Do We Have Any Published Writers On The Forum? (2022 edition)

[Ray Travez]

That's great! How did you find the process of publishing for the first time?

[bakabaka]

My first book came out a couple weeks ago! It's about a very specific historical subject and I feel slightly wary of naming it because it'd make me obviously identifiable, but I'm very pleased with it.

Congratulations! Self-published or big house publisher (not that it matters, just curious)?

[AllisonSays]

Thanks to both of you! I published with a mid-sized university press. They were lovely throughout and the guy who did the proof editing was especially nice because he was interested in the topic.

In terms of how I found it, the writing was grand and it's a buzz to hold something tangible in your hand for sure. But with academic publishing ... they don't really 'sell' the book so it's not like I'll see it in Waterstones or whatever, and in the end it feels slightly flat or disappointing, like it's out there but it isn't really. Also the hardback is too expensive to buy, really, although the paperback will be cheaper. Mixed feelings, I suppose!

I'll have a couple of book launches in different places over the coming months and that might feel more consequential, I dunno.

[AllisonSays]

Double post

[Small Man Big Horse]

Congratulations AS, I can understand the mixture of emotions, but it's a fantastic achievement to have finished the book and find a publisher, and I really hope the book launches go well.

[AllisonSays]

Cheers SMBH, I remember fondly reading a draft of your book a few years back and am delighted to hear it's still on the go!

[flotemysost]

Nice one, AllisonSays! Best of luck with the launches (and enjoy!).

Chalk me up as another who'd love to read the writings of CaBbers in a non-CaB context, there's undeniably some very gifted wordsmiths knocking around this place.

I had a short story published in a literary journal when I was 19 or 20 (they were open to submissions, so I think I just sent it in online). Every so often I'll remember, apropos of nothing, that it's one of the first things that comes up when anyone (prospective employer, date, myself) Googles my name, and I spend the next few minutes considering how best to fake my own death (it's not that bad, just clearly the work of someone trying to be all clever-clogs high-concept pretentious literary bellend). Then I forget about it and move on.

I also helped edit an academic book years ago, but that's because I'd just been fired from another job at that publisher and I think they took pity on me and wanted to give me something to do for a month or two while I applied for other jobs, which looking back was uncharacteristically decent for the industry.

I have to admit that seeing how the sausage is made (for 10+ years) has kinda withered any youthful dreams of being a professional creative, but it's also spurred me on to encourage anyone I know who has an interesting, original, wholehearted idea to go for it.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Cheers SMBH, I remember fondly reading a draft of your book a few years back and am delighted to hear it's still on the go!

That's very kind of you, and I'm still extremely grateful for your notes which helped shape the next draft an awful lot. I have to admit I was genuinely mortified by how many grammatical errors I'd made in the one you read (it turns out if you write a book when stoned it's full of mistakes!) but I'm three (sober) drafts on now and think when I finish the current one I'll finally be ready to self-publish.

[AllisonSays]

Well I don't remember the grammar mistakes but I do remember the story so you must've done something right, haha!

[Small Man Big Horse]

Well I don't remember the grammar mistakes but I do remember the story so you must've done something right, haha!

Well that's very kind of you to say. Catching Covid means I'm behind schedule now, but I really want to finish the bastard once and for all by September at the latest and then never write a book again!

[Jack Shaftoe]

I'm on my second attempt at getting a book published.

First go: wrote a children's fantasy novel about ten years ago, an agent liked the first four chapters enough to take me on as a client, had some interest from a few big publishers. I finished it a year later, suddenly none of the publishers were interested after all. I did rewrite after rewrite from the agent's notes, got up to rewrite number eleven and then thought 'oh fuck this,' and put it in a drawer.

Second go: wrote a thing over lockdown, got a different literary agent, who was very enthusiastic but always seemed a bit distracted. Gave him the first draft, a year went by and he still hadn't given me his notes. I had to give him the boot, found another agent who loved the manuscript. I did the rewrite a month ago and it went off to a checklist of publishers two weeks ago.

Since when, I ain't heard nuffink, and am starting to prepare myself that maybe it's just not meant to happen. Fortunately, after years toiling in the comedy and pre-school animation mines, I'm finally starting to get somewhere with my own scripts, which takes the edge off a bit, but still, would be lovely to wander into Waterstones, where I used to work as a fiction buyer, and see my own book on the new fiction table.

[Mobbd]

I'm suffering some not dissimilar bullshit, Jack. What is it with these people?

