How to Write Fiction (8 page)

‘Ripeness is all'

Getting your book published is all about timing and tenacity. Agent
Clare Conville
and publisher
Francis Bickmore
ask: is your novel ready to become a commodity?

I
n the words of Louise Welsh: “Writing is no job for grown-ups. We do it because not doing it makes us feel worse.” Before you put yourself through the commitment and challenges of trying to make money from writing, ask yourself why you write and whether your work is really for sale.

The old adage that everybody has a book in them may be true, but of the tens of thousands of unsolicited manuscripts sent to publishers and agents every year, only a handful get picked up, and then an even smaller proportion get published. Is yours the sort of book you can imagine you or anyone you know picking up and buying? Or is it more for your own satisfaction, enjoyment, therapy? Publication is not necessarily the only worthwhile outcome.

No second chances

An agent or editor will almost certainly only read your script once. Choose your moment. Edit like hell and get informed opinions about what further work is needed. If necessary, pay for professional help. There is a demand for specialist agencies that offer this service because objective feedback is hard to come by. Close family and friends will usually only tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to know. If you can join a creative writing course or a local writing group so much the better.

If the book just isn't ready yet, bide your time and do further revisions. Alasdair Gray's Lanark was in genesis for 30 years before publication; Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White took 20. Ripeness is all.

Prepare your submission

A strong and hopefully successful submission to an agent or publisher takes work. It involves getting distance from the writing process and thinking about your book as a commodity. Lewis Hyde's The Gift is excellent on the necessary tension between artist and salesman. Ignore what you're trying to achieve creatively and think about the book from the outside. What would make someone pick it up? Study the cover copy for authors you admire.

Researching your submission is crucial. Publishers and agents can sniff out a generic letter within a few lines. It may be hard to get to meet people in the industry, but you can professionally stalk them through various means. Don't get too personal – the letter should be professional – but do get a name of an individual within each company. Find out which other writers they work with and what they have had success with. Pick out the books on your shelf that you think most happily sit alongside your work. Look at the publishers on the spine. If there is an acknowledgments section, the agent and editor will usually be thanked. There's your lead. And when you write, explain why you have chosen them and why you think your book might fit their list.

Entitlement

A world-weary editor or agent can be startled back to life by a strong title. The title for a first novel has to work on a number of levels. It must grab attention, be memorable, it must convey in part a substantial aspect of the book and it must resonate at an emotional level, whether it is comic or tragic or a mixture of both. Take time to make a list of possible titles and ask fellow readers for feedback, then rework the title accordingly.

The right one-line pitch cannot be underestimated either. It may compel the first reader to put your novel at the top of his or her pile. It may carry through into the agent's submission letter, it may be subsequently taken up by the editor as a way of persuading his colleagues that they must back the book and it may finally appear as part of the jacket copy.

Who do editors think they are?

Remember, both agents and editors are specialists, whose job is to find books they believe in and which they can sell. A rejection is not personal, it's a business decision – albeit a subjective one, and one motivated by passion.

Editors and agents are busy people. Reading generally happens after-hours and at weekends. Canongate receives around 1,000 submissions a year via agents and twice that come unsolicited. Of these we are looking to find around 30 new books a year. Perhaps only five are going to be from a debut voice. Conville and Walsh receives 4,000-5,000 unsolicited manuscripts a year and on average take on a maximum of five a year.

With all this in mind keep your letter professional, informed and typo-free. Also, keep it short. If you present your work well you can avoid putting people off before they've even begun reading.

Get out, don't give up

Writing is a lonely occupation. Find your community. Creative writing courses, masterclasses, writing groups and online forums are fantastic for finding others who can offer support, advice, tea, wine, etc. Also, for technical writing advice, check out the Paris Review Interview anthologies – probably the closest thing you'll find to a few hours in the pub with the greats.

Fail again, fail better

“We did find it of very great interest, but I regret to say that it does not appear to me possible as a publishing venture.” This rejection letter could have been written yesterday. In fact, it was TS Eliot rejecting George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. Don't let rejection, or reports of a difficult publishing climate, put you off. There are miracle stories every year. One of our favourites is that of Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams who self-published Tunnels (
see chapter 11
). By a process of sheer determination the book came to the attention of Chicken House and has now sold over 1m copies worldwide.

Clare Conville is a founding agent at Conville and Walsh; Francis Bickmore is editorial director at Canongate Books

Make your own imprint

With digital printing and online publishing tools, it's never been easier to publish your own novel. Author
Roderick Gordon
shares his story and offers advice to debut novelists

S
o you've climbed that lonely mountain and written the book you always knew was in you. But what do you do next? Shove a few chapters and a synopsis in a manila envelope with a carefully composed letter and wing it off to potential publishers and agents? Then wait to hear until someone finally yanks it from the slush pile and all your hopes and dreams come crashing down as a rejection letter drops through your letter box?

