So, what has been happening?

Nothing at all has happened with regard to looking for an agent. My day job (I work in IT), my evening jobs (I teach Uke and do videos for bands), politics (officer in a local green party) and a dozen other things ate up my time.

However, there is one project that I would like to mention that is going pretty well. I started work on a hard SF novel. The crew of the Sarafina had a hyperspace jump go very wrong indeed and find themselves in very much the wrong place. The characters seem to be working out OK. The background is about right. The pacing is a bit brisker than Someone to believe in me because it is a different book. The voice is different too. Not better and not worse but different. It suits this topic better than the very English style of Someone.

Will it sell? Will it find an agent? I don't know but I do know that I am enjoying the writing. Even if it doesn't do well commercially, it is worth doing for that. Of course, it would be good to get a stack of cash for it as well. Dreaming is free.

I will get back to searching for agents over the summer. The market may have changed and there are many, many agents that I haven't yet approached.

Z-day is still selling a few copies a month. It would be nice to get a few more reviews out there but the ones that I have are very positive.

I am about 20,000 words into the new book with the plot and character arcs pretty well defined. I will be looking for test readers in a few months. I also need to come up with a title. It is strange how hard it is to choose just a few words sometimes.

Be well, gentle reader

Mark

Sometimes life gets in the way

Well, it has been about a year since I started trying to find an agent for Someone to believe in me and several (more accurately, many) since I last posted.

The professional review that I paid for was interesting and a little disheartening. He pointed out a number of things that he found fundamentally wrong with the book, mostly to do with the pacing. On the plus side, he said that I knew how to use language and compared my writing style to Douglas Adams which I was flattered by even if his disliked much of what I had done. It is indeed a more gentle start than any of his books and that was deliberate but I take his point and I have revamped the start and tweaked the pace here and there. I have not gone as far as he might have liked but that was intentional. I respect his work and his wisdom but I was not trying to write one of his books.  After a few days of sulking (there is something of the child in every writer), I sucked it up and carried on.

I was mid-way through this when my father (who I have mentioned before) fell ill - he collapsed and was found on the floor by my brother.

The next few months were pretty much dedicated to looking after my father who alternated between a care home and hospital. He had been getting more confused over time and the doctor's confirmed that he was suffering from dementia. Something about his night on the floor hastened the deterioration and within 2 months, he could no longer remember who I was. Sometimes he could not remember who he was. He did have a lucid day just before his death in September and he told me that he would proud to have me as his son. I told him that he was a fine father, the best that I had ever had and he laughed at my very small joke. He had a stroke that night and he died before I could get back to the hospital. I didn't feel up to working on satire for a little while after that.

So, here I am a year after finishing my second book. I have no agent. I have no publisher. I think that we can safely say that anyone that I approached six months or so ago was not interested. However, I have not given up on the book or writing. Indeed, a year to the day after I finished Someone to believe in me, I started work on a hard SF book with the working title Star Camel. Yes, it is an awful title and it will change but the main characters start out on a Camel class trading ship carrying cargo between worlds. I am only 14,000 words in but I have the plot arcs well defined and the character arcs are coming along. One way or another, Someone to believe in me will be available to buy and Star Camel will be published too, albeit with a much better name.

I am still getting a few sales from Z-day UK, my first book but I am yet to break even on it; indeed, it has not earned enough to pay for the advance that I gave my graphics artist. I don't mind. I have quoted Neil Gaiman before but it is worth repeating. If you write just for the money then it won’t be worth it. If it doesn’t sell then you won’t get the money and you won’t have enjoyed the work. If you write what you love and it doesn’t sell… you still have the pleasure of writing it and something that you love.

I will update this blog when I have news and I hope that will be soon.

Thank you for reading this.

Mark

Another rejection and some exciting news

Well, I finally got a rejection email from an agent that I submitted to back at the start of February. It was a perfectly polite form letter It had some stock words of encouragement and I am sure that the agent has sent many thousands just like it. If there had been some specifics about what they didn't like then that would have been a gift but I have no right to that and no expectation of it. They sent a reply and I can move on. Maybe the next agent will like it more. As I said, I quite like rejections and compared to silence, they are wonderful.

As I said in a previous post that literally no-one has read (there are hit counters on these posts), I paid to have someone look over my submission pack. I had hoped that maybe someone with a few years in the industry would give it a look over and give me some feedback. As a worst case, I thought that the office junior would be tasked with it and, for what I paid, that would not have been unreasonable.