I've been thinking of setting up my own indie press to publish my stuff and my friends' stuff. I know this would be a grind though so I'm not sure. Just so frustrated by the slow process and incompetence/ghosting of agents and even publishers.

Two weeks is nothing though. Give it three months before getting annoyed at hearing nothing. Or, y'know, actually getting news in the meantime.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Yes, possibly I'm being impatient. A couple of people have said the manuscript does cover that area of being interestingly weird but also commercial (the sweet spot!), so I'm not giving up hope yet, but I'm definitely dialling down expectations.

[13 schoolyards]

From my limited experience in the exciting world of publishing (I've co-authored two published novels), an agent's job is to be someone that publishers look to as being a good source of publishable material, only it's the publishers who decide what's publishable.

So they keep new authors around in the hope that what they're producing is what publishers are buying, but when the publishers change their mind or something new unexpectedly becomes a hit, the agents have to shift tact with their offerings. They need a wide range of writers working on a wide range of manuscripts, so they can focus on the ones that turn out to be commercially on-target (and quitely sideline those that aren't).

With the long lead time in writing a book, you can have something that seems like a sure thing when you pitch it turn into maybe something that can ride the last gasp of a trend when you hand it in and is definitely a year or two out of date by the time it goes to press.

In the first book I co-wrote we put in a lot of parodies about then-current trends in fiction and pop culture, and even by the time it came out a lot of those jokes were verging on dated - if we'd actually tried to write a novel based on those parodies (which was suggested at the time), we'd have been fucked by the time we submitted it.

[Small Man Big Horse]

From my limited experience in the exciting world of publishing (I've co-authored two published novels), an agent's job is to be someone that publishers look to as being a good source of publishable material, only it's the publishers who decide what's publishable.

So they keep new authors around in the hope that what they're producing is what publishers are buying, but when the publishers change their mind or something new unexpectedly becomes a hit, the agents have to shift tact with their offerings. They need a wide range of writers working on a wide range of manuscripts, so they can focus on the ones that turn out to be commercially on-target (and quitely sideline those that aren't).

With the long lead time in writing a book, you can have something that seems like a sure thing when you pitch it turn into maybe something that can ride the last gasp of a trend when you hand it in and is definitely a year or two out of date by the time it goes to press.

In the first book I co-wrote we put in a lot of parodies about then-current trends in fiction and pop culture, and even by the time it came out a lot of those jokes were verging on dated - if we'd actually tried to write a novel based on those parodies (which was suggested at the time), we'd have been fucked by the time we submitted it.

Oddly enough I was talking to a friend of a friend recently who's got both an agent and publishing deal, and he was at the time wondering what the agent did as he rarely had much contact with them. The publishing deal was a hell of a lot of money (and he's also been paid to write the tv scripts, such is their confidence in his work), only for the publisher to announce out of the blue that they weren't happy with it and he needed to rewrite it. Which led to mixed feelings, as the money they've already paid him he was amazed by, but he was all but certain that they were happy to print the latest draft, only to find out that wasn't the case at all.

[Mobbd]

With the long lead time in writing a book, you can have something that seems like a sure thing when you pitch it turn into maybe something that can ride the last gasp of a trend when you hand it in and is definitely a year or two out of date by the time it goes to press.

This.

I met with an agent who seemed to fucking love me based on some published non-fic I'd had a small success with. He seemed to want to manage my career and said something to the effect of I could write about anything since it was my voice people would like and come back for. Pretty much the best thing a writer could hear from an industry professional, eh? We agreed that I'd write a travel book next so I got on with it. 25,000 words in, I send him a sample to a decidedly lukewarm reception. I maintain a couple of years on that it wasn't bad work and was in fact precisely what he'd asked for. All I can think is that he was high on the day he asked for it or, as you suggest, something in the market had changed in the meantime.

"It's a shit business." Except for when its not, which is why it's so attractive and why it hurts all the fucking time. The law of variable rewards.

[Jack Shaftoe]

Agent sent me his spreadsheet of editor responses today, he's heard back from about half the twenty-ish publishers he sent it out to, after roughly three weeks. I was braced for it to be a bit crushing, because they're all rejections after all, but actually it's all quite cheering, mostly saying they really liked the writing, but it's quite a hard sell as it's a mix of genres (it's a crime novel in a sort of SF-ish alternative UK).

I have to say, if I've had one regular response to my writing, whether it's script or prose or whatever, it's 'this is well-written but we have no idea what to do with it', which, you know, probably means I'll die in poverty, but not in a totally depressing way.

