Pulped Fiction

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

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

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.

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.

Selling Fiction vs Selling Non-Fiction

It's far easier to earn money from writing non-fiction than from writing fiction. There's a bigger need for articles than for short fiction: just think of all those newspapers and magazines with pages to fill every day, week and month. And when it comes to selling a book non-fiction is usually the easier route to take, for one very simple reason.

Unless you are very well-known, and your previous novels have made exceptional sales, you’ll have to complete your entire novel before you try to sell it. It's difficult for anyone to judge how well a whole novel will turn out with only a few chapters and an outline to go by, and so much depends on the writer's talent: a story can be difficult to grab hold of and control, especially over the length of a whole novel.

With non-fiction it's more usual to sell the book based on three chapters and a proposal, even if you’ve not published much before. The proposal should contain an outline of the book, perhaps given chapter by chapter; a summary of available markets and any competition; and some information about why the author is the best person available to write the book.

Writing a proposal forces the writer to ensure that there is a market for their book, and to pinpoint exactly what that market is. This provides the publishers with a clear understanding of exactly what they’re signing up, and so avoids a lot of the uncertainty that is involved with commissioning novels before they’re finished.

Although it will take some time to write a good proposal it is far less demanding on a writer's time than a whole novel: which means that less will be lost if the book doesn't sell. And proposals are far easier to write well than you might imagine, especially if you buy yourself a copy of Susan Page’s brilliantly useful How to Get Published and Make a Lot of Money. It contains step-by-step instructions and the exact proposal which got Page a contract for the book.