off a handful of query letters and landed a New York agent who, while full of enthusiasm for my novel, told me cut it in half. I protested, vociferously, but she put her foot down and deleted the first ten pages while telling me, firmly, that my story began here, at the top of page eleven.

I spent another year cutting and rewriting, and cutting some more, till the story was a manageable 90,000 words and my agent declared she was ready to submit… the day before 9/11 turned the world upside-down. Months and months went by, and my agent dragged her feet, saying the time wasn’t right, that publishing was in disarray and editors were freaking out over the anthrax scare, that nobody was buying fiction, let alone women’s fiction. Discouraged, I stuck the manuscript in a box beneath my bed, and went back to writing for kids.

Picture books this time. I found another enthusiastic agent with an impressive client list, but her personal problems got in the way of her professional life and she wound up dropping the ball as well. Even more discouraged, I stuffed my four picture books into the box with my novel and decided I wasn’t cut out to be a writer after all. Besides, I had a living to earn. I couldn’t afford to waste time writing stuff nobody wanted to read.

But a good friend, another writer, disagreed. She nagged and cajoled, encouraged and threatened, till finally she convinced me to blow the dust off my novel and begin all over again with a different tense, a different point-of-view, and a different title. Using my original version as a detailed outline, I spent ten months writing from the ground up and having more fun than I expected. Layers of stodgy writing fell away, a fresh voice emerged. Maybe I was a writer after all.

More queries went out and a third enthusiastic agent entered my life, but after coming close with a couple of New York editors and being turned down by a handful more, my agent told me to write another novel and she’d sell that one instead. So I did, but the result didn’t sit well with her. At first, I was angry and indignant; then apathy set in. I withdrew from my online writing group, parted company with my agent, and added yet another manuscript to the box under my bed.

Time to think seriously about giving up altogether.

But that determined friend wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted my novel would appeal to readers in England, given a huge chunk of it is set in London and Cornwall, and why didn’t I try submitting it myself to publishers in the U.K.? So I did, and wound up in the capable hands of Will Atkins, my brilliant editor at Macmillan New Writing.

Time elapsed from that hefty first draft to publication? Ten years, almost to the day. So when authors say that getting published is all about the three Ps, passion, patience, and perseverance, I’d like to remind them there’s another P in that path to publication: potholes.

* I'd originally referred to Beachcombing as Maggie's first adult novel but it's been pointed out to me that an "adult novel" has certain connotations, particularly in the USA. So I've changed it to "grown-up novel" now, which sounds slightly Playschoolish to me: if anyone would like to suggest a better phrase, I'd be happy to hear it!

WordHustler Asked If I'd Be Interested....

I do not recommend the use of automated submissions services: writers need to target their submissions, and have to check their submissions packages for errors and omissions before they send them off. And yet such services continue to appear, and some of them are extremely pushy in their approach.

On Monday I received the following email from Anne Walls of WordHustler.

Hi Jane-

I recently found your blog and have fallen completely in love with it.

I wanted to drop you a line to tell you about my company and see if it was something you were interested in mentioning on your blog, since we, like you, are dedicated to helping writers demystify the publishing industry.

My company, WordHustler (http://www.WordHustler.com), is the world's first online submission management platform for writers. My partner John Singleton and I are two writers who grew tired of the traditional method of submitting work to publications, literary agents, publishers, writing contests and more, so we invented a way to do it better and more cost-effectively.

Writers upload their manuscripts to their free WordHustler accounts, select markets from our free database of 4,500 agents, publishers, contests, and publications, then we take care of all the physical printing and shipping of manuscripts for them.

Coming in 2010 we are launching a Digital Submission System to handle email submissions as well.

Something that really may mean something to your blog readers is the fact that we solve the hassles related to International Shipping and postage. WordHustler even offers a Virtual Office service, where we receive your physical correspondence from markets (SASEs, etc), then scan and email the results to you.

Over 5,000 writers from all over the world have already used us to submit their work, saving themselves time so they can do what they're supposed to be doing: WRITING. Our goal is to make the submission process easier and more organized for writers AND the markets who receive their work. In fact, Bnet.com called us "The Match.com for the publishing industry."

