We could say that, broadly, the centre of a narrative should mark the zenith of its arc – and therefore, it is the pivotal point of the story. If your book loses momentum around this point, that’s problematic.
So how do you avoid the dreaded saggy middle? Here are some ideas to implement.
1. Consider a twist at the mid-point
This will inject your plot with energy and propel the text on.
Might one of your protagonist’s friends or allies betray them, offering new interest and prompting the reader to reconsider assumptions they’ve made?
Conversely, someone the reader had thought was a villain may turn out to be something else. Perhaps they are more subtle, more intriguing, than they first seemed? Maybe that villain is wrestling with their own conflict, or fulfilling a role forced upon them.
Thinking more about assumptions, could you offer something subversive here? Maybe a character readers have assumed to be truthful has been lying throughout the story so far. Or is your narrator less dependable than they seemed?
What happens need not be a cataclysm; it could just be a series of hints to unsettle and intrigue your reader. All these things may come earlier or later in your novel – but do consider them here and see if they ignite your book.
2. Up the stakes
Often, a saggy middle comes from a lack of increase in stakes. What are the consequences if your protagonist succeeds or fails in their mission? What if it looks as though they might not answer the questions you posed earlier in the book? You could make the need to solve a problem more urgent, or introduce an additional element of danger or risk. You could add a setback or two.
We don’t want your protagonist to arrive too smoothly at their destination. Do elements of the plot fall into place too neatly? In that case, the book might struggle to keep momentum as it moves towards its climax.
Adding a setback, or a series of setbacks, around the halfway point is an effective way to keep the book alive. By creating new jeopardy and complexity, you’ll lead the reader on, making them wonder how the protagonist is going to recover. This is a terrific technique because wanting to know the answers to questions is instinctual in all of us – particularly when the questions are thorny!
Added to this is the question of whether your protagonist’s (and other characters’) emotional arcs need to be more expansive. Have you tied their development closely enough to the setbacks they’re experiencing? Consider whether more is needed to develop and build to sustain the fascination of your reader with your characters from this point.
3. Add more action
Does your novel need more action at this stage? How might you add drama and tension?
The action need not be physical – it can take many forms, depending on genre, plot and your readership. Consider an argument, where long-held resentments come to the surface; or perhaps a revelation that leaves one or more characters reeling. Whatever happens, will it open the way to further engaging twists, setbacks, and developments? Will it make your reader keep turning the page?
4. Experiment with editing
Just how badly is your book’s middle sagging? Is it time to make some cuts?
Read the text aloud. Are you bored? If so, that’s a sign some trimming is needed. I have found that when a writer doesn’t know how to get from one point to another, their text may be mired in unnecessary dialogue, small events which do nothing to advance the plot (however lovely the language) or an efflorescence of detail that just grounds the book.
Sometimes writers tell me they need to include lots of detail at this point because it is immersive for the reader. But the opposite can be true: it can be a drag factor. It might be that you are actively creating a saggy middle!
In general, your reader needs less detail than you do – so consider whether there is just too much here. It can be a painful process, but it is part of authoring a book. Being tough on yourself here is excellent training, too – not least because edits are part of the process of bringing a novel to market.
Bonus tip: if you do decide to trim your text, remember to keep any content you remove from your manuscript in a separate, clearly labelled, dated document. You never know – you may want to add it back in later, or even place it somewhere else in the text.
Hopefully, these ideas are useful for you. Above all, please know that saggy middles are a common problem – and definitely something you can fix!
My last email was grumpy. Bah humbug. A silver cane waved menacingly at orphans.
This email is festive. A Merry Christmas to us all! A shower of sweets for street-children, a fat goose for chilly clerks.
Just two things to say:
One, aren’t we lucky? Aren’t we as writers lucky, to have this thing we love doing? Laying down sentences on an empty sheet. It’s free. It’s creative. It’s reliably joyful.
And yes: this whole game has its arduous aspects, of course. All good things do. Getting an agent? Hard. Getting sales? Hard. Writing well enough to deserve either of those things in the first place? Yes, also hard.
But that’s not the core of what we do or why we do it. It’s writing things like this:
I’m Homer, the blind brother. I didn’t lose my sight all at once, it was like the movies, a slow fade-out. When I was told what was happening I was interested to measure it, I was in my late teens then, keen on everything.
Or this:
When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with. The very first time I saw her, it was the back of her head I saw, and there was something lovely about it, the angles of it. Like a shiny, hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil. She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily.
I didn’t write either of those paragraphs. (EL Doctorow did in Langley and Homer, and Gillian Flynn did in Gone Girl.) But imagine the joy of writing those things. Not all at once, of course, but getting there slowly, chipping away at a paragraph – chip, chip, chip – until the exact right pattern of words made itself felt.
We get that pleasure, you and I, and all we need is a laptop. Lucky us.
That was number one. My number two thing to say is, are you a member of our Townhouse community? If not, you ought to be. It’s free and it gives joy and companionship… and, as it happens, it’ll give you useful feedback, support and encouragement too.
Just go to the Join Us page on our website and select the FREE option.
If you aren’t yet a member of Townhouse, you are genuinely missing out. You have friends there; you just haven’t met them yet. Make that a little free gift to yourself this Christmas.
That’s all from me.
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FEEDBACK FRIDAY:
Your Feedback Friday exercise this week is simple: eat so much Christmas pudding that your EYES BULGE. In my view, it is perfectly acceptable if you get the same effect from eating mince pies. My wife likes Christmas pudding so much, she buys 12 of them at a time. They line a whole shelf and wink at me each time I open the cupboard, whispering softly of puddingy secrets.
When it snows, at any time of year, we get a pudding from that cupboard, walk up into a snowy field and eat it there, with squirty cream from a can.
And so, as Tiny Tim said: "A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, everyone!"
Hmm. We’re getting close to Christmas and this email has a bit of a bah, humbug tone – but I’m also writing on Friday the 13th, so I think I can get away with a little cheer-spoiling, so long as I don’t err again soon.
And –
I saw a blog post recently, from a guy in the fitness niche. He’d been asked about why someone wasn’t losing weight, even though they were controlling their diet and exercising properly and doing everything right.
And he just said, BS. It’s not possible that you’re doing everything right – over a period of weeks and months – and not achieving the desired outcome. Like: you’d actually have to break laws of physics if you eat (say) 1800 calories a day and spend (say) 2200 calories a day, and then not (over time) notice weight loss.
That’s not the way our blogosphere normally goes. On the whole, telling customers or readers or users that they’re completely wrong isn’t a brilliant way to attract customers / readers / users.
But, OK, sometimes people are wrong and it helps to say so.
In our niche, the myth I most often hear is some variant of:
“I know my book is fine [because of Made-up Reason X], but agents don’t want it because they only give book deals to friends / they can’t handle conservative viewpoints / they only want books by pretty blonde thirty-somethings / they only want books with violence / or whatever else.”
All assertions of that kind are basically false.
Agents want books they can sell. They want books that they can plausibly sell to Big 5 publishers, or to the kind of independents that can compete financially with those guys.
It IS true that agents will be dubious about taking on niche literary fiction. There are excellent, tiny imprints that do a great job with more demanding, niche, or experimental novels. But “great job” in this context does not mean “generating huge amounts of moolah”, and agents working with this kind of fiction are essentially doing it pro bono.
It’s also true that agents may well be dubious about working with digital-first publishers. Those guys can create huge sales, but they don’t always, and advances are small. If an agent thinks that a digital-first imprint is your most likely destination, they may say yes anyway, but they will be thoughtful.
And there are niches – certain sorts of fantasy or science fiction, for example – where self-pub is so dominant that Big 5 publishers don’t really compete.
So yes, there are examples of good, saleable books being rejected by agents. But that doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy. It just means you’re knocking on the wrong door: you’re a fisherman trying to sell your catch to a cheesemonger. If you want an agent, you have to make sure that agents basically want your type of thing in the first place.
But that’s not mostly what I hear. Mostly, I hear authors who have written, let’s say, a standard issue crime novel complaining about being rejected by agents.
And if you’ve written a crime novel, and you can’t place it with agents, then EITHER:
You haven’t yet tried enough literary agents (10-15, let’s say)
OR
Your book isn’t good enough.
Assuming an even basic level of professionalism in your approach to agents, then one of those two answers WILL apply to you.
And the commonest, commonest, commonest reason for being rejected by agents?
Your book isn’t good enough.
It’s not them, it’s you.
We’re not really supposed to say that in the blogosphere. It’s not the most supportive, friendly thing to say. But it’s true. And, actually, it IS the most supportive thing – because it’s the only message that will really alleviate your issue.
At Jericho Writers, we do of course have a ton of services aimed at helping you make your book better. (The gold-standard service? It’s manuscript assessment, of course – or the Ultimate Novel Writing Course if your book is still a work-in-progress. Call or email us if you want honest advice, tailored to you and your exact needs.)
However, the paid-for service part of things comes second.
The first part lies with you. You need to recognise that your book may not yet be strong enough to sell, and that fixing this issue lies in your hands.
Honestly? If I could choose between working with a gifted but feedback-resistant writer and a less gifted, but feedback-responsive one, I’d choose the latter every time.
Write a book. Write it better. Edit it harder. Market it professionally. And don’t complain about agents!
Good luck, and I promise I’ll be less mood-spoily next week.
***
FEEDBACK FRIDAY:
Let’s use FF this week to just consider all any questions you have about literary agents. If you have experience of submitting, then share it, even if you don’t especially have questions arising from that. Let’s just share experience, unearth your questions, and see if we can help each other. Log in to Townhouse, then post your thoughts here whenever you’re ready.
***
The missus is reading the kids a (somewhat edited) version of The Sons of Adam, my third novel from way back. It’s a historical romp, set mostly in the oil industry of the 1920s and 30s, but flanked by world wars at either end of the book. The kids are loving it, especially the war stuff. Tucking the kids in one night, I literally couldn’t find two of them, and was blundering around in the dark trying to find them.
Then two blond heads poked up from a little crawl space in between the end of one bed and the wall. ‘We’ve built a dug-out, and we’re going to sleep here.’ Honestly, the kids are small but the space they’d made for themselves was tiny.
They spent the whole night there and refortified their den in the morning. But – the power of fiction, eh? The loveliness of imaginative play.
I was thrilled.
Til soon
Harry
PS: If you’d like 1-2-1 feedback from a literary agent on your submission package, we can help with that, too! We’ve just released a batch of sessions spanning January to April 2025. Find out more about what’s on offer and how to book here.
PPS: On a similar note – if the word of traditional publishing bewitches but also baffles you, why not consider our Path To Publication course? In eight weeks, our expert tutor Kate Harrison will teach you everything you need to know about the inner workings of the publishing industry
Lots of things in writing are hard. One thing in particular is very, very easy… but it’s astonishingly neglected by a lot of writers.
Here’s an example of getting something wrong, using an extract I’ve invented for the purpose. In my mind, this extract might stand at the start of a novel, but it could be anywhere really.
So:
Dawn woke her – dawn, and the rattle of trade that started to swell with it. Barrels being rolled over cobbles, a cart arriving from the victuallers’ yard, men starting to bray.
It had been a cold night and promised to be a cold morning, too. Her feet found the rag mat next to the bed. She washed hands and face briefly, and without emotion, then lifted her nightgown and began to bind her breasts, with the white winding strip she always used. Round and round, flattening her form.
She continued to get dressed. Blue slops. Bell-bottomed trousers, a shirt, a waistcoat, a blue jacket, loose enough for her shoulders to work. Just for a moment, she looked at her hands. They’d been soft once, and were coarse now, hardened off by the scrambles up rigging, the hard toil on ropes.
Caroline – Charles as she was known to her fellow ratings – had been forced to take work as a man when her father died two years ago, right at the start of this new war against Napoleon. She had tried taking work as a seamstress, but the pay had been poor, and she had a younger sister always sickly to look after. In the end, she had found herself forced to dress as a man and work as a man, here at the great bustling port of Portsmouth…
I hope you can see that this passage is kinda fine… and kinda fine… and then disastrous.
The first paragraph here is fine: it starts to establish the scene.
The second paragraph is intriguing: why the flipping heck is this woman (clearly not a modern one) so keen to flatten her chest?
The third paragraph inks in a bit more of the mystery: OK, so this woman works on ships of some sort in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. So why is she disguising herself as a man?
And then –
The disaster –
The writer makes the horrendous mistake of answering that question. The story was just beginning to make fine headway. We wanted to grip our reader and thrust them forwards into the story. Our first three paragraphs set up a fine story motor, which was already starting to chug away. Then by completely solving the mystery, we destroyed almost every shred of momentum we had.
By the end of that extract, we still have an interest in seeing what happens to this woman, but we don’t yet know her very well as a character. We can’t at this stage care very much about her. But we did care about that mystery. And the author just ruined it.
The lesson here – and the easiest technique in fiction is – take it slow. If the reader wants to know X, then don’t tell them X.
That’s it! That’s the whole technique.
A much better approach here would have been to simply follow Caroline/Charles’s morning. I’d probably have given her some kind of problem to solve. Perhaps, she owes an innkeeper money that she doesn’t have and needs to slip away unseen. Or she has to collect some belongings from one part of town but has to get back to her ship in order not to miss the tide.
That way, one part of the reader is asking, Will she get back to her ship in time? But that’s just a top layer to the more interesting underlying question of Why is she disguised as a man?
Indeed, we’ll study the whole rushing-about-town episode with extra interest, because while we’re not that fussed about whether she misses the tide or not, we are interested in that second question – and we read about these ordinary story incidents as a way to uncover clues about the bigger issue.
The key fact here is that readers love solving mysteries. They like reading a text to find clues and hints and suggestions that lead them to an answer. I think for most readers that process has an extra impetus if the mystery is embedded in something very personal to a key character.
So the technique you need to adopt is:
Create a mystery. Then,
Don't solve it.
Whenever you find chunks of text – perhaps only a paragraph, perhaps only a line or two – that delivers mystery-busting information, ask yourself if you can withhold it. Does the information need to delivered now, or can this safely be left until later?
In my Fiona Griffiths books, I took the biggest mystery about her (Why is she so weird?) and didn’t answer it until the very end of book #1. I have some minor mysteries (What colour are her eyes?) that I’ve never answered.
In Caroline’s case, I don’t think you could plausibly avoid telling the reader about the need for male disguise for as long as that, but a good strategy would be:
Get readers intrigued by her need for disguise
Get readers involved in the other details of her life (which they'll love because of item 1)
As we start to involve readers in those other details, you can slowly reveal the money problems, the sickly sister and the rest
By this point, readers are now engaged in worrying about the money and the sister, and so you have another functioning story motor
That means you can slowly give up your first one and it's safe to start revealing the reasons for the male disguise.
That’s one way to look at it – and a good one. But you should also ask: what does my character reflect on or think about right now?
In our sample chunk, Caroline did think about flattening her chest, because she was in the actual act of doing that. She had just washed her hands, which made her think about her hands. But she had no reason to start thinking about the whole reason she’d taken on male disguise. On the contrary: she was up at dawn, she had lots to do, she had problems to solve – those are the things that would have dominated her mental landscape.
So another way to put things is simply this: narrate what matters to your character in the moment that it matters.
Gosh, how easy that is.
And honestly, if you go to your manuscript with these thoughts, I’ll bet that 90% of you will find places where you give away information too early, or in a way that clashes with your character’s own focus of interest.
Create a mystery. Then don’t solve it. The easiest technique in fiction.
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FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Creating (but not solving!) a mystery
Today's challenge neatly follows on from what you've just read.
Find a passage- 250 words or so - in which you create but do not solve a mystery. Post yours here when it's ready. Give whatever context we need to make sense of that passage. And please also tell us how many words / pages / chapters it will be until the mystery is solved.
(By the way, I'm approaching a million words on Fiona and haven't yet given away her eye colour, so beat that. I'll send you a plateful of cherries if you do.)
The challenge is open to anyone who wants to do it, but my feedback will be reserved for Premium Members. If you want to become one, I have good news! We've extended our 30% off November promotion into one last weekend, so now is the perfect time to join us.
***
My Year 5/6 children performed in their school play this week - a version of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. And golly gosh, what an old pro Dickens was. It's not just his literary gifts I admire, though I do. It's his joyously unembarrassed commercial instinct. "I want your florin, and by God I intend to get it." He'll use every tool he has to secure your attention. The idea that literary fiction has to be boring to be acceptable? Bah, humbug.
