Dear silly writer

At least once a week, I get an email from someone asking for free advice. I don't just mean someone asking a favour; or someone asking a simple question; I mean someone saying, for example, "Hi! I've written a book. Can you give me some advice about getting published?" Bearing in mind that this blog and my books are FULL of such advice, my internal responses to these emails are not really fit for publication. My actual response is usually something hopelessly mild, usually written after half an hour of redrafting so that I don't upset the irritating person.

These people make me crabbit.

This is a message for all of them, specifically the one who just emailed me.

Dear Silly Person Who Really Has Not Thought,
Thank you for your rambling email telling me the inspiration for your book of poems (complete with 79 photos) and for so fully appraising me of your life story. You ask whether I have any advice for you about getting published.

In fact, yes, I do. I have this blog, where, for well over three years, I have slaved and sweated, bringing advice about every single aspect of publishing and writing. All the advice is free. I have written Write to be Published, over which I slaved and sweated for more hours than you can imagine and for which I received no advance. The price is £8.99 but you can even get it cheaper than that in certain places, and nine months later I will receive around 35p. I have also written Write a Great Synopsis, although frankly it does not sound as though you are quite at that stage yet. And in a couple of weeks you will even be able to buy Dear Agent, which will give you even more detail about approaching agents and publishers.

Oh, you mean, of course, that you want individual advice? Advice that will take me several hours to prepare, not including reading your waffly email before we even get started.

The thing is, you are entirely wrapped up in yourself. You have not properly looked at my blog, although I know that's how you found me. You have not taken the trouble to discover how phenomenally busy I am. You have not stopped to consider how exactly I am supposed to give you my individual time and my knowledge and not be paid.

And more importantly than that, you have not realised that the world will not stop spinning if your book never gets published. The world won't stop spinning if my next book never gets published, either. We are all dispensible. There are plenty more writers where you and I came from. Being published is not a right.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

Go away and read and write and think and engage your brain. The advice is all here for you.

And leave me alone. I'm trying to write and I'm trying to help sensible people.

All writers should self-publish

No, I haven't gone entirely mad. Or even, I venture to say, a tiny bit mad. Nor have I started to believe the self-publishing-is-the-answer-to-everything and the publishing-is-completely-broken rubbish.

I am, as you know, a published (more than 90 books) author who has also ventured into self-publishing, and who is enjoying it. I dare even say succeeding, though John Locke need not watch his back. But my steps into self-publishing do not mean turning up my nose at traditional (hate that word but... ) publishing: yes, I still want to be published by publishers. Pretty please. And, especially, to have my books in proper bookshops.


And I believe all writers should self-publish.

I'll rephrase that: I believe that all writers should self-publish something. (Unless they have worked in a publishing company themselves.) 

Why? Because I think that self-publishing teaches us a great deal, if we choose to listen, and I believe it teaches us a great deal about how difficult publishing is.

Actually, no: publishing is easy. Anyone can publish a book and publishing ebooks is child's play. (Literally; I heard of a teacher whose primary pupils publish their own work to Kindle, actually doing the publishing bit themselves.)

Yes, publishing is easy but selling is hard. And it's the selling of our books that causes published writers so many gripes about their publishers.

That's why I think we'd all benefit (and our future publishers would benefit) if we tried to publish something ourselves. Our increased understanding would both make us able to contribute better to the marketing process with our future publisher and more appreciative of why disappointments do happen. Also, we'd be more realistic and professional-sounding in our pitches. No longer would we believe that our lovely book was certain to sell tens of thousands if it really wasn't. Our ideas, our pitches, our writing, our consideration of our readers - all these would, I venture, be tighter, more professional, more likely to be realised.

I'm quite prepared to admit that what I've learnt through publishing Tweet Right, Mondays are Red and Write a Great Synopsis leads me to be a little less harsh on publishers who have made mistakes, either in their decisions to publish (or not publish) or in their failure to sell as many copies of an author's books as they should.

It's harder than we think to reach those readers. Only when we've tried to sell something in a market where there are hundreds of thousands of competitors can we truly know how hard it is. We become, I think, more connected to the reader who buys our book, buys it from us, not from some middleman.


So, yes, self-publish in order to learn what it's like on the other side.

But does this mean I'm letting publishers off the hook? Oh, no! I'd also like every publisher to try to write a book. I'd like them to know what it feels like to put our precious oeuvre, perhaps the work of two years or more, into someone else's hands and watch it sink and vanish, as most do. I'd like them to deal with negative reviews and poor sales, when we only have that one book to earn our crust with that year. Don't get me wrong: I love what I do and I choose to do it, and the same can be said for almost all of us. I do NOT want you to get the violins out. Nevertheless, it's harder than most publishers think. It's more emotional, more raw, more distracting, more damn gutwrenching

And both writers and publishers should understand a little more of the challenges of the other.

