How to get published

Simple. Do it yourself.

That's the short answer, anyway—but it's probably not the answer you're looking for. What you really want to hear about is a fast track to fame and riches. What you want to hear about is an alternate route to the traditional path of working hard, struggling for years, persistence, shrewdness, devotion—and a little bit of luck.

And talent.

Trouble is, there isn't really any other way. Not for most of us, at least. Word processors have turned us all into "writers". Desktop publishing programs have turned us all into "editors". Self-help books have made us all into armchair experts. But the road to publishing paradise is still a tough one, even when you handle it all yourself, and probably not one in a thousand writers—or possibly one in ten thousand—are going to make much of an impact.

Which isn't to say you shouldn't try. Writing a novel is a tremendously rewarding experience. I know because I've written a dozen or more of them, and each one came with a huge sense of achievement.

If not any hard cash.

Yet.

But I'm still out there campaigning my books and improving my batting average in terms of positive response from literary agents and publishers, and I'm still reasonably hopeful that sooner or later I'll make the breakthrough.

Maybe.

In the meantime, I'm publishing my own books. Not novels, mind. Instead, I'm publishing a range of more specialised tomes in various fields. And it pays. Not a fortune. But it's early days for this project, and in the current economic climate, people are understandably being very cautious with their money.

So watch this space.

POD. Print on demand

But novel writing, if that's your goal, is a different business. The average guy or girl in the street might well be able to pump out a few copies of a book, probably through one of the numerous print-on-demand (POD) outfits currently fighting among themselves for your precious coin. But once you've published your novel, you probably won't be able to develop an adequate distribution path to make self publishing pay.

Why? Because the market is just too scattered. Bookshops, saddled with hundreds of promotions from the big, powerful publishing houses, are already struggling to pay their bills. Go to Amazon and it will probably make you a victim of its success through it's portals where hundreds of likeminded authors are faking their own reviews hoping to flog a few more books to a largely bewildered public already stuck for choice. Ebay is not much use because almost no one buys novels from unknown authors in that marketplace. And modern price cutting will grind most hopeful publishers into bankruptcy.

It's not the same as, say, writing a history book on German Battle Tanks of World War Two. You could probably write that book were you so inclined. You could research your subject, talk to a few experts, buy some illustrations, copy a design template from Dorling Kindersley, and then hit the presses.

Yes, the market for such a book is also scattered around the world (and it's a surprisingly big market). But, crucially, fans of World War Two German battle tanks come together at key points. And if you're waiting for them at those points with a tray of fresh books and a convenient method of payment, you're going to sell a few copies. Maybe a lot of copies—just as long as you get your pricing and production right.

And there's a fair amount of latitude here for a specialised book. People are more forgiving than you might think, especially when you come riding into town on their favourite hobby horse.

A novel, however, is less specialised, even when it's a work of genre fiction. The world may well be teeming with people interested in vampire horror or playing cowboys or dressing up like characters from middle earth (and don't knock it). Role playing weekends are more popular than ever. But these fans aren't necessarily also going to be interested in buying your horror story or western or fantasy book even if you could afford to follow them all over the country, or planet.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that.

The vast numbers of readers interested in horror or sci-fi or detective fiction are, superficially at least, pretty ordinary people. You can't at-a-glance identify your market, and without that, you can't reach them economically. They're simply spread too thinly—although the overall numbers are very high.

Supermarkets score here because they're visited by pretty much everyone. They know that if they stick a dozen horror stories on their bookshelves, plus a couple of dozen thrillers, a dozen or so police procedurals and whatever else is in the remaindered bin, they'll sell the lot sooner or later. They're not handling just one book, remember. They're catering to a range of tastes. They're dipping into the book market (and arguably killing it with a death of a thousand price cuts). And they're prepared to sell at a loss; or, at least, at little profit.

But you don't have a chain of supermarkets. You don't have any way of reaching your target market except through the mainstream publishing channels. And to get that market, you have to jump through the traditional hoops.

Self publishing

So okay, some people have self-published and have made money and achieved considerable fame. Check out Wikipedia and they'll tell you that William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain and James Joyce all published their own books. But notice how all these authors are soundly dead.