The bonus is that I’m doing a FREE webinar today at 12.00. The theme is elevator pitches and specifically how to:
Build a pitch that fully expresses the DNA of your novel;
Use that insight to help your novel fully express the delicious idea at its heart;
Use that work when it comes to selling your book
I’ll give you a clue right now: Part C is the easy one.
If you're a Premium Member, you may already have done our Take Your Novel From Good to Great course. If so, you can ignore this offer as the content of the webinar is very similar to module one of that course. If you aren't a Premium Member and haven’t done that first lesson, then this is a good opportunity to scope it out! As I say, it’s completely free - just sign up here to register.
Now then...
Last week, I ended a long series of emails on selling with a question to you all, via Feedback Friday. Or four questions in fact:
What matters to do you in writing?
What do you want to get out of this?
What do you think the biggest obstacles are?
What would help?
It’s really worth taking a look at how people answered.
On the first two questions – what matters – people mostly agreed. “Just seeing my books out there in some form or other would be cool.” Entertaining readers was a near-universal goal. People often wanted to be able to sustain themselves by writing, but no one had dreams of vast wealth from it.
Other comments that spoke to me:
A lot of people spoke about “the pure joy writing inspires, the fun we have putting pen to paper.” That’s true for me too. It has remained the one absolute constant through my career.
“Recognition. The biggest buzz of all is when readers tell me they laughed or cried, or felt that constricted feeling in their throat — the feeling of something that *really* matters.” And yes, same here.
“I want to be traditionally published and have a readership that likes my stories.” A lot of you were in that rough area, although I noted an increasing awareness of the various upsides of digital-first and sel-publishing options.
“I’m already getting what I want out of this. It may sound crass, but all I ever wanted was to get my stuff out there. I’m achieving this now [via self-pub].”
And a special mention for this comment, which we can all relate to:
"What matters to me in writing? I love it. Even when I hate it, I love it."
On obstacles
Comments that struck a chord were:
“It is my first time writing, and turning a passion and an interest into something commercially marketable with no prior knowledge of the industry, standards, expectations, process, etc. – it’s terrifying.”
“Second guessing every decision is really slowing things down and stopping me writing fresh stuff.”
“Time. There is never enough time to write, to research the market, do the marketing, without all the things that Life throws at me.”
“The system. Agents are the gatekeepers and agents are human. They pass certain things I would throw out. The publishers publish certain books I would never buy, but they regard as commercial. Thank goodness there are Indie Press and self-publishing routes.”
On what would help
Some really good feedback here:
“A little marketing genie would be good.”
“Time. Money … But also actionable advice, feedback, safe spaces to ask questions. Knowing I’m not alone … Community has been more of a help than I realistically ever thought it would be.”
“Help would help. Much like people who climb Everest, I would really appreciate the help of a Sherpa. Someone who’s seen and done it all. Someone who knows the secrets and can guide my feet over the dangerous terrain. I’m happy to do the hard yards. I want to get to the peak and plant my flag. But I can’t do it alone.”
“A guide on what makes a good story and how to slice and dice away nonsense.”
“Blue skies and sunshine …Someone to do all the advertising. Marketing, promotional stuff.”
“What do I think would help? A kick up the arse. I’ve had some wonderful feedback on my work from some lovely people here. I’m deeply grateful for their kind words. They inspire me enormously.”
“Access to professionals at a reasonable cost to those of us who are struggling to find the spare cash. I think JW already do this with their [premium membership service].”
And look, we know where you're coming from.
We'll use your insights to shape Jericho Writers Premium Membership for the coming year. We have a strong sense of what you want, and will be making some really huge improvements in 2025. We won’t announce anything until we’re closer to launch, but we’re aiming high.
If you're not already a Premium Member, remember: today is Black Friday: a day of dark commercial magic, where we try to make your wishes come true! If you join us today, you’ll do so at the best price we’ve offered all year - and your writing, as well as your chances of publication WILL improve. We'd honestly love to welcome you, because this community gets better, the more voices it has.
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FEEDBACK FRIDAY: An Especially Lovely One
And because it's a special Friday, let's have an especially lovely Feedback challenge.
So: I want a passage of yours (about 250 words) that you really love. Give us any context we need, and tell us why you love it. That's it.
My two daughters are, just possibly, turning into writers. They love starting novels – all called “Murder in the Stableyard”, or rough variants on that. Then they write a cast list, which involves perhaps half a dozen individuals, notably girls 2-3 years older than my two. Then they extend the cast list by adding about four horses. Then they ask me to praise them. Then they write a first sentence or two. Then … they start again with a new novel.
Some of you giving comments on Feedback Friday last week, noted that writerly procrastination did at least deliver a very clean house and a punctual approach to on-coming chores.
If you are confident you want to self-publish, you can probably afford to (mostly) ignore emails 2 and 3 from the list above.
If you are confident you want to be traditionally published (and are also confident that you’ll get the chance to do that) then emails 5 and 6 are less relevant to you – though email 7 is very relevant, and you’d be nuts not to properly absorb the lessons of email 4.
But I want to end with some thoughts on mindset. All that follows, but two things first.
One, please can EVERYONE take a look at Feedback Friday this week. I'd love as much involvement as possible.
And two:
NOVEMBER ALERT!
It's November. This month, you can become a member for 30% off our normal prices. Members get:
An entire suite of video courses. On How to Write, on taking your novel From Good to Great, on Getting Published, on Self-Publishing – and more. You could easily spend well over £1,000 on individual courses and not get as much useful information as you do from these.
A huge collection of masterclasses. We have hundreds of hours of masterclasses: on craft, on finding agents, on working with publishers, on marketing your work – and much more. If you’ve got a concern about writing or getting published, we almost certainly have an expert to answer it.
A vast range of live events. From “Ask Us Anything” to themed months on Build Your Book and Getting Published, and now including an online Writers Retreat, we have a ton of events to keep you educated and motivated – and in community with other writers.
AgentMatch – a proprietary database of 1400+ agents, complete with detailed profiles and easy search / filter tools.
Feedback Friday and query letter reviews - plus discounts on our other services. And more!
Most of all, you get to be in a community of expertise and passion. I was in an internal meeting the other day with three of my Jericho colleagues. And – I noticed that all of us, all four, were published authors. We’re in this business because we care about it – and know a heck of a lot about it. With Premium Membership, we aim to make that knowhow available to you.
You can sign up today at 30% off our normal prices. Info here. I really hope you do. We love serious writers and that includes you.
BACK TO MINDSET...
Right: mindset.
Writing books is not easy. Many of you will therefore set the endpoint of your dreams to getting published: getting an agent, getting a book deal. After that, presumably, the whole show is in the hands of grown-ups who know what they’re doing, right? And you can kick back, and write more books, and let the adults do their thing.
Except –
That’s not reality. Writing books is hard. Selling them? Also hard.
There are (estimated to be) well over 12,000,000 ebooks on Amazon. There are probably over 50,000,000 books of all varieties and formats on Amazon.
How many of those actually get sold? A minority. It’s probable that at least half of ebooks have made no sales at all. Not one. And if you set even a very low bar for acceptable sales – a few dozen, say – then well under 10% of books will ever reach even that hurdle.
Having a big publisher is certainly some sort of protection against these frosts. If you have a Big 5 publisher, you will sell some books, for sure, and not just in the low dozens.
But…
Print publishing is still a matter of 12 portly gentlemen running for the same door. On ground that’s slippery with rain, and in a high wind.
My first Fiona Griffiths book was published by one of the best editors, at one of the best imprints, at maybe the best publisher in New York. The book was a Crime Book of the Year in a couple of major US newspapers. It was positively reviewed in the NY Times. It got starred reviews in Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. It had a halo around it: it was destined to do well, no?
But it failed. The hardback didn’t do great, but the paperback was so shunned by retailers that it sold fewer than 1,000 copies across the entire United States. It was that failure which led me to buy the book back from the publishers and to self-publish instead. Buying the book back cost me $10,000 but within a short space of time, as a self-publisher, I had vastly expanded my readership and was making over 4 times the money I’d earned by way of advance from my trad publishing.
The moral of this story?
Not that self-pub is good and trad publishing is bad: they both have strengths and weaknesses, and the right choice for you depends very much on your book and your situation.
No. Rather, the moral is that you will always need to stay in control of your own sales destiny – or as much control as you can possibly retain. With that in mind, here is some final advice before I end this chain of emails and turn back to the happy busyness of the Writer’s Craft.
Mindset
Writers – myself included – tend to want to skip the boring bits.
Writing – that’s fun. Editing – well, I hope that’s fun, because it’s desperately important. Getting an agent and a publisher? Well, that’s fun and it’s glamorous and you get paid, so that’s a particularly good bit. And being published? Seeing your book on a shelf somewhere? Dropping the book in your mum’s kitchen waiting for her to go all pink and shiny with pride? Also good bits.
But to turn that book contract into sales success relies on lots more.
And yes, among other things it relies on luck. But focus on the parts you can control.
Ask yourself:
Is your book cover good? Not just good in itself, but good in comparison with its immediate competitors? This issue is so important, I’ll revert to it in a moment.
Is your blurb strong?
Is the pricing of your ebook realistic?
Does your Amazon book page look OK?
Have you been sent a proof of your ebook? And is that ebook laid out in a way that will boost your mailing list and encourage sales of further books by you?
If physical bookstores don’t take your book in any quantity, does your publisher have a meaningful Plan B – which would need to place Amazon and your ebook at the centre?
Does everything – the cover, the blurb, the other marketing materials – line up with the pitch that you’ve spent so long thinking about and honing?
Is there anything you can do to foster your relationships with booksellers, with retail buyers, with book bloggers, with reviewers, with festival organisers and so on?
One of the most professional authors I know used to visit bookstores in every town she went to. She introduced herself. She offered to sign books. She bought a coffee. She made nice.
She also never let her publisher send out proof copies without including a handwritten note from her.
She also wrote – always – to thank festival organisers and the like for events she’d attended. She made sure to know the names of book bloggers, and to find out about them, and to ask them about their children / dogs / pet iguanas the next time she saw them.
Her mindset was right. Every detail mattered. No detail would even add 1% to sales, but if you take care of enough details, these things start to add up.
You can have the right mindset and things can still go badly wrong – but your chances improve, and improve drastically. Don’t sit back. Don’t let the grown-ups take care of things, unsupervised. These are your books. You care more than they do.
Lean in.
Mailing list
I spoke in the last email about how to build your email list, but I didn’t say this:
Your mailing list is your strongest insurance against disaster.
If you have a robust mailing list, you kind of know that you can sell books and make money. (Not if the books are terrible. Not if you publish them unprofessionally. But if you do those things right.)
And that means, even if you are traditionally published and want to go on being traditionally published, you still need that list because of the protection it confers. It will be helpful if you (slightly) change genres. It will be invaluable if you switch publishers.
Build that list. Cherish it.
The book cover
It’s odd, but no one – including me – ever talks enough about book covers.
However, those covers are INSANELY important.
They matter in print publishing, because retail buyers are picking from a flipping catalogue. They are looking at one page of yadda about your book to see if they want to order it. The brightest, most attractive thing on that page is your book cover. They have essentially no text of yours to look at. The book cover (and your elevator pitch) matters hugely.
And in a bookstore: readers are hesitating over which book to pick up. They can’t yet see the back of your book. What else do they have to go on, aside from its cover?
On an Amazon selection page, the issue is even more devastating in a way. Users can’t even see a full cover, they can see a squashed-down icon of a cover. They see that, and book title, and price, and a summary of review ratings.
The cover is vastly influential at that first moment of choice – and a bad cover can easily crush your sales conversions here severalfold. A good cover (and title) can increase conversions severalfold.
And it’s not just that first moment of choice. It’s everything else, too. Your other visual marketing material will be (or should be) keying off that cover. You can’t, for example, create a good Facebook ad unless you have a strong cover. I mean, literally, you cannot do it. Because if you place the book cover on the ad, it looks weak, because the cover is weak, and you won’t get clicks. And if you don’t place the cover on the ad and use something more visually attractive instead, then you will get the clicks, but you won’t get the conversions when people land on your unattractive Amazon page.
So, your book cover matters.
If you’re an indie author, you sort of know that already and will have put proper time in to getting the cover right.
If you’re trad published, it’s very easy to be seduced by the grownups-know-best thing and to accept the cover you’re given. (And everyone will try to massage you into accepting that cover; publishers do not love having to redo something that’s been settled internally, even if they secretly know that the settled-internally option is not yet good enough.) So trad-published authors need to be on their guard. If that cover seems off to you, it is off. Fight for a better one.
Take your time
When you’re writing and editing a novel, it’s almost a matter of pride amongst authors to boast about how many drafts they’ve done. How many times a paragraph gets re-written.
But with marketing, it’s often the other way around. We like to get a job done so we can move on to the next thing that’s calling – maybe, some damn paragraph that wants another rewrite.
Do not be like that.
I’ve found when I mock up (say) Facebook ads on Canva, that I do something, and I like it. Yes: I like it after trying this element here or there, and this colour or that one, and this font for another.
But I’m quick to like something.
If I come back to the same task again the next day, I’ll do something better.
And if I come back the next day, I’ll do better again. By this point, my first attempts don’t look amateurish exactly… just not quite good enough.
And, realistically, for a lot of tasks – and definitely Facebook ad creation – you don’t need one utterly professional looking ad, you need loads. One of those ads will outperform the rest, but you can’t tell which one it’ll be until you try ‘em out.
So take your time. Do multiple versions. Pick the best.
And – good luck. Writing is hard. Selling is hard. And I hope these emails have helped.
*
FEEDBACK FRIDAY
An odd one, this week, but a good one to do.
What matters to do you in writing? What do you want to get out of this? What do you think the biggest obstacles are? What would help? Let me know. I think it’ll be an amazing conversation.
Welcome back to our Spotlight On interview series, where we uncover the day-to-day work of agents, what they’re looking for in submission packs, their thoughts on the publishing industry and much, much more. Looking to read more? All our Spotlight On interviews can be found right here on Townhouse: #JWSpotlightOnInterview.
This week, we’re speaking with Saskia Leach, junior agent at Kate Nash Literary Agency. Her clients include Anna Britton (Close to the Edge, published September 2024), Leonie Mack (In Italy For Love, published October 2024), Ally Wiegand (Going For Two, published October 2024) and A. J. Clack (Lie or Die, published March 2024) Authors on Saskia's list with upcoming books to look out for include Kerry Watts (Bury Your Secrets, coming November 2024) and Hannah Kingsley (Soul Hate, coming March 2025).
You can follow Saskia at @saskialeach_ for updates on her work, or view her agency profile here. Read highlights from our interview with Saskia below and view the full interview on her AgentMatch profile…
Saskia Leach
Hi Saskia, thanks for speaking with us today!
What brought you to agenting?
I always knew that I wanted to work in publishing. I was an avid reader right from when I was a child and I loved storytelling and writing. But as I went through secondary school and university, whenever publishing was spoken about as a career path, it was usually in the context of editorial work for a publishing house.
I graduated from university in 2020 just as we went into lockdown, which meant opportunities for work experience and internships had dried up. So, I signed up to as many virtual events as I could with places like the Society of Young Publishers, New Writing North and New Writing South. I joined the Spare Room Project - rebranded for 2020 as the Spare Zoom Project - which paired people who wanted to work in publishing with somebody already in the industry for a one-to-one call where they could learn more and get advice. I tried to have as many conversations as I could with people working in the industry, and this opened my eyes to the many different areas of publishing: editorial, sales, marketing, publicity, rights, production, scouting… and agenting.
When I heard about the role of a literary agent and found out a bit more about what that entails, it instantly appealed to me. I really liked the prospect of being able to work closely with the authors and being involved in the early formative stages of a book as opposed to the completed product. So, I started applying to formal vacancies that were being advertised for literary agency assistants and other entry-level roles. But I also decided to take matters into my own hands, and I drew up a list of all literary agencies based in the South East of England. I emailed each of these individually, explaining that I was a recent university graduate who was really keen to pursue a career as a literary agent, that I'm eager to learn, and that I'd be interested in any opportunities or experience that they were able to offer - whether that was a formal position, work experience, an internship, or even just some advice. I thought that the worst that could happen was that everybody said no or everybody ignored me, and that would just leave me in the same position that I was already in!
It was from this that I found a job with the wonderful team at Kate Nash Literary Agency. I originally joined as an agency trainee, where I learned about not only the agency and our authors, but what it is that a literary agent does and how the industry works in general. After six months, I was offered a permanent position as an agency assistant, and then after about two years as an assistant, I was promoted to junior agent.
