Sunday 26 February 2012

Rejected Submissions - Some things to consider

The other day,  I received a nice thanks but no thanks from Jo Fletcher Books for my zombie novel. In the email it said that just because it wasn't for them didn't mean other publishers would feel the same way.

Your dog may share your sadness when you get a rejection.


At first I got upset, felt worthless, told myself nothing good would happen ever again.  Then I stopped mooching and thought 'hey, there's a blog post in this.'



 That brings me to my first point -



1. A publisher or agent saying 'no' is like someone expressing their opinion. Think of it that way and it doesn't seem so bad.



2. Before you send your manuscript have at least 6 other publishers/agents you can send it to. I did and I'm now working on a new submission package. Keep on updating that list.



3. Publishers & agents get deluged with submissions. There's a chance yours didn't get read. They simply don't have the time to read everybody's work.



4. Many fine books that have become classics were turned down by publishers time and time again, but their authors never gave up. Why should you?



5. Did you send it to the right person? Send a children's book to someone specialising in chick lit and off course you'll get a great big NO.



6. They might have a similar book planned/or on their books. Sometimes a rejection can be down to bad timing.



Note – Even if you do everything right you can still get a big fat NO.

Friday 24 February 2012

It's a hard knock (writing) life

Since the decision was made for me that I was going to be a writer (does anyone actually choose to have a life full of disappointment), I have learnt quite a few things that have surprised me -

Go on punch yourself in the face. That's what it feels like to be a writer.


1. Publishers can give unlimited numbers of your books away free, without telling you. See Could your publisher give your book away free if you want to find out what I'm babbling about.

2. When your writing's going well you can feel it. You're desperate to write; to get back to your characters because they're real in your head. But, when your writing's going badly you can barely put an address on a freaking envelope.

3. Royalty statements are so confusing Einstein couldn't figure them out. What formula do they use? The pull it out your butt formula.

4. It's way too easy to live on junk food, fizzy drinks and prescription drugs when you're a writer. Grapes and herbal teas don't give you that sugar hit you need. Drinking way too much booze and puffing away like we're still in the steam age are problems too. And let's not start on the depression and the crumbling sense of self-worth tied into whether some stranger says nay or yay to the novel/article/poem you've been lovingly crafting by candlelight because the power's off again or maybe you just forgot to pay the bill. Again.

5. Sometimes you will actually wonder if your publisher gives two figs about your book. You may sign a contract and then discover communicating with them is like pulling out your own teeth with a pair of pliers. Emails will go unanswered or ignored. Deadlines they came up with will pass without so much as a tweet from them. You'll feel like the mouldy salad at the back of the fridge: forgotten and minging and waiting to be binned.

6. If you were a plumber nobody expects you to work for free, yet when it comes to paying writers people can be real tight wads. I've lost count of the number of editors who've told me how much they've loved my article - often ones I've pulled out of the hat at the last minute cos their pal ditzy dolittle who they asked to write it in the first place couldn't do it because she's having her belly button defluffed/her brain waxed - only for me to have to battle for the next 6 months to get paid.

Of course these negatives can be offset by the joy of seeing the book/article/poem you wrote published, but boy, have you earned it.

Thursday 23 February 2012

Getting Published: The Hard Truth

At times when you're trying to get published it can feel like you're standing outside a shop where the closed sign has gone up and then they pull down the shutters when they see you coming.

It's tough going but there are some things you can do to give yourself a fighting chance -

Read as much as you can and in as many genres as you can. Whenever I'm stuck with a bit in my novel, reading inspires me.

Write as much as you can and accept that you may have to write a lot of novels or non-fiction books before you get published. This may be because your first work is rubbish/not what they're publishing right now/needed more work that you realised. I wrote 4 full sized novels before I had my novella accepted by Pulp Press. I also started many more.

Accept you will have some near misses. The man who discovered JK Rowling was interested in my non-fiction book but it came to nothing. The publisher of my first ever published book, a humour title wanted my next two books, but then they decided to cut back on their publishing schedule and they couldn't do the 2 books.
Don't be snooty about any other genre. This is important because you might be missing out on the genre your writing might be most suited for.