Acquisitions Meetings

This is the crucial meeting in a publishing company, at which the Big Decision will be made about your book: to publish or not to publish. To get to this stage, the book has already seduced an editor. The editor believes that it is The Right Book For This Company. Now, she has to convince the scary sales and marketing people in the acquisitions meeting. This is when the editor's passion for your book has to translate into budgets and costings and projected sales figures. I have heard editors say they quake in their shoes before these meetings as they work out how to turn their feeling of "I love this" into "I know we can shift units and generate sufficient revenue." Gone are the days when the commissioning editors held sway at these meetings; now, it's down to people who haven't read your book and often don't particularly want to. Or need to.

For you, the aspiring writer, or me, the one who wants to continue to be published (please), it is very helpful (though uncomfortable) to know how the decision is made.

Let's look at all the things a sensible publishing company must decide:

1. Does it fit our list? (It's unlikely to have reached the acquisitions meeting if it doesn't, as the editor will know this anyway.) This translates into questions such as:

• Which of our titles is it similar to?
• But is it also sufficiently different?
• Is this the sort of book we know how to sell?
• Is there a suitable time-slot available for publication? Publishers have schedules and must not over-stretch themselves. Their schedule could be full for the next 18 months, and they are unlikely to want to commit further ahead than that. They also need to choose a month for publication and that month must not be too full, or have competing titles, or have bad astrological portents. (I jest. Slightly.)

2.  Do we have the budget for it? This translates into questions such as:

• How expensive will this be to produce? Does it need illustrations? Will it be hardback, or paperback only? How long will it be and therefore how many pages? This, and such factors as thickness of paper, will affect other costs such as warehousing and delivery.
• What sort of marketing spend will be necessary?
• What sort of author advance will be necessary?
• How soon are we likely to to recoup our costs? For this, an estimate of sales figures will be discussed.
• What other books demand our resources, bearing in mind that no revenue will be generated till after publication, which may be well over a year away?

3. What is the likely market for this book? This includes:

• Do we know how to get this book to its market?  
• What is the history of books like this?
• What is the competition for this book?

4. Is this book likely to gain critical acclaim (good reviews in good places, and perhaps award shortlistings) or commercial success? (Either is good enough!)

5. Are we likely to be able to sell foreign rights, if the author grants us those rights? (The advance and value of the acquisition will partly depend on which rights the publisher is allowed to control.) What about other rights, such as serialisation?

6. What about the author - how helpful and proactive will and can she be in promoting the book? This is where your online activity and "platform" come in handy. But if you are an aspiring novelist, don't fret excessively if you haven't done much about this yet, as the publisher really only needs to see your willingness and potential to engage in all the right promotional activities. For a non-fiction writer, your platform is essential as it will hugely affect how easily your book can sell.

Phew! What tough and nasty questions these are! Our gorgeous, passionate book gets picked over by the pointy-lapelled number-crunchers and ends up as a mass of figures and predictions. But we are best knowing this now, because if we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who make the decisions about our book, we are most likely to produce a book which will make them say YES.

How well-written your book is is for the editor to see - it's what will make her fall in love with it and allow her to make a judgement about its reception by readers. It's what will allow her to fight for it at the acquisitions meeting and beyond. But it's what the book sounds like when described pithily that is what will get it past the meeting. And that's why my previous post about hooks and pitches is so important.

There was also a previous post which explains hooks and pitches - please read it if you're at all unclear.

And talking about hooks and pitches, remember, you can pitch your story to your fellow blog-readers, if you wish. The details of how to do this were at the end of the more recent post on pitches. A great way to perfect it before you submit it to agents or publishers. Courage, mes braves!

WHEN A CONTRACT IS CANCELLED

I see it as one of my missions to open the eyes of the unwary author, telling it how it is, even if how it is sucks. So, I bring you a post from editor (and writer and margarita-drinker) Lynn Price, who talks here about the reasons why a contract might sometimes be cancelled.

She's absolutely right. It's never happened to me but on the several occasions when I've been writing a book after nabbing the contract, it's something that has scared me. What if the book goes wrong in the middle and I can't rectify it? What if what the editor thought she was going to get is not what I deliver? What if I am struck down by illness or other disaster before I've finished? What if the editor leaves?

So, go read Lynn's words, please, just so's you're warned. There are some things you can't control, but others you can. And if it does happen to you, yes, it's a kick in the guts, but you can survive and your book could easily - well, not easily, but likelily - transmogrify into another project another time.