What I would love to see more of in educational environments is coverage of all the different roles available to students who want to work in publishing. It’s not just about editing books; there are so many more ways to be involved in the journey a book takes from an idea to a finished product.
Could you tell us more about the difference between an agency assistant and an agent?
In the context of Kate Nash Literary Agency at the time, my time as an assistant was spent working with Kate and Justin on their client lists, helping with day-to-day admin work to support their authors.
But there were also wider agency responsibilities that came with being an assistant. Every agency does have a different setup and a different structure, but in my experience at Kate Nash Literary Agency, I worked a lot on our, at the time, centralised submissions inbox. I would review the material that was coming in, and would bring anything I thought was especially promising to our weekly submissions meeting and present it to the agents in the team. I also sent replies and rejections to submissions that weren't being taken forward. Other wider responsibilities included updating the agency website; the agency’s social media platforms; being a point of liaison with other contacts in the industry such as film and TV scouts; or day-to-day things such as a publisher asking if one of our authors would like to provide an endorsement quote for an upcoming book.
About a year into that, I started building a client list of my own, so my time was split between working with the client list I had at the time and helping other agents with their lists. Now that I'm a junior literary agent, the key difference has been that the majority of my time is now spent working on my own client list, rather than having a foot in each camp. As I made the transition from assistant to agent, more and more of those wider agency duties ended up being passed along to other people in the company so I could focus more on my clients.
How does a day in the life of an agent look for you?
This is quite a difficult question because one of the joys of agenting is that no two days are the same. Sometimes I’ll have a meeting-heavy day, whether that’s internal meetings or external meetings with publishers. I might be meeting with one of my authors to hear about their next idea, to give some advice if they've got multiple projects on the go, or to give feedback on their current work in progress. I might be meeting with an editor to pitch one of my author’s books to them or to hear about what they're looking to acquire.
Or, I might be having more of a desk day where I could be drafting pitches for any books ready to go out on submission. I could be negotiating a contract between one of my authors and a publishing house. Or I might be reading: the next book by an author on my list, some submissions I've received, or a manuscript that I've requested in full from a writer seeking representation.
Most of the time, it's a combination of the two. My day will typically be split between a couple of meetings and then some desk work, but no two days are the same, which is something that I really enjoy about the role.
What do you think makes for a good agent-author relationship?
Good communication, without a doubt. I think that's the backbone of any good working relationship really, and that's what builds trust on both sides. Certainly as an agent, it's really important to have an open and honest dialogue with the authors that you work with and to manage expectations. And I think that's something that works both ways.
When you're reading a query letter, what are some things that you'd like to see? Is there anything you prefer not to see?
Every agent will have their own preferences on what they like and dislike in a query letter, and this will often be outlined in their own agency’s submissions guidelines. If you're a querying writer, do take the time to read up on those guidelines so you can adjust your query letter accordingly.
For me personally, I recognise and really appreciate it when the author has personalised their query letter to the agent that they're querying. This could be as simple as referencing a Tweet that you've put out recently about a specific genre or specific theme that their book happens to explore. I like to see anything in the opening of a query letter that indicates the author has thought about why the book they've written is a good match for the agent they’re querying. I would advise authors against having one generic and unaltered query letter for every single literary agent in the country. Make sure you have checked how that particular agent or agency accepts submissions or which genres they're looking to represent. I do appreciate a tailored approach is more time-consuming, but I do believe that it will yield much better results.
In addition to having a short blurb about your book, I also really like it when the author includes a one-line hook or elevator pitch for their book. I like to see a bit of information about the author and what inspired the book, because it's often these stories that I remember a submission by. I'm always interested in hearing the anecdote or the life experience behind the book – it’s something I find really interesting and memorable.
How do you feel about synopses? Is there anything you'd like to see or anything you dislike?
I like synopses but I will often read the author’s writing sample ahead of the synopsis. When I'm making a decision on whether this is something that I'd like to read more of, or ultimately if it's something that I'd like to represent, it will almost always be the writing sample that this decision hinges on.
My #1 tip for a synopsis would be to give the agent all of the spoilers. Remember that when you're querying, the synopsis that you're writing is only for the eyes of your agent, and later on your editor. It’s not for the eyes of readers, so please don't hold back the key twists of your book to try and create jeopardy or tantalise the agent reading it. If it's a murder mystery, then include the solution: who did it and why? I'm going to need to make a judgement call on whether I think the plot works and whether the ending is satisfying, so it's really important that I'm given all of the facts I need about the plot.
Same question for the opening pages of a manuscript. Is there anything that tends to stand out to you in those pages?
I love it when an author opens with a bang and drops me straight into the middle of a high-stakes moment. Or if they open with a moment where everything changes for the main character, that's something that really catches my attention.
Something that I sometimes see in submissions is a chapter or two of preamble before the event that kickstarts the story. This is quite natural for an early draft of the book - but before you start querying agents, ask yourself whether your story could start with that ‘Chapter 3 moment’, or whether Chapters 1 and 2 could be cut completely with the story still making complete sense. If the answer to either of those is yes, that's perhaps an indication that your story needs to start in a different place.
Outside of the world of books, do you have any hobbies or passions that you'd like to share?
Yes, my two biggest loves outside of reading are musical theatre and football. I'm a lifelong supporter of Brighton and Hove Albion. I absolutely love musical theatre, both as a performer and a viewer. I'm a member of my local amateur dramatic society and I love getting up to the West End, seeing touring productions or watching local musical theatre productions.
Any last pieces of advice for authors in the querying process?
When querying, build your village. Make sure you have a support network who will be there through the highs and lows of querying, and can celebrate the wins with you, both big and little.
If an agent comes back to you with some personalised feedback saying something like: “I liked X, Y and Z about your book but I sadly won't be offering representation because…” I think that can sometimes be taken as a negative or upsetting piece of news. But something I’d really like to demystify is that if an agent has taken the time to come back to you with personalised feedback, that's usually a real compliment! It shows that the agent has seen something promising in your work and has decided to take time out of their day to help you get one step closer to that offer of representation. So please do take that feedback on board and know that it’s a positive sign.
If you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a Premium Member, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review once per year of membership! Finally, we have plenty of fantastic agents offering Agent One-to-One Sessions in November only – book your session now to hear their feedback on your submission pack.
A racing catamaran can sail faster than the wind – over twice as fast, indeed, under perfect conditions. (Don’t believe me? And yet it’s true, I tell you, true!)
Something like the same effect – only better – is achievable via mailing lists. Still better: this email is just as important to trad-publishing types as it is to indies. Almost more so: this is the one part of your marketing destiny that you can, and really must, control.
So:
Let’s say that you hustle and bustle your way to 1,000 names on your mailing list. You’d be pretty pleased with yourself if you did that, no?
And let’s also say – fantasy land, here – that you put out a book launch email which secured a 50% success rate. That is, half of all those you emailed went out and bought your book. (That’s not impossible, but it would be very good. Anything 30% or better would be excellent.)
So, you’ve just sold 500 books. Let’s say you’re offering a launch promo price of $2.99 for the ebook, which means your royalties are (roughly) $2, so you’ve just earned $1,000 from your 1,000-name strong mailing list.
I mean, that’s good, right? No one hates $1,000. But you’ve had to go to a lot of effort to secure it. Maybe your time and energy could have been better spent elsewhere?
Not so, my furry friend
But that’s not so. In an earlier email, I told you that Amazon responds quickly and powerfully to signals which tell it that a certain product is selling well.
Now the beauty of email is not especially the volume of sales that you can generate. The beauty is that you can generate those almost precisely when you want. A launch-type email will generate essentially all its sales within 24 hours and, honestly, within about 6-12 hours of sending.
So, the way to think about those 500 sales is that they allow you to manipulate the visibility of your book on Amazon’s system. If you generated all those sales within 2 hours, you might lift your overall bestseller rank on Amazon.com to perhaps 200. (In the UK, you’d do even better, with a peak rank of under 50.)
Now, as I told you in that earlier email, you don’t want to do that. You want to space your sales out over 4-7 days. So, for example, you might send your launch email out in waves, aiming to secure roughly 100 sales/day over 5 days. That will give you a lower peak rank, but will send a much strong signal to Amazon. Your email will get Amazon’s bots active on your behalf, and they’ll take over the marketing for you.
The result of your email to 1,000 eager readers could easily be sales of well over 5,000 copies over the next 1-4 months.
Phooey to catamarans. You and your mailing list can sale much faster than the wind.
None of this is theoretical. The summer when my wife and I had our second set of twins, I was due to launch a book. Our first set of twins was not yet two and my wife and I… were pressed for time.
So, my launch strategy – the whole thing, not withholding a single thing – was:
1. Send an email
That was it. There is no ‘2’. I didn’t tweet. I didn’t blog. I didn’t flap around on Facebook. I didn’t float zeppelins over New York or hire PR people at $1500 an hour.
I sent an email, that was it. And to about 1,000 people at that.
But those people liked my book and bought it. And my visibility rose. And Amazon saw my book happily a-selling and marketed it further. Over the next few months, I sold over 5,000 copies. My mailing list more than tripled. The other books in the series also sold much more than before.
I’m not saying this was a good, rational, well-planned launch – it was not. But it worked. Indeed, it was the success of that spectacularly lazy campaign which told me just how much power there could be in self-publishing.
In the front and back of those ebooks, you place a call to action, which says, “please join my readers’ club”. (You will never say, “please subscribe to my newsletter” unless you truly don’t want anyone to sign up.)
Now, nice people don’t especially want to sign up to a readers’ club unless they get some kind of reward. So, you offer the reward that this particular group of people most wants: namely, another story, written by you, and involving the same world and group of characters that they’ve just enjoyed.
Naturally, people then sign up to your reading list, which they do by heading over to your website.
Once they’ve signed up, you need to give them the book that you’ve promised. You simply automate that process using an automated email system (I use MailerLite) and Bookfunnel, a firm which solves the problem of how to get your ebook onto someone else’s device.
A helping hand
Now, yes, there is something circular about my telling you to build an email list to sell books… but you need to sell books to stock your list.
I hope that the emails on promo sites and Facebook ads covers that issue, at least a bit. (This is a flywheel. It’s hard to get it to start spinning. But once it’s going, it’s hard to stop. The first 250 names on your list are the hardest.)
Additionally, though, there are sites whose purpose is specifically to help seed those lists. You can check the various options for yourself, but the current champ in this area is BookSweeps. The emails you’ll get from that source won’t be as good as genuine organic signups from people who have bought and read a full-length novel of yours, but they’re not bad – and a darn site better than nothing.
Some specifics
One email isn’t sufficient to outline how to build and use a list – there are whole books that cover the territory in detail. But here are some starting points:
First, offer plenty of opportunities in the front and back of the ebook to sign up to your list. That’s not being shouty – it’s being appropriately helpful to your readers. Just like if you were building a website, you wouldn’t place just one link to a key page. You’d pop that link anywhere that users might find it helpful. You need to follow the same logic in your ebook.
Second, the webpage (on your website) where readers sign up to your club is very important. The key thing is to make it unbelievably obvious what you want your reader to do and that means removing all distractions. My own signup page is here: note the complete lack of a top menu or, really, anything to do on the page except sign up.
Your free gift needs to be a nicely produced ebook. It doesn’t need to be long – anywhere from 7,500 words to 15 or 20,000 words seems about right to me. But apart from length, in every other way the gift should be first rate. A proper cover. Proper editing. A proper story – and one that comes straight from the world of the characters your reader has just enjoyed.
(If you happen to enjoy crime stories, and would like to experience the whole sign up procedure, then be my guest. It’s that process which you are going to replicate.)
Third, you mustn’t think of your mailing as a way to take stuff from your readers. The mailing list is a way to build relationships. Once you’ve done that then, yes, around launch, it’s perfectly natural to say, “Hey, do you want to buy my latest?” But put relationships first, then asking second.
So, the first email that goes out to readers on my list offers the free gift (as promised), but the second one offers a second free gift – a pure surprise. I also tell readers a bit about myself. I tell them roughly what to expect in terms of emails from me. Hopefully, by that point, readers like my books that little bit more than they did before and – admittedly only in a tiny way – they feel like they have a teensy bit of relationship with me. Fostering that relationship is THE most important thing in your authorial career… beyond – of course, of course – writing quite excellent novels.
And fourth, you do, I’m afraid, need to kill people – and surprisingly often. Every email list will, over time, fill up with people who NO LONGER OPEN YOUR EMAILS! That shows shockingly poor taste, I agree, but it will happen. And you need to get rid of those people. Murder is one route. Simply removing their emails from your list is another. (All email list providers have simple tools to enable this.) The more dead wood you have on your list, the more likely your emails are to get dumped into Junk email or similar. You must avoid that fate. A small, highly engaged list is better than a large but baggy one every time.
Big Publishing and mailing lists
I’m not going to get into a huge digression here, but suffice to say that it is a Foolish Writer who gives up control of their mailing list to Big Publishing. I have seen some ugly car crashes take place under those circumstances. Even if you plan to be a bestselling writer working under the care of Big Publishing – especially then, in fact, you need to own and operate your list yourself. Aside from your books themselves, that’ll be the biggest asset you have. Don’t give it away.
And that’s it
You sell books.
People sign up to your list, get their free gift, get some welcome emails, experience the joy of a relationship with you… and are fully primed to buy your next book when it comes out.
Amazon will notice that burst of sales, and will reward you for them in the multiple – feeding your pocket and building your list in the one and same sweet process.
That’s the joy of the list – and the thrill of sailing faster than the wind.
Next week
This series of emails comes to a close next week, with thoughts about mindset… and plumbing.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Query Letters
We’ll keep things simple this week as well. Any chunk involving physical action – a fight, a car crash, a fall, an accident. Anything like that. 250 words please. And exciting, of course.
PS: This email has been running faster than the wind on Townhouse here. It’s pretty sure it can see its own backside looming up in the windshield.
PPS: Oh you silly billies. It’s November. It’s time to become a memberof Jericho Writers at 30% off the normal price. How can that not be a good, wise, rational thing to do? You get:
All our member courses – HOW TO WRITE, GOOD TO GREAT, GETTING PUBLISHED and many more. These are big, properly produced courses any one of which would often sell for more than the price of membership.
All our masterclasses – hundreds of hours of them on every topic you can imagine
Live events – everything from Critique Club, to agent panels, to live editing, Build Your Book, and so much more.
AgentMatch – our proprietary database of 1400+ agents, with detailed profiles and all easy to search and filter
A Query Letter review – totally free, of course
The joy of Feedback Friday
And the knowledge that we have your back. Got a query? Ask us. We’ll either know the answer or we’ll know someone who does. We’re here for our members.
Joining information is here. And honestly? We’d love to have you. Please come.
Last week, we dealt with the cheap and unglamorous world of book promo sites.
This week, we go to Madison Avenue, or at least to Silicon Valley. We’re talking digital advertising and, specifically, advertising on Facebook.
Now, before we go any further, I need to tell you that this is a complicated subject and small errors can quickly become costly. One email is not enough to fully explain the ins and outs.
Also, while I’m a more than competent Facebook advertiser, I’m not a seasoned expert. For both of those reasons, you should use this email as an introduction only – a first step. I’ve put some further reading in the PSes.
Please use it; it’ll be expensive if you don’t.
What is a Facebook ad?
A Facebook ad looks something like this:
The various components of the ad are as follows:
Sponsor identifier: You’re the sponsor of the ad so it’ll be your name (or writer-pseudonym) in the top left.
Primary text: That’s the bit of text that sits above the image. “6,000 5-star reviews…” The position of the text will vary depending exactly where in FB’s ecosystem the ad is shown.
The image: That’s the picture, obviously. (Andjust so you know, the sale ISN’T running, so don’t bomb over to Amazon to find it.)
Destination URL: The ad won’t send people to Amazon’s home page, it’ll send them to my book series page. But you want to show a tidied up version of the URL, just to keep the ad looking pretty.
The headline. This is the text right at the bottom. (“Save over 50% …”) I always think it’s weird that the headline sits at the very bottom, but I don’t make the rules.
The Call-To-Action (CTA): That’s the “Shop Now” button, in this example.
This email is going to offer a very swift overview of how to use these various elements – but, again, please think of this as a quick orientation only.
What you’re aiming to create
A good ad is sexy, spare, focused – and repellent.
