PUBLISHING DEAL WANTED. WILL GIVE 110%.

I’m gutted. I started writing a blog on Saturday morning about the X Factor saying that there’d be a few versions on ‘he gave 110%’. I wish I’d finished and posted it now cos I’d have been so smug. Robbie even mentioned 112%. My reason was to link in with manuscript submissions though. There’s generally a link… I’ve edited this a few times between other work and, as I’m out on my travels today, thought I should send it or it’ll be another week.

I had a novel submission earlier this week and was really touched by the enthusiasm of the writer. I’ll not name him, but he said he’d give 110% in promoting his book. I wanted to reply saying it was a pet hate of mine and that it was physically impossible, but it’s Christmas and all that. It was a bit like listening to a closing dialogue from one of Suralan’s Apprenti (that’s a plural, don’t you know)… and I felt an odd mixture of wanting to chuck a ‘how not to approach a publisher’ rant back at him and I also recognised that he was so keen to see his work in print. I’d probably wrote similar stuff to publishers when I wanted to see all my brilliant words in print. And why not… I knew I’d love to sit there at signings, would travel anywhere for an interview and knew I wouldn’t be an ‘arsey author’ (not that I’ve ever worked with any).

If it’s going to happen, it will. Good books generally get published. Even if they sit around for a bit in a big container marked ‘the slush pile’ in green marker pen in the corner of a publisher’s office, they’ll still get read at some point. One thing I don’t like about publishing is sometimes there is a bit of resentment if you reject someone. I rejected a friend’s manuscript recently and we had a coffee together to discuss why it wasn’t the right book for me. He’s a writer and he understands and I wouldn’t always sit down with someone to go into detail. I had to because I didn’t want him thinking I thought his work was rubbish and also because I still wanted him to send manuscripts my way. It just happened that he sent a good submission in a genre I wouldn’t publish.

I generally know within the first page if it will work - regardless of if the writing is good or bad. It might be the idea behind it, in which case the writing can go through development. The manuscripts are usually rejected because it is probably in a genre I’m unfamiliar with, don’t know enough about, don’t read, etc, etc – therefore I don’t really know the audience. Or that I just don’t think there is an audience for it. I’ve also had a few submissions recently that I’m sure have potential… but again, not my area of expertise. I put one writer in touch with my web designer to road test the book content out as a website and see what kind of feedback and readers they could attract before seeing if it was worth launching as a book. Hopefully it will take off and we can discuss taking it to print. Or he’ll head off to HarperCollins. But at least that’ll mean it was a goer.

Another friend pitched an idea a while ago and sent a manuscript in. It’s good, well written, he knows the target audience and I do, but I’m not exactly convinced it will be a ‘seller’. I know he’d easily give 110% in promoting it, but publishing a book is an expensive risk. At the moment I’m 100% impressed with it but 48% convinced it would sell. It has a limited readership really and is specific to an area rather than it having universal appeal. It’s non-fiction, which in many respects is a bit easier to sell.

On average, I get around 30-40 submissions a week now. Not millions, but enough for me not to be able to read them all when working on everything else. If I’m not working I’m sleeping, so submissions have to be read when I get any time off. I’ve promised a few people I’d get back to them ‘by the end of the year’ and now I have a few hundred to get through. D’oh! Even as I was writing this on Saturday another submission came in, right on cue. Looks good as well. And then one last night at around 1am, starting with an opening line of ‘Dear agent’ and I knew that I had to draw a line under reading any further submissions for a bit or risk going insane. Again.

It’s getting harder for new writers all the time. Publishers are cutting back on what they are doing and looking for books they know will sell. It sounds quite obvious, but in these times of economic recession if one title doesn’t do well it can put a publisher out of business. I’ve got next year’s schedule pretty much planned and will have room for one or two that I already considered and will spend more time reading through. Essentially, and as bizarre as it sounds, I’m looking for books for 2011 now. And that’s just a one-man-band outfit. All publishers work like this. And it’s something else writers are up against.

The message here? As ever – don’t give up. A great philosopher called Gary Barlow once said ‘Just have a little patience’ and, as we know, he’s rarely wrong about anything. Now that I’m starting to go through my submissions, I’m seeing more than ever how many writers there are out there with good, publishable manuscripts. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t publish them all. At a guess, there’s close to 400 manuscripts. I read a few pages of some as they came in and know they are very worthy.

The ‘Dear agent’ writer - I replied and told him Tonto isn’t a literary agency in case he’s done similar with his contact research and is sending ‘Dear publisher’ letters out to the wrong people. I said I wouldn’t be interested in reading his manuscript, wished him luck, and then back to work this morning I saw a reply with:

 ’If I can’t get someone who is selling my exact genre to even read a chapter, then maybe I should just hang my hat up and throw in the towel. I will rethink what I am doing here. Thanks for opening my eyes.’

I’d hate the responsibility of saying I’m not interested in reading someone’s work to have put an end to a writing career that hasn’t started. In an email conversation to Caroline Smailes recently I described myself as ‘Simon Cowell’. Maybe I could be the Simon Cowell of publishing rather than the John Blake. It’ll need more thought. Still doable, like. I hope he wasn’t serious about giving up just because of my reply. It’s a cliche but if you can’t handle rejection, you’re in the wrong business. Or another take – if you can’t handle being kicked in the teeth and underpaid, then don’t be a writer.

Think of your submissions as job interviews / job applications. I did. I used to do temp office work to support myself through writing projects and a lot of the time I was knocked back from very basic office work (and other jobs that wouldn’t have crept into my writing time) that I could do standing on my head. Not that I can stand on my head, but you know what I mean. The point here is that I wasn’t the right person for the job, was probably going for the wrong job, wouldn’t have fitted in… there’s so many reasons why they never happened – but none of the reasons were because I wasn’t qualified or couldn’t do it. I didn’t say, ‘Right you temp agency bastards. I’m going to stop temping because of you. Curse you allllllll!’

Publishing deals are like that in a way. Not the right manuscript, not the right time, taking on people with more experience, too many submissions and can’t commit, schedule already planned for the next two years so not recruiting right now… all you need to do in that case is try somewhere else and keep trying until you find the right ‘job vacancy’.

It’s a mad industry to be in. If any publisher knocks you back, take it on the chin and move on. Take the idea or the manuscript somewhere else if you believe in it. If you get to the point where it feels like a dead horse – stop flogging it. Successful writers will also tell you about their bottom drawer with a few manuscripts that they were unable to get placed. It happens – it’s career / writer development. It isn’t failure.

And now I’m off to do a bit of reading…