There's one other lesson to take from this: do not have all your eggs in one basket - you should always have another idea bubbling away, or another book in progress. The book you are writing now is not the end of the story.

The novel I'm writing now has no contract because my agent and I haven't asked for one yet. When it's finished, we'll go for it. And I'm feeling so freed by this situation. It means I can write the book I believe in, not the one I think someone else believes I'm going to write.

DECIPHERING YOUR PUBLISHING CONTRACT

When you get your first publishing contract, your eyes will be so awash with tears of joy that you won't be able to read it. When the tears have dried up and you're celebrating properly, you'll be so addled with champagne that you will laugh inanely at all the long words and not know what they mean. When you've sobered up, you'll be so excited about impending glory that you won't care if the contract was drawn up by a dalek egged on by Godzilla.

And even if none of that were true, you won't understand the contract anyway. Bits of it will make sense - for example your name, and the bit where it states your deadline - but other bits will be gobbledygook.

My strategy on receiving a contract is to glaze over and sign it because I have an agent who has already negotiated it for me and what she says goes.

But what if you don't have an agent? Or what if you actually do want to know what you are signing? (Which is a very good idea and of course I do, despite my apparent glazing over.)

Well, I have a simple answer for you (and very simple for me). Go and visit the blog of Stroppy Author, who has had about 130 books published and, as she says, has argued with many publishers over the years. She has been writing a long-running series of posts called "How To Read a Publishing Contract", and if you scroll down to the labels and choose the label of that name, you will find them all. Very detailed, very excellent and very useful. More then that, actually: essential and could save you lost earnings.

She says her blog is mostly relevant to children's authors but, in fact, this particular strand is equally applicable whatever books you write.

I told her she should bundle her posts into a book but she's got too many other books to write at the moment. So, get it while it's free!

WHO'D BE A (SMALL) PUBLISHER?

One of the most ignorant and annoying things that a frustrated unpublished author can say to excuse constant rejection is, "Kuh, publishers  -  they're only in it for the money, of course." What? So you thought they were in it for a free passage to heaven?

Publishing is a business. So is writing, though a weirdly unprofitable one. Yes, many of us are passionate about writing, so passionate that we do it for peanuts; and many publishers are passionate about publishing good books. But tell me why a publisher should deliberately pay to serve your passion?

Anyway. That's quite enough crabbit for one day because I would now like to introduce you to a woman who is passionate about publishing but who is learning just how difficult it is to survive in it, let alone become rich on it.

Her name is Lynn Michell and she is the woman behind one-woman band, The Linen Press. (Oh, for goodness' sake  -  I've just realised why Linen...) I'd like you to listen to her and then tell me that publishers are only in it for the money. The Linen Press has been running for two years and has published four books. I am not giving you Amazon links, though that would earn me some pennies  -  I'm just showing you the covers and if you'd like to buy one, or find out more, you could (I suggest) do so on the sales page of The Linen Press:

Right, let's talk to Lynn. (And do ask her questions or make comments afterwards.)

Me: How and why did you do this crazy thing called publishing  -  and on your own?

I had run writing groups for many years and had often mulled over the possibility of helping women writers reach a wider audience. The final push came when 92 year old Marjorie Wilson, wearing pink and purple and with three pairs of glasses round her neck, joined our group and I discovered a rare, lyrical voice.  Her memoir of Edinburgh at the turn of the century had to be published. I set up The Linen Press and Childhood’s Hill was its first publication.

Me: I wouldn't know where to start. How did you know or how did you learn?

It has been a huge learning curve for me.  I naively thought publishing was about reading manuscripts and choosing beautifully crafted, thought-provoking books which would sell themselves.  My role model is The Women’s Press.  Remember those striped spines that used to have a stand of their own along with Virago?  As a new writer I worked with Kathy Gale, then MD, for seven years. She always called manuscripts ‘projects’ because she worked painstakingly with her authors until she was satisfied. That is how I work.  I take on a manuscript that shows promise but requires a lot more editing and re-drafting than any big publisher would offer. But the book world has changed and now I dare not take on a writer unless her book has a strong selling hook and unless she can help with the publicity and sales. Stephanie Taylor, author of The Devil The Device and Me, is currently giving readings, talks, and approaching shops so it’s very much a joint effort between publisher and writer.

Me: What about the money side? People seem to think that publishers roll away with loads of profit. Can you spill the beans??

The financial challenge for a small publisher is formidable.  Let me give you some figures:

 - One book costs £4 to produce because I do small runs of 1000. I refuse to compromise on quality and I use environmentally friendly paper and ink.