It’s sexy, in that it should attract the eye, and arouse reader-lust in the right group of readers.
It needs to be spare, because you don’t have a lot of text to play with and you need to make sure that you give the essential messages fast and unmistakably.
It has to be focused, because your ad needs to tell people what it’s advertising. In the example I’ve given, it should be clear that I’m offering (a) a crime series, (b) it’s on sale [except, it’s not – this is just an example], and (c) what I’m offering is ebooks on Amazon.
This is also why the ad also has to be repellent. I actively don’t want ad-clicks from people who want to watch TV crime, or only buy print, or only use Apple as their bookstore. Those clicks will cost money and destroy returns. To those people, the ad has to say, very clearly, “this ad is not for you.”
How to build a persuasive creative
In terms of primary text, the basic rule is that you need your tagline followed by an explicit statement of what you want the user to do next. In my example, the tagline spends two lines pitching Fiona’s unique quality and reader reactions, followed by half a line which tells the user what to do next. (And you’ll note, I’m explicit about “download on Amazon”: I don’t want clicks from non-Kindle users.)
Don’t use more than 125 characters for all this, or your text will be cut off. It’s best to come up with several (three?) variants for primary text. One variant might emphasise a price discount, another might emphasise social proof (“X number of 5-star reviews!”), a third might pick out some key property of the book. Facebook will be able to test which variant works best for you, so give it some options.
Your ad image matters immensely. The basic rule here is that you use the cover art (without text) as a background and overlay a book cover on that art. You might think that sticking a book cover on top of the artwork is not exactly a way to make the artwork look its best, and it’s not. But again, your ad has to say: “I am selling books, nothing else.” You can get cheaper clicks if you don’t include a book cover… but your conversions are likely to suffer.
It’s also tempting to overcrowd your image. You’ve got some great reader quotes! You’ve got how many 5-star reviews? And wouldn’t it be nice to cram a bit of your blurb on there as well?
But radical minimalism tends to work best. A few words to convey whatever it is you want a reader to hear and retain. And a price alert. That’s it.
The colours you choose to do all this should, almost always, be either black text on yellow (like wasps) or white text on red (like danger signs). Using other combinations steps away from the tools used by generations of marketers. That’s probably not a good idea.
One positive in all this: you don’t need a designer or any fancy software to create these images for you. I made this image on the free version of Canva in well under an hour. The image above is 1080x1080 pixels. A letterbox format is also possible but tends to work less well. You can try both, but make sure you’re working to the standard FB formats.
Your headline is the only other element that truly matters. You have 45 characters to play with here, but shorter is often better. Pick the thing you want to emphasise (“Sale, now 50% off”, for example) and keep it short.
Your call-to-action button won’t make a huge difference, but on the whole you want to tell users what you’re expecting: so “Shop now” rather than “Learn more”.
No, but really: how to build a persuasive creative
What I’ve just told you is not the law; it’s a set of guidelines that works for most ads and most authors most times.
But you need to test. Testing is the only route to excellence. You need to generate multiple bits of text. You need to generate multiple images. You need to refine those, by eye, the very best you can. Then you feed them to FB and let it test what works. And that, in the end, is how you perfect the ads. You build several great variants, then test. Then you do it again. And then again.
Where do you want to show your ads?
Facebook will offer you a million different placement options, across its whole sprawl of websites. Many of those placements will offer much lower cost clicks than the Facebook Feed placement, but they tend to come with lower conversion rates too. So you need to test. Try (a) letting Facebook do its stuff, and (b) restricting placement to the FB Feed only. Remember, you’re not looking to see which option delivers a better cost per click. You’re only concerned about sales. There are good indie authors who favour approach (a) and others who favour (b). All that matters to you is what works for your readers.
Who do you want to show your ads to?
A big question, this.
A few years back, I’d have been encouraging you to go and ferret out your audience by targeting the readerships of comparable authors, and TV shows that chime with your work, and figuring out the demographic niche that works best for you.
These days, Facebook’s AI can essentially figure this all out by itself. On the whole, I think you need to tell FB:
What country to target
That you want people who read books on Kindle
That’s it.
There are highly successful marketers who don’t even restrict by Kindle usage, which somewhat puzzles me, but again: you can test with and without that restriction. And remember, Facebook’s AI is very effective, but it needs data. You can’t spend $20 and hope to have found your optimal targeting. It doesn’t work like that!
What results are you looking for?
When you’re setting up your ad, Facebook will ask you what you want to achieve. Do you want engagement (clicks and likes and so on)? Or website traffic? Or sales?
Now, of course you want sales – but you have a problem, because the sales are being made on Amazon, a website you probably don’t own. Since Amazon won’t tell Facebook which user has or has not bought your book, that route is simply closed.
You therefore have to ask Facebook to optimise for “website traffic”, and Facebook will duly oblige. It will report its success or failure in terms of CPC, or cost-per-click. And yes, this metric is important. But in practice what matters most is cost-per-sale, and Facebook can’t tell you, because it doesn’t know.
You can solve this problem in one of two ways, and they’re both fine.
One is: you just average out your baseline sales before you start advertising. Then you advertise and see how much above baseline you achieve.
The second (and my preferred) approach is to use the Amazon Ads attribution tool to figure out precisely what sales come from what campaigns. I’ve put a link in the PSes to some useful resources.
But whichever way you approach this, the arithmetic is little muddy. What counts as success?
The obvious way to think about things is:
How much have I spent in terms of ad-spend?
How much money have I earned in royalties as a direct result?
Except –
Directly boosting the sales of Title #1 by advertising will also increase its sales indirectly by lifting its visibility on Amazon and thereby attracting more organic sales.
And that visibility lift will have some afterlife – if you engage in an intense promo, you may feel the effects of it some 30 days after a promo ends.
And if you’re writing a series (as you kind of need to be for this kind of approach to work), then you should in principle be happy to pay, say, $0.10 to get a reader into #1 of your series, if you have a high degree of confidence that a sufficient proportion of readers will go on to buy #2, #3, #4 and so on.
So the benefit of a sale is very likely worth more than that one sale… you just don’t know how much.
As a result, it’s hard to say what an adequate cost-per-sale is. It genuinely does depend on your objectives and what you have to sell. You need to figure this out for yourself, based on the data you have in front of you.
How much do you want to spend?
I’ve told you to generate multiple versions of your text, and multiple images, and to test them all. I’ve said to test placements and audiences. I’ve said that estimation of actual success is somewhat muddy. Furthermore, Facebook’s ability to snuffle out the right traffic for you has become impressive – but it needs data to work with, and those early clicks cost money.
Unfortunately, all that says that you can’t really engage intelligently in a Facebook campaign without being willing to plonk down a significant sum of money, which you are very likely to lose. I’d say that you probably need to commit $150-200 just to get your feet wet: that is, to get your testing to a point at which you might start making (or at least stop losing) money. And that would actually be a good result. You’ll only achieve that if your images, your text, your campaign set up, and your Amazon books page itself are all excellent.
When and if you think you have a successful campaign, you’ll probably want to run that at no less than $10 a day, and perhaps more like $20/day. Just go carefully – and watch that data!
When and how to use Facebook ads
The book promo sites, which we looked at last week, can certainly add a chunk of low-cost, fair-quality traffic on demand – but you can’t scale up, or not beyond a point.
Amazon ads have a huge potential audience, but – even for really proficient advertisers – it’s hard to get scale and it’s essentially impossible to support a surge-marketing campaign.
Facebook, on the other hand? If you want to surge market via FB, it’ll be more than happy to take your cash – and deliver your ads in potentially huge volumes. That quality of scalability is vital to most seasoned book marketers. It’s going to be an element of any large-scale, professional digital marketing campaign for books.
That said, it is NOT likely that you can earn money by marketing a single book: you probably want to have a decently performing series of three books first. (Decently performing? That means good evidence that a good proportion of Book #1 readers will end up buying Books #2 and #3.) As I say, Facebook is not a newbie-type technique.
In short…
Facebook ads are powerful – potentially career-altering – but also dangerous. It’s easy to overspend and lose money. People who lose are more common than those who win.
And again: please don’t forget the qualifiers that have studded this series of emails. You can’t sensibly market bad books. You can’t sensibly market books whose packaging (covers, blurb, and the rest) are subpar. You are competing – literally, not metaphorically – against the best authors and book-marketers in the world. So match those standards.
Next week
Next week, we’re going to talk about mailing lists – and a ship that can sail faster than the wind.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Query Letters
It’s been a while since we’ve looked at Query Letters on Feedback Friday, so let’s go for it today.
Your task: simply this – present your draft query letter. Post yours here when you're ready to share it.
So, you’re ready to get serious about your creative writing ambitions. Keen to hone your craft. Committed to writing more words, more consistently than you ever have before. Maybe you’re finally feeling brave enough to share your work with others: a nerve-wracking step that (in my experience) is far less scary, and far more helpful, than it’s possible to imagine upfront.
Assuming the above isn’t too wide of the mark, you’re probably considering a creative writing course. I found myself in just that position five years ago, and I maintain that participating in one made a crucial difference to my motivation and self-belief. I’ve since written four completed books, three of which have been traditionally published. The fourth is due out next year.
But how do you know which are the best online creative writing courses?
The short answer is, it’s not easy! Picking the right course is a challenge: there’s a huge array of options out there. One size does not fit all, and it’s important to ensure that, whatever sum you invest, it yields the help and support you need.
In this blog post, I’m going to share my thoughts on 10 important things to look for, to identify the best online creative writing courses before you make your decision.
1. Reviews and testimonials
Positive feedback from previous students is a sure sign that a creative writing course is worth considering. Think not only about the number of starred reviews a course gets; read detailed testimonials if they’re available, so you can get a clear sense of individuals’ experiences and what the course has helped them achieve.
Ask yourself: what does this course promise, and what does it deliver for the people who participate? If those two things match up, you could be onto a winner. If not, it makes sense to look elsewhere.
2. Reputable instructors
When you put yourself – and your beloved novel idea! – into the hands of experts who promise to help you, it’s important to make sure they really are experts. You need to feel confident that the people teaching on your creative writing course are credible. What publishing experience do they have? How many years does it go back? Have they won awards or prizes? Have their previous students found success?
Just as importantly, you should look at the kind of writing a tutor or mentor works with and assess whether they’re a good fit for you. If you’re a committed fantasy writer, for example, it’s important for you to work with someone who both understands and enjoys your chosen genre. The Jericho Writers Ultimate Novel Writing Course tutors have a wide variety of specialisms, and we aim to match these as closely as possible to the projects of the individuals they work with.
Another thing to consider is how well you feel you’ll gel with whoever will be teaching your course. Sharing your writing with anyone means making yourself vulnerable, and trust is a key component of the relationship you’ll forge with any creative writing tutor.
3. Flexibility
It’s important to think about how a creative writing course will fit into your life. The best course for you is always the one you will actuallyparticipatein.
No matter what its merits or how much money you’ve put into it, if a course is structured in a way that makes it impossible for you to commit – perhaps because the schedule is rigid and you’re already dealing with work, domestic and family pressures – you won’t reap its full benefits.
Online creative writing courses offer more flexibility than in-person options, but they don’t all work in the same way. Take a close look at how any course you’re considering works in practice, so you can decide whether you’ll be able to participate on terms that work for you.
At the same time, don’t be afraid to decide that now is the moment to start carving out space on your calendar for writing. The trick is balancing this determination with a dash of realism. In my experience, both are important ingredients if you intend to bake a whole book.
4. High quality course content
Don’t be shy about digging through the full syllabus of any creative writing course you’re considering. What, exactly, does it cover? What are the key topics you’ll study? How relevant do you feel they are for you and your project?
Personally, I’m a fan of the blended approach – one that covers the craft of writing, plus how the publishing industry works. The beauty of an online course like the Ultimate Novel Writing Course is that it offers the best of both worlds: a focus on the nitty-gritty of characterisation and plotting (such as you’d find on a creative writing MA course), plus additional support with understanding how to get your work published.
5. One-to-one mentoring
Working with a mentor can make all the difference to your self-confidence, as well as the quality of your story. While some creative writing courses offer regular one-to-one sessions with a tutor, others don’t – and it’s important to know at the outset how much individual attention you’ll get from whoever is teaching you.
We offer two versions of the Ultimate Novel Writing Course, and our FULL package includes monthly one-to-one mentoring with your tutor, as well as two one-to-one sessions with a literary agent at the end of the course.
Students who choose our CORE package get a single session with a literary agent and have the option to book one-to-one mentoring with their course tutor should they wish to upgrade.
6. Detailed, personalised feedback
Actionable feedback on your writing is among the most important things you should look for in a creative writing course, whether you’re studying online or IRL. Good questions to think about include: how much of your novel-in-progress will your tutor read? Note that, in some cases, it won’t be your full manuscript. Will you receive a written report on your work? If so, how much detailed advice will it contain?
In my view, a tutor who can look at big-picture stuff (such as your character arcs and overall plot structure) as well as how skilfully you craft individual scenes and dialogue, is definitely worth having in your corner.
Students who opt for the FULL Ultimate Novel Writing Course package get a complete manuscript assessment as part of the course. This means their tutor will read their full novel (up to 100,000 words) and deliver a report of up to 4,000 words on its strengths and development areas, as well as how to perfect it.
7. Publishing industry insight
This links back to the credibility of your course tutors, but I think it’s important enough to merit a specific mention. The publishing industry is complicated, competitive and constantly changing. Whether your ambition is to self-publish or submit to literary agents and hope for a traditional deal, it’s vital to understand how everything works.
Look for a creative writing course that will support your understanding of the various ways to publish, as well as their pros and cons. Ideally, find one that’s taught by people who’ve been there and done it – and who still have their fingers on the pulse.
8. Opportunities for discovery
Imagine: you’ve shown up consistently and grafted hard to write your novel. You’ve taken on board your tutor’s feedback and edited your work, fine-tuning it so it’s finally ready to be shared more widely.
What’s next? Ideally, if your creative writing course has got you this far, it will help you get your work out there, too – probably by helping you put it in front of literary agents.
Many creative writing courses offer students the opportunity to have their work featured in a collection that’s shared with agencies, but make sure you know precisely what’s on offer before signing up.
All students on the Ultimate Novel Writing Course are offered the opportunity to submit their work for our anthology, and will also receive feedback from our agency partners on their novels’ commercial potential. CORE students get a single one-to-one session with an agent, while FULL package students get two.
9. Ongoing support
Writing is joyful, but it also has its difficult, dispiriting and lonely moments. No author is immune, whether they’ve produced one book or twenty, and no matter how much publishing success they may have had.
That’s why a creative writing course that offers ongoing support – from the provider, and / or from your fellow students – is well worth thinking about. I finished my creative writing course in 2019 but, like many Jericho Writers alumni, I’m still in touch with several of my classmates. It’s a pleasure to be able to review and help promote one another’s books, and half a decade on we’re still celebrating each other’s successes.
All Ultimate Novel Writing Course students retain access to their course materials for life, so they can revisit key lessons at any time. I also think it’s great that the FULL Ultimate Novel Writing Course package includes two years of Premium Membership to Jericho Writers. The best authors never stop learning, and accessing live masterclasses and video courses is a great way to keep pushing yourself.
10. Value for money
Finally, you need to consider how much you’re able and willing to spend on your creative writing course before you commit. Prices vary hugely, but so does what providers include – so I’d urge you to think carefully about a course’s long-term benefits and whether it offers value for money, as well as its upfront cost.
Spending a few hundred pounds on a short course that kick-starts your creativity may well be the best choice for you right now. Conversely, you might be ready to invest a bigger sum, and significantly more time, in developing yourself as an author.
We’ve designed the Ultimate Novel Writing Course to offer everything we think beginner and intermediate writers need to complete high quality, publishable novels and prepare to seek publishing deals. However, we also offer a host of other writing courses and editorial services – and if you’d like some help with working out what’s right for you, you can book a free consultation with a member of our team. Honesty is one of our core values, so you can rest assured that if we don’t think the Ultimate Novel Writing Course is right for you, we’ll say so. We’ll also suggest a more suitable alternative if we can.
So there you have it! My quick (ish...) 10 point guide to figuring out which are the best online creative courses out there.
You can find out more about the Ultimate Novel Writing Course, and download the full course brochure, right here on our website.
Last week, I explained that the trick of selling on Amazon is to achieve steadily growing traffic and sales over 4-7 days. In effect, you’re priming Amazon’s own algorithms to take over the task of marketing your book for you … and Amazon turns out to be rather good at doing just that.
