It's been just over a year since my debut novel, "Covenant", was bought by Simon & Schuster after a fiercely fought auction that lasted over a week. The manuscript was sent to nine publishers by my agent on Thursday September 9th, 2010 - I'll never forget the date because it was also the day I was made redundant from my job of 12 years. So much has changed since then, all of it for the better in my case, but for the benefit of those who may not have followed my long ( LONG ) journey from hopeful, aspiring author to happily published and best-selling novelist, here's the heavily abridged version:
Started writing in 1994, after realising I would not be allowed to train in the RAF as a pilot due to my eyesight not being absolutely perfect.
Wrote two historical epics, Frontier and Man 'o' War, spending five years on them. Multiple submissions - no takers.
1999, began writing screenplays. Completed four of them, over six years. Multiple submissions - no takers.
2005: Wrote a contemporary black comedy novel, 'Four Fridays'. Multiple submissions - no takers.
2007: Wrote "Genesis", a converted screenplay from 1999 ( originally titled "The Nemesis Origin" ). Multiple submissions - one taker. Rejected as full MS after 4 month wait.
2007-2009: Re-wrote "Genesis", twice. Multiple submissions each time - no takers.
2010: Completed fourth version of "Genesis". Submitted to ten literary agencies. Eight rejections, two takers. Asked by one agent to re-write an entire third of the novel to suit the market. Agreed. Was signed to Luigi Bonomi Associates as a result of willingness to edit the novel.
Sept 2010: World rights to now re-titled novel "Covenant" sold to Simon & Schuster in a major deal for three books.
The reason that I'm posting this now is because, of late, I've heard a number of heart-rending tales of disappointment from aspiring authors who, for one reason or another, have been unable to gain a contract. Some have come achingly close to doing so, only to have success snatched away at the last moment. The heart-ache and frustration that this causes hopeful authors is undeniable, and having been there myself before now I do feel qualified to comment on such disappointments. I'm one of the lucky ones who got through and achieved the unthinkable, a major publishing deal that changed my future. However, it took me sixteen years to find myself in the right place at the right time, and good enough at writing to be signed up. I suppose my point to all this is that, despite all of the joy and delight of making it through, all that really changes is the next step on the author's journey.
There are many published authors whose book sales dwindle ( for far too many reasons to go into here ), who find themselves back to square one. The market is incredibly tough, and I've come to learn a great deal about that in the last few months. The sale of EVERY single copy counts, and can be the difference between success and obscurity. Margins are down, the rise of digital publishing is changing the market at an incredible pace, and publishers and agents are all struggling to keep up with and adapt to the changing environment. Things are changing fast and nobody really knows how it's all going to end up, so gambling tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds on unknown names isn't on the gameplan of many publishers right now. Agents are struggling to gain deals for authors on their own books, let alone newcomers. If it was hard to get published before, it's even harder now, but that doesn't mean the situation is hopeless at all.
The bottom line is that both agents and publishers would love to have to struggle to choose which authors to represent and buy because they were all so good. The harsh reality is that most of the work sent to them is rejected because it isn't quite right for the market yet, either in terms of quality or content, not because it's rubbish. My advice is to remember that writing is a hobby. It is something that we all do because we can't NOT do it. We'd get bored or frustrated if, for some reason, we couldn't write. Getting published is not just about being the best writer anybody in the industry has seen that year: it's about the right time, the right place, the right subject, the right tone, the right people seeing the work and the right publisher having the cash and the business plan to find a place on their books for your much treasured manuscript. It's a business, and if they're not sure, you're not going to get through. It doesn't mean you're not good enough, it means that now's not the right time for what might have been the perfect debut last year, or might be in three years' time.
But if you persevere, if you don't quit and stick with it for long enough, sooner or later the odds come down. The market shifts in your favour. The economic downturn ends. The digital revolution becomes everyday technology. Your novel now looks like it could be next year's BIG THING. And suddenly, unbelievably quickly, everything you've just read becomes a thing of the past.
Don't let rejection get you down. Keep writing because you want to, not because you want to be the next Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling. You don't want to be anybody's 'next', you want to be the first 'YOU'. Enjoy your hobby, don't endure it, and you'll get through eventually. Fifteen months ago, I was exactly where every other aspiring author was. Hopeful and determined, yet often disappointed and disillusioned. Letting 'failure' get me down was my only mistake, because in writing there is no failure, only the next step. Covenant peaked at #26 in the Sunday Times Bestseller list and is selling fabulously worldwide. It happens. Stick with it, just like I did.
Happy Christmas!
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publishing. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Finding your niche.
I didn’t start out writing thriller fiction.