[Mister Six]

Worth sticking in a drawer while you focus your talents on something a bit more easily pigeonholed, then bringing it out once you've got a couple of things made? Easier to say than to actually do, I know, especially if you're trying to write something that you're not utterly passionate about.

[13 schoolyards]

Unless you're writing literary fiction (which is a genre in itself) genres are massively important when it comes to getting published. Pretty much everything that gets published can be boiled down to a handful of genres, even if they do interesting or new things within those genre boundaries.

And that's exactly how readers like it: my writing partner and I wanted to write comedy (and we did), but the only real path to getting a comedy novel published (unless you're already a comedy figure) is via rom-coms. Which was fine with us, but it turned out that rom-com readers don't actually want comedy - they want light-hearted romance, which was enough of a difference to set us back on our heels.

If I was starting again, I would write a crime thriller where a burnt-out detective returns to their scenic home town to investigate (or get caught up in) a murder that turns out to just be the tip of a crime iceberg. And then once I had that structure firmly in place, I would write whatever it is I actually wanted to write in the 30,000 words left over in a 85,000 word manuscript

[Jack Shaftoe]

Yeah, I always wanted to write a comedy novel, but they just aren't sellers (new ones, anyway), it's weird. People just don't take a punt on them the way they will with a crime or something with a dragon on the cover (not a dig, I love stuff with dragons on the cover).

Worth sticking in a drawer while you focus your talents on something a bit more easily pigeonholed, then bringing it out once you've got a couple of things made?

There are still a load of publishers we're waiting to hear back from, including the more SFF end which might take more kindly to a bit of genre-blending, I dunno. But yeah, I've dialled down my expectations a bit now, which is probably for the best.

The thing about scriptwriters is no matter how well you do, you'll never become a name that can sell books the way a performer can (unless you're insanely successful, in which case you probably ought to stick with that), so there isn't as much crossover potential as you'd think. It all helps though, and it certainly makes publishers more likely to read your stuff in the first place, as they can be confident you already have the basics of structure, dialogue, character and so on.

I did put my kids' fantasy book on lulu, and just being able to hold it as a physical object was a lovely thing. My daughter read it when she was old enough and quoted enough bits I could tell she'd really enjoyed it, and she just told me her best mate had borrowed and loved it, awww.

[Mobbd]

Everyone is correct here when they say that genre is important to marketing but I really wish it wasn't the case.

So the good-quality book that's a crime SF risks being passed up because the genre is unclear. How about someone in publishing who actually likes the book just takes it on and then... get this... decides which genre to market it in. Is any SF fan going to turn their nose up at a crime element? Is any crime ghoul going to say "hey, there's ray guns in this, booooo!"

Or, y'know, stick it in both departments and sell double copies.

Cowardly marketing excuses. Drives me mental.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I didn't know that about the genres, when I sent out my covering letter and synopsis I described it as a mixture of "Urban fantasy, humour, romance and horror", which I now see was a terrible idea. Ah well, at least I can blame it on that rather than the book itself being bad!

[Mobbd]

I didn't know that about the genres, when I sent out my covering letter and synopsis I described it as a mixture of "Urban fantasy, humour, romance and horror", which I now see was a terrible idea. Ah well, at least I can blame it on that rather than the book itself being bad!

Not inherently terrible at all - attractive even. It's to your great credit that you don't have a marketing mind.

[13 schoolyards]

Everyone is correct here when they say that genre is important to marketing but I really wish it wasn't the case.

So the good-quality book that's a crime SF risks being passed up because the genre is unclear. How about someone in publishing who actually likes the book just takes it on and then... get this... decides which genre to market it in. Is any SF fan going to turn their nose up at a crime element? Is any crime ghoul going to say "hey, there's ray guns in this, booooo!"

Or, y'know, stick it in both departments and sell double copies.

Cowardly marketing excuses. Drives me mental.

To be fair, it seems to be as much a flaw in readers as in publishers. Most of the fiction books that are sold are sold to people who read a *lot*, and they tend to know what they like and devour that and only that. If you've written a clearly genius novel that everyone will love, then it'll just be marketed as "literary" or "the must read novel of the summer" - and a lot of the time when you read those books, they already slot into an established genre. With Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel wrote a historical thriller; Sally Rooney writes coming-of-age romance.