 - I charge £10 a copy

 - Amazon takes 60% and I pay £1.75 to replace the book. If you do the sums, that's £6 for Amazon, plus £1.75 p&p, and the £4 production costs, so I am actually paying Amazon £1.75 for every book they sell. If readers ordered from my website I would make £6. [Good God  -  sorry, I can't help interrupting. That's horrible.]

- The big book stores charge me 50% mark up get a book onto one of those tables where people stop and browse. If I sell a copy, I make £1.

Me: if you're passionate about publishing, and you're certainly not going to get rich on it, you must have clear ideas about how to direct that passion. How do you decide what to publish?

Because we are the newest, smallest publisher on the block, I rely on my slush pile. So how do I pick the ones to read? First, despite the clear guidelines on my website, I get submissions from men, and children’s stories and chick lit and other stuff I say I do not publish. Second, I can usually tell from the introductory letter whether the accompanying chapters are worth reading. Third, I want a synopsis - not the plot chapter by chapter - but a synopsis, and if a writer does not know what a synopsis is then she too gets passed over. I am looking for writing which makes me think: ‘Ah I’m in good hands here. This person knows her craft.’

And when I get a professional letter, a good synopsis and some engrossing, beautifully written chapters I am fired with enthusiasm.  That excitement never goes away. I love the working bond that develops between myself and my writer.  I am personally involved at every stage of the production and am as proud as the author when I hold it the book my hands. The Linen Press has integrity and passion.  I hope we survive.

I am quite humbled by that, to be honest. It would be so much easier, wouldn't it, to focus on big-selling stuff, commercial books, the ones that tick all the boxes for flying off the shelves? But just as we don't all write those "commercially sensible" books, not all publishers publish them either. So, for all our sakes, and the sake of the future range of literature, we should support these small presses and spare a thought for the struggling publisher as well as the struggling writer.

Now, some of you will be thinking, "Struggling writer or struggling publisher: stop being so foolish and go and earn some real money! After all, no one's forcing you to do this." Well, then where would we all be? Getting Katie Price in our Christmas stockings, that's what. Euuwwww.

I am currently torn between buying Stephanie Taylor's book on The Linen Press website (because more money will go to author and publisher) and buying it from Waterstone's, (because then Waterstone's will be more likely to re-order it and notice it.) No, I'm not torn. Not at all. 

Do check out Stephanie's website. And the domain name that I want to kill her for.

I should declare a semi-interest here. I met Stephanie, Lynn's newest author, some months ago, though I had no idea she was published by Lynn who would later contact me through my blog. Stephanie is delightful and her book LOOKS stunning. I want it. And I am going to insist that neither Lynn nor Stephanie sends me a free copy, because the absolute least I can do is buy it.

Do you have any questions or comments for Lynn? I know she'll be happy to answer them. And I could very easily get Stephanie to drop by, too.

Good luck to both of them and very good luck to The Linen Press.

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Although you're reading this on October 1st, I'm writing it on September 26th , and I've just read this in today's Guardian. You can read it if you like but the point relevant to my post is that today (Oct 1st), 800 new titles will be launched. In the UK alone.

Now, this is obviously more than on most days, for reasons that aren't relevant to my point but which the article nicely explains. My initial point is that in any one week / month a hell of a lot of books are being published. Around 120,000 a year in the UK, though that number is somewhat skewed by odd things like maps and reissues of Chaucer or whatever. And Thomas the Tank Engine books by idiots like me. Sorry.

After a recent post of mine, Marion Gropen, host of the Publishing for Profit blog, added a comment giving the equivalent US figures. She allows me to quote it here:

"Here, we had more than 400,000 new books published last year alone. So, if you took a quite large bookstore (you know the kind that cover most of a block, and have two or three floors), you'd have enough to fill that store 8 times with those new books. And then you'd have to fill it a 9th and a 10th time with the older titles still selling (we call it backlist) and the imports.

"There are 2,000,000 manuscripts floating around looking for a home each year here."

Very scary.

The main point of this post is to ask you to think a bit logically about why publishers often turn books down. (Not often enough, some might say, in view of the fact that such a ridiculous number are published. That, however, is an argument which you will not like and which I will therefore shield you from, kind old bat that I am becoming.)

This is what I'd like you to think about. I warn you: it does not make pretty reading. Forget the depressing (or exciting, if you're worried about books being dead) figures and think of some others.

How many books do you read a month? 
How many books does the average person read a month?

Now, I don't know the answers to either of those questions. But let's guess. I guess I read 3 - 4 books a month  -  I mean properly read, having bought or borrowed from the library. Ignoring people who never read a book, and then leaving aside those at the extreme ends of the reading spectrum, including professional reviewers, I guess that perhaps 3 - 4 books a month is average for average readers? I think I read somewhere that 40 a year was an average and that pretty much supports my guess. (Young children will read / have read to them more, granted.)

