The Other Side
If you read my last blog you'd know that, I've dealt with authors and
publishers as an agent and I'm doing that right now. But I've also been
on the other end – the author trying to get published. A lot of what I have
learnt over the years has been through doing that.
The first thing you have to do,
of course, is build your skills to a professional level. Not many people do
that but some of us do and I certainly did. As I keep telling people, that
takes time. My first really publishable book for adults, I believe, was my
third novel, Devil Dog Dreaming.
Having written it, though, I started to learn the other important part of
getting published – studying the market. I have no doubt the book is good. But
it’s horror, and the Australian market is almost phobic when it comes to horror
(yeah, there’s another blog there, but we’ll keep moving...). And it’s
Australian, and the Brits are frequently contemptuous about all things
colonial, and as for the US:
‘Who wants to read about guys in
lederhosen, and anyway, wasn’t that where Hitler came from?’
‘ No, you’re thinking of Austria.’
‘Whatever.’
So
I soon realised that I’d written the wrong book (maybe I ‘realised’ that too
soon but we’re saving that question for the blog on personal qualities of the
successful writer, right?) By the time I had gone through the process of
failing to place Devil Dog Dreaming
I’d written my second horror novel The
Time of the Wolves which was to become The
Twilight Age (published by Black House Comics. Yes! Quick victory dance before
going back to long tale of failure). The 460 page ms of that was on a lap top
that was stolen (arrrgh!).
I then went on to write my magnus opus Real Magic a 1000 page fantasy set in
Australia in the Victorian era. This was the book I wanted to write – because
at this time I was still following the idea that you don’t follow the market
because it is always changing, so you may as well write what you want bzzzzzzzzt. I loved that book. I still
love it. Full of pride I sent it to Rose Creswell of Cameron Creswell. Rose had
great taste. She was among the four agents who saw Scheherazade, the other 3 passed. One said, ‘I can’t see this being
published in Australia.’ Rose said,
‘I’ll take that!’ She repped the book and got a bidding war happening. She got
it a record-breaking advance, the reviews were rapturous and it’s been
published in many languages. Rose also picked up the next ms I wrote a
recommendation for, William Tevelein’s The
Visitants. She got Penguin to publish it. So Rose was my girl, if only
she’d have me. Well, she was kind enough to take a look because she knew me
through my ‘recommendations’. So I sat
with bated breath.
Rose
sent me a nice note. I quote from memory, ‘Thanks for sending me your
beautifully written and fascinating novel, however, I will not take it on
because I am leaving the industry and also, I think it will be a hard sell. I
suggest you try Lyn Tranter.’
I
thought, that would be right, my timing, as always is impeccable. Sigh, okay I
call Lyn Tranter another big, big agent. ‘Rose Creswell suggested I give you a
bell.’ (Yep, this is my, ‘Rose and I go waaaay back’ voice). So she gives me
the time of day. Until I tell her it’s fantasy set in Australia. ‘Oh no no no
no, Penguin just published a book like that and it bombed terribly.’
Yeah,
I was only too aware. The book was William Tevelein’s The Visitants. Penguin had published it with one of the worst
covers I’ve ever seen. No wonder it bombed, despite good reviews. You see the
irony here. I help this ms get published and it helps put people off my magnus opus. I still think Bill’s book
is brilliant and I’m proud to have helped him to some degree but ... it’s
ironic. So I suck it up and forge on.
Lyn Tranter: ‘It’s how long.’
Me: ‘A thousand pages, the same length as Lord of the Rings.’
Lyn
Tranter: ‘Well when you’re JRR Tolkein give me another call.’
Actually,
she didn’t say that last line but it would have been a good come back and
apposite. Who is going to publish a debut novel of that length? Who is going to
invest the time in reading it? What if it falls apart in the last fifty page?
Yeah,
you have to study the market. Real Magic
doesn’t feature elves and fairies or brawny barbarians either. It’s a new kind
of fantasy, a daring new blend of fantasy, horror and bzzzzt bzzzzt bzzzzzt. YOU
IDIOT! PUBLISHERS HATE CROSS-GENRE BOOKS. PUBLISHERS HATE NEW, DIFFERENT, GROUND
BREAKING! Where’s your precedent? It’s like the Van Morrison song, ‘Give us
another one, and another one, and another one ... just like the last one.’
So
I was over it. I had given it my best shot and I was not going to play anymore.
For about a week. Then, some time later, I heard that Lothian Books, an
Australian institution, were going to publish a line of horror novels. Woohoo.
So I gave Devil Dog Dreaming another
polish and sent it in. I got an email from them. ‘You’re in the shortlist of 16
novels we’re considering. We’re going to publish 4.’