But how do you get your traffic in the first place? We’re going to look in turn at promo sites, Facebook ads, and mailing lists. Today, we’ll look at the simplest and easiest tool of all – namely, the promo site.
These sites aren’t just useful to newbies – they’re nigh on essential. They bring the readership that you don’t yet have. Plus, they’re cheap. Plus (with one exception) access is easy.
The Beast
The biggest, best-known book promo site is Bookbub. It promises readers that it will help them get ‘Amazing deals on bestselling ebooks’, and that’s just what it does. (And, to be clear, the site is all about ebooks. Now, of course, you can happily sell print books on Amazon… you’ll just find yourself selling 10 or 20 times as many ebooks, so that’s what this email will focus on.)
In effect, Bookbub runs a massive mailing list – the biggest in this sector, by far. That mailing list is divided up into genres. So if you join Bookbub as a reader, it’ll ask you what books you’re interested in. In your specific case, you’ll tell it you like Literary Fiction, Crime Fiction, and Swamp Monster Steamy Romance. Bookbub will then send out regular emails which will notify you of selected books in those categories when they are on special offer. So, a book that might normally sell at $9.99 as an ebook could be available, for one day only, at $0.99.
Bookbub is offered a LOT of books. The books that are chosen for the emails are editorially selected and standards are high. Unsurpisingly, if you like your steamy swamp monster romances, and you find a classy and bestselling title sold at a fraction of its normal price – you’re likely to jump on it. Loads of your fellow readers will do the same.
For an author, this is bookselling gold… just relatively expensive gold. If you’re in a major category – like crime, for example – a Bookbub Featured Deal will cost you upwards of $1,000. You might think that’s pretty dear for a promotion of this sort… but on the three occasions I’ve had a Featured Deal with my books in North America, I’ve repaid the money by tea-time in the UK, which means barely midday in New York, and not-even-properly-woken-up time in California. The deal lasts all day, and the effects of the deal last even longer.
So: if you can get a Bookbub deal, then do. And really, a disciplined author should put in for a deal at least 5-6 times a year. There’s no harm in knocking.
In fact, the only real problem with Bookbub is that you have no guarantee at all of being accepted – and the odds are against you. (They used to say they take no more than 1 in 5 books offered. I think that ratio has gone down and is, in any event, increasingly biased towards authors with a well-established following.)
That means, it’s good to know how The Beast works. It’s good to apply for promos. But it’s also good to have a back-up. And that’s why we need to get to know…
The little sisters
There are literally dozens of book promo sites, many of which are simply useless. But there are still a good few sites with meaningful email lists and a meaningful capacity to drive sales for you.
The best sites do change from time to time, so I always check out the latest information from David Gaughran and Nicholas Erik. Both of those guys are in the market a lot, for their own books and for campaigns they manage on behalf of other authors. I basically trust them to know the good sites and make honest recommendations to others.
Be aware that the various sites do have their differences. Freebooksy, for example, will only handle books that are being promoted at $0.00. Bargainbooksy will handle promotions of $0.99 and similar. There are also sites that handle only specific genres. And so on. Prices are relatively affordable and should certainly be within your budget.
Crucially, these sites are essentially non-selective. That means, if you’re a newbie author without a huge pre-existing following, you can still use these services. Indeed: not just “can”, but “bloody well ought to”. It should be the very first layer of your promotional campaign.
Promo stacking
You’ll hear indie authors use the phase ‘Promo stacking’ – and it’s what I recommend. But the phrase is just a little misleading. A stack is a set of things piled vertically, right? A stack of books, a stack or ironing.
And that tends to suggest that if your overall book promotion campaign is going to run Monday to Friday, that you should ‘stack’ all your promo sites on (say) the Monday. And that’s not right.
Promo stacking means using multiple different promo sites, but spaced out so you can add traffic throughout your promotional period. BargainBooksy for Monday, RobinReads for Tuesday, Fussy Librarian for Wednesday, and so on.
For under $200 you can build a five-day promotional campaign that will get your book out in front of thousands and thousands of readers. You shouldn’t leave things there – we’ll talk about more powerful strategies in subsequent emails – but even pro marketers working on big campaigns for authors making seven figures a year will start with the basics: bookings on promo sites running through the term of the campaign.
It's easy. It’s low cost. And it works.
Don’t forget the basics
All that said, please don’t forget the basics.
By far the biggest marketing failure made by newbie authors is to hurtle through to the very end of the selling process – booking promo campaigns, designing Facebook ads – when the preceding plumbing is woefully leaking.
So:
Is your book actually good, or is it just you and your mum who thinks so? If it’s just you and your mum, there is no amount of marketing that will make that turkey fly. You MUST get your book to the kind of standards required by high quality digital-first publishers. If that means investing in writing courses and professional editorial feedback, then spend that money. (Preferably with us! We’re very good.) If readers don’t like your book, Amazon will figure this out, you’ll get lousy reviews, and the more money you spend advertising the book, the more money you’ll lose. Write. A. Good. Book.
Is your cover actually good, or is it just you and Dorky Phil who did the Photoshop work for you who think it is? Again: there’s no compromise here. Your book cover must look like something that could adorn a book put out by Penguin Random House or any of the other big boys. That also means that your pitch and your genre have to be visually assimilable – and quickly – from the thumbnail of cover and title. Here too, there can be no compromise.
Is your blurb good? Do you have good reviews coming in? Is your pricing sane? Is your website up to scratch? Is your mailing list set up and do you have a proper welcome automation in place?
If you allow any of these things to be sub-par, you will struggle. You are up against the best writers and the best publishers on the planet, so don’t think some lowlier standard applies to you. It doesn’t.
Next week: a tool that’s more powerful and more scalable than anything else out there. It’s also a tool that will spend your money with glee and won’t in any way guarantee results. In short, we’re riding the bronco that is Facebook ads – and don’t tell me you’re not ad-curious. I know you are.
See you next week.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Single Sentence Summaries
Because we're now at the end of Build Your Book Month, we ought to look at what you've accomplished. So, I'd like:
A one sentence summary of your book, please. Just a quick explanation of what kind of book you're talking about.
250 words or so of plot outline - which will include giving away the ending. You're not blurbing the book; you're summarising.
Ideally, I want to see a nice tidy sense of shape. I want to feel the point of the book and the forward thrust. It's really not easy summarising in this way, and you can write a good book and a lousy summary - but still. Let's give it a go. When you're ready, post yours here.
I have just noticed: I have many children. And they're still here. Oh yikes. They made pumpkin soup today, and I saw an actual footprint, in soup, on my kitchen floor.
Welcome back to our Spotlight On interview series, where we uncover the day-to-day work of agents, what they’re looking for in submission packs, their thoughts on the publishing industry and much, much more. If you're new to the series, don't worry! All our Spotlight On interviews can be found right here on Townhouse: #JWSpotlightOnInterview.
This week, we're speaking with Philippa Sitters, who has recently founded her own agency after ten years spent at David Godwin Associates. Her clients include Margarita Montimore (Oona Out of Order, published 2020), Ashley Hickson-Lovence (The 392, published 2020), Kate Brook (Not Exactly What I Had in Mind, published 2022) and Connor Hutchinson (Dead Lucky, coming 2025).
You can follow Philippa at @PhilippaSitters for updates on her work, or view her agency profile here. Read highlights from our interview with Philippa below and view the full interview on her AgentMatch profile…
Philippa Sitters
Hi Philippa, thanks for speaking with us today!
What brought you to agenting?
Back in 2011 I moved to London to do a Publishing MA at Kingston University, where one of the most important parts of the course was to do at least one month of work experience in the industry. I happened to attend a lecture that was put on for the Creative Writing students where we heard from a literary agent. Her talk was all about finding an agent, but afterwards I gave her my business card in the hopes I could spend some time at her agency, PFD. I spent the whole month of January interning there, and they must have seen some agenting spirit in me, because I was then in and out of the office during the rest of my Masters, covering the role of assistant to the CEO, while the person in that role was building her list. If she had a meeting, I’d be in to cover. It was a busy and fun environment, and I knew I didn’t have the patience to sit and edit for hours – most people on my course were keen to edit – so agenting was an ideal option.
Why did you decide to open your own agency and how have you found that experience?
It’s very early days right now, but it’s been a great experience. The outpouring of support from within the industry has been overwhelming and I’m proud to say I’ve already sold five books. Long may that continue! I decided to set up PSA because I love having autonomy, being in charge of my own time, while being free to champion brilliant people.
What does the day in the life of an agent look like for you?
The nature of the job means no one day looks the same, and that’s part of the appeal. Each day will involve fielding emails between clients, publishers, co-agents and all sorts of other people keen to work with my clients, such as broadcasters, book festivals and journalists. Perhaps I’ll spend some time researching. I could be looking for new clients or finding out more about commissioning editors who might like to see something I’m working on. Many days I’ll try and meet editors in person, or catch up with author clients. I also spend time editing manuscripts or book proposals. Occasionally the day will be capped off at a book launch, those are always fun. You can only really plan to try your best to do something on any given day as you never know what’s waiting around the corner. A huge part of agenting is resolving issues between parties, and these can pop up from nowhere.
In your opinion, what makes a good author-agent relationship?
As with any relationship; honesty, kindness and mutual respect. That sounds a bit sappy but putting yourself out there as an author is an intensely stressful thing to do, even if you’re the most laid-back kind of person. I often see this relationship as that of professional friends. We chat about anything and know a lot about each other, because when you’re dealing with projects that are so personal it’s important to get to build mutual trust.
What’s at the top of your wishlist in fiction?
Something with an incredible hook. I don’t think it really even matters what genre, it could be literary, commercial, book club, crime or thriller, romance or historical, if the hook is there, I’m in. Among my bestselling authors is Margarita Montimore, whose debut followed a woman who lived her life quite literally in the wrong order. Once you hear that, you want to know so much more, and yet it’s a simple line. However, if we’re going to be fussier I want richly drawn family stories, tales of friendship and revenge, wide open landscapes and vivid cities bursting with life. Books that pull you in and which you don’t want to leave, where the characters are fully drawn and in turn don’t leave you.
What about non-fiction?
Fascinating and enlightening books from experts, whether that’s a book that examines a new take on history, a deep dive into a certain aspect of science or something much more personal. I love a gorgeously-written memoir or a book that could change the world for the better.
Is there anything you would prefer not to receive?
I’m not the right agent for high fantasy, sci-fi that’s at the more complicated end (other worlds for example), nor children’s books and poetry. I handle the latter two on behalf of clients who write for adult audiences but only if I already represent them.
When you’re reading a query letter, what are some things you like and dislike seeing?
It’s not essential, but I do love to hear from someone who’s clearly looked at my list or knows who I am. A submission that’s professional and friendly and provides all the information I’m after: short pitch, genre, blurb, comparative titles and biography. It’s a shame if any of this is missing. Things that really put me off are submissions that cc every agent in the industry, beg you to represent them, are sarcastic or rude (“Not that you’ll bother to read this but I’m sending you my submission.”). You wouldn’t believe how often that happens.
Some agents love synopses, others don’t. What do you think of them, and what do you like/dislike seeing in them?
I enjoy a synopsis. I read it third, after I’ve read the cover letter and sample writing. If I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read I want to then have a rough idea of how the plot will unfold and whether I think it could work. Then I’ll request the full manuscript. So the synopsis isn’t something I need to tell a really thorough story, but gives me a good idea of how the book will be structured and whether it’s likely to pull me in.
Is there anything an author can do in the first few pages of their manuscript that will really grab your attention? Anything you don’t enjoy as much?
Naturally this is quite subjective. Every book is different and there are a million ways to start a book, so it’s probably easier to flag habits I notice. Lots of books begin with descriptions of the weather, and funnily enough, descriptions of their character’s eyes. It wouldn’t make me stop reading, but it’s something I’ve noticed over the years.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned during your time as an agent?
I think I’ve become increasingly better at handling rejection, steelier perhaps. When you start out and you’re pouring all your energy into certain projects only for them to be passed up by publishers, you feel the hurt, but as time goes on you realise there are myriad reasons an editor might pass something up, which aren’t personal at all. It’s imparting this steeliness to your authors that’s the tricky part.
Any last pieces of advice for querying authors?
I would encourage you to find a community to share your experiences with, with whom you can swap writing, share your highs and lows with. It can feel like a lonely road, and it’s a process that everyone handles differently, but authors I know who have found a writing group really appreciate the support network, and the opportunity to share their writing with likeminded people rather than asking family and friends for their honest opinion, which must be scary. Also, keep writing and keep trying if it’s what makes you happy.
If you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a Premium Member, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review once per year of membership! Finally, we have plenty of fantastic agents offering Agent One-to-One Sessions in October and November – book your session now to hear their feedback on your submission pack.
Over the last couple of weeks, we thought about how to sell books the traditional way - print books sold through physical bookstores. The short summary: you try to amass retail footprint (via your publisher’s sales team) then create a real density of awareness once you have it. The lethal catch: if you don’t capture that footprint in the first place, there’s essentially nothing that can be done to achieve sales thereafter.
Today, we turn from a world of tweed, pipe tobacco and hardbacks… to bits, bytes and algorithms.
This email (and the ones that follow) are of particular relevance to anyone self-publishing their books, but I think they’re ALL of relevance anyway. No ambitious author should be without a mailing list under their own control. And the other tools we’re talking about are so basic to modern digital selling that you can’t afford to ignore them. And, to be blunt, plenty of trad publishing companies who ought to know better are still poor at digital selling. You won’t be able to understand or modify those failures unless you understand the territory. So: listen up.
The big question today is:
How, in theory, do you achieve huge sales via Amazon?
Yes, I know that other online bookstores exist. But they’re so small in comparison with Amazon that they barely count. Kindle Unlimited alone is about equal in size to all other non-Amazon e-stores combined. So, I’m going to focus on Amazon. That’s where the sales are.
And… the answer to our big question is easy. It’s:
Achieve strong, steady traffic to your book’s Amazon page; and
Ensure you have strong conversions once readers get there.
I’m not going to talk about Part 2 of that very much. In a nutshell, you need a blisteringly good book cover. You need a strong blurb. You need to accumulate some reviews. You need a sensible price (which means a low one. My Fiona series is self-published in the US. The first book in the series normally sells at $0.99. The other books sell at $4.99.) And – have I ever mentioned this? – everything of course needs to be perfectly in line with your insanely strong elevator pitch. You all know what a strong Amazon page looks like, because you’re familiar with it as readers. Create that.
So let’s turn instead to Part 1 of the question: an altogether harder and more thought-provoking question. How do you drive traffic to your Amazon page?
The biggest source of traffic
Before we start to answer it, I want to call your attention to the phrase “strong, steady traffic”. What does that mean exactly? Also: who cares? If you had, say, 10,000 visitors to your book page, why would you especially care if they all came at half-past two on Saturday, or trickled out over a week, or trickled out over two months? If, let’s say, one in ten of those visitors ends up buying a book, that’s 1,000 book sales whichever way you count it, right?
But no: that’s not right. That arithmetic is totally wrong.
Because the biggest source of traffic to your Amazon page will be… tiny drumroll… Amazon.
Amazon’s websites have more book-buying traffic than anyone else, by far. Amazon knows exactly who amongst their horde of buyers is likely to buy your book. Further, Amazon has any number of ways to advance or drop the visibility of different pages. For example, a really popular book page might feature on:
An overall bestseller list.
A sub- or sub-sub-bestseller list. (You can sit at the top of multiple lists.)
A “customers also bought” selection attached to books by other writers in your genre.
The home page for certain users. (So, if you’ve bought a lot of romantic comedies from Amazon recently, you may find that your Amazon home screen fills with various other rom-coms for you to consider.)
A hot new releases list.
Emails to selected users (i.e., readers in the same genre.)
Search pages, where the search term is in some way relevant to your book. This could even be for another author’s name. So if I enter “Gillian Flynn” as a search term, Amazon will first display some books by GF and then start to suggest books that it thinks GF-type readers are likely to enjoy.
And so on...
So, the best way to get traffic to your book’s Amazon page is to get Amazon itself to boost your page’s visibility. Essentially, you want to make sure that Amazon’s algorithms and robots to decide that what they most want to do is feed traffic to your book page.
But how?
Strong and steady
To answer that question, you need to know two things.