So, let's say, for the sake of argument, that a "normal" reader reads 40 books a year. Factor in the fact that a normal reader won't read just any 40 books, but 40 books that tend to fit his or her preconceived ideas of personal reading tastes. So, I'd be unlikely to read chick-lit, or romance, or manga. Factor in some gender differences and some age differences.

Now factor in those 120,000 new UK books every year. And factor in all the 000000s still on the shelves from previous years.

Finally, factor in the fact that the vast majority of those new books are obviously not debut books.

Now take a deep breath, especially if you are unpublished or otherwise struggling to get a contract, AND if you are self-publishing ...

Now tell me why you think that your Work in Progress is so compelling that a total stranger should pick it to be one of the 40 books he or she chooses to read in a year? Not only pick it but pay for it, invest money and time, precious time, engaging with the words you happen to think are worth reading.

Finally, tell me that you don't understand why your book has not been snapped up by an agent or publisher.

But what about all the crap that is published? I know: I've tackled that before, here. Thing is, publishers know that there are plenty of people who love to read what you call crap.

I am very sorry. I should have warned you that this was going to be a tough one. Now, please, pick yourself up, go and have some chocolate and then get back to your keyboard and make damned sure that your beautiful blood- and sweat--stained MS is as wonderful as it can possibly be before you send it out there into such a cruel world. Because it will have to be.

MONEY MATTERS - THE MAD MATHEMATICS OF ROYALTIES

Every now and then laziness overcomes me. Luckily, this usually happens when someone has just done something so clever and useful that the most clever and useful thing I can do is tell you about it and then go back to sleep.

So, if you have ever wondered about the maths (or math, for you over yonder ocean) of royalties and advances and foreign rights and returns and all sorts of other bogglingness, please travel over to Editorial Ass here, for the detailed rundown on what it all means and what you can expect/hope for/dream of/fear when you eventually see your treasured WIP hit the shelves. As you surely will if you keep listening to my advice and acting on it.

It simultaneously answers the question that the unagented among you often ask: Why do I need an agent? Maths/math is why. That and a lot of other things, such as calming pissed-off authors down when stuff happens, as you can be sure it will. Stuff has a habit of doing that.

WHY IS CRAP PUBLISHED?

Why do people crochet pink toilet-roll covers? Why do manufacturers produce orange psychadelic wallpaper? Why does anyone bother to grow broad beans? Or make mint-flavoured white chocolate? Or offer holidays on cruise ships with karaoke every evening?

Because there's no accounting for folks and some people actually like that stuff.

Same with books. Publishers produce what they think people will buy and generally-speaking they're right. (Apart from the dolt who paid a fortune for unappealing UK footballer Wayne Rooney's FIVE VOLUME autobiography when the guy was only about 17. Must have been very big print. And probably a load of pictures to help him along, but still ...)

You'll have noticed that the biggest best-sellers can often arguably be categorised as utter drivel. And you may rightly surmise that a lot of people like reading drivel, otherwise they wouldn't have bought it.

And don't go all politically-correct and hit me with, "Who're you to say it's drivel?" Drivel is in the eye of the beholder and in this case the beholder is me. If the reader of Katie Price's autobiog wants to say that Madame Bovary / The Blind Assassin / Atonement / Life of Pi /The Moth Diaries / Silas Marner / The Little White Horse are rubbish, fine. They're wrong, but what do they know? And it's not the point: the point is to answer the question, "Why is crap published?"

It's published because it sells. Blame the readers. Publishers have to make money and all readers are different and are entitled to enjoy and choose whatever rubbish they want and like or dislike it for whatever reason they want.

A much more important question is "Why does great stuff NOT get published?" In other words, why has the genuinely beautiful and wonderful work which I am sure many of you produce not been snapped up?

I've gone a long way to answering aspects of that in other posts, but it boils down to one or more of these reasons:

• although it's genuinely beautiful in many ways and you are a talented writer, you have not yet crafted a book which is good enough to be in the "great book" category but it is way too great to be read by readers of the crap category
• it doesn't have an adequate "hook" - a snappy "high-concept" tag that will make sales and marketing people drool. (See Acquisitions meetings.)
• it's otherwise goodish but falls down in eg voice or structure and the editor isn't sure that you'll be able to improve it enough
  
• you haven't written the right book at the right time or sent it to the right publisher at the right time ...
  
• ... and in the right way - the submission must be right, especially the covering letter
  
• an agent / editor admires it but hasn't fallen in love with it - see the Behler Blog here - possibly because it's neither brilliant nor drivel, but middly
• for one reason or another, it's simply not sellable in enough quantities, although your mother absolutely loves it (which, as you should know by now, means nothing - unless your mother happens to be accidentally right)
  

For rubbish to sell, it has to be seriously good rubbish. Your average kind-of-OK book just won't cut the mustard, especially if it's a book which looks as though it could actually be quite good with a bit of work done on it.

