There’s no doubt that a nice fat dose of fame will help you get your book published: but that’s not the only route into publishing.
You don’t have to be an established author to get published either. If you follow that particular myth to its logical conclusion, the fallacy is easy to see: even JK Rowling was an unknown once.
The majority of books which are published by mainstream, commercial publishers still come from people who are relative unknowns. And although it can be difficult to get published the root of that difficulty lies in writing a good enough book, and not in doing something which forces you into the limelight or in circumnavigating the complexities of the publishing business.
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As someone who’s routinely asked – even now – if I would have got published if I’d had a different surname, I’m a little bit of proof that you have to learn to write a good book first. The first six books I wrote had my name on them, just as The Mathematics of Love did, but they weren’t good enough.
Oh thank you, thank you for this post.
“the root of that difficulty lies in writing a good enough book”
which I hope to continue to learn and try to do!
Take care
x
Being a celebrity may get one’s book published easily and with great fanfare, but it doesn’t mean that 1. it’s a good enough book, 2. it will be a bestseller.
Yes, there are plenty of well-known authors whose names were not familiar the first time they wrote–and sold–their very good books.
So, there’s hope and optimism.
I’ve always been confused by the suggestion that only famous writers get published: it just isn’t logical. And yet it’s trotted out all over the place. And as Emma shows, having a well-known name doesn’t guarantee success: it’s talent, hard work and persistence which gets you there in the end.
Yes, this is one of those great fallacies that people like to console themselves with. There’s also a myth that books by famous people are bad. Several people also sent out lynchmobs for me after on Authonomy when someone posted a link to the opening of Martine McCutcheon’s latest as an object of hilarity and I had the temerity to point out that it actually did a better job of being a jolly good romantic romp than anything I’d seen on that site (save Miranda’s, but that’s another story).
I wonder if I might proffer an opinion though. When it comes to the non-blockbuster type of novel – those gentle, awkward to place, literary reads we’re told it’s impossible to get representation for these days. In these cases I wonder if it IS easier to get a deal if you know the right people. Which isn’t a moan that I have failed to secure such a deal (I haven’t looked for a while), but an observatin based on what I have seen of the industry from the inside since we’ve been touting ourselves round live events.
Thank you, dear Jane, for reminding everyone that only the famous are pubbed. Rubbish. There are far more un-famous authors being published every day.
Dan, you’re absolutely correct. I get all kinds of replies from those I’ve rejected bleating like a goat on crack that I’m a hideous hydra because I’ll only accept famous people. Huh? They obviously haven’t looked at our books!
Interesting post, Jane, and it makes a lot of sense. However, I think new writers do need to create some sort of public presence for themselves eg. blogs, websites etc. now in order to be more attractive to agents/publishers. As I understand it, marketing of new authors is not a high priority, so building up your own profile is crucial.
Good post, Jane; it’s all about the writing. My fourth novel is due out next year and nope, still not famous! Perseverance helps though.
I’ve always wondered about the route followed by Joanne Rowling before she was swept up by Christopher Little. Presumably she needed to improve her MS and submission technique during her early efforts. Perhaps she sent off HP and her subsequent HPs for a critique.
Clair, the problem is that the world and its dog have blogs now, and so if your blog is going to achieve anything it needs to be themed, and different from all those other blogs out there. I wouldn’t advise anyone against having a blog or a website: but it has to be consistently good to help, and if it doesn’t attract many visitors then it might well be that the author would do better to focus his or her promotional efforts elsewhere.
You’re right that some publishers don’t market all their authors to the same degree: but the better ones do at least try to get their books onto the shelves in as many book shops as they can (which is still where most books are sold, no matter what claims to the contrary you’ll read on the internet), which is a huge thing: it gets books in front of their potential readers, which is terribly important.
Nicola, good grief, you churn those novels out at a rate of knots! It only seems like ten minutes ago that you were writing number two. Well done.
Dwight, it’s good to see you here!
I don’t know much about Rowling’s submissions before Bloomsbury took her on: but I suspect, if she had lots of rejections, that perhaps she wasn’t sending her work out to the most appropriate agents or editors. She’s bound to have attracted some good advice during her submission process (contrary to popular belief a lot of agents to tell writers why they decided against representing them), which must have helped her.
I’m a perfect example. If I can manage to get my books into Waterstone’s–middle-aged, unknown, living in the middle of nowhere, away from all the London Literati that I am, there’s hope for everyone.
Jane – J.K. Rowling had 12 rejections before Bloomsbury took her on for a small (i.e. perfectly normal) 4-figure advance!
I always tell my novel students that the best way to get published is to have a really good book that an editor will love. They stress about the other, peripheral stuff – the font, the page count, the word count, etc. – because it is easier to fix. Things like their surname, their “platform” and so on are also peripheral.