My first written novel was entitled “Man o’ War” and was set in the 18th Century, following the crew of a Royal Navy sloop sent to hunt pirates in the Caribbean, who themselves turn pirate and are hunted down. My second was entitled “Frontier”, and followed a street urchin ‘pressed’ into service aboard an East Indiaman bound for Calcutta in 1838, and from there into the First Afghan War of 1842.
Both were good stories and could have done well. Why didn’t they? Partly because I was still learning my craft ( though agents commented encouragingly on my opening chapters for both novels ) but mainly because I didn’t understand that the publishing industry ebbs and flows in niche revenue much like movies and music: things come in and out of popularity. At the time, historical fiction just wasn’t moving, and so neither did I.
Had I known this I would have researched it further, and perhaps succeeded earlier than I did. Exhausted after such research-heavy endeavours, I spent the next five years writing screenplays for TV / movies. These are even harder to market than debut novels, but I learned a great deal about story-telling whilst doing them.
It was only a few years ago that I began studying the publishing industry, whilst at the same time taking a look at my own bookshelves to see what I was reading, and thus what excited me. Thrillers dominated by far, especially the work of Michael Crichton, along with Lee Childs, a bit of Wilbur Smith and some Jeffrey Deaver. Clearly I needed to write thrillers and my market research revealed that, by and large, thrillers always sell regardless of more general shifts in public interest.
Writing in differing genres can deliver a great deal of perspective on how to produce great work, but if you’re aiming to see your name on the shelves you must be passionate about your subject material and genre, otherwise your lack of enthusiasm will show through no matter how hard you try to conceal it. Find your true focus, let all of your talent rush into it, and spectacular results can occur. It may sound simple, but it took me years to find what I REALLY wanted to write about.
Write what you enjoy, and keep a weather eye on the publishing world. Eventually, work, luck and timing can help you produce the perfect novel at just the moment when publishers are looking for your kind of work. And when they’re looking for something in particular, they’ll approach literary agents, who’ll search their slush piles for just that kind of book…..
My first written novel was entitled “Man o’ War” and was set in the 18th Century, following the crew of a Royal Navy sloop sent to hunt pirates in the Caribbean, who themselves turn pirate and are hunted down. My second was entitled “Frontier”, and followed a street urchin ‘pressed’ into service aboard an East Indiaman bound for Calcutta in 1838, and from there into the First Afghan War of 1842.
Both were good stories and could have done well. Why didn’t they? Partly because I was still learning my craft ( though agents commented encouragingly on my opening chapters for both novels ) but mainly because I didn’t understand that the publishing industry ebbs and flows in niche revenue much like movies and music: things come in and out of popularity. At the time, historical fiction just wasn’t moving, and so neither did I.
Had I known this I would have researched it further, and perhaps succeeded earlier than I did. Exhausted after such research-heavy endeavours, I spent the next five years writing screenplays for TV / movies. These are even harder to market than debut novels, but I learned a great deal about story-telling whilst doing them.
It was only a few years ago that I began studying the publishing industry, whilst at the same time taking a look at my own bookshelves to see what I was reading, and thus what excited me. Thrillers dominated by far, especially the work of Michael Crichton, along with Lee Childs, a bit of Wilbur Smith and some Jeffrey Deaver. Clearly I needed to write thrillers and my market research revealed that, by and large, thrillers always sell regardless of more general shifts in public interest.
Writing in differing genres can deliver a great deal of perspective on how to produce great work, but if you’re aiming to see your name on the shelves you must be passionate about your subject material and genre, otherwise your lack of enthusiasm will show through no matter how hard you try to conceal it. Find your true focus, let all of your talent rush into it, and spectacular results can occur. It may sound simple, but it took me years to find what I REALLY wanted to write about.
Write what you enjoy, and keep a weather eye on the publishing world. Eventually, work, luck and timing can help you produce the perfect novel at just the moment when publishers are looking for your kind of work. And when they’re looking for something in particular, they’ll approach literary agents, who’ll search their slush piles for just that kind of book…..
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The first meeting with a literary agent.
Now that I’ve calmed down a little, I thought that aspiring authors might appreciate a more detailed breakdown of what happened during my meeting with Luigi Bonomi at LBA. It’s extremely rare for unpublished authors to find themselves in the office of a well established agent, and there was little on the Internet describing such meetings before I had my own. So, here it is.