Unfortunately, seriously good drivel is what many large publishing houses now need to survive. See - you're just all too good and surely I'm doing you a great disservice in writing a blog designed to make you better. I should be teaching you how to write really bad stuff. Trouble is, I've never quite worked out how to do that myself. I like to think.

Because, of course, rubbish is other people's success.

ON (NOT) GETTING PUBLISHED AGAIN

It's often said that when you've been published once, you have "got your foot in the door". What's less often but equally truthfully said is that if the door is very heavy, this can be a singularly painful and stupid place to have your foot.

Of course, being published the first time is a wonderful feeling. For a while, the future doesn't matter: the present is everything. You don't care whether your book sells in pallet-loads - after all, you won't have to give back your advance, your parents / children are proud of you at last, and what else matters? You're still heady on the cheap Cava from your (self-funded) launch. Your friends are proud to know you. Your mum is talking about, "My son, The Author". You are still walking into Waterstone's and loudly asking for your own book.

But what next? Or what after the second book of the precious two-book deal is written? Friends are already asking "What are you working on at the moment?" and you begin to realise that everyone expects you always to be "working" on something. Being an author is not just about the glory. (The what?)

No problem - you are writing another book. Surely your publisher will want it, if it's good enough? After all, the list of authors who didn't achieve fame and fortune on their first, second, third, even eighth book is as long as .... ooh, well, long anyway.

Thing is, two things are making that door very heavy nowadays and unless you've got steel-capped boots, you're going to feel the pain.

1. Impatience, fuelled by the "bottom line" - nowadays, publishers have to get a faster and more predictable return on their money; they have big overheads, mean share-holders who weirdly expect a profit, and hundreds of writers coming along who might be the next cash cow if you're not. (No offence meant.) Unfortunately, the current climate means that publishers are more often looking for big sellers - and the gap between biggest sellers and the rest is widening. The mid-list is becoming a scary place to be, instead of just the normal authory place to be.
   
2. Damned computers - and Electronic Point of Sale - meaning that because of clever databases like Nielsen Bookscan, your agent cannot massage fictitious life into the pallid sales figures of your first book. Authors used to call themselves "best-selling" if they'd been No 7 on the South Devon Mind Body Spirit List. Now any potential publisher can see exactly how minuscule your figures are. And not be impressed.
   

But what if your next book might be your "break-through" title? Well, you have to find a publisher who will believe that. There are publishers who will stay loyal to an author they believe in but there are others who won't. Sometimes I sympathise with them; sometimes I don't.

Why am I telling you this?

1. Because people often ask and I'm one of those people who thinks a question should be answered. (I'd never make a politician.)
   
2. Because unpublished authors often think that those who are published are set up for life - it's not a helpful delusion.
3. Because published authors (and you, the moment you are published) need to act to protect those future contracts.

But how? I would hear you ask, if I wasn't in my garret and you weren't in yours.

1. By understanding the market so as to produce ideas that publishers will want. (While never selling out to commerciality. Oh no.)
2. By understanding the market so as to produce hooks, synopses and covering letters that publishers must want.
3. By using the market and doing loads of clever things to maximise book sales - there's so much that authors can do. Yes, yes, yes, I will do a post on it, but meanwhile you should take a look at Alison Baverstock's Marketing Your Book - an Author's Guide
4. By being the nicest most publishable author ever. Yes, yes, yes - jolly good idea: I will do a post on How To Be a Nice and Very Publishable Author. Using my own extensive experience.

I feel that this has been a sombre post - oops, nearly typed sober there - so, to make up for it and to reward you for the attention which my trusty stat counter reveals you to have been displaying, I will tell you the story of the funniest day I ever had as an author. Though it wasn't very funny at the time. But not today - on Thursday, when (if) I have come back from the snowy wilds of Scotland where I am doing some school events.

And when you hear this sorry story of hilarious ineptitude, (mostly not by me, of course), you may decide to keep your foot firmly out of the door.

COMMON WORDS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Your lesson for today, children, is vocabulary. There are certain words and phrases which you will come across in your journey and of which you may not ask the meaning without looking foolish and unpublishable. Some of them you may already have met in rejection letters.

Many of them may seem as though you won't need to know them until you have a contract, but a) I believe that the more knowledge you can have of all stages, the better chance you have of that contract and b) many of you have already been published once or even more often, and have discovered the inconvenient truth that being published does not mean that publishers will tripping over themselves to sign you up for the wonder that is your second /third etc book.