Get to know other writers so you can share your tales of woe and success. Yes, I did say success. My favourite writers' forum is Talkback. Great people who are so supportive and know what it's like to be a writer.

Keep on submitting to publishers and agents and ALWAYS follow their guidelines. If you don't you might as well throw your submission in the bin. For instance, most agents & publishers don't want to see your full manuscript they may want to see 10,000 words or their first 3 chapters and a synopsis.

Get feedback on your work wherever you can. It's so difficult to see your work as others see it. If you can't get feedback edit your work by printing it out or viewing it on an ebook reader. It helps you to get your editor's hat on.

P.S. After writing this, I got the first rejection for my zombie book. Off to cry into a bucket then I’ll give myself a kick up the backside and get on with it. Writers who get published get published because they NEVER give up.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

How to tell if you are a writer



Do you find yourself wandering off during conversations?

Do you have pens and paper everywhere around your home, including in the loo?

Do you find yourself writing on anything you can find, like toilet roll, napkins and even your arm?

Do you find yourself experiencing lost time because you're so immersed in you writing?
Do you wander off during conversations because you've come up with a new plot idea?
Do you use your mobile phone as a mobile word processor - as I'm doing when I'm writing this?
Then you must be a writer.
A writer is someone who is compelled to write whether they've been published or not.

Monday 9 January 2012

The angry writer


I said 'I need a picture of an angry lady, not an angry baby.' Oh well, this will have to do.

Instead of doing New Year’s resolutions that I’ll probably break anyway, I thought I’d take this time to reflect upon the bane of many folk’s lives – crap customer service from so called big name companies. The kind of stuff that takes you away from writing.

Bit late you might think to mention New Year’s resolutions. But there’s a reason for that. Well two reasons.

I’ve been without the Internet for over a month.

The first and most important reason for that is BT. The letters used to stand for British Telecom. Now the T stands for terrible service and the B stands for what they used to nastily refer to children without fathers.

You see, in the modern era, the once great BT can’t put a telephone in my new flat for over a month. That means NO landline (which concerns me greatly as my dad has bone cancer and mobile phones aren’t 100 percent reliable) and NO internet.

There’s a phone line in my property, but it’s ‘the wrong kind’ of phone line apparently. If you don’t come from the UK, you won’t know this, but ‘the wrong kind’ is a phrase they trot out whenever things don’t work like the trains. Hence the reason the trains aren’t running is because there are ‘the wrong kind of leaves on the line.’

To go online, I would have used one of the handful of dongles I bought that supposedly will allow me to us mobile broadband, but none of them get a signal decent enough to take less than 20 minutes to load a web page full of rubbish ads and pathetic pictures.

Next on my hitlist is Orange. Why is it so difficult to speak to someone in customer service who doesn’t mangle the English language (I’m talking about British people, here)/sound like they have nasal congestion/thinks because you have a Scottish accent you are speaking Swahili. Apologies to anyone who speaks Swahili. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful language.  

After ten minutes of trying to get the person to understand my flat number – It’s 10E – I finally gave up. Decided to do it online using my phone.  

I had a lot of fun trying to put some money on my Orange phone on New Year’s day. Shops were shut. ATM Machine not one you can put money on your phone with. New credit card because someone tried to tan (use it on a spending spree) just before Christmas, so couldn’t top up the normal way. (Cheers, mate – hope you end up with a turkey rammed up your jacksy.)

As for the sick, perverted monster who invented Captacha (had to use that in a vain attempt to top up my account online), is it just me, or are the letters, numbers and occasional punctuation just a load of rubbish mashed the together that the human eye can barely see?

Footnote – I thought no Internet or phone line was bad enough, until the January storms came and with it went the electricity for THREE DAYS. With temperatures below zero in our home on an island, it was warmer outside.

On the plus side, I got to experience first hand what it would be like to live after a zombie apocalypse with no electricity, which came in very useful when writing Deid Bastards.

Saturday 24 December 2011

Could your publisher give your book away free?



The answer sadly in many cases is yes they can. And the real kicker is that they can do it without even telling you.

