After trawling through P&E's list of publishers, it became pretty clear that approaching a publisher directly is probably a bad idea. I'll still have a go, but the chances of success are slim in a world where they started off poor. Slim multiplied by poor is not good. Fact is, most well-known publishers simply will not take submissions, or even queries, from people they don't know.
So I moved on to literary agents. The list here is MUCH longer. I'd already been advised to go the agency route, by two people I trust, but being a stubborn sod I had to work it out for myself too. Anyway, off I set, visiting each of the websites in turn and searching for those who (a) deal in the kind of material I've written and (b) are prepared to take queries or submissions by email. I mean, this is the 21st century, right? Any company that doesn't deal by email these days must either be mad or already have so much business they don't know what to do with that they can't possibly handle any more.
And indeed that latter argument is true in many cases. I found several dozen sites with the message "we are closed to new submissions" or similar. But for those working only with paper? Well I'm not saying I won't deal with them at all, it's just that they go to the bottom of my list of possibles. Paper is expensive for me to produce. They all want at least the first three chapters, which in my case is 118 pages. That's almost a quarter of a ream (and they insist on the good stuff), plus it would take the best part of an ink cartridge to print. With postage on top, and return postage to ensure I don't have to print it all off again, that's gonna set me back around £40 for each submission. Not to mention the environmental impact ;o)
Well if I get rejected by ALL the agencies that take email submissions then I'll have no option, but until then...
But the point of this post is to share some wonderful words of encouragement. Quite a few of the agency websites have pages of advice to both new and established authors. Not just "how to format your manuscript" (which is, annoyingly, slightly different in each case - and mandatory!) but also how to be a writer, what to expect, yadda yadda. So in amongst all this information and advice, I find this gem:
"Someone who sits down one day to dash off a thriller just for fun is not likely to succeed in the long run; nor in most cases is the casual writer who takes 10 years to complete a single book."
Well...I haven't quite taken 10 years, but I'm almost there. Should I just give up now, then? No. Thanks for the advice, but I'm not jacking it in just yet.
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3 comments:
You sound a bit rattled, and you have every right to be so.
It seems to me that anyone who creates anything, be it a novel or something for radio or television needs to have an agent. Gone are the days when we stuffed our work into envelopes and crossed our fingers.
And you're right not to give up, why should you? So what if your book has taken a bit longer to write.
Pay no attention to critics Digger, no statue was ever put up to a critic.
Rattled? Moi?? No...amused, more like. I've already donned my protective mental carapace and set my expectations to low, so I'm prepared to step into the fray. But after all that effort, it made me laugh out loud to think that some pompous jerk in a high-falutin' office somewhere in the Smoke would think it a good idea to include such "advice" on his website.
I have, subsequently, found some more positive statements. A blog for another day.
I wonder if the idea behind the "casual writer who takes 10 years to write one book" has to do with ... if that book really is very good, getting another one out of said author might take another 10 years and i don't suppose any publisher wants to wait that long. good luck with it ! I'm sure it's a wonderful book so it's just a matter of finding someone that will take the time to read it and they'll agree!
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