Getting published
A beautiful piece of vitriol from Peter McGrath:
When writers write about writing (and even worse writers writing about writers writing about writing) often gets self-indulgent and makes one want to find them, break their keyboards and burn their Writers and Artists’ Yearbooks in front of their eyes.
No one asked us to inflict our golden numbers on the world and whenever I read another whining unpublished writers blocked author I want to tell them to thank their lucky stars they’re not living in Ethiopia and walking five miles to get a container of hookworm infested water every day while thinking it normal you’re been peeing blood since childhood.
So, just to court fate, I’m going to address the question of getting published. 
L’Ombre goes into the stark reality of getting published today, what it takes, how the market is changing and how much one can expect in return.
In 2000, I hawked a most inferior first version of my Obsession around to a number of London agents and actually got read. The problem was apparently not interest level – it was a bit real life raunchy – but that it ticked very few boxes. Parts would appeal to one demographic but other parts would alienate them.
Even if it had been accepted, the chances of any sort of money, after the expenses had been met, was small. L’Ombre breaks it down this way:
Short fiction pays around $0.05-$0.15/word and most places that accept short fiction either cut the rate when the story gets too long or just reject over long stories. A 10,000 word story at $0.10/word pays the author $1000. There are occasional exceptions to this but I would say that $1000/story is a pretty good rule of thumb. If you want to make a living out of short fiction you need to sell 3 or 4 stories a month which means writing one pretty much every week. Unfortunately even if you can write one a week you probably can’t sell them all unless you can write under a dozen pseudonyms in three or more different genres.
Novels are not much better, remuneratively:
A typical new author/midlist author will get an advance for a book of around $10,000 (this is an order of magnitude thing – the advance could be $5000 it could be $20,000 but it isn’t $1000 and it isn’t $100,000). Assuming the book earns out but only just an author would need to sell two or three of these a year to make a living out of writing – and if his advances are at the low end by make a living I mean make something slightly more than a part time worker on minimum wage.
The book will need to sell between 5,000 and 10,000 copies in hardcover and perhaps 30,000-50,000 in mass market paperback. Critically we also know that publishers rarely reprint even when sell through is very high because they don’t want to take the risk that the reprint fails to achieve adequately fast returns. Hence the book then goes out of print real soon and never, ever gets a chance to catch on later.
What we also know is that currently ebook sales per title tend to be in the hundreds and that while this number is going up it isn’t yet at even hardcover sales numbers.
Alternative? E-books and L’Ombre makes the case for mechanisms like lulu.com POD selling. Bookshops are a dwindling concern and Amazon itself has its troubles:
The problem for Amazon is that while the web helped them take sales from existing bricks and mortar stores because of larger inventory and lower prices, their success is gradually killing these stores. If (when?) the bricks and mortar stores go away then so does the casual reader base that buys bestsellers and takes an occasional chance at something else when browsing in an airport bookstore.
The DRM problem and the control sellers wish to exert over people’s reading, IMHO, greatly reduces the desire, at this stage, of wanting to go the e-book way. Many are Amazoning and similar and absolutely no one is reading anyone online, which is where my three books and short stories are.
So, the bottom line is that the e-book has considerable problems to overcome first, not least DRM, Amazon will do well for now and it is near impossible to get published unless it is non-fiction and carries a fanbase before starting.
An oblique way I feel could be to be translated, providing you’re au fait with another language, e.g. French and there might be novelty value to a French publisher, depending entirely on the quality of the translation, of course.
Food for thought.
Filed under: Arts & culture, Leisure & travel
Just as well that I blog and call my poems “poetry” without any expectation of ever making money.
Perhaps I should sell my body.
On second thoughts I’d make much more money by writing.
Oh well, there goes the “get rich quick” scheme then:)
I always struggled in recent years with how novels were very samey and that there was nothing new and refreshing. On one of my holidays I met someone who was in publishing and that enlightened me.
The way to go is to find an independent publisher who is willing to take a risk.
Ah yes – the proverbial hen’s teeth – the independent publisher. One way is for people to combine and self-publish together but there is no guarantee of quality of work across the range then. Distribution is then the problem too.
To an extent, the literary agents are right – there is a lot of dross out there and I include my original version of Obsession I hawked around. The one now is probably “quite OK” but I’d claim no more.
I agree with what you say and would add that things are formulaic but they argue it’s because such like sells. Perhaps the trick is to actually forget selling one’s own and become an independent publisher instead.
Calum, Angus – stick at it.
That was the stance of the big publishing houses. They know the formula that sells and will only take on those kinds of work because it means easy cash for them. The problem is that they are not allowed and use their instincts to introduce interesting new writers with refreshing ideas. This leads to a books going very much like the MSM.
Thanks James. Sometimes the spleen must be vented and I’m glad you found it post provoking. That was only one molar vitriol.