The book business has been changing radically every couple of years for the entire time I’ve been in it, but one thing does seem to remain constant: lots of people still want to break in and sell their novels, and a sizeable number of these folks either haven’t got a clue where to start, or don’t believe what the people in the business have been telling them.
For those of you who haven’t got a clue, the basic process of selling a novel is simple but frustrating: you make a list of potential editors/publishers; you check it over, collect names and addresses, and look up each publisher’s submission requirements; you send the first one whatever version of the novel they want to see (portion-and-outline, query letter, or full ms.; hard copy or electronic); and when your manuscript gets rejected, you send it to the next publisher on your list. Over and over and over, until the thing sells.
That’s it. There are no short cuts. There is no trick or secret handshake. There is no password that only someone in the business can tell you. You send it out, and you keep sending it out until it sells.
So why are there a bazillion articles, discussion groups, blog entries, etc. on How To Sell Your First Novel?
Several reasons. For starters, while there is no trick, password, or big secret method, there are mistakes one can make that will likely get a manuscript bounced within nanoseconds, and a fair amount of the wordage is just reminding people not to make them. Most are common sense: don’t fax the publisher your manuscript; don’t send a sweet Romance novel to a publisher that only does hardboiled detective novels; don’t badger editors at conventions or workshops; don’t turn a page upside down somewhere in the middle; don’t bring your manuscript to your brother’s wedding because you heard that one of the bride’s relatives was an editor and you thought you’d get him to read your novel during the reception. (Yes, that is a true story. No, the editor didn’t buy it.)
Then there are the specifics of How You Make Your List of Editors, which are pretty much the same as the ones I just laid out a couple of posts ago for How To Make A List of Agents (look at who publishes the books you like; get addresses and editor names from Literary Marketplace or Writer’s Market; google for their submission requirements; check them at Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors; do not pay an agent, publisher, or editor to look at your book). That can pretty much fill up a post right there, but I’m assuming that all my readers are smart enough to look at what I said about finding an agent and figure out how to apply it to finding an editor/publisher.
Those two things – trying to prevent basic mistakes and walking people through the process of making their initial list of publishers-to-send-the-manuscript-to – make up about 98% of the posts and articles by the actual published authors, actual editors, and actual agents who give advice to beginners. Unfortunately, the other 2% get most of the attention. These are the how-I-beat-the-system posts by people who used some non-standard submission technique and got lucky, and who mostly haven’t been around long enough to realize that they succeeded in spite of, not because of, whatever they tried.
Because while there is no secret method, password, trick, or short cut to selling, there is such a thing as luck. The trouble is, you can’t control luck. It happens when it happens. Also, it comes in two varieties, and there’s never any saying whether you’ll get the good sort or the bad. Luck is not something you want to depend on.
Most people know that intellectually. But it’s really, really hard to keep believing that it’s true when the ms. keeps going out and coming back, over and over. And all the stories about how Gone With the Wind was rejected forty times before it sold, or how Madeleine L’Engle was about to give up on writing completely when A Wrinkle In Time came back from the very last publisher (except it didn’t come back, that last time) – those stories don’t help much with the discouragement and frustration.
So people look for a second opinion. And they get it from those last 2% of published authors…and from all the rest of the on-line posts and articles and especially forums and discussions by people just like them who haven’t sold anything yet, and who therefore don’t actually know anything first-hand.
This is where you find the folks who claim that “it’s all about who you know,” that you must do certain things (sell short stories first, have an agent, attend conventions, go to workshops, hire an editor/book doctor, etc.), that you’re better off doing something else (self-publishing; starting with the small presses; e-publishing; putting it on your web site; doing a lot of social networking and/or other pre-sale publicity, etc.), that analyzing form rejection letters will tell you something useful, that gaming the system works.
Reading this stuff will make you crazy. Because people argue very plausibly, and there is the niggling feeling that getting published can’t possibly be a matter of make list, send it out, send it out again, repeat over and over til sold. There has to be something more you can do to improve your chances. Doesn’t there?
Well, no, there doesn’t. Because what it all boils down to is, whether your manuscript sells or not depends on somebody else’s decision. Somebody you can’t influence, because you probably don’t know them, and even if you did, it’s their job to not be influenced. Breaking your brains trying to figure out something else to do is like breaking them trying to figure out a way to guarantee you’ll have good weather for Saturday’s picnic. It really doesn’t matter what you come up with; the weather will do whatever it does, and you’ll just have wasted a bunch of time.