As novelists, they stand a far better chance (if their work is good) of being noticed than a new screenwriter, for example – who may have to labour in the salt-mines of BBC writing courses and so on before getting one 20-minute commission for a daytime soap years down the line. And they’d still be years away from writing for a major show like Casualty or Doctor Who. As for getting the TV equivalent of a novel – their own, one-off, 90-minute drama on ITV on a Sunday night – forget it!
Dan, as usual you come to my rescue and provide good, hard facts. Thanks for clarifying Rowling’s submission statistics.
I thought this part of your comment was fabulous:
DanielB wrote:
You’re so right. In fact, I feel a whole new blog post coming on about that. Unless you’d like to write it for me?
(Captcha text for this comment is “the skeptic”. I find that pleasing.)
Sally, the reason you got published is that you wrote a very good book, and kept on trying. I am now looking forward to your next!
Jane, excellent point, as usual. I have just been discussing this with someone in publishing, and I think so much of it comes down to the author putting in the time and the legwork. I had NO clue what I was doing when my book came out, so I tried everything I could think of! And now, 18 months later, I am still promoting my book, in different ways now that I am in the UK. The problem is that it gets in the way of writing, and I don’t think many of us writers are natural salespeople. But, as someone said to me, you’ve put so much effort into writing the book, aren’t you prepared to put that much effort into getting people to read it?
…and thank goodness for that!
Does anyone know if the % of books returned from shops to the publisher is greater for celeb titles? I always look at the giant piles of shiny hardbacks with over-smiling faces, and wonder if they all end of going home with someone, or off to the jobbers for a few quid a pallet.
Tania, you’ve worked very hard to promote The White Road and it’s a wonderful collection: you deserve all the success you’ve had.
Mabh, some books end up in remainder shops because they’ve failed to sell, but that doesn’t mean that most books get there for that reason: a lot of them (most, I’d guess) end up there because they’re no longer profitable for their publisher or because a new edition is being issued, and so the publisher wants to be rid of any remainders of the older editions.
I’d be interested to know what sort of percentage of celebrity books end up being remaindered or returned. I shall do a little digging.
In schools little kids often ask me “Are you famous?” The instinct if they were not such little children, would be to say ‘Well,obviously not if you have to ask!’
But I usually ask if any of them have been in the local paper (they usually have at one time or another with school photos) and tell them that this makes them famous and that my mum thinks I am famous and that’s fine by me.
But seriously so much of the ‘famous’ thing is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder and not worth getting hung up on.
Yes, publishers love to have a famous celebrities on their list but usually only as long as the books sell. There have been so many disasters for publishers where they have paid huge advances for books that earned practically nothing in return, you would think they should know better (the publishers not the celebrities, who pocket the cash and laugh all the way to the bank, often not even having to write the ‘bookwords’!)
The publishing world would not survive it only famous people got published, there would be so few books out there.
Oh dear, am I ranting, apologies!
Linda – what an excellent answer to the “famous” question. I shall pinch that and use it in future as it is much better than my other answers!
Jane – I’ll leave your blogging in your capable hands! I have some of my own to do!… And J.K.R. was agented by then, by the way – so her agent obviously kept the faith throughout those 12 rejections without asking her to go back to the drawing board. Not everybody’s would.
I know you are right Jane – but at the same time our Prime Minister managed to get a picture book published recently – and I am absolutely certain it would have been rejected out of hand but for the fact that he is the PM! I think that is the sort of thing that leads people to believe that you need to be a celebrity…sigh.
It’s like I always say: It’s not who you know, it’s what you know…until you know something. Then it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
Dan, I guessed you’d tell me that. Are you being kept busy at the moment?
Cat, you’re right: some people do get published because they’re famous in one way or another, and not because of the merit of their book: but this doesn’t mean that you HAVE to be famous to be published. Most of us take the write-a-good-book route, and it works reasonably well.
Professor, I’m going to have to disagree with you here: you really don’t need to know anyone in publishing to get a very good book deal–so long as your book is good enough to stand on its own. Naturally, as you write and publish more you get to know people in publishing: but that doesn’t always help you and if your work’s no good, it doesn’t matter who you know, you’re not going to get published.
@ Jane Smith:
I think you just reinforced my point. If you don’t know how to write, it doesn’t matter if you know the largest shareholder at RandomHouse; you’re not going to be published. On the other hand, if you can write AND you know said shareholder, you odds of getting published have just gone up asymptotically.
@ Emma Darwin:
OKAY-
I have just finished a book that I worked on for two years with another book right behind it almost finished-
It’s Non-fiction-It’s a True Story-
I never once thought about the publishing aspect of this endeavor until after I had finished the book-
Soooo-now I have had publishers say that the book is too controversial and too graphic-
I consider this book to be very interesting-
I have read it myself several times!
It’s a reality book about Incest and childhood sexual abuse for peeks sake-
Any suggestions??
@ Isabella Grace Straughn:
They might consider publishing it if you rewrote it as fiction, perhaps? It may the the ‘it’s a true story’ – possibilities of libel etc – that makes them nervous.
But I could be totally wrong.