Getting Published Part One: An Interview with a Publishing Insider
October 04, 2013
Hello
Fellow Junkies,
As
an indie author, I aspire to get my books out there and noticed. Unfortunately,
sometimes that's a very hard thing to do. My ultimate goal is to get
traditionally published by a huge publishing house, but after many, many...many
rejection letters, I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that it's probably
not going to happen.
Am
I going to let the rejections stop me, though? Hell no! I’ll just keep trying
and keep writing. Everyone has to have a dream—a goal they’re working
towards—and although it may seem unattainable, I’ll keep writing and I’ll keep
submitting to literary agents and publishers because no one has the right to
take away someone else’s dreams. It just comes down to how badly you want it.
And
I want it.
So,
what have I got for you today? Well, if you’re an established indie looking to
get published, or maybe just an author new to the scene, you don’t want to miss
this two-part interview with a Publishing Insider. I’ve broken this interview
down into:
a) General comments about publishing, and
b) Advice for authors.
Without
further ado, may the mysteries of the publishing universe be revealed…
1. On an average day, how many
manuscripts/query letters do you receive from:
a. Agents?
A carefully vetted selection (maybe 5 – 10)
b.
Directly from authors?
Hundreds!
The majority of publications that are published are from
Agent’s submissions. In terms of unsolicited manuscripts, we publish very few
(under 2%).
2. What happens to the manuscripts
you’ve passed on? Do they simply go onto a slush pile, or are they destroyed?
Is there ever an instance where you’d hang onto a manuscript because you
thought there was potential in the idea, but it wasn’t ‘quite there yet’?
These are destroyed or deleted. If a manuscript shows promise we will go
back to the author at the time of their initial submission and ask to see a few
more chapters, but we don’t generally hold onto submissions.
3. Do you bounce ideas/manuscripts off
fellow publishers, or is it a lone decision you make?
Definitely – it is always useful to get another opinion. Although it is a
rather lengthy process to get a manuscript to the Publisher, it is just the
starting point for us – if we receive a book we think has “legs” we’ll talk
about it with the publishing team and obtain buy-in from the sales, marketing
and publicity teams. From here we prepare a business case to the executive team
in order to receive financial backing before making an offer to the author, so
during this process many people in the publishing team are consulted.
4. In the fiction genre, what’s the current trend?
Vampire/Werewolf/Zombie romance and fantasy, erotic fiction (mainly
e-books) are the current trends. Fantasy, romance and crime fiction are always
the areas where the most manuscripts are received.
5. What’s your prediction for future
trends in fiction?
“Farm-lit” to replace “Chick-lit”. (Note: “Farm Lit” = “Chick-lit” but
with a tree-change). Perhaps women are mentally moving out of the city, given
the rise of books that base their heroine’s lives around homesteads and wine
making as opposed to slick city offices and corporate jobs.
6. Is the practice of selling a manuscript to a bigger publishing house
common:
a.
In Australia?
b.
In the USA?
c.
In the UK?
7. What’s one myth about publishing
you’d like to debunk?
Most authors are not “overnight sensations”. Not even J.K. Rowling or
E.L. James. (And using your initials won’t make you more successful…despite
aforementioned example of J.K. Rowling and E.L. James).
8. What’s one truth about publishing
people don’t know?
It’s rare to make a living solely as a “book author” in Australia. Many
writers freelance non-fiction articles to magazines or work as freelance
editors to supplement their income. Successful authors can also be full-time
mums who write once their kids are in bed, business professionals who write on
the train and retirees who have only just got around to writing that book!
9. What’s the name of your biggest
author-superstar at the moment?
For fiction, Hannah Kent (Burial Rites). Non-fiction is high on the
best-sellers list this year with Sarah Wilson (I Quit Sugar) and Hugh Mackay
(The Good Life) both incredibly successful this year (in fact, I actually
bought 3 copies of Sarah’s book I liked it so much – yes, Publisher’s still buy
books occasionally…).
10. In your opinion is the
self-publishing revolution hurting the traditional publishing industry? Why/why
not?
No, I personally encourage it as there is a place for both. There are a
lot of good books that we can’t publish and avenues such as Amazon.com or Spunk
Press (www.spunk.org) are a great way of getting your
work published. There are pros and cons to both types of publishing avenues.