There are, admittedly, alternatives to traditional publishing. But that gets back to what you actually want…and anyway, it’s another post.
You make a list of potential editors/publishers; you check it over, collect names and addresses, and look up each publisher’s submission requirements; you send the first one whatever version of the novel they want to see (portion-and-outline, query letter, or full ms.; hard copy or electronic); and when your manuscript gets rejected, you send it to the next publisher on your list. Over and over and over, until the thing sells.
That advice has always bothered me because lists end. What happens when you get to the end of your list of publishers and none have accepted your manuscript? Do you start over? Do you look for more publishers to expand your list (and, one assumes, lower your standards)? Or do you give up on a manuscript you just spent years writing and trying to sell? (Possibly decades, considering each publisher takes 6 months at a minimum.) How many manuscripts do you need to have rejected in this way before giving up is the saner option?
Yes, I know that’s the system. The system is terrible. That’s why people are looking for ways around it, and why it’s very easy to believe that nepotism and luck rule the publishing industry.
“How many manuscripts do you need to have rejected in this way before giving up is the saner option?”
I have pretty much concluded that I’ve passed that point, and am now officially insane. 🙂
I think that knowing that I’m crazy is going to take a whole lot of burden of guilt off… I’ve wasted *how* much time and effort on this? Ah, but clearly I’m crazy, so if I hadn’t been doing this insane thing, I would have been doing something else insane instead. I might as well keep at it, and get whatever fun I can out of it.
From what I’ve heard (from non-authors), the publishing industry is moving toward e-publishing. Is that true?
You send out the manuscript for your second novel, which you were working on while the first one garnered all those bounces.
Yes, you send the next one out as soon as you can. But what do you do with the first? And how many manuscripts — how many decades — will you throw into the same terrible system?
Let’s say I’m an Eager Would-Be Writer and I’ve just written the Best Story Ever, and I start sending it off to publishers and getting rejection letters.
It seems to me (unpublished as yet) that there are two completely separate reasons for the rejections.
On the one hand, my luck could be out, or this kind of story isn’t selling just now, or the editor just doesn’t care for this kind of story, or it’s the wrong phase of the moon. The solution in this case would be to keep on sending out the manuscript, hoping that someday my ship will come in.
On the other hand is the unhappy possibility that I’m just not good enough (yet) to get published. The solution in this case is to do some more writing, take some classes, do some more writing, learn some new skills, do some more writing, do Other Helpful Stuff (?), and do some more writing. At that point, I take the manuscript off the shelf, give it a major overhaul and start sending it out again.
How can I tell which of the categories I’m in? And what are examples of Other Helpful Stuff?
Remus – You know perfectly well what I’m going to say: you have to decide for yourself when it’s too depressing for YOU to stand, and what you’re willing to do for a next step. For some, the next step is giving up entirely; for others, it’s self-publishing at one of the many different possible levels. It depends on what you really want and what you’re willing to do in terms of effort, time, and money. Jim Hines did a fairly amazing survey of first novel sales that shows an average of 11.6 years to get that first sale, with the longest time-to-sell being 41 years. I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people aren’t willing to persist for 41 years.
Michelle – I agree (well, not with the “you’re crazy” part…) If you aren’t having fun, why bother?
Katya – I think it’s more correct to say that e-books are (finally!) exploding, and a lot of publishers are trying to take advantage of/figure out how to exploit this huge potential new market.
Mary – Yup, yup, yes, exactly. 🙂
Remus again – When you finally run out of markets, you put it away somewhere, and if and when you have time to revisit it far in the future when you are a famous published author, you revise it then. Lots of published authors have two or three unsellable novels in their trunks somewhere; R. A. MacAvoy told me once that she’d written sixteen unsellable novels before finally hitting gold with “Tea With the Black Dragon.”
nct2 – I think that’s a whole ‘nother post. Looks like I’ll be talking about this subject for a while…
Oh, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to respond in as timely a manner as usual. The computer’s been at the Geek Squad for the last couple of days, getting a virus cleaned off it, and I just this morning got it set up again.
I’ve been reading the “How I got an Agent” on the writer’s Digest web site. A surprising number met someone who knew someone who was an agent or an editor. And then, there are the writers who coincidentally used to be editors at the publishing house who bought their book.