They
didn’t pick me! Boo hoo! I’m not playing. For another week. But I called Teresa
Pitt who was the main editor. I had some other mss I wanted to discuss and I
got a meeting with her. She told me she loved my book and had wanted to publish
it but it was the usual committee-style thing and one of the other editors
strongly objected to my book on political grounds – the protagonist is not PC.
I wouldn’t say he’s a misogynist (Teresa Pitt is a woman for Pete’s sake!) but
he’s no Prince Charming, and he’s not meant to be. It’s not just a horror story
but a tale of a guy struggling with his chance at redemption. It has very
strong female characters as well and if anything, one of them is ‘the hero’
but, the end result is, I miss out again. And that’s fine, people. This is how
the world works and we have to get used to it and keep on going which is why I
was talking to Teresa. She wanted me to write something new and was keen to
publish, so I went home very much encouraged, and set to work.
This
time I’m like, screw writing from the
heart, this time I’m a calm cool calculating writing machine who’s going to write
his breakthrough novel. And I wrote Profile
of Evil for Teresa Pitt. My protagonist was a strong female cop. It was a
thriller (not a mainstream horror novel, so still a bit of a cross-over book,
but I could sell it as a thriller). It was set in Australia but I had an editor
at an Australian publishing house hot to trot, so it was worth that, or so I
thought. By the time I finished (about 3 months later) Teresa was gone, among
the casualties of the takeover of that Australian institution Lothian by
multinational Hachette Livre. Hachette really only wanted Lothian’s children’s
section and a lot of other stuff was cut. I hear (from an author who was
accepted in the final four) that the horror line I was so keen to be part of
was pretty much abandoned and, like most books left to sink or swim, they sunk.
Never
mind. I liked this new book I’d written, Profile
of Evil. I was pretty sure I’d hit all the right notes (okay, there was one
section I thought might be a little off key but I hoped I’d get away with it –
I’d leave it up to the critics to confirm it). So, the search for a new
publisher was about to begin again. But first, an agent. Because all of my
research had convinced me that a good agent is worth every penny they get. You
cannot rave about you own book – you just sound like a twat. Unless you’re
published already most publishers won’t give you the time of day, and I respect
that. Most new authors are time wasters, and these people are running a
business, guys. Your agent will open door for you.
This
is where a good assessment agency will also help you. Because if you get a good
review from someone with cred, agents and publishers may give you the time of
day. I had enough cred to get people to read my ms. I’d been working for years
to build that. I can’t remember who I sent it to. A lot of agents had stopped
looking at fiction from unknown authors (meaning anyone who hadn’t had a
successful book published by a big publisher), it was just getting too hard to
sell. Sophie Hamley, however, had taken over from Rose Creswell at Cameron
Creswell. Sophie had just come from HarperCollins where she’d been editing Tara
Moss, so she knew thrillers. She got her reader to read my manuscript and called
me to say, ‘she loves it, can’t put it down.’ Awesome! Sophie read it. She also
loved it. And she offered to rep it (victory dance! I am so awesome! I am so
great!). Six months of agony followed. My second marriage broke down, my middle
son, Jaspar, was struggling with bi-polar psychosis, I sold Lynk Manuscript
Assessment Service (which I’d run for 2 and a half years), I moved to Europe
once Jaspar settled down, and I waited for my book to sell. Actually, first I
waited for the bidding war. Then I waited for my book to sell. Then I waited
for some encouraging news.
I
waited in vain. ‘Don’t worry,’ Sophie said. ‘No one is buying anything. You
should write another one though, we got close with this one.’ Okaaaay. No one
is buying but I should write another one? I don’t think so. Not set in
Australia, anyway. I was grateful to Sophie though. I was told by one editor
(I’m pretty sure it was Louis Thurtell at Allen&Unwin), ‘She really
believed in your book. She fought hard for it.’ You can’t ask for more. And
that was it. The market for new authors was dead (then, is it better now, you tell me). Waddayagonnado? In Australia
you have 6 chances, if editors are
actually looking for stuff, and if
you choose a popular genre. JKRowling would have been dead in the water on
those figures – how many times was she rejected? Huge bestseller Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
reputedly was rejected 127 times – that’s how many publishers there are in the US.
My next book would be set in the States. I’m yet to write it, because you go
where the money is and since then I’ve been writing and illustrating The Twilight Age, illustrating Sixsmiths, writing short stories for
Chris Sequiera anthologies, and working on the Secret since it has been
generating interest from a film and TV director and I’ve been doing other stuff
to pay the bills.
But
I still look for opportunities to place my old stuff when they arise, which is
why I’ve put Profile of Evil in
Amazon’s Amazon Scout programme. If you want to support it in this latest stage
of its journey, follow this link.
