The Truth About Getting Your Work Published: Part 1

From time to time I get the opportunity to teach Creative Writing, and the students always seem to enjoy most the class on ‘How I Got Published’. I have gained the impression that the frankness and honesty with which I discuss this process fills in some gaps that in all honesty often get skirted over. Having just had my third novel published in February I thought it might perhaps be a good idea for me to set my experience of getting published down in writing. My negotiations with agents, in particular, offered me an insight I am particularly glad I now have.

I started off my foray into the world of publishers by sending off short stories to small literary magazines. I figured this would be the good place to begin and if, after a couple of years, I had managed to place a few short stories I could focus on placing something longer. I remember vividly familiarising myself with the content of each magazine and making notes, and actually developing certain stories to fit with those notes. Did the magazine have a tendency to publish funny stories? Did they often have a domestic, magical or fantastical bent? I had three stories on the go and I remember pushing to give them certain features with publishers in mind. To get over the first hurdle I soon realized that funny stories about human behaviour made an impression. To my surprise one was published after a few months and I started dedicating a day a week to writing. I was working in a Psychology Clinical four days a week and in my mind I told myself that therefore three of four seven days were to write.

I was fortunate in that I didn’t need an agent to get my first two novellas and first two novels published. The stereotypical route is that writers send their work to agents (usually three chapters and a synopsis of a longer work) and if very lucky the agent takes them on and then send their work out. My first novella was accepted for an anthology with a very good, hardworking independent publisher. I had written my longest piece to date- a novella set in a block of flats- but seen that they were accepting stories for an anthology that would’ve perfectly fitted. But I’d missed the deadline by three days. I sent them the novella nonetheless, with a note about why I thought it would fit perfectly with them. I was ecstatic when they told me my piece would be in the collection.

I forged a good relationship with that publisher, having shown a keenness to promote that collection in various book signings. They kept asking for more of my work and they published more and more of it. Over the course of it I sent some of my second novel (a series of letters from a ballerina) out to a series of agents as I was interested in the response. I knew that by and large bigger publishers only looked at novels that are solicited (e.g. given to them from agents). The response was, to this ballet novel, by and large that ‘the epistolary mode (i.e. the letter writing format) does not sell.’ The rejection letters piled up. Others commented that a book about a ballerina, or any artist in particular, was of limited appeal to the general public who want books about ‘normal people’. Fortunately the book was published, by my original publisher, and it briefly touched #52 in Amazon’s Bestseller’s in Fiction list. I learnt an important lesson here about agents and what they might or might not know.

Agents have a very difficult job, in having to process and reject a huge number of submissions. As the saying goes ‘if you throw a dog a bone you don’t expect it to chuck it back and say what it tastes like’, which is why I must be gracious about the feedback they offered me when they said the book wouldn’t sell- even if it didn’t turn out to be true. I suspect that the sheer commitment agents need to have to work on a book requires them to absolutely love it, and if they don’t they probably feel they need to give a decent reason. I learnt after a few rejections that one way for them to do this is to allude to ‘received wisdom’ they have on which type of books, story and subject matter will get published and sell. My personal view is that no matter how much experience and accurate market analysis an agent has done, we never know why certain works fly and others don’t. I’m not sure anyone can completely explain the appeal of Harry Potter or Fifty Shades of Grey, because if they did they would write it!

Students of mine have occasionally said they presume I will get any novel I write published because I have had a couple out before. Not true. In a highly competitive market, (I once read 0.5 of novels written get published) businesses need to be able to prove as best they can that they are not taking a complete risk on a novel. Before taking on an author therefore publishers and agents will need to know how many copies your last book sold, and if it is less than a hundred, or in the low hundreds, you may be on a sticky wicket. One mid-size publisher who discussed accepting my novel told me that anything over a thousand was interesting to him, but they have the means to look up, on a database, your sales figures and if they are low you may struggle. For a debut author it is different. You can be sold as ‘the new talent on the block’ and in fact I have seen certain independent publishers look specifically for new talent for that reason. If you have not been published use that to your advantage. You have cause to be optimistic! You are only new to the block once, and so seize the chance to be defined as you want to be.