However, they have hooked me up with a respected SF author that I have read in the past. That far exceeded my expectation and I am very much looking forward to working with him. All in all, things are looking pretty good.

Getting my submission reviewed

Sometimes, you get a rejection letter from an agent. In theory, you sometimes get a request for more information but this is an exceptional case. On the plus side, I am yet to get a restraining order so that is a positive.

.Sometimes the agent doesn't respond. Well, that is fair enough, I suppose. Agents are busy people. How long you should wait before assuming that this is the least formal version of "Thanks but no thanks" depends on the agency. Some will tell you that they will look at submissions within 3 months. Some say that they will try to look at submissions within a certain time frame and in those cases it is becomes a judgement call as to when you should move on. It makes sense to keep your book in front of a reasonable size pool of agents. Too small and you are hurting your chances. Too large and you run the risk of irritating the very people that you most need to impress. It is a balancing act and, since you have no idea what happens after you send the submission off, it is a blind-fold balancing act.

Since several agents have been silent for 3 months and I know that another is on maternity leave (I don't stalk them but twitter is public), it is time to send out a few more emails but I have decided to pay for an editor to review my submission. I know that there are a lot of sharks out there and advice may not be worth what you pay for it but I have been impressed by the integrity of Agent Hunter (http://www.agenthunter.co.uk/) and I am going to see if they can help me

As I said in a previous post, an author has at most minutes to make an impression and perhaps as little as a few seconds. I would be a fool not to want to make the best possible use of that time.

Will I follow their advice? Well, probably most of it. We shall see. I am planning on publishing a "lessons learned" post as soon as I can claim to have learned anything.

The quest continues...

Why people write books and why you shouldn't do it for the money

So, there is no news from any agents but that is not unexpected. A week may be a long time in politics but it is the blink of an eye when seeking an agent. That is very much the long game.

My first book was self-published as I said and I have helped a few other people self-publish. As part of that, I attended a workshop run by Entrepreneur’s Circle (a business development group) for authors looking to market their books.

There were some good tips on climbing the Amazon best seller lists in specific categories and it was a generally helpful course but one thing that I found interesting was the reason why the people wrote books. I write because I can’t imagine not writing. I have stories to tell and I love sharing them. However, the people there were all writing non-fiction. The books that they were writing were all in support of other business goals.

I think that it is fair to say that many people write books to establish themselves as experts in the subject matter. I can see that a consultant who has written a book on the best ways to unscrew the inscrutable would be well placed to represent themselves as the expert that you need when faced with a problem in that domain. Profits from selling the book will be (for these people) a bonus.

Some write to share their passion with others. I got my brother a book on how to carve decorative wooden objects that was written by someone with a deep love of the subject that he clearly believed that everyone should share. He was writing about his passion and that came across well despite his lack of skill with words.

Text books are a bit of a special case. While novels and most non-fiction books are written and published as more or less one off events, text books are constantly revised. Sometime the subject is one that changes rapidly such as the case with books about technology but other subjects don’t seem to change much. Many students think that it is an attempt to milk profit from the students that form a captive audience. Certainly, the publishers of such books tend to do well with double digit profit margins but I don’t know how much of that gets back to the author. I suspect that the writers of text books are motivated by a desire for reputation as much as any financial motivation.

Others write because they are trying to send a message to the world. Certainly the bible and Chairman Mao little red book proved to be good sellers. Even Mein Kampf has rarely been out of print.

As for writing for the money, well, many authors may do that but it doesn’t really work for most people. There is an illuminating and rather discouraging study here: http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/self-publishing-debate-part3/

To pull some figures from the report, most self-published authors make under $5000 (£3500) from their writing with over half of them reporting no profit at all. I make more than that a month in my day job and some of these books will have taken years to write. When I looked at how this compares to conventionally published writers, the result surprised me. About a third of conventionally published authors are in the same $5000 and lower bracket. Fewer than 10% of conventionally published authors and fewer than 2% of self-published authors make a living wage from their writing. In terms of financial returns for the time spent, most authors would be better off with a minimum wage part time second job.

Now, an agent typically takes a 15% cut. It is clear from these figures than this is often 15% of very little. I can quite understand why they looking for the rare sure fire winners in their huge piles of submissions. If these figures are a good guide, it is a wonder that most agents can afford to eat.

Their cut seems very modest indeed when you look at the numbers.

