Chapter 9 - The numbers game
Alongside writing Legacy, I started to look into the publishing industry to learn what I’d need to do to get published. To start off with (I’m not going to lie), I had dreadful preconceptions about self-publishing and its validity as a ‘respectable’ route to market. My cousin wrote a book a couple of years ago and told me he was thinking of self-publishing. My instant, naïve, (unspoken) reaction was that he was obviously doing this because his book wasn’t good enough to be ‘properly published’ - how little I knew.
During my research, I learned about the route to traditional publishing (get an agent who will sell you to publishers), but also couldn’t help but come across the self-publishing phenomenon. The general message was that more and more people are choosing to self-publish; some very successful authors actually opting to self-publish rather than peruse a traditional publishing deal, and some authors switching from the traditional model to self-publishing as they often make more money this way.
The more research I did, the more self-publishing seemed like a good option (see my blog article on self versus traditional publishing), however there was still a part of me that wanted to be published ‘properly’ or at least to give it a go. Others had had success fairly quickly via the traditional route and those I’d shared Legacy with were really positive, so I decided to have a crack.
I did some fairly extensive research into how to get an agent; there’s a plethora of advice online and then there are offline resources such as the Writers and Artists Yearbook, which I also bought. Essentially, you have to write a stand out cover letter and a great synopsis of your book, then send those, along with the first three chapters, to as many literary agents who are currently accepting applications and seem to fit your genre, as possible. The cover letter should be tailored to each agency and therefore research on each agent prior to writing is advised.
The problem is, this process is a bit of a lottery. Agents who may at some stage in the future be interested in your book may not have an open list at the moment; agents may feel that there is no current trend towards your kind of material and that they don’t want to take a risk on something readers aren’t currently demanding; agents may be in a bad mood when they’re reading your submission or not like something you say in your cover letter and therefore write off your book before they’ve even got to the three chapters; an agent may have a celebrity approach them for representation with all the marketing benefits this brings and choose them instead of an unknown; agents may prefer personal referrals from others they trust and choose a book that comes to them via this route rather than via their ‘slush plie’.
In short, it’s a numbers game for new authors; you need to write to as many seemingly appropriate agents as possible and hope to strike gold. The important thing to remember (says the advice online) is that pretty much everyone gets rejected by at least some of the agents they submit to (even JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer), so just keep plugging away, show you are willing to do a load of self-promotion and hopefully, eventually, someone will like your material enough to offer representation.
So with this in mind, I started to play the numbers game, but I couldn’t shake from my mind that most published books don’t make a profit (meaning most authors never get more than their initial - usually small - advance), and of the money they do make, they have to pay 15-20% to their agent. This implies that agents (and indeed publishing houses) are not that good at picking the right books (if your definition of the ‘right books’ is ones that will sell); instead they tend to pick books that they are passionate about and feel they can represent well.
The publishing industry (just like many other old, well established industries - insurance, banking etc), is slow to adjust to the modern world (partly I’m sure because this requires significant investment in both structural and cultural change). They are yet to truly embrace the possibilities presented by social networks and the data available from sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They are yet to fully explore how to make the ebook distribution channel work for them (and their authors), and some agents won’t even accept submissions from authors via email, requiring a physical copy to be sent in the post!
Anyway, whilst these thoughts where whirling around my mind, I kept writing submissions, still a little bit in love with the idea of being a ‘proper’, published author; the kind with a real live book out in the shops. How hard could it be anyway, if I wrote to enough agents, eventually someone would pick me up - wouldn’t they?
During my research, I learned about the route to traditional publishing (get an agent who will sell you to publishers), but also couldn’t help but come across the self-publishing phenomenon. The general message was that more and more people are choosing to self-publish; some very successful authors actually opting to self-publish rather than peruse a traditional publishing deal, and some authors switching from the traditional model to self-publishing as they often make more money this way.
The more research I did, the more self-publishing seemed like a good option (see my blog article on self versus traditional publishing), however there was still a part of me that wanted to be published ‘properly’ or at least to give it a go. Others had had success fairly quickly via the traditional route and those I’d shared Legacy with were really positive, so I decided to have a crack.
I did some fairly extensive research into how to get an agent; there’s a plethora of advice online and then there are offline resources such as the Writers and Artists Yearbook, which I also bought. Essentially, you have to write a stand out cover letter and a great synopsis of your book, then send those, along with the first three chapters, to as many literary agents who are currently accepting applications and seem to fit your genre, as possible. The cover letter should be tailored to each agency and therefore research on each agent prior to writing is advised.
The problem is, this process is a bit of a lottery. Agents who may at some stage in the future be interested in your book may not have an open list at the moment; agents may feel that there is no current trend towards your kind of material and that they don’t want to take a risk on something readers aren’t currently demanding; agents may be in a bad mood when they’re reading your submission or not like something you say in your cover letter and therefore write off your book before they’ve even got to the three chapters; an agent may have a celebrity approach them for representation with all the marketing benefits this brings and choose them instead of an unknown; agents may prefer personal referrals from others they trust and choose a book that comes to them via this route rather than via their ‘slush plie’.
In short, it’s a numbers game for new authors; you need to write to as many seemingly appropriate agents as possible and hope to strike gold. The important thing to remember (says the advice online) is that pretty much everyone gets rejected by at least some of the agents they submit to (even JK Rowling and Stephanie Meyer), so just keep plugging away, show you are willing to do a load of self-promotion and hopefully, eventually, someone will like your material enough to offer representation.
So with this in mind, I started to play the numbers game, but I couldn’t shake from my mind that most published books don’t make a profit (meaning most authors never get more than their initial - usually small - advance), and of the money they do make, they have to pay 15-20% to their agent. This implies that agents (and indeed publishing houses) are not that good at picking the right books (if your definition of the ‘right books’ is ones that will sell); instead they tend to pick books that they are passionate about and feel they can represent well.
The publishing industry (just like many other old, well established industries - insurance, banking etc), is slow to adjust to the modern world (partly I’m sure because this requires significant investment in both structural and cultural change). They are yet to truly embrace the possibilities presented by social networks and the data available from sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They are yet to fully explore how to make the ebook distribution channel work for them (and their authors), and some agents won’t even accept submissions from authors via email, requiring a physical copy to be sent in the post!
Anyway, whilst these thoughts where whirling around my mind, I kept writing submissions, still a little bit in love with the idea of being a ‘proper’, published author; the kind with a real live book out in the shops. How hard could it be anyway, if I wrote to enough agents, eventually someone would pick me up - wouldn’t they?
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