Luigi was interested initially on how long I had been writing, what about, and what my day job was ( I’d also been asked to send a brief C.V. in advance of the meeting ). The reasoning behind this was to give Luigi a feel for where I was in my life at the time, and also to see if there was anything about me that might help to sell my novels to potential publishers and the public. Many authors write about subjects similar to their occupations, and such expert knowledge helps to encourage readers that they are going to learn something from an authority figure as well as be entertained. ( I am not in that position, but it obviously doesn’t hinder an author if they’ve done what an agent considers to be a good job of their novel ).
Then we got down to business. Considering the sheer volume of material Luigi handles, he recalled a great deal of detail about ‘Genesis’, and was able to sketch out where he felt things were letting the story down. Chief among these was pace, along with his feeling that, having started with what he called “a terrific premise”, I had failed to capitalise upon it during the rest of the novel.
What followed was an hour talking over how to re-write about half of the novel in order to take full advantage of my premise, whilst trimming the novel down from its existing 150,000 words to around 110 – 120,000 words ( not a small task in itself ). This was to promote swifter pace within the story, and also no doubt to keep potential publisher’s costs down, making the title a more appealing accquisition.
Luigi made a point here of remarking that one of his reasons for being willing to work with me was my own willingness to make changes based on his experience and inside knowledge of the publishing industry. We had exchanged e-mails before the meeting, where he had highlighted the novel’s strengths and weaknesses, and my positive responses were what prompted his invite to the LBA offices in London. He then went on to detail how he felt that male thriller-fiction was beginning to move into new directions, and that I should consider following, something that I will definitely be bearing in mind as I get down to re-writing my novel to make it as commercial as possible. I should point out that at no time did Luigi dictate what he felt I should do with the novel – he made suggestions and then we talked them over, bouncing ideas off of each other until we found a compromise that really fitted the work. It was the first time that I’ve been able to do that alongside a publishing professional, and it left me bursting with new ideas.
After a hugely productive hour, Luigi told me that he would send me a standard agency agreement by e-mail that day. I was overjoyed, as you can imagine. He then cautioned me that getting publishers to buy novels, especially in these economic hard-times, was immensely difficult even for established agents, and that nothing might come of this. I accepted that, but between you and me, Luigi doesn’t sign an author unless he has high hopes for them, and he also said that if this novel doesn’t work we’ll have to find something else that does, suggesting to me that we’re in a business partnership that he hopes will last.
So do I!
Luigi was interested initially on how long I had been writing, what about, and what my day job was ( I’d also been asked to send a brief C.V. in advance of the meeting ). The reasoning behind this was to give Luigi a feel for where I was in my life at the time, and also to see if there was anything about me that might help to sell my novels to potential publishers and the public. Many authors write about subjects similar to their occupations, and such expert knowledge helps to encourage readers that they are going to learn something from an authority figure as well as be entertained. ( I am not in that position, but it obviously doesn’t hinder an author if they’ve done what an agent considers to be a good job of their novel ).
Then we got down to business. Considering the sheer volume of material Luigi handles, he recalled a great deal of detail about ‘Genesis’, and was able to sketch out where he felt things were letting the story down. Chief among these was pace, along with his feeling that, having started with what he called “a terrific premise”, I had failed to capitalise upon it during the rest of the novel.
What followed was an hour talking over how to re-write about half of the novel in order to take full advantage of my premise, whilst trimming the novel down from its existing 150,000 words to around 110 – 120,000 words ( not a small task in itself ). This was to promote swifter pace within the story, and also no doubt to keep potential publisher’s costs down, making the title a more appealing accquisition.
Luigi made a point here of remarking that one of his reasons for being willing to work with me was my own willingness to make changes based on his experience and inside knowledge of the publishing industry. We had exchanged e-mails before the meeting, where he had highlighted the novel’s strengths and weaknesses, and my positive responses were what prompted his invite to the LBA offices in London. He then went on to detail how he felt that male thriller-fiction was beginning to move into new directions, and that I should consider following, something that I will definitely be bearing in mind as I get down to re-writing my novel to make it as commercial as possible. I should point out that at no time did Luigi dictate what he felt I should do with the novel – he made suggestions and then we talked them over, bouncing ideas off of each other until we found a compromise that really fitted the work. It was the first time that I’ve been able to do that alongside a publishing professional, and it left me bursting with new ideas.
After a hugely productive hour, Luigi told me that he would send me a standard agency agreement by e-mail that day. I was overjoyed, as you can imagine. He then cautioned me that getting publishers to buy novels, especially in these economic hard-times, was immensely difficult even for established agents, and that nothing might come of this. I accepted that, but between you and me, Luigi doesn’t sign an author unless he has high hopes for them, and he also said that if this novel doesn’t work we’ll have to find something else that does, suggesting to me that we’re in a business partnership that he hopes will last.
So do I!
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