Still, the search continues. Best of luck, folks. I wouldn't say no to a little luck for myself.

In the spirit of full disclosure…

I come from something of a family of scribblers. My brother wrote a regular page for a local paper and my father wrote a book about the interactions of the native Canadians of the north-west territories and the Canadian government of the time.

I read my father’s book. It was well researched and cogently argued. The style was, I have to admit, very dry and more than a bit dusty. It was clear that he had learned to write from teachers in the 1940s and they were often older men. Many teachers were pulled out of retirement to work at the blackboard once more. That said, there was much of value in there and considerable original research.

Now, a history is not necessarily a “trade book”. If you are not familiar with the term, it generally refers to the sort of book that you would find in a big book shop and specifically not specialist books such as text books or manuals. The definition can be a bit blurred especially with the rise of online stores but if your book is called “A history of windmills in 17^th century Florence” then it is not really aimed at the general public and so not considered a trade book. It was hard for my father to believe that not everyone was as fascinated with the topic as he was. I suspect that this is a common trait among authors. Of course, I am immune from this delusion and know that everyone loves zombie survival guides and SF/religious/comedy crossovers.

Anyway, for non-trade books, an author can still approach a publisher directly without needing an agent which was fortunate. My father is still around and closer to his 86^th birthday than his 85^th but he was in his early 70s when he completed his manuscript. I have heard that agents (quite reasonably) much prefer authors who will produce multiple saleable books and my father could not be described as a prolific writer.

He approached publishers one at a time. More accurately, he approached one publisher once. The publisher rejected it saying that they did not think that it was publishable in its current form. It probably didn’t help that he had asked for a large advance. The manuscript went into a desk drawer and has stayed there for the past 10 years.

I dare say that the publisher knew his business and the book would not be of much use to a general publisher. It is a very specialist subject. However, such books are generally part of the long tail. You might not be familiar with the term but, in retail, it is where the profit comes not from large volumes of a few best selling items (for example, the Twilight books) but from many items that sell a relatively few copies. It generally costs more to handle these low volume items and that has to be figured into the retail price.

There are online publishers (and self publishers) that exist almost entirely on the long tail – CD Baby, Lulu and many others. Without the backing of a publisher and a professional editor, a lot of books and CDs are a bit rough around the edges but they can still be of value. If yours is the only book on a subject, it is by definition the best book on that subject.

If it had been my book, I would have considered the validity of the feedback, looked at what I could do to fix it and then tried again with another publisher. If that was unproductive, I would have looked at making it part of the long tail with a print on demand publisher. Hey, better to sell a few copies a month or even a year than none at all. However, my father is a proud man and it is his way or the highway.

I am not that proud. I write because I can’t imagine not writing. And I rewrite. One short story that I had published in an audiobook was rewritten from scratch 4 times without any change of characters or plot. It was worth it. The last version was greatly improved. I don’t think that more than 100 people ever heard it but I am still glad that I did it.

So, do I write just for myself? No, not wholly. If what I am writing works for someone then it is worth doing it. Of course, if it works for a lot of people and they all want to give me money then everyone wins. That said, Neil Gaiman (a fine fellow) has given excellent advice here. If you write just for the money then it won’t be worth it. If it doesn’t sell then you won’t get the money and you won’t have enjoyed the work. If you write what you love and it doesn’t sell… you still have the pleasure of writing it and something that you love. I also think that a writer will write what he knows and loves far better than what he thinks will sell.

I am away on a training course (like almost everyone that writes, I have a day job) so I am going to be off the radar for a week or so. I will post an update if anything exciting happens but it is a waiting game at the moment.

If it helps, think of this bit as the epic trek through the forests that so many fantasy heroes endure for purposes of character development. I should really have some quirky companions.

Why I quite like rejection slips

I have had a few rejection slips/emails. I was pleased to get them. This may seem masochistic but there is method to my madness. I am questing for an agent, not tilting at windmills.

Rejection is horrible. Do you remember that time when you asked that cute girl/boy out and they said no? It was pretty awful. I am told that a relationship with an agent can last years and you can come to trust each other to a remarkable degree. How many teenage relationships could you describe that way?

However, let us consider how much they know about you. As I said in a previous blog, an agent might easily be getting 166 or more submissions a week. They will probably have spent less than ten minutes looking at your submission and maybe much less than that. They may not have even got to the end of the cover letter. “Wild west action novel? No market for those this week.”