The benefit to traditional publishing is the distribution agreements we have with bookstores and other sales channels, which self-publishers rarely have access to, as well as teams of marketing and promotional professionals – this ultimately results in more sales than self-publishers can generate on their own.
Publishers also pay the upfront costs for publishing the text, which can be very expensive once you take into account editing, permissions, typesetting, artwork, printing and advertising. Given this, we ask that authors “sell” us their content in return for a royalty agreement, which means they do not have complete ownership of the final product.
This arrangement doesn’t suit everyone, and for those that prefer to be completely independent and have the means to publish their own book (as e-books and print-on-demand systems are making this much more accessible) then self-publishing is a good option to look at.
The benefit to traditional publishing is the distribution agreements we have with bookstores and other sales channels, which self-publishers rarely have access to, as well as teams of marketing and promotional professionals – this ultimately results in more sales than self-publishers can generate on their own.
Publishers also pay the upfront costs for publishing the text, which can be very expensive once you take into account editing, permissions, typesetting, artwork, printing and advertising. Given this, we ask that authors “sell” us their content in return for a royalty agreement, which means they do not have complete ownership of the final product.
This arrangement doesn’t suit everyone, and for those that prefer to be completely independent and have the means to publish their own book (as e-books and print-on-demand systems are making this much more accessible) then self-publishing is a good option to look at.
I think “free” publications are more damaging to the traditional
publishing industry than the issue of whether a book is self-published or not.
When e-books were first released many self-published books were able to be
downloaded for free or at a very nominal cost, as a quick way for authors to
get their name and content in the public arena.
This (in conjunction with free Google-searches, free-YouTube clips and free news) has meant that readers have come to expect that if content is online it should be free or very inexpensive. While there is not the printing cost associated with e-books, there are still many expenses that need to be covered – editing, proof-reading, typesetting, fees for e-book conversion, Amazon (or similar) fees, author royalties, advertising costs – this means that if a publisher is to sell an e-book for $5, instead of $20 for a print copy, we need to sell twice as many copies to meet costs and sales expectations.
We don’t necessary sell twice as many books just because it is cheaper, which means that it is getting harder to meet all our costs. This leads to us being able to take less “risks” with publishing – so it is much safer for us to publish established authors – which further increases the gap for good, yet unpublished authors, who may find self-publishing a quicker route to being published.
This (in conjunction with free Google-searches, free-YouTube clips and free news) has meant that readers have come to expect that if content is online it should be free or very inexpensive. While there is not the printing cost associated with e-books, there are still many expenses that need to be covered – editing, proof-reading, typesetting, fees for e-book conversion, Amazon (or similar) fees, author royalties, advertising costs – this means that if a publisher is to sell an e-book for $5, instead of $20 for a print copy, we need to sell twice as many copies to meet costs and sales expectations.
We don’t necessary sell twice as many books just because it is cheaper, which means that it is getting harder to meet all our costs. This leads to us being able to take less “risks” with publishing – so it is much safer for us to publish established authors – which further increases the gap for good, yet unpublished authors, who may find self-publishing a quicker route to being published.
11. What is more prestigious, being an
indie author, or a traditionally published author?
Well, as a Publisher, I’m obviously slightly biased towards traditional
publishing. Do I think that there is the prestige attached to publishing houses
that there was twenty years ago? No. With more ways to publish content globally
there are a lot of good authors out there that can still be good authors
without the help of publishers.
In saying that, I still believe there is prestige in having a publisher’s logo on your book – not only for the numerous prestigious writing awards that offer great incentives (which many self-published books aren’t eligible for) - but the logo shows others that you’ve done the hard yards, passed through the agents, the reviewers, the publishers, the editors and the thousands of other books that get rejected each year – to have your own professionally published book. I still believe there is merit in that.
In saying that, I still believe there is prestige in having a publisher’s logo on your book – not only for the numerous prestigious writing awards that offer great incentives (which many self-published books aren’t eligible for) - but the logo shows others that you’ve done the hard yards, passed through the agents, the reviewers, the publishers, the editors and the thousands of other books that get rejected each year – to have your own professionally published book. I still believe there is merit in that.
12. Finish this sentence: The future of publishing is…online. Print books are far from
dead, but publishing is increasingly about embracing new technology and looking
at new ways of presenting information to the rest of the world.
Stay tuned for part two of this interview which covers the
Publisher's advice to authors!
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