The first is that Amazon’s bestseller lists are extremely sensitive to short-term movements. A classic bestseller list – the NY Times list, for example – reflects the total volume of weekly sales, and is updated once each week. Amazon’s list, by contrast, updates every hour. What’s more, the sales you’ve made in the last 24 hours account 50% of your total ranking. The sales you make in the preceding 24 hours account for the next 25%. The prior day for 12.5%, and so on.
That means Amazon is electrically sensitive to quite small movements, in a way that the NYT list is not.
That said, Amazon’s little robots know that a one-off spike doesn’t mean too much – it could be an email blast that gets a flurry of sales and nothing more before or after.
So, the Indie Author Hive Mind (which is exceptionally smart, by the way) says:
Work to secure sales over 4 days, not 1.
A little longer than 4 days is probably better – say 5-7 – but that does depend on how much marketing oomph you can bring.
Ideally, you’d have a gently sloping increase in sales over the period – so aim for something like 100 / 110 / 120 / 130 in terms of sales progression. (I mean these as indicative units, not specific book sales. A brand-new indie author would be doing very well indeed to shift 400+ books over four days.)
If your sales tools are still in their infancy (i.e., no mailing list, smallish ad budget), then do what you can. I’d suggest that getting some sales on Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and Day 4 would be a reasonable aim, with anything splashy you can manage coming on Day 4.
You’ll note that this advice will NOT maximise your peak bestseller rank. If you wanted to do that, you wouldn’t just try to get your sales compacted into a single day. You’d ideally try to have them squashed into a single hour. And yes, you’d have the pleasure and satisfaction of a salesrank you can boast about to your dental hygienist. But you won’t get as many sales overall as if you follow the plan here. And sales matter more.
What happens next?
So let’s say you follow the plan, and achieve that gently sloping uptick in sales over 4-7 days. What then? You’ll have exhausted your mailing list. Your ad budget will be empty. What next?
Well, what next is – Amazon.
If you do this right, at about the four-day point, you’ll see a sudden surge in sales as Amazon takes over the marketing. Its tiny little underpaid, non-union bots are essentially saying, “OK, author-human, we’re convinced that this book of yours is worth marketing, so we’re going to start marketing it ourselves. We’re going to sift through the MILLIONS of readers who come daily to our website, and we’re going to show your book to the ones most likely to buy it.”
That sounds exhilarating – and it is. But the exhilaration (and the sales) won’t last forever. New books come onto the market, new sales surges are manufactured, those underpaid little bots are fickle – FICKLE, you hear me? – and they will start flashing their glossy metallic ankles at other books and other authors instead.
So, over a period of about 30 days, you’ll see sales tail off to a base level… then probably dwindle further as time goes by.
You’ll do better in that 30-day period (and maybe extend it a little) if your Amazon page is all seven shades of fantastic: Amazon will prefer to send readers to a page that ends up in sales. You’ll also do better if readers read and enjoy and finish your book. (How does Amazon know if you finish your book? Because it collects data from a gazillion Kindles.) But nothing lasts forever. Your sales surge won’t.
The arithmetic of sales
Earlier in this email, I said:
“If you had, say, 10,000 visitors to your book page, why would you especially care if they all came at half-past two on Saturday, or trickled out over a week, or trickled out over two months? If, let’s say, one in ten of those visitors ends up buying a book, that’s 1,000 book sales whichever way you count it, right?”
You can now understand why that logic is flawed.
If you trickled those sales out over two months, your popularity on Amazon would almost certainly never rise to a point where you tickled Amazon’s bots enough to get them involved. So your expected sales would indeed be 1,000 books, or something similar.
If you took the one-off surge approach, I think that Amazon would respond, just not in a very powerful or sustained way. But still. Books sold? More than 1,000 anyway.
And if you took the slow and steady over 4-7 days approach? You’d easily generate enough sales to get a really good blast of love from Amazon and you’d see lovely, organic sales for week, after week, after week. That’s where you’ll really make the money. That’s also why smart indie authors are perfectly happy if their Week 1 ad campaign makes exactly zero profit. It doesn’t have to make a profit in week 1. It has to make a profit in the somewhat longer term. The approach outlined in this email tells you how to go about doing that.
“Now look, you blithering idiot, you gibbering phytoplankton, you lumpen mass of curdled whey – why won’t you answer the ONE QUESTION that I really want you to answer?”
I expect that most of you will be thinking along these lines – or a politer version anyway. Because of course, it’s all very well setting out the theory of how to apportion your traffic to Amazon, but how do you secure that traffic in the first place?
I’ll answer that question in some detail next week, with deep dives into a couple of further areas after that, but suffice to say that there are lots of things that don’t work:
Twitter / X
Instagram
Blogging
Blog tours
Organic Facebook traffic (probably)
Boosted Facebook posts
Amazon ads
Traditional publicity, of the sort that Big Publishing uses.
Some items on this list might be surprising: how could Amazon ads not increase sales on Amazon, for example? The answer is that Amazon ads may increase sales in a low-level, evergreen-type way. They are not well adapted to the kind of surge marketing I’m talking about here. I also think that Amazon ads tend to work better as a phase two option: that is, once you have already generated some good book sales through other sources.
Or again: how could trad publicity not work, since it works perfectly well for trad publishers? And yes, of course it does: but they have a huge physical retail footprint. Trad publicity is pretty much hopeless for generating digital sales on demand. The two worlds – physical bookstores and all things Amazonian – are largely separate in terms of sales approach.
So I’m only going to focus on three tools, but they’re all important:
Promo sites
Facebook ads
Author mailing lists.
That’s it. That’s what lies ahead.
If you’re trad published, then knowing about promo sites is valuable, in that publishers should – these days – think of them when it comes to boosting your ebook. Author mailing lists are critical for everybody. And Facebook ads? Well, it will be essentially impossible to profit from them if you’re trad published. But indie authors will rely on them heavily – and I do think that trad authors just need to know what their publishers could be doing, and in many cases ought to be doing. You can’t even have the conversations, if you don’t understand the territory.
*
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Selling Strategies
An unusual task this week. Simply:
Do you have experience of a selling strategy that really didn't work for you?
Do you have experience of one that really did?
You might be talking about something that your publishers conceived and executed for you. You might be talking about something that you did yourself. Either way, let's hear about it. When you're ready, post yours here.
And?
Yes: writing books is hard. Selling them is harder. But let's also not forget that loads and loads of books do get written and sold, and authors make money and find readers. Just this week, for instance, our very own Becca Day has published her latest thriller, The Woman In The Cabin, to rapturous reviews.
So, this is a hard task, but not an impossible one. Avanti!
Last week, I talked about how print-led publishing is essentially dominated by the battle to secure retail space.
If your book gets a really good level of retail space, it stands an excellent chance of selling well. If not, your book is mostly likely to sell badly, irrespective of its basic quality.
I ended that Depressing, Pointless and Nihilistic email by promising you that this week I would offer you some Very Sound Advice.
And yes: I will. But be warned. That advice is akin to finding running shoes for the portly gentleman at the start of his race. It’s akin to massaging his quads and calling his attention to a trip hazard en route. His odds will improve, for sure… but the race is still a crapshoot. The basic shape of the game remains unaltered. All you can do is boost your odds.
So that’s coming up, but first:
I got a LOT of replies from you guys last week, and quite a lot of you seemed to think I was saying that trad publishing is basically broken and that self-publishing is a better option.
To be clear, I am not saying that. Trad publishing has its challenges. Self-publishing does, too – they're just different challenges. And, either way, a ton of books get sold all the time. Authors are taken on by agents, their books are bought by publishers, they’re sold to retailers, who sell on to readers. Despite the huge torrent of new media, books remain absolutely central to culture. And of course, you can earn a lot of money even if your book doesn’t sell: that’s what advances are for.
So, trad publishing is great and full of opportunity. But it’s also difficult and full of challenges.
Here’s what you need to do.
Write a good book
The quality of your book ought to matter, and it does matter.
Ideally, the major retail buyers would read all the books offered to them by publishers, and pick the ones that were the very, very best. That doesn’t happen. Too many books, too few buyers.
But quality still matters. Your publishers are sophisticated readers and will know the difference between a book that feels genuinely special and one that feels just fine. They’ll put more work into the first one than the second. That will affect every conversation between your publishers and the wider world. It can generate some startling, immediate, significant wins.
For example: when my Fiona Griffiths series was launched in the UK, hardback sales weren’t great. They weren’t awful, but certainly mediocre.
In the normal course of things, hardback sales are the best predictor of paperback ones… except that my publisher (Orion, part of Hachette) had an in-house book group. A reading group, in other words: a bunch of friends getting together to talk about a shared reading experience. That group read my book and loved it. That enthusiasm spilled over to UK’s biggest bookseller who ended up putting the paperback into their biggest monthly promotion, thereby sharply changing the book’s (and series’) sales trajectory.
So: write a good book. That’s the only part you have real control over, so do it right.
If you need or want help, then of course we offer a ton of ways to provide that. Two easy options are:
Our Good To Great course, which is specifically there to help competent writers become dazzling writers – the sort that agents have to take on. The course is free to Premium Members, but everyone gets to have a free first lesson.
Manuscript assessment. This is still the gold standard way to improve a novel, and our editors are very, very good. If I’d recommend any one thing, it would be this.
Make nice
Back in the day, I was published by HarperCollins and my editorial team also handled a major bestselling author, whom we’ll just call Jack. (The author in question? Rich. Litigious.) HarperCollins knew this author would earn them money, but he was horrible. Just a nasty human. So yes, they put together a pitch for this chap’s next book. Yes, they tried to win it. But – they were also kind of happy when they failed.
Publishers will work harder for people they like. So make nice – and, really, that’s just a way of saying BE nice. It makes a difference.
Be professional
For the same reason, it helps to be professional. Delivering on time, working well with edits, responding fast to emails – all of that. Those things help your editor do his or her job, so being professional is basically just a way of making nice, in a way that is directly helpful. It all makes a difference.
Be strategic
If you’re lucky, you’ll get the chance to meet bloggers, and retail buyers, and booksellers, and other industry types.
Those meetings really matter.
Yes, there are often other authors floating around at those events and authors are generally more delightful souls than, erm, almost anyone, and so it’s tempting to curl up in a knot of drunken writers and ignore everyone else – but don’t.
Be strategic. Booksellers and bloggers and other influencers matter, so seek them out, and be interesting and make nice. And retail buyers really, really matter so seek them out and make super-nice.
And if that sounds too calculated – well, hell, I should probably add that you should be authentic too. Don’t just lie and flatter. Be yourself, just a polished up version of yourself. Make nice with the people who matter, then get hammered with your cronies.
(Oh yes, and crime writers are WAY the most interesting authors, so you should probably write crime, not something smelly like lit fic or YA. And even when crime writers aren’t the most interesting, they have way the highest capacity for booze.)
Care about your cover
Your book cover matters – intensely.
It’s something I’ve often not got right in my career. I don’t mean that I’ve chosen a poor cover, because I’ve never exactly got to choose. I’ve got to comment. (And, by the way, a publisher may be contractually obliged to consult with you about your cover, which sounds nice. Just be aware that their legal obligation would be entirely satisfied by the following exchange: Publisher: “What do you think of your new book cover?” You: “I hate it in every possible way.” Publisher: “Thank you for your opinion.”)
But – even without having a contractual right of veto, it’s a rare editor who doesn’t basically want to make his or her author roughly happy.
So:
Before you see your draft cover, have a damn good idea of what the other books in this space look like. Yours can’t look worse. You want it to look better.
When you do see your cover, be as honest as possible with yourself about your feelings. That’s harder to do than it sounds!
Discard completely all feelings that have to do with the way the book, or the cover looks in your head. It doesn’t matter if the cover seems to refer to an incident or feature that’s not in the book. The key questions are: Does it convey genre? Does it convey mood? Is it arresting and just generally brilliant? That’s what matters.
Tell your editor what you think. If you want changes, say so. If you want a total rethink, say so – and in those terms. Be direct. Do not be too people-pleasey.
Beware: if you think the cover’s wrong, your publishers is likely to “nice” you into submission. If your editor says, “Oh, I’m sure once you see the cover with the raised lettering and the foil effects, you’ll be absolutely blown away,” what they mean is, “Give us a chance to let a few more weeks pass, and then it’ll be too late to make changes anyway.”
For that reason, make sure you get a reasonably early sight of your cover. If it arrives with you too late, you may be stuck with it.
A bad cover will kill your book. A great cover could propel it into the stratosphere. Do not accept compromise – and throw your toys out of the pram if you have to. This is almost the only area where toy-throwing makes sense.
And when you are considering cover – or blurb – or marketing in general, then always remember:
The pitch, the pitch, the pitch!
Publishing is a machine. It makes its profits by employing good people, working them too hard, and paying them too little. It can seem like a privilege to work for a good, big publisher, but by heck they’ll take their pound of flesh (or 454g, for our EU readers.)
The result is that books don’t always get the level of thought and attention they deserve. And in particular, your cover designer hasn’t read your book, didn’t commission your book, and has little more than a page or two of notes from your editor in terms of design brief.
The result can easily be a lazily “me-too” cover, or one that simply doesn’t evoke the mood and tone of your book.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You are most likely to get stellar sales if:
You have a brilliant concept – an elevator pitch; and
Everything lines up perfectly behind that concept: the text, the title, the blurb, the cover, and every line of marketing yadda.
Your job, as author, is to be the scent-following, rat-shaking terrier that ensures the fidelity of everything to your pitch. If your title and blurb promise one kind of experience, and the book cover promises another, that book will not persuade readers to walk it over to the till.
You need a great concept.
And everything – everything – needs to line up behind it.
Honestly? Nowadays, I’d be blunt about it. I’d offer my own cover design brief to an editor. I’d suggest my own blurb. I’d say what I thought our pitch was and what tone we needed to strike.
If you do that right, you won’t even come across as an asshole. Offer your material humbly and accept advice when it’s wise. Most of the time, an editor will actually be grateful: you’re making their life easier. That’s a positive blessing. But if they say you’re wrong about something, you also need to accept that you don’t know everything.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY:
Well, I’ve yammered away about the pitch – again – in this email, so let’s have another pitching challenge.
If you haven’t watched the free first lesson of Good To Great, then do please do just that. And, in any event, please:
Give me the pitch for your novel in a maximum of 20 words, and preferably fewer. If you’re stuck, try the “Premise + Conflict” recipe to see if that unsticks you like slippery egg on Teflon.
Also, present your pitch as an extremely short list of ingredients “Teen romance + werewolf”, “Orphan + wizard school”. You have 3-8 words for this.
For extra pepperoni on your pizza, then please also show me how everything is going to line up behind that concept:
What’s your title? And how does that line up with your pitch?
What kind of cover would work? You need to advertise genre and you need to advertise pitch. Don’t get too specific: just offer a sketch of a possible cover brief.
What we’re trying to do here is make sure that your pitch flows right through to the places where your book is first going to touch the reader: on a bookstore table or on an Amazon search page.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome back to Spotlight On!
We're back with a brand-new series of interviews with literary agents. Stay tuned to learn more about the day-to-day work of agents, what they're looking for in submission packs, their thoughts on the publishing industry and much, much more. All our Spotlight On interviews can be found right here on Townhouse: #JWSpotlightOnInterview.
This week, we're speaking to Sheyla Knigge from New York-based agency High Line Literary Collective. Sheyla began her career in publishing working under agent Victoria Marini in 2021 and has since started building her own client list, which includes Kalie Cassidy (In the Veins of the Drowning, July 2025) and Maggie Rapier (Soulgazer, July 2025).
You can follow Sheyla at @sheylaknigge for updates on her work, or view her agency profile here. She is also participating in our Agent One-to-One service this month, so don’t miss out on a chance to hear from her! Read highlights from our interview with Sheyla below and view the full interview on her AgentMatch profile…
Sheyla Knigge
Hi Sheyla, thanks for speaking with us today!
What does the day in the life of an agent look like for you?
It's different for everyone, but for me, it looks like a lot of emails and reading. My email inbox is specifically for any correspondence with my colleagues and editors, and my clients also use it to send me links to their documents so I can make notes. I'm a very editorial agent, so I’ll read through their work and make comments. I have clients on the West Coast, the East Coast and then I have clients with editors in the UK, so I'm working across a bunch of different time zones!
What’s your favourite thing about being an agent?
I think my favourite part of being an agent has got to be the difference in the projects. It's like I tell my clients: we can all use similar tropes or similar themes in our stories, but there are certain stories that only they can tell. I really love finding the intricacies of their work in the differences between them.