You might say that a rejection from an agent is as impersonal as choosing to buy a different book in a well stocked book shop but that wouldn’t really be accurate. If we consider that at least one agent passed over nearly eight thousand writers and took on five, it is more like someone coming into a bookshop, looking around and then not buying any books.

Of course, it might be personal and that is actually useful for a number of reasons. Imagine that I had the following rejection.

“Hey, Mark, I read your submission. Your main character is derivative and the pacing was way off. Consider writing classes and don’t quit the day job.”

So, the agent read the cover letter and was interested enough to look at one or more chapters of the customary three provided. That tells you that your elevator pitch (the 30 second explanation of the book) must have been at least OK for this reader and he was willing to consider this sort of material.

They have helpfully explained what they didn’t like. You may not agree with them. It is just an opinion. Even if ten people say the same thing, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t make a valid artistic decision although it may indicate that your sales would be weak. By itself, the feedback is not something that you should act on. I have been told that the same short story was too packed with plot, too character based and glacially slow. At least one of those has to be wrong. There is a saying that if one man tells you that you are a horse, he is insane. If two tell you that you are a horse, it is a conspiracy. If ten men tell you that you are a horse, it is time to start counting your legs.

A response that looks like the agent didn’t read your submission may indicate that they are not looking for that sort of book (or possibly any kind of book if they have recently taken on several authors) or that your cover letter failed to excite.

However, one thing that you can say for sure about a rejection notice is that they don’t want to represent you, at least for now. That is really good to know and here is my reasoning.

If I contact an agent, the things that can happen in worst to best order are:

1.      The agent agrees to represent me and then never sends the book anywhere. The worst worst case is that they ask for loads of changes and then never do anything with it.

2.       The agent says that they would like to represent me but requires fundamental changes to the book that would make it into something that I would not want to have written.

3.       The agent doesn’t respond at all and I wait the three months before deciding that they are not interested.

4.       The agent asks for a reading fee. This one is easy. I failed to do my research. Ok, refuse the request and move on.

5.       The agent declines the submission.

6.       The agent likes the submission and ask for the full text.

A straightforward “no” is the second best option. Option 1 could delay me for years, cost me a fortune and prevent the book ever coming out. Option 2 is only bad if I decide that yes, I could change the gender and culture of my hero and change the setting from Morecombe Bay in the 1970s to China during the Boxer rebellion. Option 3 might be worse than option 2. It is unreasonable to submit to more than about ten agents so long delays prevent you getting your words in front of someone that might like it more. Option 4 is not bad. I will have wasted some time but I am not silly enough to fork over cash.

Option 5 is the dreaded rejection. By comparison to the other choices, it is looking pretty good about now. Option 6 is the only better one and that could fall back to option 5 in the end if they don’t like the rest of the book or if the later chapters just need too much work.

A refusal may tell me whether they read the cover letter. It may have feedback. It also ends the uncertainty. It can be hard to cope with uncertainty but we have all handled a bit of rejection in our day. Dust yourself off, maybe have a small chocolate bar, consider the covering letter again in the light of any new information and look for the next agent. A rejection letter is not a failure. Every writer gets one and then another one and yet another one. Look up rejection letters that famous authors have had if you feel blue after getting one.

Some people claim that you shouldn’t give up until you have had 100 rejections from agents. That would take a while to get and you could polish your work quite a bit in that time or write another book. At my current rate of rejections, that would be about twelve years. Z-day UK took me three months to write. Someone to believe in me took about eighteen months spread over several sprints.

How many rejection letters will I need before I give up?  That would depend on why they were saying no. If there is no market, well, markets change. If they didn’t like the length, I can fix that. If they hated the idea then it would come down to how much faith I have in the book. My test readers (all but one) liked it a lot. Several of them liked it enough to spend many hours on it. I have a fair amount of faith in this one.

So, we have considered all the possible cases where we don’t get published, right? No, not by a word or a line. Imagine that you get the perfect agent. They love your work. You get on really well with them. They can hook you up with an editor if you need one. You are the lucky 0.06%. Now the book gets sent to publishers. The first one may well reject it. So may the second one. It may be that none of them will take it. In this case, option 6 is really option 1 all over again but with much better intentions. That rejection is not looking all that bad suddenly.

If no-one likes it, I can still self publish and maybe get a few sales - it is unlikely that a book that no agent liked will be a great seller but that is not a hard and fast rule. It worked out OK for 50 shades of Grey.