I'd love to chat more with you about WordHustler and hope it's something that interests you and your readers. We've also got a blog with lots of interviews with writers, agents, editors, etc as well as tips on writing query letters, etc that you can find here: http://wordhustlerink.wordhustler.com/

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope to speak with you soon!

Best,
Anne

Anne Walls
Founder Creative Director WordHustler.com - One Click to Destiny
http://www.wordhustler.com

It's good of her to say such kind words about this blog but it's odd that she claims to have only recently discovered it, as she left comment-spam here early in September 2008; crowbarred a link to Wordhustler into the comments to my Essential Reading post on the same day; and left similar links on various other blogs, which all now appear to have been deleted.

So irritated was I by her actions that I began a thread about Wordhustler over at Absolute Write and everyone there came to pretty much the same conclusion: WordHustler is probably not something the serious writer should even consider, because it just doesn't do anything that writers can't do perfectly well for themselves.

WordHustler offers a publishing directory and a print-and-post service. The writer decides who to send a query, partial or manuscript to, and downloads it all to WordHustler; and then WordHustler prints out the work, and sticks it in the mail. And it charges a premium to do so. I cannot see the value in that.

Sorry, Anne. I'm sure you're well-intentioned, but next time you start a writing-related business you might consider offering a service which offers real worth to writers, and promoting it in less intrusive ways than you've used here.

Pitch Parlour

Here's an interesting new blog. Miss Pitch has probably shuffled more slush than she cares to remember. Send your work in, and then brace yourself.

Let me know if your work is showcased there, and I'll go and have a look.

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.

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: 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

Potential Market Is Not Enough

Let us suppose you have a brilliant idea for a non-fiction book. You research the market for that idea, and realise it's huge; so you write your proposal and your sample chapters and send your submission off into the world. And back it comes, on a tidal wave of rejections. What went wrong?

It could be that your idea of a huge potential market does not match the publishing business’s perception of huge.

It could be that you've submitted it to the wrong places: an agent who represents writers of young adult science-fiction isn't going to consider a cookery book, and neither will a publisher of literary fiction.

It could be that you've submitted in the wrong way: if you are asked to send your proposal by snail mail but you've submitted electronically, your submission probably wasn’t even looked at before being deleted.

Perhaps you sent the wrong material. If you are asked for the first three chapters and a proposal which includes a market analysis and marketing plan, then don't send an outline, demand a ghost-writer, and suggest that the publisher could throw your launch party at the Ritz and send you on an international book tour (especially if your proposal is for a book about the canal system of the English countryside). Similarly, while a handful of endorsements by established, well-known professionals might well impress, a list of congratulatory comments from the unpublished writers at your critique group and a blurb from your Aunt Sophie who once had a letter published in the Grimsby Gazette probably won't do the trick.

Finally, if you've put together a carefully-researched proposal in which you've demonstrated a clear gap in the market and have sent it to the most appropriate agents and editors for your genre but it still gets rejected, then there's a good chance that your writing just isn't good enough yet.

Do Agents Edit? And Is It Really Their Job?

Literary agents have two main functions. They separate the best writing from the rest, so that editors can spend more time editing and producing the best books they can; and they get their clients the best deal possible—which doesn't always mean going for the biggest advance.

Is it also part of an agent's job to provide writers with editorial advice? I would say yes. In order to get the best deal for their clients they have to know that the book is as good as it can be before it goes out, and doing this requires some degree of editing. It might not be substantial (although sometimes it is): it could consist of a couple of general comments or it could be a far more rigorous and penetrating process.

Some agents say that they don't edit their clients’ work and while this might well be true, it doesn't mean that they offer no editorial advice at all. They do it every time they reject a submission and comment “I didn’t love this enough”, or "this is not right for me". Such comments constitute valuable editorial advice. Even more valuable is the blank rejection which implies that the writing is just not good enough, which every writer would be wise to pay close attention to no matter how hurtful they find it.

What Happens When An Agent Gives Up?

It can seem, sometimes, that agents make too little effort on behalf of their clients—particularly their newer, unpublished ones.