Not for me that game. I'd had enough disappointment in my life at the hands of others when I was made redundant after nearly two decades of working in the City. I think I was probably still recovering from a bad case of burnout when I hooked up with an old friend from university, Brian Williams. Together, we wrote the sort of book that had lit up our imaginations when we were young – full of baddies, adventure and new worlds. Looking back I must have been out of my mind. With two sons in private school, a full-time nanny and an eye-watering mortgage, I should have been trying to find another job, and quick. But I didn't, because the book we'd called The Highfield Mole had become an obsession for both of us.

I talked to Brian about publishing it ourselves and he loved the idea. We'd have complete control over the process, from the editing to the design of the finished item. And the way we wanted it to look was vitally important to us. Our book wasn't just a good story, it was going to be an art object.

But I had no idea what it was going to cost. I found numerous “vanity publishers” online: you pay them to print your book for you, selecting one of their picture postcard covers, and you end up with something barely fit for the bargain bins in one of those remaindered bookshops. Then there were the subsidised presses who could produce a more bespoke item, but Brian and I didn't want our book to go out under one of their anodyne imprints. (This was 2004, so releasing an ebook wasn't a consideration.)

So I trawled the internet for a printer who would be interested in producing a small run of books, and also a designer. The designer I stumbled across, Ned Hoste, was a godsend. He helped me through the process of selecting a printer and the spec of the book. I had no idea of what “perfect binding” was, or what weight the pages should be.

After six months of doing nothing but editing the book and working with Ned on the layouts, it was time to press the button and send it through to the printers. You really can't imagine that moment unless you've been there. A book is never finished – you can always find a word to tweak, or something you think the proofreaders have missed. I held my breath and two months later a lorry turned up with three palettes of books ...

The books looked fantastic – 500 hardbacks with printed end papers, and 2,000 paperbacks, both versions with Brian's illustrations on colour plates. But there were far too many to store under the bed and we wanted someone to actually read them, maybe even give us a review. For a while we engaged in “reverse-shoplifting” by walking into bookshops in London's West End and planting them on the shelves. Of course we were giving them away.

I came up with the idea of having someone run a promotional campaign. Brian was initially against it because he didn't want me to spend any more money – I was already in for nearly £20,000 and counting. But I took on a PR company which landed us an article in The Book and Magazine Collector. There followed a feeding frenzy by collectors and dealers, many of whom offered to send copies to their contacts so we'd get a deal with a real publisher.

That's how Barry Cunningham (the editor who signed up JK Rowling for the first two Potter books) came to hear about the book. To cut a long story short, after some minor editing Barry republished the book as Tunnels in 2007. It achieved worldwide sales of 1m copies across 40 different countries. The film rights were also snapped up, and preproduction is scheduled to start next year.

Making your debut

Would I recommend self-publishing? Yes – if you're mad enough to drag yourself up a second mountain having climbed the first, and you go into it with absolutely zero expectations. The quality of digital printing has improved such that it's indistinguishable from traditional litho printing. And while the price of paper stock has remained more or less static, print costs have dropped in recent years, so it's never been a better time to bring your book into the world. Before you do, here are five things to remember:

1
Cajole everyone you know to read your book before you publish and encourage them to be brutally honest with their feedback.

2
If you can afford it, a professional editor is worth their weight in gold. And you'll be blind to the howlers tucked away in your prose, so don't stint on a proofreader. Some typos and clunks will always slip through the net, but there's nothing worse than stumbling through pages littered with them.

3
Find yourself a good designer who can guide you through the process and ensure the end result is what you set out to achieve.

4
Don't break the bank to publish your book. I never thought I'd break even on the exercise, let alone earn a living from it, but the odds are you won't recoup your investment. If you're not a sucker for physical books then the ebook option is certainly one to consider. Your cash outlay will be less and there are already some incredible success stories from indie e-publishing.

5
If a mainstream publisher loves your book and waves a contract in front of your face, you'll have to radically adjust your mind-set and relinquish overall control. The publisher will rule on matters such as cover design and how your book is to be positioned in the market. Take it from me – this is not the easiest of transitions. Even with five Tunnels books under my belt, this is one piece of advice I have yet to accept myself.

Roderick Gordon's Tunnels series have been bestsellers throughout Europe and the US. Spiral, the fifth book in the Tunnels series, is published by Chicken House