Secret Agent Tales: Negotiating the Labyrinth of Publishing 2

A New Record

Wow! This is a new record for me. I've started a blog twice before but this is the first time I've written a follow up blog. I'm not going to be distracted by going into the reasons why. That'll be  future blog in itself on the personal qualities of the successful writer (persistence being one of them).

And I'm not ducking the topic of why I wrote Profile of Evil (for those of you who read my last blog and are even minutely interested in the answer to that question), because that's part of my secret agent tales (well secret until now).

Being an Agent is Sooooo Easy

When I worked for Lynk Manuscript Assessment Service one of the first books I assessed was Anthony O' Neill's Scheherazade. It blew me away. Not only was the book brilliant but it was highly polished. I didn't think it needed critiquing so much as a Recommendation to Publish. I rang Liat Kirby who started Lynk and said, 'I want to write a recommendation to publish.' Liat said, 'We don't really do that.' I said, 'Well can we?' And she agreed. So I did. And it was published. The same thing happened with William Tevelein's The Visitants. This is too easy, I thought. I find the book, do the hard work of reading and writing the recommendation, and some agent swoops in and gets the agents cut. So when I took over Lynk I added the services of agent to the business. And I started to look for more publishable mss. This was going to be soooooo easy.

Bzzzzzzt: not so. For a start it was seven years since I'd assessed Scheherazade. The contraction of the publishing industry had continued and well established publishers were becoming less and less likely to publish new authors. Many agents had ceased representing new fiction authors. The amount of work that went into representing them compared to the likelihood of placing them had become such that it was no longer worthwhile. I had 8 manuscripts I thought were publishable. I tried very hard to get them published. I succeeded with one, Nansi Kunze's, Mishaps. I don't think it was better than the others, excellent as it was, it just happened to be junior fiction which was one of the few genres that was still moving.

Christopher Ride

Another ms I agented was Christopher Ride's, The Schumann Frequency after developing it with him for a year or more. It went to everyone. Everyone said no, not for us, this isn't good enough, that isn't good enough, it's just not a Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins etc. book. I wrote emails, I made phone calls, I noodged, I schmoozed. Maybe I should have tried begging and pleading. Threats? Then finally, the last of the big six to look at it, Hachette Livre said yes! Well, Vanessa Radnidge, their acquisitions editor said yes. God bless her. We were all set to go. Bzzzzzzzt. When she took it to her acquisitions meeting the staff were divided on its merits and it was nixed. Arrrgh! But Chris is a man of means, he published it himself, spent a lot of money on promoting it and it was a bestseller. Then one of Australia's best established agents Selwa Anthony swooped in and Random house decided that it was very much a Random House book and have gone on to publish a couple more of Chris's excellent thrillers.

What does an Agent Do? Nansi Kunze
Most big agents don't work with new writers and they certainly don't help to develop the manuscript. As mentioned, I may. With Nansi Kunze, however, I didn't have to do anything on Mishaps. Nansi was already a very accomplished and polished author. All I had to do was send it out. Then the rejections started coming in.
Publisher one, ‘The characters are great but the plot is stupid, she can certainly write though.’
Publisher two, ‘The plot is great but the characters aren’t convincing, she can certainly write though.’
Publisher three, ‘This plot and characters are great, pity she can’t write better.’
Publisher, ‘This just isn’t a Penguin, Hachette Livre, Pan MacMillan, HarperCollins, Allen and Unwin book...’

This was pretty much the same situation as what I’d had with The Schumann Frequency, and after the third rejection Nansi started to lose faith and thought maybe she should go back to the drawing board. Here's where I proved my worth to her: I said, 'Nansi, there's nothing wrong with your book, the problem is with the publishers. You know your stuff, I know my stuff, we keep on going until we find someone who recognises gold when they see it.' So we kept on going and the rejections kept on coming in. It was the very last publisher to respond, Random House, who finally said yes. Nansi and I were vindicated. Hooray! Mishaps did very well and Random House have published a couple more of her books too.

The other thing an agent can do is open doors for you. Publishers prefer agented manuscripts. Some will only look at agented manuscripts. Which is only sensible. If you've impressed an agent they know they're not wasting their time with you. They may still not want your book but at least they'll look at it. I'm not the top of the tree as an agent but I do have a good track record with spotting and developing talent and that means people in the industry will look at an ms if I recommend it. 

I haven't focused on that side of the business for quite some time but I am now. I am not opening myself up to submissions. If you want an assessment that may lead to an offer from me to represent you. Reputable, full time agents do not charge to look at your book. If you can find one willing to look at your ms you should go to them if you are sure you don't need to develop your ms any further. If they are willing to read your ms they are unlikely to read it in its entirety unless they think it is brilliant. If they read a substantial chunk of it but think it's not quite ready they may give you some feedback.