Unless you're already massively famous, your book will need a fair bit of help to find its audience, and if its audience isn't extremely clear-cut - basically, romance fans, then crime and/or thriller fans, then whatever's left - that job is going to be a lot harder. It's shit, but if you want to sell your writing, you really need to have a marketing mind, if only so when you pitch it to an agent you can say "It's like Sally Rooney meets Hilary Mantel" with a straight face.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Not inherently terrible at all - attractive even. It's to your great credit that you don't have a marketing mind.

Well that's very kind of you to say, thank you!

I'm finally in a position to self-publish next month and it looks like its going to be a full time job attempting to market it, and even then I'll probably only sell 20 copies or something (I've worked I have 20 people in my life I can emotionally blackmail, anyhow!) but then at least it'll be out there and over and I can move on to writing something else in the new year.

[Ray Travez]

I'm finally in a position to self-publish next month and it looks like its going to be a full time job attempting to market it

Yeah, this is it. The marketing. I know I've banged on about The Secret before, but it's a bloody awful book, that for various reasons has been marketed superbly, not least by being featured on Oprah Winfrey's show. And people lap it up. And it's awful, offensive even.

Well, I wish you luck!

[Mister Six]

The Secret is the most psychopathic, immoral book I've ever read. Then again, what else could chaos magick for Karens be?

[13 schoolyards]

Well that's very kind of you to say, thank you!

I'm finally in a position to self-publish next month and it looks like its going to be a full time job attempting to market it, and even then I'll probably only sell 20 copies or something (I've worked I have 20 people in my life I can emotionally blackmail, anyhow!) but then at least it'll be out there and over and I can move on to writing something else in the new year.

Good luck! From my extremely limited experience while it's always disappointing to discover just how many people you can't guilt into buying your book no matter how hard you try (I had close family members asking for a free copy... uh, no), the reverse is that there are also complete strangers willing to pay up if you have a good pitch.

You really do have to talk about it everywhere, all the time, in the most positive terms possible (no false modesty!). I found that local bookstores are often a bit shit - they'll only put on events if they think you can bring in enough people to make it worth their while, which often rules out new-comers or the self-published - but anything you can find that might be interested in a "local author" (writer's groups, libraries, local council events) are a great way to get some free-ish publicity and spread the word.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Yeah, this is it. The marketing. I know I've banged on about The Secret before, but it's a bloody awful book, that for various reasons has been marketed superbly, not least by being featured on Oprah Winfrey's show. And people lap it up. And it's awful, offensive even.

Well, I wish you luck!

Thanks for that, I'm going in with low expectations, but hoping somehow I'll at least get in to double figures sales wise!

Good luck! From my extremely limited experience while it's always disappointing to discover just how many people you can't guilt into buying your book no matter how hard you try (I had close family members asking for a free copy... uh, no), the reverse is that there are also complete strangers willing to pay up if you have a good pitch.

You really do have to talk about it everywhere, all the time, in the most positive terms possible (no false modesty!). I found that local bookstores are often a bit shit - they'll only put on events if they think you can bring in enough people to make it worth their while, which often rules out new-comers or the self-published - but anything you can find that might be interested in a "local author" (writer's groups, libraries, local council events) are a great way to get some free-ish publicity and spread the word.

Thank you too, the advice is really appreciated and I'll definitely try all you suggested. I know a few people who run podcasts who I'm hoping will review it, and maybe even get me on for a 10 minutes interview, though it's all too possible it might not pan out.

I know it's a cliche, but right now the main thing is just being able to hold a copy of my book in my hands, and knowing I've produced something at least that I'm very fond of even if anyone else isn't!

[Jack Shaftoe]

Publishing as an ebook on Kindle Direct on Amazon is always an option. Not as satisfying as holding an actual book in your hand, but you can always take a punt and see how it goes.

I wrote a thing over lockdown that was around 50K words, longer than a short story but nowhere near a novel and thought I'd see how it went on kdp. Bit of a faff to get it formatted properly, but not too bad, and it only took a day or so. I got about £280 for the first month (the money doesn't actually appear for another two months) and immediately started planning a new career. The next month it dropped to about £230, then it seemed to be abandoned by the algorithm and after that it was almost nothing. I've unpublished it now, as it's not worth doing the paperwork for £2 every three weeks or something.

I suspect you have to keep feeding the beast: write another £50K thing and then another, and they sort of bounce off each other. Also you've got to have some obvious keywords and be clear what genre it's in. Plenty of people do make money off ebooks, but they seem to have a lot of stuff out there so they build themselves as a brand, sort of thing. Might be worth a try, anyway.