A great example is the two romantasies I have coming out next summer: In the Veins of the Drowning by Kalie Cassidy and Maggie Rapier’s Soulgazer. Both of them are seafaring stories, and they're very magical and mythological. They're very different to me, but close enough in themes that I would love to have them in conversation with one another. So it's little things like that that keep me on my toes. I like to find the tiny things I loved from previous books in my clients’ stories and help bring them to life in a new way.
As an editorially minded agent, how do you approach feedback?
Typically, when I make an offer, I ask the author which way they prefer to get feedback, because I want to be very cognisant that every author works differently. I have some clients who prefer to send me a document and have me put all of my notes in at once and then send it back with an editorial letter. Some prefer to talk about edits on a phone call or face to face. I have other clients who send me their writing bit by bit, so we work on each section separately and then clean it up and make sure it’s cohesive at the end. It depends on what helps them the most!
I like to tell my authors that no matter what edits or commentary I might have, I want the story to remain as close as possible to the story they wanted to tell. Authors get a lot of feedback from agents, editors and beta readers, but my goal is to make sure the result feels authentic to the original story and is something the author is excited to put out into the world.
In your opinion, what makes a good author-agent relationship?
I think transparency is really important. I think a lot of people go into this relationship with the idea that they work for their agent or their agent works for them, but I don't really have that mindset. I think that this is a very collaborative working relationship and at the end of the day, we're just two creatives who love books and want the story to be the best possible thing it can be. It can be helpful to think about how much you want to share with your agent, so that they can be helpful and be a good advocate for you if you ever need to push back a deadline or something like that. It’s true that you don’t have to be friends with your agent, but I think that in any good working relationship, you have to be at least a little bit vulnerable in what you’re willing to share so that the other person knows what you need from them.
What’s at the top of your wishlist in fiction?
As my career has continued, I've become more of a mood reader — so when it starts to get cosy and cold, I want to read something spooky or scary. Right now, I would really, truly love something about the four horsemen of the apocalypse, something inspired by Sleepy Hollow, or anything about murderous cheerleaders or murderous teens in small towns.
I'm also loving witchy stories right now, but I've got a couple of them already so I'm trying not to ask for too many. I think that sometimes, when authors see books that agents have sold, they might think: “Oh, I have something like that, they'll love mine.” And we might! But the thing is, we don't want to cannibalise our own list and we have to think about what’s best for the authors that we already work with.
Beyond the spooky stories, I'm always really interested in magical stories that transport me to a different place. It’s very rare that I will take on something that is that set in the modern day, so any contemporary stories would have to wow me and show me something that I haven't seen done before or that I haven't seen in a while.
Are there any genres you would prefer not to receive?
In non-fiction, I’m not a great fit for memoirs. I’m also not a war buff or a history book in general.
In fiction, I’m not hugely excited by dystopian stories or sci-fi. I loved them when I was in middle school, and if I can see them developing into some hugely influential part of the culture the way that The Hunger Games did, then maybe — but otherwise, I’m probably not the right agent for those genres.
When you’re reading a query letter, what are some things you like and dislike seeing?
When I read query letters, I always think about whether I would want to pick up the book in a bookstore. Does the pitch have the same feel as the back cover of a book in the sense that it makes me want to read those opening pages? I’ve had friends who have published their books and tell me that the blurb on the back cover is word for word what they wrote in their query, so I love to see query letters that capture that feeling. If the query isn’t drawing me in, I’ll usually go to the opening pages to see whether there’s a disconnect between them, which can happen because query letters are really hard to write.
In terms of things I don’t like to see in queries... Publishing is in a sort of transitional phase right now where we're seeing fewer and fewer series being bought. There are books that I’ve sold which I would love to be a series, but it’s not up to me. So, when authors tell me in their query letter that this is the first in a trilogy or a nine-book series, I really wish they were pitching just one book with series or spin-off potential. I want to be the best advocate for my authors but I can't guarantee I can sell one book, let alone nine, so knowing that someone has written an entire series does make me more hesitate to take their work on.
Some agents love synopses, others don’t. What do you think of them, and are there any things you look for in a synopsis?
As someone who doesn’t like writing synopses myself, I don't typically ask for them unless there’s a really short deadline for reading a submission and I just need to see the CliffsNotes version of the story. Sometimes I do need to ask my authors to send through a synopsis because the editor wants to see one — but personally, I’ll ask for a playlist before I ask for a synopsis.
To give some advice, though, synopses should represent the structure of the story, beat for beat. Say your book contained four acts; what are the key components of each of those acts and how can you translate them onto a page to give the reader a sense of what’s happening in the story?
Is there anything an author can do in the first few pages of their manuscript that will really grab your attention? Anything you don’t enjoy as much?
I love a chunky book with a lot of words, so I want pretty prose — maybe what most people would call purple prose. I just really gravitate towards that sort of writing. I like to be drawn into the story, and I love to be surprised. I might read a query letter and have an idea of what the story will be, but then open the first few pages and realise I had no idea what was coming. One of my favourite books (and favourite series) is Stalking Jack the Ripper and those opening pages left me gasping for air and needing to read more. That’s the sort of thing that makes me fall head over heels for a book, and if I’m not head over heels for it, I’m not the best advocate for it.
Any last pieces of advice for authors?
It’s very easy to get caught up in rejections, but every no is going to lead you to that eventual yes. It's not that your story or your writing isn't good, it's that it’s just not a fit for that agent, and that's okay. Your next story might be a better fit for that agent, or there might be another agent that your current one is the perfect fit for. Think of it sort of like speed-dating — it’s there and gone in a minute. This is the last time that your story is truly yours and no one else’s, so take that time and bask in it!
Secondly, writing full time can be a very lonely business, so finding community is important. Look for other authors who have similar interests and are open to talking about writing and the publishing industry. I was listening to a podcast recently which said that a good chunk of debut authors don’t continue past that first year because it’s just so overwhelming and intense. It’s true that you can talk to your agent or your editor about the industry, but it’s the camaraderie between authors who are going through the process together that’s really going to help you find longevity in this.
If you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a Premium Member, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review once per year of membership! Finally, we have plenty of fantastic agents offering Agent One-to-One Sessions in October and November – book your session now to hear their feedback on your submission pack.
Last week, I talked about how selling print books is a very different proposition from selling ebooks. Print books can’t change their covers, can’t radically lower their price, can’t link to the internet, and are sold (by publishers) to huge corporations not direct to consumers.
So how do publishers sell books?
Well, there are two ways to look at it. There’s the way that publishers will talk about (at length) if you ask them at a festival or elsewhere. Then there’s the way that actually illuminates what happens.
How publishers sell books (publisher version)
Let’s honour publishers first by talking about bookselling the way that they do. Selling a print book, these days, is more complicated – more multi-channelled – than it has ever been. So publishers will think about:
Social media activity, including relatively novel channels like BookTok.
Some digital advertising (maybe).
Book reviews via notable bloggers in whatever your genre space is
Book reviews via mainstream media
Other media opportunities, from local radio to national press or even (rarely) TV
Requesting puffs and review quotes from authors and other influencers
Sending out proof copies to all and sundry
Festival appearances
Industry get-togethers that give you a chance to meet bloggers, reviewers, etc
Industry get-togethers that give you a chance to meet retail buyers
Industry get-togethers that give you a chance to meet booksellers
Book signings (less frequent now than they used to be, thank the Lord. Turnouts at these things seldom helped an author’s ego.)
Book giveaways, however handled
Price promotions, especially with supermarkets
Purchasing “book of the week” type slots with chain booksellers
Inclusion in the publisher’s seasonal catalogue
That’s not even a comprehensive list – and it includes categories (eg: ‘social media activity’) which in itself comprises a whole bewildering and inventive range of initiatives.
That said, what publishers actually do for any particular book tends to be a very small subset of what they could potentially do.
Let’s say that you have a really capable agent from a heavy-hitting literary agency in London or New York. Let’s also say your Really Capable Agent has sold to a highly credible imprint at a major publisher. The publisher concerned has a fancy office building at some glamorous address. They have a billion dollars plus in global revenues and make a very healthy profit on those sales. Let’s also say that your book deal wasn’t even marginal. It wasn’t one of those $10,000 / £5,000 advances that basically say, “Look, we’re not that excited by this, but we’ll give it a shot …”
So, you’re all set, right? You just need to stand back and let this mighty machine do its perfectly polished work?
What actually happens
Well – maybe.
Sometimes, yes, an author will find it pans out, all as they’ve dreamed it. It’s as though they’ve gone to sleep in some frozen landscape, then woken up on a geyser, tossed higher than seemed possible. “Hey, sorry, Oprah, I’m on Jimmy Fallon that night, could we maybe reschedule?”
But mostly – it’s not like that.
Mostly, you have these weird conversations with whichever Glossy Marketing Person your publisher allocates you.
YOU: “Cover reveal on Twitter, OK.”
GMP: “Yeah, it’s called X now.”
“And, uh, the book’s in a catalogue?”
“Yes, we’ve really revamped the way we address indie bookshops, so there are going to be a LOT of eyes on this.”
“And proof copies? When you took me on, you were going to print up some book proofs with a fancy cover …?”
“Well, yes. I mean, we’ve gone the PDF route, in fact, because so many people find PDFs easier to handle.”
“And Festival appearances? We spoke about that too …”
“Yes, we’re really getting your name out there.”
“But nothing booked?”
“Well, we haven’t yet heard back from the Little Piddle Lit Fest team. They were very enthusiastic at one point.”
“Book reviews?”
“We can send out another email, but it can be positively unhelpful to chase too much.”
“Adverts? I mean, are you taking any positive steps to get this book in front of readers?”
[Glossy Marketing Person does the nervous laughter compulsory when an author mentions a strategy that costs actual money.]
“We really feel that organic reach works better on digital.”
It’s perfectly possible – no, likely – that your marketing conversation goes something like that. And you watch on as this huge machine, this reliable creator of bestselling books and authors, appears to do virtually nothing to support your book.
Sure enough, what looked likely to happen, does happen.
Not many retailers buy your book, and those that do don’t buy it at huge scale. Sure enough, you make some sales, because it would be weird if literally no one bought it, but the sales seem very low.
Nobody from your publisher ever calls you up and says, “Hey, you do know that your career is completely ****ed, don’t you?”, but by the time you get to the latter stages of your two-book deal, the mood music has altered so unmistakeably, you get the message anyway. You always quite fancied pig-farming / floristry / exotic dance as a way to make a living, so you start retraining as one of those good things instead.
You are about to be a former author, except that – like American presidents – you always get to call yourself an author, even if it’s been years since you ran a country / wrote a book.
How publishers sell books (the reality)
What publishers say about selling books is all, 100%, completely true.
But they mostly don’t add a crucial little rider, and everything that truly matters is in that rider.
Your book will get a huge and impressive density of marketing effort if retailers agree to stock your book in significant volumes. If retailers don’t agree stock your book in bulk, we will offer you the absolute minimum of support – and yes, we are well aware that this lack of support will be terminal.
They are extremely unlikely to tell you this directly. They are not likely to volunteer what level of orders they are looking for. They are not likely to tell you if you have / have not met this level.
Publishers are, in the end, profit-seeking companies. Their basic sales model (for print) is as follows:
Buy 12 books from debut authors.
Do a reasonable (if cost-conscious) job of book production – covers, editing, all that.
Present those 12 books to retailers. (That’s why “Inclusion in the publisher’s seasonal catalogue” is the most important element in the list I gave you earlier, even though it seems like the most boring and least impactful element there.)
Retailers are getting bombarded by loads of catalogues from loads of imprints from loads of publishers. Even the biggest stores don’t have shelf space for everything. Most stores are small not big. And supermarkets – which sell huge volumes of books – sell very few individual titles. The result is that most debut novels don’t get many orders. That’s just how it is.
Publishers then triage, ruthlessly.
If a book gets a heavy level of advance orders from a good number of retailers, the marketing artillery will come out in force. The advance orders from supermarkets are most likely to come if the publisher offers significant price discounts, but supermarkets know that they can and will secure those discounts if they back them up with orders. All this is potentially geyser territory; where you wake up on a glorious fountain of sales: your book, in a lot of stores, backed by hefty price promotions.
If a book does not get a heavy level of advance orders (and it probably won’t), publishers will, in their smilingly deceptive way, let your book (and your career) die.
The publisher then moves onto the next batch of 12 debut authors. You move on to pig-farming / floristry / exotic dance.
All this is perfectly logical.
Retailers can’t possibly stock all the books they’re offered. If a publisher runs an expensive marketing campaign aimed at generating sales in bookstores, that campaign is bound to fail – badly – if your book is invisible in the places where people buy books.
The result is that, if your book doesn’t get ordered in significant volumes, your publisher will simply throttle any marketing effort. They’ll do just enough to stop you being shouty and screamy, but they know perfectly well that the little they do won’t meaningfully shift books.
In effect, modern publisher bookselling is akin to twelve fat men running for the same revolving door. It’s not really an athletic competition. It’s more of a random scramble. But in the end, only one fat man can pop first through that door – and the bliss of Selling Heaven – and eleven portly gentlemen will be sitting all a-tumble on the skiddy granite outside, wondering what happened.
What happened, my friend, is that you just got published.
Pipes and tweed
Now, I should say that all this is very much the pipe and tweed version of things – what happens with a very print-led publishing process. There are, for sure, imprints at big publishers that are either digitally-led or reasonably adept at pivoting between the two. But since the pipe-n-tweed imprints are always the most prestigious, and the ones most likely to create the kind of bestsellers you’ve always dreamed of writing, this model is still profoundly influential.
If you’re startled by my cynicism, I should say that I’m hardly alone. I had a conversation a year or two back with someone who used to run one of the most prestigious imprints in British publishing. I gave him my 12-fat-men analogy, and he essentially agreed. He said that one of the reasons he left publishing was precisely because he felt it had become too much of a lottery, with books elevated by happenstance more than quality.
(And all this, by the way, explains lot about your experience as a reader. Let’s say you read about the new bestseller by Q. It has fancy reviews from X and Y and Z, and it’s selling a LOT of books. So you buy the book and read it, hoping to learn something about how to write … and you think, huh? I mean, books don’t get to be super-big bestsellers unless they genuinely have something special. And you don’t even get to be an ordinary-level bestseller unless you bring a basic competence. But dazzle? Bestselling debut fiction should be dazzling, and it often isn’t. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. This email explains the reason why.)
So what to do?
This email would be Depressing, Pointless and Nihilistic unless it ended with some words of advice on how to win that 12-fat-men-and-a-revolving-door race. And …?
Well, I don’t know.
And this email is too long.
And these emails are ALWAYS too long.
But, that being said, I do nevertheless have some Very Sound Advice to offer.
But you’ll have to wait till next week to get it.
Tell me what you think
As we go further with this series of emails, I’d love to know what you think. What’s useful? What isn’t? What do you want to know more about? Just hit reply, and let me know.
I got a lot of replies last time, so do keep your thoughts coming. I read everything and reply to nearly everything.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Build Your Book Month - Plotting
It’s Build Your Book Month and we’re plotting away.
Sophie’s workshop last week - “Start your book with a bang” was free to all and and generated a LOT of interest. So the assignment this week is:
Watch Sophie being amazing here (that link will take you to the Masterclass area of Premium Membership. Not a member? We've made the replay free to watch here too.)
Upload your opening page (max 300 words)
Give us some comments (after your opening) about how you decided on what you wrote.
(I’m asking for comments because personally I don’t really start my books with a bang. My most tedious ever opening paragraph? That’s easy. It was the one word: “Rain.” Although, more broadly, that opening was probably beaten out by my very next book which opened with two characters, including my protagonist, discussing a new pair of jeans:
I say, ‘Great. Really nice.’ I’m not sure what to say.
‘My jeans. They’re new.’
‘Oh.’
Any time, Becca Day and her team want a BYB workshop on “How to craft a tedious opening”, I’m their man.)
I’m off to open things in a boring way – books, beer bottles, supermarkets. I’ll see you next week.
This is the first in a season of emails on how to sell a book. Today’s email will cover the shape of the industry as it is today. Further emails will cover things like traditional sales techniques, Amazon’s algorithm, Facebook ads, Amazon ads, mailing lists, non-fiction, and other topics.
What’s the point, mate – I mean, honestly?