There are relatively few major fiction publishers in the United Kingdom. If an agent can’t place a book after ten or fifteen submissions, they might not try further: chances are there won’t be any other good-enough, big enough publishers which they think would “fit” the book well. So it might seem that an agent has made only a handful of submissions before advising their disappointed clients that the book has failed to sell, and that they should move on and write a new, more commercial book. In this situation writers are often left feeling that there’s not been nearly enough effort made on behalf of their precious books—especially when they consider the pages and pages of publishers that are listed in the Writer’s Handbook. To make it worse, it’s almost impossible for a writer to then find another agent to take their book on, as the highest-earning routes for it have already been exhausted.

But all is not lost. There are some wonderful smaller presses which fall beneath most agents’ radars because of their lower (or non-existent) advances. These presses usually accept unagented submissions, so there's nothing to stop a writer from making submissions for themselves if their agent gives up on their books.

Some of these presses produce beautiful books, and achieve sales that the bigger presses envy: Sarah Bower's The Needle in the Blood, from the consistently good Snowbooks, and Catherine O'Flynn's What Was Lost (or try this edition, with a much-improved jacket design), from Tindal Street Press, are prime examples.

Writers have to be careful: there are plenty of vanity publishers out there masquerading as small presses. And I'd still always advise a writer to find an agent to check and negotiate any contract before they signed. But if an agent is unable to place a book, that doesn't mean it's unpublishable.

Manuscript Display Sites: What Are The Chances?

On Authonomy’s message-board a while ago, a writer commented that she thought that HarperCollins would probably find one manuscript on Authonomy each month that was good enough to publish.

One a year might be a more reasonable hope.

When I was an editor I’d have been thrilled to find one publishable submission a month. But the vast majority of submissions I received weren't even readable, let alone publishable. Perhaps 10% were coherently written and showed a reasonable understanding of spelling, grammar and punctuation: but we considered very little of that 10% for publication because most of it just wasn’t suitable for our lists. We published non-fiction but fiction made up about half of the submissions we received; and the non-fiction that was submitted rarely fitted into the genres we worked within.

Based on what little I’ve read on Authonomy I’d say that a lot of the writing showcased there would come in the top 10%, so is already ahead of the game. But most of it is still a fair distance away from being publishable, as is perhaps evidenced by the fact that so far, just one book has been picked up for publication from the many that appear there.

Centralising The Slush Pile

This piece is one of a group of posts which appeared on my blog some time ago but then decided to remove themselves from public view and hide in my drafts folder instead. It was probably because I did something foolish, but I'm not quite sure what! Here it is again, for your reading pleasure. And apologies for the confusion.


I’ve seen it suggested that a centralised slush-pile might help some of the bigger publishers consider reopening their doors to submissions. The reasoning goes that by centralising submissions, duplicates could be avoided and the whole system could be streamlined. On the face of it this idea is appealing, but it could cause all sorts of trouble.

First, the pile would have to be separated into fiction and non-fiction, and then further, into genres. So you’d need a team of readers to handle this, who would have to be experienced in all different genres, and who could separate the good writing from the bad.

Once the good work was separated from the bad, and sorted by type and genre, it would have to be read by specialist readers to decide which list/imprint would be best. To do this, the readers would need a detailed knowledge of each and every imprint’s requirements, what each one had bought (both published and as-yet unpublished), and what would fit into the gaps that were left. As this is a centralised slush-pile there are no list-specific editors available, this work will have to be done by general readers, who are not likely to have all of that information available to them. And as the editors employed by the scheme would not be involved in directly editing or publishing any of the work involved, good editors are unlikely to even consider taking on the task.

Because of the volume and nature of submissions, lots of time-intensive, soul-destroying work would be involved in filtering a central slush-pile: but who would pay for it? Publishers have a system that works for them already: why would they stump up more money for a system that wouldn’t necessarily give them any further benefits? And just suppose that a book from this centralised slush-pile was sent to one imprint and subsequently became a huge best-seller: what sort of reaction would you expect from the lists which weren’t given a chance to consider it?