My teachings come in no particular order, as usual. You must by now be beginning to know the haphazard "creativity" of which my brain is capable. Some might say I should make such lists alphabetical but alphabeticalisation is the domain of librarians, who are incredibly good at it.

1. List - as in "your book is not right for ours". A publisher's list consists of several lists. There is the entire list of its publications and there are lists within lists, such as the literary fiction list or the mind/body/spirit (MBS - there's another "word") list. One day, a publisher might have a literary MBS list, but this is hard to imagine - though I guess the Bible might be a contender. Anyway, the point is that the editors for that list know what they want on it. And, sadly, that is not your book. (Remind me to do an article on "What rejection letters are really telling you" - in fact, I'll put it on the list right now.) Thing is, suppose you had a shopping list - would you include an item "do tax return"? See? On the other hand, the item "anchovies" is a perfectly valid thing to put on a shopping-list and for you to say it's not right for your shopping list would be simply to say you don't like anchovies. Similarly, to say that your book is not right for the list can sometimes be a way for the editor to express not liking it.
   
2. MSS - were you listening in the early lesson on "Inexcusable Ignorance"? MSS is in fact a misnomer, because your manuscript is not really a manuscript - ie hand-written while lying on a sofa eating peanuts and drinking nicely-matured grape juice - but a typescript - ie beautifully and clearly typed. (Please don't tell me yours really is a manuscript because if it is you'd better get it transmogrified asap). Pedants among you will want me to point out that also MSS strictly stands for manuscriptS, and that MS is a singular manuscript. But although agents and editors like careful authors, they don't like pedants, so please get with the lingo even if it's wrong.
3. Agent - a person who quite rightly takes a % (10-15 and more like 20 for foreign/TV/film rights) of what they earn for you. (See the article on To Be Agented or Not ...). If you grudge this, don't have one. Trust me, they are not coming looking for you - it's up to you to show (show not tell) them that you are going to be so very successful that they will want their % even though it will be a long time till they get it.
4. Acquisitions meeting - (forthcoming article alert) the crucial meeting held by your publishers, at which the editor who likes your book has to persuade everyone else to like it equally, and that it is perfect for their list (qv). In the US, I have heard it called a Decide meeting by by US publishers, but a comment (No 10 - thank you, Marissa) from one of you helpful expert readers suggests that this might not be widely-used. Mind you, the US is quite a big place, she says, with gentle understatement. And "Decide meeting" would be a very sensible term. Go for it, US, I say!
   
5. Advance - an amount of money which is always much less than the papers will say. If the papers even mention it it means it was a lot, but still they are exaggerating. You don't get it all at once either. A common system is to get 1/3 on signature of contract, 1/3 on final delivery of MSS (pay attention at the back), and 1/3 on publication day. Or half on signature and half on publication, or some other system agreeable to you and your agent, though not as agreeable as getting twice as much twice as soon.
6. Royalties - elusive things which only come when your book has "earned out" its advance. Most/many books never actually earn any. You have a royalty percentage (say 10%, but this varies hugely and for very good reasons depending on whether hardback, paperback, ebook, audio, serialisation etc etc and nothing to do with how amazingly brilliant you are) and essentially you get that % on each book sale (usually based on the publisher's receipts and not the cover price, which is where high/low discount (qv) comes in). I know, you've switched off but don't worry: only sad people understand their royalty statement.
   
7. Returns - ugh. Bookshops buy your books "sale or return" and when they are returned they appear unpleasantly on your royalty statement and their previous earnings are deducted. And the books don't get sold again because too many customers had jam on their fingers when they picked up your baby - sorry, book - and fingered it before not buying it. (Please can we not talk about returns any more?)
   
8. Publication day - OK, you you know what it means but do you know what it really MEANS? Often, it means two years from now. So I hope you've got some writing to do in the mean time. Or a paper round or something, because you're going to need it.
   
9. Sales and marketing departments - two parts of a publishing company that sometimes might as well have offices on different planets, and on different planets from the editorial dept. And absolutely in a different universe from the author. (Note to my publishers - this is hearsay: of COURSE I don't mean you - you all communicate stupendously well.)
10. AI - not A1, which is a very dangerous road between Scotland and more southerly parts of the UK, but AI (pronounced AY - as in May - EYE) - stands for Advance Information. This is a document which in the ideal world would tell that world accurate details about your book, and you, and why everyone should buy said book. Of course, this is not an ideal world, and as I mentioned in a previous article, the AI may be written by a 12-year-old who lurks virtually unpaid in a cupboard somewhere and who bases her description of your book, understandbly from her p.o.v., on your description of your book before you wrote it. Therefore, one of the first things you should do once you've signed your contract, is enlist your editor to ensure that what ends up on Amazon is something you can be proud of and that has a close resemblance to the truth. Otherwise you will have a hell of a lot of explaining to do when you are asked to talk to the Bognor Regis Women's Institute and they discover that the book they thought was an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery of a whimsical and traditional nature is in fact a post-surreal pastiche of American Psycho with shades of In Cold Blood.
    