And you thought your relationship with your publisher was a partnership. At least I did.
Here’s my tale of woe –
I found out through a message board I belong to that two self-help titles I wrote for Need2Know Books on bullying and caring for dogs were being given away free. This was news to me because I had a contract stating how much ebooks would cost and what my royalty percentage was.
Note it wasn’t at the price of zero, royalty zero. Hey, I worked hard on those books. It was my name next to the copyright symbol. It was my hard toil that crafted the words, did the research. And in the case of my bullying book: spilt my guts.

Hey, I even worked hard to get reviews and some press coverage. Worked hard, when I could have been doing something else – like doing paid work to pay my bills that land on my doormat like bricks.

I contacted the Society of Authors and got advice. I was hoping they’d tell me that the publisher had no right to 1, give away my book free and 2, not tell me.
The news wasn’t good. Apparently the clause in most publishing contracts that allows the publisher to set the price of the book also means they can give it away for hee-haw, nae money, feck all, free.
So, what have I learnt from this? Apart from the fact that this publisher showed a complete lack of common courtesy to their authors (I know of at least another dozen of their authors who were not made aware that their books were being given away free, including one who didn’t even agree to their book being turned into an ebook) I can’t stress this point enough -

Get it stipulated in your contract how many books can be given free and under what terms.

Footnote – when I contacted the publisher about what they were doing they claimed giving every one of their books away free was a ‘marketing tool.’ They had no idea how long they would give the books away gratis, but hoped it would boost sales of the traditional paper books.

I disagree with that. Why if people are getting books free will they pay for them? The answer is they won't. Not unless you're an author writing a free book as a taster (say it's a book in a series or a short story featuring series characters like Freaks by Tess Gerritsen, which features Rizzoli and Isles).

Me? I feel like my pocket had been picked and it’s pretty empty these days anyway.

Monday 12 December 2011

Enemies of the writer



There are so many things that can stand in the way of your writing time. Know what they are and beat 'em.

The Internet
Do you really need to find a present for Aunt Betty online, right this moment? Do you even have an Aunt Betty? If you really, really need to do research online, write a list of the things you need to know and tick them off as you answer them. Then turn the Internet OFF. Unless you do the Internet will eat away at your writing time.

Housework
Why is it always a case that when you actually have to sit down and write you suddenly decide to clean out the refrigerator/do the vacuuming/take a duster to the cobwebs that have been at that corner of the ceiling for years?

Perhaps if you’re avoiding writing so often, you should ask yourself if you should be writing at all. A writer is someone who has a compulsion to write.

Reading other writers who make you feel like you don't deserve to kiss their pen.
Hence the reason I'm not reading Stephen King's latest novel. He tells a great story and writes it well. I try to. I try to.

Games computer games, Internet games, card games, games you play in your head.
Do you want to waste time that you could be writing finding hidden objects or getting solitaire out? Yet, we've all been there. Just don't get sucked in. If you must play games do it to give yourself a break after some kick ass writing.

Social networking
Are you genuinely making friends and sharing your writing woes or just killing time? Set yourself a decent amount of time to tweet, Facebook, Google or whatever. DO NOT EXCEED THAT TIME.

Laziness
Is it really too difficult to get notepads, pens and station them around the house? Too much good writing and too many ideas are lost because you never wrote them down. If you're outside the home make sure you have something to capture your ideas. Many mobile phones have note functions and voice recorders. Use them.

Being a perfectionist
Stop expecting every word you write to be perfect - I have a habit of doing this. Get it down then edit/perfect it later. You can’t expect to get your writing to flow if you keep on stopping every sentence to rewrite and rewrite.

Publishers
I recently discovered (by accident) that the publisher of two of my self-help books, were giving them away free as ebooks without my knowledge. Whilst I was okay with them giving away e copies with the paperback version, I thought giving them away for heehaw was a step too far. I'm now taking legal advice.

Finding out about my hard work being exploited like that cost me a day's work and a week's worry. Then I realised that I was allowing this publisher to steal my writing time and I put a stop to it by sending off the corresepondance I needed and forgetting about it.

Note – Always make copies of every contract or commission form your received and keep them in a safe place. Also scan copies into your computer. It can be so easy to lose contracts when you move home.

Most read