Luck of the Irish?
No matter, I still have faith that even though I have no connections, I will get published…and I’ve been doing this since the 1980s!
I just found your blog, and I love it. Thanks for your thoughtful, honest posts about publishing. I appreciate it.
Hi Patricia,
This is a great post and I have what may be a really dumb question but I’m asking anyway. I’ve been really boning up on my social media and I wanted to Tweet this post, but other than cutting and pasting the URL, I don’t see an easy way. Is it possible to put a Twitter button on your blog or a FB button or even maybe G+? I’m so impressed w/ this article I expect I’ll be reading more and wanting to pass them on to my writer peeps via social media.
Thanks!
Patricia, I think I love you.
To add to your comment to Remus, Beth Revis wrote 11 novels before she found an agent for Across the Universe. Meg Cabot queried every day for 3 years until she got an agent. My plan is to query agents on my first novel, if my partials and fulls get rejections I will query the second novel until that gets rejected, and so on. As far as how long I’ll query one until I give up and query a new one, I’ll just have to see on that. I won’t ever self-publish only because I need to feel validated by an agent that I’m good enough to publish. If my books get rejected, there’s got to be a reason. Each book I write, I will try my best to be a better writer. And nct2, I’m hoping to get enough feedback from agents as to whether it’s my writing, or just not their cup ‘o tea. I know that’s not always the case, but I hope at some point I’d get pointed in the right direction as far as rejections go.
fictionwriter – See the Jim Hines survey I referred to above – OK, it’s a small sample, but the number of people who knew somebody at the agency or house that took their book appears to be even smaller than I’d expected. It does happen, but…see the part of the post on “luck, good and bad,” above.
Julie – You’re welcome.
Beth – I’m afraid that when it comes to social media, I have no clue whatsoever, particularly since I don’t Twitter or have Facebook or Google+ accounts myself. I’ll try to remember the request when I have somebody update the blog format, but that’s probably not going to be for a good long while. Months, at the earliest. Sorry.
Amy – Um…OK. 🙂
Abby – I think that’s a very sensible approach, myself. (Of course, I would – it’s a lot like what I did, all those many moons ago.) Though it’s worth bearing in mind that agents and editors generally don’t have a lot of time to provide instruction or even explanations for EWBWs. Some houses even have a hard-and-fast policy of editors sending form letters only, to avoid possible misunderstandings. So don’t feel bad if you don’t hear much.
Regarding feedback from agents and publishers, I’ve been thinking about including something like the following. Is it likely to work?
If my manuscript is rejected, please check all that apply.
This manuscript was rejected in
A. Round 1 (the slushpile)
B. Round 2 (does this have another name?)
C. Round 3 or higher
Because of
A. Poor writing quality
B. Plot doesn’t work
C. This kind of story isn’t selling right now.
D. I just don’t like this kind of story.
E. Other (specify)
nct2 – You’re somewhat more likely to get a response if you put checkboxes on your return card, because you’re making it easier on the editor, but there are still those who won’t reply because there’s a house policy against it or because they’ve had bad experiences with doing something like this in the past. And really, an editor’s job is to choose stories, not to educate unpublished writers whose manuscripts they aren’t even buying.
I am going through the fire of agent rejects on my first book right now. I am finding two types of response.
a) Those that shoot a reply back in the first few days and give a comment such as “Not what I am looking for right now”, to “I’ll pass on this but thanks for the look.” These good people are in the minority.
b) Do not bother to respond ever!
For that reason I am just sending out queries across the board. The majority of agents want it all their way. “Give us your query excluding all others and we will not bother to advise when we cannot use it.” Ignorant and selfish to say the least and I for one am not playing. Note, I am not looking for feedback, just a reply, such a lot to ask for.
Do you generally need an agent to get published or can it be done sending out to publisher on your own.
I believe there are still a few publishers left who take unsolicited submissions from unagented new writers, but there aren’t many. So technically, yes, you can sell your book directly, without having an agent, but it is much harder (and the market is more limited) than if you had an agent.
The truism in publishing is that getting an agent is easiest if you already have an editor, and getting an editor is easiest if you already have an agent. Thus it is often a good idea to work on both things at once, because the process is the same and whichever you get first will help you get the other one.