11. Hook - every book needs one. The sales and marketing departments need a quick phrase that sells your book, tells the potential buyers what it is in a pithy way that makes it different from anything else in the world and yet exactly like a book they'd love to read. I once went to speak at the publisher's sales conference before the publication of my historical adventure, The Highwayman's Footsteps - (that's called a plug by the way, which is a very important word and should always be preceded by shameless and yet performed with a pleasant smile so people don't hate you too much) - I had to speak for 10 minutes to the sales team, to enthuse them without teaching them their job; so, I wanted to make them want to sell the book and also give them something that would make it easy. They won't remember anything else I said that day except for my hook: "Robert Louis Stevenson on caffeine." My agent tells that story as an example of a hook that works. So, get yourself a hook for your book. (If you want to know a secret: actually, caffeine wasn't the word I used. But I write children's books so let's keep this appropriate, please.)
    
12. Prelims - the pages at the front of your book before your actual words start. So, the title page, any foreword and acknowledgements, list of your previous books, little biog. Not a dramatic word but at least now you can respond sensibly when your editor asks you if you've got anything you'd like to add to them. (Your name is the most important bit, by the way.)
    
13. Trade publishing - publishing of books that you can reasonably expect to find in a good bookshop. As opposed to eg educational or academic books, which will be sold in different ways and not usually through high-street bookshops.
14. Trade paperback - I confess I've always been a bit mystified / bored by this distinction because it really only refers to the size/format of the book, which is a pretty boring thing to get too involved in. Essentially, your book will either be published as a hardback and later "go into" paperback (once the publisher thinks it's squeezed enough higher-profit sales out of it); or it will be published as a "paperback original" and not be in hardback. Sometimes the publisher will publish as a hardback while simultaneously (or almost) bringing out a "trade paperback" which is always for some odd reason fatter and bigger than the pb (paperback) original would have been. Absolutely fascinating, I am sure you agree.
    
15. High discount - publishers sell books to retailers at high or low/normal discount. A powerful volume retailer like Amazon, or a big high-street chain, can command a higher discount, especially if they are going to put your book in a price promotion. And it matters, because you get less dosh out of it. But it also doesn't matter, because a) you can't do a damned thing about it and b) you're just ecstatic that anyone is buying your book at all.
    
16. Editing / copy-editing / proof-reading - these probably need an article to themselves, but briefly: your editor is the one who helps you mould your book in major ways. He/she will suggest that a character isn't developed well enough, or your pace is not varied enough, or this bit doesn't work, or that bit was too short / long / shocking / boring. This then becomes a dialogue that you hope doesn't become an argument. Who has the last word? Hmmm. I play a tactical game with mine - I give way on things I don't care about so much, or which she might even (it happens, Chris) be right about; and I reserve the full power of my persuasion for the rest. I reckon I have the last word; she probably reckons she does. Which is a happy conclusion. Then she passes it on to the copy-editor, who picks up small things - not as small as punctuation but things like sentences that she / he doesn't understand, places where I've forgotten I said it hadn't rained for weeks and then have sunlight sparkling on the wet road (not that I would, as that would be a cliché) or I said someone was riding without a saddle but then I mention stirrups. Copy-editing can be a very painful process if you get a lousy copy-editor who thinks she/he knows best or a great process if the c-ed picks up really embarrassing things which an annoying reader might harangue you about in the distant future. Then, when all of those glitches are sorted, comes proof-reading, and you know what that is. It's skilled and picky and you REALLY want a good proof-reader because by that stage you've read your damned MSS so many times that you're starting to sleeptalk it and worms crawl across the page every time you look at it. Also by this time you hate your book and think it's rubbish and you go into a decline to which the only solution is chocolate. Luckily, chocolate solves everything.

Which seems like a good time to go and have some because I see that it's six minutes past midday, which is one of the many perfect times for chocolate. Also, I feel that on the one hand this article is too long and on the other I expect I've forgotten loads of useful words. If you have any others you'd like me to mention, please tell me - and if you are worried about seeming foolish in public you can email me through my website - www.nicolamorgan.co.uk (spot the second shameless plug of this article) - and I promise not to name and shame you or even make you feel slightly embarrassed.

Trust me: I'm a novelist. No, seriously, do.

Need chocolate badly.