During their time, the world was a different place, and there were fewer outlets where the literate public could get its hands on a book—which meant that the self publishers of the world had a slightly easier time in reaching their target market. And besides, the overall competition was lower.

To self-publish in the modern world, you're faced with a deluge of competing titles. And to stay viable, you have to have a range of talents because the moment you begin buying in skills, your profits start seeping away.

My own (specialist) books have all been written, photographed, produced and marketed by myself, and then sold online. Also by myself. There was no other way. But I had the advantage of coming from a design background and therefore had all the software and camera equipment at my disposal. I also spent a long time as a journalist.

For the untrained, unexperienced writer hoping to compete with mainstream books, a range of skills would need to be developed, and the design and editing and production has to be top notch.

Think you can do it?

Then give self-publishing a try. But I'd suggest you first carefully explore the issue of distribution. And remember; if you're going to directly offer your book for sale through a conventional retail outlet, the retailer is going to want his share of the cover price. His time will be precious, and he'll be under considerable commercial pressure, and unless you've got an outstanding product that he (or she) personally loves, he's not going to want to do much to promote it, assuming he even takes it to his shelves.

If you use a mainstream distributor, they're going to want a cut too; you're certainly going to immediately lose around fifty percent of the cover price. And if you price your book too lose, it simply won't be worth their while handling it.

Which means that if you're offering your paperback fiction for £5 per copy, you'll be very luck to pocket even £2.50 for each unit sold—and your cut will probably be considerably less than that when you add up your other expenses, such as travelling, packaging, postage, and telephone calls.

And then there's the printing.

A single POD book (a high tech photocopy, basically)would probably cost you anywhere between £8 per copy and £15. Or more. The price would drop by ten percent per copy after the first fifty copies. Or thereabouts.

Offset litho printing could get the unit cost down to one pound or two pounds per copy, but you'd have to print thousands of copies to get that rate—certainly not less than around two thousand units.

Now look at all the costs and decide for yourself how much you'd pay for a paperback—especially one by an unknown author.

And then you'd still have to convince a bookshop to make shelf space for your title. If you're a local hero or celebrity, you're in with a chance. You might sell dozens of copies. Even hundreds. But once your local market is exhausted, you're going to have to start travelling and visit other bookshops, and that will eat into your profits.

Incidentally, a word of warning here; many POD firms will promise to help design your book and even market it. But my experience is that POD books, designed in-house, are usually cheap looking and feel amateurish. Yes, there are good examples. But you have to look long and hard for them.

Mainstream publishers are far more clued in about design and marketing. They hire dedicated professionals and generally think in terms of tens of thousands of copies—plus they have the networks to keep costs under control.

Selling books online

It can be done. Possibly even for fiction. But you're going to have to develop a website that draws in tens of thousands of visitors a year. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Much depends on your book itself. If it strikes a chord with the public, you could do well. But developing that website will take time, and/or possibly money. You could take years to get sufficient traffic to your site to make it pay.

You'll also have to develop a payment gateway (such as PayPal or Nochex), and you'll need to be prepared to take ordinary bank cheques. You might approach your bank and work out a deal to accept payments online - which will be essential because a large number of your visitors will be from overseas.

But whatever payment method you choose, it will cost you money to collect the money. PayPal, note, will require that you create a business account. If not, it will limit the amount of money you can transfer and bank (although PayPal will naturally be happy to collect as much money as it can get and hold it in its account while you're sorting out your account; remember too that PayPal is not a bank, and is unregulated). Other payment gateways will probably have the same, or similar, rules.

Then you need to work out a routine and system for packaging and posting books, and you might yet want to use Amazon and other similar online booksellers to help spread the word. But it will all be work. Hard work. And while you're doing all this, who's going to write the next book?

Mainstream publishing

You can better appreciate now just how complicated it is to get a book into print. You can see how many people are involved and what the outlays are. You can see why publishers will accept manuscript only if they're fairly certain of converting them into profitable sales units.

Mainstream publishers, understandably, set anticipated sales thresholds. If your book falls just outside of that (in their opinion), they won't take it on.