If you want me to act as your agent then you will need an assessment from me. Go to my website and check it out.

Okay, this is getting kinda long. And one of the first lessons of show biz is 'keeping wanting more' right. So I'll leave the story of my dealings with agents as an author and, among other things, how I came to write Profile of Evil and get it repped by a big agent and what happened after that, for part 2.

Here we go Again. Negotiating the Labyrinth of Publishing.

Okay. So what's this all about then, Alfie, this here blog?

It's about me desperately scrabbling for attention while desperately attempting to seem casual. And believe me, if there's one thing you need to learn to avoid in life, it's letting people know how desperate you are. The ol' stink of desperation is the kiss of death.

Luckily I'm in that grand phase of life where I don't care how many people know how desperate I am. Frankly I don't give a stuff... Let's be real with each other just for a moment, shall we, before we all go back to 'being professional'. Passion is the great driver. We all want the great love, the person we can't live without. But when you find that person then the possibilities of pain equal the possibilities of ecstasy. First you have to woe them - Oh, oh, will she ever be mine? Then you have to keep them - o-oh, who's that guy she's talking to? Etc. etc. etc.

If you're reading this I assume it's because you're a creative, like me (unless you're someone doing my glorious partner a favour - yeah, yeah, I read the blog, it was FUNNY. It wasn't meant to be funny? You're not sure? You didn't read it yourself?). You're hoping to find out how you get noticed, because I'm not the only one who feels this desire (desperate or not). Unless, of course, you've written your book, your screenplay, your graphic novel and you don't care if anyone reads it, if it gets published or if you make any money out of it.

Some of us want attention just because we're kind of pathetic, but for most of us it's about getting ahead in our careers so we spend less time doing things we don't like and more time doing what we love. I just got paid to write a screenplay. What a glorious time that was! That's living the dream. It's enough for me to meet my very modest basic needs for about 3 months. That's bought me time to write this blog and put a bit of time into working on the business rather than in the business.

Working on the business helps you to build the business. Working in it does, too, if you do a good job because that builds your brand - say you write a screenplay someone loves. But working in the business means you get that person to write you a recommendation and then post it on your Linkedin profile. It means writing a blog to let people know what you've just done. It means taking that novel that's been sitting in your draw for three years waiting for you to 'tweak it' and sending it out, unless it really is that bad.

A lot of us are very, very good at what we do, but we're terrible at selling ourselves. Mea culpa there, baby! You don't know how painful this is for me. Not the writing part. I'm having a ball here rattling away and mouthing off blah, blah, blah. But actually asking people to look at it and risk being laughed at (in a bad way) or rejected or ignored... that's the pain of when the great love goes sour.

But better to have loved and lost... nothing ventured nothing gained...

So I'm going to try to be better at this. I'm going to post this and another and another and another and I'll let you know how it goes. I've been doing this for a long time and I've learnt a lot. I'll be writing about some of the stuff I've learnt and I'll be writing about my current projects and how they're progressing.

Here's a little list:
I've been developing a little project called the Secret for about 20 years. It's one book on Amazon at the moment. It's a screenplay. It's also 3 sequel screenplays and novels in the editing stage. It's also a new series in development of short books for little kids aimed at 10 year olds (and above) which will serve as a template for a TV series. I've been in discussions with a well established TV and film director who loves it and want to 'do it'. More as it comes to hand.
I'm agenting a book called Pandora by a writer named Fred Trost I've been working with for a couple of years. I'm also working on a couple of additional books he's producing. So I'm sending out proposals to agents in the states and waiting for replies from local publishers.
I'm co-writing the sequel to Into the Lion's Den with Martin Chimes. This thriller will be released in September 2015 - about 3 months from now. The publishers are printing 10,000 copies and making it their Father's Day promotion. I've just finished writing the screenplay of Martin's book and it's being pitched to film people in Canada as I write.
I've just done a cover for an issue of Jason Franks Sixsmiths and I'll be doing another for volume two.
I'm getting together some samples of Thongor art for Chris Sequeira which he's going to be showing around in San Diego in a few weeks, for a series I'll be illustrating and co-writing with Jason Franks.
Well, that's a partial list. You'll find out about other stuff I'm working on if you bother to come back here. I'll let you know the strategies and the progress. The triumphs and the bitter defeats (oh the humanity!).

The last thing I'm mentioning, though, is another one of my current projects, Profile of Evil. I think I'll devote my next blog to the genesis of this book and its journey through the Australian Publishing Industry, because there's some lessons there. All I'll say about it now is - SUPPORT IT! Please. Follow the link and nominate me so I can get this sucker published by Amazon and make a few bucks, in return I'll love you even more than I do now.
https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1JAKKD7A4E5HU