To weed the complete no-hopers, and there are many, publisher use the time honoured literary agent filter, and these agents are going to have to be convinced of your book too. It's their reputation on the line. And, indirectly, it's their cash as well, because they have to invest time and money in you before they get money back.

Advances to authors used to be big, and agents got their share of that when the advances came in. But those days are mostly gone.

It's only when you look at the publishing industry in its entirety that you appreciate just how cautious everyone has to be. Yes, occasionally they're overcautious, and that means a lot of good books fail to reach the presses. But that's just too bad.

Get over it.

The bottom line is that you have to have a rock solid publishing package if you want to see your novel on a bookshelf. You need a great book, or at least a very good book, plus a good title, a great query letter, and a good "sell".

Because it all comes down to that.

Selling.

The route to getting a book published is just plain hard work regardless of whether you handle it yourself, or persuade someone else to do it.

If you're determined to self publish, first try a technical guide, or a specialist book aimed at a market that you've carefully researched and can reach economically. But forget the fiction market unless you've got grit and guile and a fair amount of time and spare cash.

In the meantime, make a cup of tea or coffee, grit your teeth and get back to your keyboard or pen or pencil and write, write, write. And when you've got a manuscript and need an editor, email me and I'll do what I can to make your project even better.

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Creative writing

● Writing tips

● Plotting a novel

● Finding a literary agent

● Choosing a literary agent

● Agent query letters

● Inspiration for writers

● Rejection letters

● Manuscript critique

● 5 minute fiction fix

● Proof reading

● Writer's block

● Creative writing school

● How to get published

● Active & passive voice

Sample writing

Like to read a few examples of my style of writing? Check out the links below. If you like what you read, and have a manuscript of your own that needs a little help, email me. I'll do what I can.

Sample 1

Dirty Business

Murder and mayhem following an industrial pollution cover-up.

Sample 2

Cruising

A light hearted tale about a holiday venture, with a difference.

Sample 3

Exit Point

An aviator becomes embroiled in a terrorist murder plot.

Sample 4

The Grace of God

A tale of blackmail following a hit-and-run incident.

Sample 5

Exclusion Zone

A middle-aged man takes a couple of suitcase bombs onto a London underground train.

Special features

Darley Anderson, top UK literary agent, on books,
publishing and success

Zoë Sharp, creator of the

action-packed Charlie Fox series of books

Jeff Kleinman, New York literary agent, talks shop

Crème de la Crime:

An interview with

Lynne Patrick,

publisher and managing editor of a smaller—but

essential—British

publishing house.

Click the image above

to see more excerpts from
my novels. All feedback,  whether good, bad or indifferent, is welcomed and appreciated.

How to get published tips

Tip 1

1. Be professional at all times. This can't be overstressed. If you sound like, or look like, an uncommitted amateur, you'll be treated as such. It doesn't matter that you are an amateur; in your mind you're a professional. Everything you do should be of top quality.

Tip 2

Decide from out the outset what your true goals are. Do you want to write commercially, or academically? It makes a real difference. Broadly speaking, commercial writers write for the market. Academic writers tend to write more for their peer group. Or for posterity. That's not to say that either type of writer is less committed or doesn't care about their product. But the focus is different.
If you're trying to write commercial fiction, keep your mind's eye on the money. Contrary to some advice, this is actually more important than putting your manuscript and characters and story first. Commercial writers learn to write what sells even if that goes against their personal ideals. Prostitution? That's exactly it. The only thing you need to worry about is how far you're prepared to compromise your ideals.

Tip 3

Study the market and the market trends. Things can change rapidly, and you need to adapt to those changes. You may be "out of step" one year, only to find that things are changing the following year. Can your work be quickly adapted? Can you "spin" your query letters and synopses to embrace a new style or trend. Look for opportunities and seize on them.

Tip 4

If you're considering self-publishing, first try writing for a smaller, more select market. It's a more cost effective way to learn the mechanics of publishing without losing your shirt on an expensive flop. If you can demonstrate to the trade that you've successfully self published a number of titles, the mainstream trade is likely to take you more seriously. That in itself will not guarantee a publishing deal. But a successful track record of producing and selling books will inspire confidence in you.

Also, it will help develop a "commercial mindset", which is something most amateur writers simply do not have.

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