There’ll be a large group of you for whom this kind of information may seem redundant. Those folk may be inclined to think, roughly:
“Look here, you Cheerless Charlie, I haven’t even finished my book, and I don’t know if it’s any good, and certainly don’t know if any literary agent will be keen to take me on. And all that mailing list and Amazon ad stuff? Isn’t that something that publishers are meant to take care of? I have zero interest in self-publishing a book and a couple of emails won’t change that.”
Well, yes, I hear you.
And yes: selling a book may seem a distant dream, and the information that follows may feel theoretical. But that’s not the right way to look at it. You are, all of you, seeking to create and sell a product to an industry – or, for indie authors, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that you’re looking to create a product that you’ll sell direct to consumers via some well-established industry structures.
And to do that, yes, you need to write a good book. You’ll know me well enough by now to know that I’m a craft-first kind of guy. I’m all about hard-writing and easy-marketing, not the other way round.
But understanding the industry always helps. Always.
Sometimes, it helps in very direct ways. If you sell your book to a publisher, and you’re at some industry event supported by that publisher, you’ll know who performs what role – and who you ought to be out charming. Good knowledge about the industry will change the way you think about Twitter/X. It’ll change the way you think about your book cover. It’ll change the way you present yourself as an author.
But more than that, I think you grow up in less definable ways. All fiction projects start out in a kind of dream. A story pops into your head and you think, wouldn’t it be fun to write this down? That’s perfectly fine – it’s how I started, too – but your aim has to be to become a truly professional author. Yes, you will always need to satisfy your own creative spirit (what a waste it would be if we didn’t do that), but you’d be plain dumb to think that your creative spirit doesn’t need to work hand-in-hand with an industry.
What’s more, for all the mwah-mwah-darling nature of the (very pleasant) publishing industry, it is at its heart as ruthless about income and profits as any other.
So:
You need to remain creative, but you also need to build a product for a shamelessly profit-seeking industry. These emails will tell you how books get sold and that in turn will tell you a lot about how agents, editors, publicists and everyone else thinks. Get to grips with these emails and your odds of success go up. Got that? Good. Allons-y!
The doom loop that wasn’t
For a few years, it seemed credible to argue that the traditional books industry could simply collapse. Bricks-and-mortar booksellers were near-bankrupt. E-books were booming. Print-runs were getting shorter. It seemed possible that shorter print runs would drive up print prices, which would force the collapse of Barnes and Noble (US) and Waterstones (UK), and that in turn would create a doom loop for the rest of the regular bookselling industry.
That didn’t happen. A couple of big book chains went bust (bye-bye, Borders), but the flagship chains recovered their spirits, their profitability, and their charm.
Meantime, e-books (and audio book) did in fact turn out to be the Next Big Thing – a vast new way of reading and marketing and selling books – but that new thing has added to, not replaced, what was there before.
The invisible publisher
The publishing industry, as it exists today, divides into two (messily defined) chunks.
One chunk is ‘traditional’ publishing. The company names are essentially the same as they always were. The imprints are often the same, too. The firms they sell to are largely the same. The products they sell have shifted – but only a bit.
Thus, a modern trad publisher might sell roughly 70% of its books in print form, roughly 20% as ebooks, and roughly 10% as audiobooks. If you look at value, not volume, then ebooks drop back to more like 10% and that chunk gets added onto print instead.
So, for most modern publishers, ebooks are and have long been secondary. It’s true that ebooks play a bigger role in adult genre fiction, but that means they play a correspondingly smaller role in kids’ books and adult non-fiction.
This summary – 70 print / 20 ebook / 10 audio – is often presented as though it were true of the books market as a whole, but it’s not.
Talk to indie authors, and you’ll find they barely think about print at all. My own self-published books sell at least 95% of their copies in digital form – ebook and audio. I really only sell in print because it’s easy to do so, and because it’s nice for readers who prefer lovely, lovely paper.
Virtually all self-published authors are like me: we sell digital products. Our print sales are little more than decorative. Yet because mainstream media has long, deep connections with trad publishers and essentially no connection at all with indies, the self-published part of the industry is essentially invisible – perpetually forgotten, perpetually surprising to those from trad publishers.
But, collectively, these indies are hardly negligible. The self-pub industry is at least as large as Penguin Random House and probably larger. If you add in the digital-first publishers – who are quasi-traditional in that they are selective, but still very ebook dominated – then the ebook-dominant publishers are collectively way bigger than PRH.
And yet – still invisible.
Selling in print and selling in bytes
Now all this matters to you because selling print books is radically different from selling ebooks.
Take ebooks first:
If early sales data says that your cover isn’t working quite right, you can change the cover instantly. Or the blurb. Or both. Aside from the new design itself, it’s not even costly to make the switch.
If you want to tweak the price, you can. Want to drop a book from $9.99 to $0.99 or even $0.00? You can do so, easily and instantly.
Supposing you want a reader to visit a website, with an ebook you just offer an ordinary, regular link and say, “Tap here.” Done.
One more thing: ebooks are sold (almost exclusively) via Amazon and Apple, two of the world’s largest companies. Those companies don’t hand-curate their bookstores. They just sell everything, no matter how good or bad. So that means you, the author, aren’t really selling your book to Amazon for them to on-sell. You are selling via Amazon direct to the consumer.
So that’s ebooks: instantly flexible, price-adjustable, online-linked, direct to consumer.
None of that stuff is true of print books.
Yes, in theory a publisher can change a cover – and often does from hardcover to softcover, or for an anniversary or TV-special edition. But for that process to operate cleanly, the old stock has to be recovered and pulped before the new stock is issued. Consequently, the process is slow, rare and considered.
Price tweaking doesn’t really work with print. Because there’s a hard cost (in materials, printing, warehousing, shipping) to get a book to a bookstore, a publisher can’t just chop the price and expect the same margin. So price cutting happens less radically (“3-for-2”, say, not $9.99 to $0.99) and less frequently.
Visiting a website direct from a print book? Good luck with that.
And, finally, print books aren’t sold to consumers. Not really. Print books are sold to retailers – often huge companies (such as supermarkets) for whom books are all but irrelevant.
Why this matters
This matters to you because print sales techniques are utterly different from digital sales techniques. You need to know how the whole print selling process works, because you may end up working with a big publisher and you need to know what you can influence and what really matters.
But you also need to understand, in depth, how the ebook selling process works, because if you have a trad publisher, they may well cock it up. (Though they’re less hopeless than they used to be.) And if you don’t end up with a trad publisher, your alternative will be selling digitally in one form or another, so you need to know all that side of things, too.
As we go further with this series of emails, I’d love to know what you think. What’s useful? What isn’t? What do you want to know more about? Comment below to let me know.
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FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Publishing and selling Q&A
Simple one this week. Just tell me what your publishing / selling plans are, and what questions you have.
Premium Members only, please. If you’re not a PM, then this could be the time to Do The Right Thing…
“As you write, and as you edit, you are faced with 1,000,000 choices: again and again and again. Are you happy with this sentence? What about this one? Does the attacker strike your heroine? Strike her with what? Does he hurt her? Does she hurt him back? Does she escape? How does she escape?”
And –
Well, just casually, almost by way of an aside, I’ve assumed it’s just fine to write about violence against women. But is it? Pretty obviously, violence is bad, and male violence against women is especially unlovely … and making an entertainment out of all this? Isn’t that a bit Ugh?
One approach is to say that violence of this sort should never be used for entertainment.
A British screenwriter, Bridget Lawless, in fact set up a prize – the Staunch Book Prize – which rewarded novels that did not feature violence against women. The prize sputtered on for a few years before closing.
The prize was never without controversy, though. Women thriller writers, Sarah Hilary and Julia Crouch, both noted that women do in fact suffer violence by men. Crouch said, what the “prize immediately knocks out is the lived experience of millions of women in this country.”
That’s true of course … women do suffer violence, so we should talk about that rather than conceal it. And that feels like it might be a let-out, except if I’m being super-duper honest, my last book involved a contemporary detective running around searching for artefacts linked to King Arthur. The one before that involved an extended caving scene and some (literally) mediaeval monastic practices. My books aren’t really attempting to take the ‘lived experience of millions of women’ and make art out of them. They’re attempts to provide bloody good entertainment using stories which aren’t, quite frankly, all that plausible in the real world.
I don’t think that I’m especially keen on having dead women, rather than men – I think I’m an equal-opportunities killer. But, yes, my books do involve violence against women. Fiona suffers ill-treatment in every single book and in many cases, other women are also victims, often dead ones.
So do I use murder for entertainment? Yes.
Does that include murder of women by men? Yes.
Are my books intended to represent a carefully considered view of the actual ‘lived experience’ of women? No, definitely not.
So, bluntly put, am I exploiting stories involving violence against women for pure entertainment purposes? Yes, I am.
But do my readers, including my female readers, mind about any of this? No, they don’t. Or at least if they do, they care in such small numbers that the issue would seem not to matter all that much. And, I should say, I’d guess that at least 60-70% of my readers are women, maybe even more.
Now, assuming that you (A) like writing books and (B) think that men whacking women is generally a Bad Thing, we need to figure out what’s going on here.
The first thing to say is that books do generally need a splash of darkness. They don’t absolutely have to have an episode of violence at their heart, but an awful lot of books do. And it’s not surprising. We don’t want to read books about the everyday. We want our books to operate like really high-class gossip: “Gosh, no! Really …?” That reaction almost always derives from transgression of some kind and the blackest sort of transgression (especially in a sexually permissive age) is violence.
The second thing to say is that there are ways of writing violence that are just … ick.
Any time where the camera lens is pressed up against violence with a kind of glee is, for me, unreadable. (Indeed, I won’t even read on; I know I’m not going to like that book or that author.) Where the violence involves sadism or anything with a sexual edge, then any hint of glee or pleasure in the moment is, for me and, I think for a lot of readers, just a hard no.
And for me, that’s what is always comes down to in the end.
Does the way you write end up commoditising violence – making a kind of porno reel out of it?
Or does your writing try to deepen our humanity? Does it try to enter those dark moments and speak truthfully of the fear, the grief, the compassion?
I think if you do that, you’re OK – no matter what your genre, or story, or purpose in writing. There’s a moment in my upcoming book where Fiona comes across a corpse. The man has been hit hard with a frying pan, then shoved into a freezer, where he froze to death. That’s an ugly (albeit off-screen) dying, but it wasn’t played for laughs. It wasn’t played for sadistic thrills. The murder delivered a moment of quietness – reflection. And Fiona then went to see the dead man’s father and brother. And felt their shock and grief.
None of this is filtered through some ‘holier than thou’ lens. The difference between my books and a sermon in church? Quite detectable, I’d say.
So, for my money at least, entertainment is fine. Violence as part of that entertainment is fine. But – stay human, not icky.
A good life rule, that.
...
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Be Bloody, Bold and Resolute
Last week, I asked for 250 words of happiness. Today – violence.
The crack of a silver candlestick – Colonel Mustard falling – blood on the library floor. A country house aghast.
Take any episode of darkness from your manuscript and let’s have a peep at it. Remember: we don’t mind a bit of blood and gore. But stay human, not creepy, please.
I mean, readers, yes, obviously. But who? Your mum? That old English teacher you loved? Crime fans in general? People who love Patricia Cornwell in particular?
There are two reasons to ask these questions. The first is marketing. If you’re writing people who want a fresh take on the Patricia Cornwell vibe, that would suggest a certain approach to book covers, titles, marketing slogans and so on. You might even refer directly to Cornwell, or her most famous character, Kay Scarpetta, in your marketing yadda.
The second reason has to do with the choices you make as you write the book itself.
As you write, and as you edit, you are faced with 1,000,000 choices: again and again and again. Are you happy with this sentence? What about this one? Does the attacker strike your heroine? Strike her with what? Does he hurt her? Does she hurt him back? Does she escape? How does she escape? Is her breath ‘hoarse and rasping’ afterwards? Or does it come in ‘juddering heaves of relief’? What phrase do you prefer? And what does she do next?
Now, obviously, you’re going to make all those choices on the basis of what seems right to you – you have no other option. But at the back of your mind, there’s always a sense that you’re writing for one set of readers rather than another.
For example, if I were writing forensically-led crime fiction, I’d have to assume that my readers knew Patricia’s Cornwell work and would be wanting me to break new ground. I couldn’t just reprise Cornwell’s tropes and expect success myself.
Indie authors – intelligently analytical as they are – often take this further, and try to conceive of an ‘Ideal Reader’ – a dog-loving, mother-of-two Kansas 40 y.o. housewife, with plenty of friends, love of hiking, watches true crime shows on Netflix, reads mostly crime, but will cry at soppy love stories too.
The idea is that if you know your ‘Ideal’ reader, you can craft your book and your marketing material to appeal perfectly to that one person.
And? OK. Very smart writers I know do just that and they say it works for them. In part, it works because book marketing works best when it’s micro-targeted. A good campaign is one that gets excellent conversions happening amongst a very tightly defined group of readers. A bad campaign is one that starts so-so conversions from a much broader group. So: a hyper-detailed picture of your Ideal Reader keeps your marketing focused.
But I have a somewhat different take.
I think you have to turn yourself into your own Ideal Reader.
Partly, that means bringing your own tastes to bear. As I say, when it comes to editing, you don’t really have a choice.
But you also have to ensure that you become your own readership. What books do you expect your readers to have read? What authors do they love?
You need to have read that book and know those authors. If you’ve read Patricia Cornwell as keenly as your readers have, you won’t just repeat that stuff. In the end, your desire for novelty will be the same as theirs.
These things go deep.
I know, for example, that more of my readers are American than British. So I have a particular love of giving my American readers a taste of Wales that’s very Welsh. So, for example, a few miles from where my Mum lives, there’s a village called Newchurch. Easy to say, easy to spell, right? But I’d pretty much never use that placename in one of my Fiona books. Near Newchurch, lie the settlements of Rhosgoch, Glascwm, Llanbadarn-y-garreg, and (where my kids go riding) Bryngwyn. I’d use any of those placenames instead, joyous in the knowledge that Kate from Kansas and Ali from Arkansas will struggle to pronounce any of them.
Or again: I wrote a book that had to do with the archaeology of the British Dark Ages. I know my readers to be literate and intelligent. Plenty of writers might have avoided a ton of ancient history detail, but I knew my guys would like it. (I know I like it. I’ve become them.) So the book is spattered with chunks of Latin, and late Celtic poems, and mournful Romano-British monks, and factoids about Anglo-Saxon vs British burials. (The main difference being that the Anglo-Saxon invaders were pagan, the ancient Britons were Christian, so their burial rites looked different. I am English, but I’m still on the side of the ancient Britons. Twll dîn pob Sais.)
One last example:
How fast or slow do you take a scene? Do you hurtle through? Offer a reaction shot or two, but still move at pace? Or do you allow yourself a paragraph or two of considered reflection?
My writing creates my readers, but my readers also create my writing. I know that my readers relish the Fiona character – they want more of her, not less. So, while I’m hyper-sensitive to anything that feels boring or self-indulgent, I’m happy to allow proper space for reflection. On the whole, my scenes go slow but deep, not fast and shallow. That’s respecting my readers, not ignoring them.
Over time, any difference between you and your readership gets snuffed out. You learn from them what they do and don’t respond to. You learn what books and authors they like. You follow down those trails.
You don’t have to like everything that every one of your readers like. I’ll get book recommendations from readers (either via email, for example, or from names cited in an Amazon review) where I read the book and don’t like it. But that’s fine too. What matters is knowing (roughly) the universe that your readers inhabit, and using that knowledge to shape your tastes and your choices. The process becomes a rolling, laughing, respectful conversation with a multitude.
And if you follow that path, things become easy.
Your Ideal Reader? It’s you.
***
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: HAPPINESS
Modern Fiction often feels like it honours the dark over the light, the grave over the upbeat.
And, OK, I don’t have a fight with Modern Fiction. But, just for this week, let’s lighten up. Give me a passage of 250 words that shows happiness. Anything upbeat. A moment of relief or laughter or gladness.
Let’s share those excerpts and give feedback one to another, till evening falls.
When I started work on my first novel, I didn’t set out to write something funny. My priority was to craft something relatable: a story that would resonate with readers, as well as entertain them.
In pursuit of realism, I hit upon an important truth: real life – mine, anyway – involves endless mishaps, missteps and mistakes that can either be laughed at or cried over. Like most of us, I typically choose to chuckle – and pretty quickly, I found myself squeezing something sweet from the proverbial lemons my protagonists’ lives served up, too.
Three (almost four!) books in, I feel like I’ve found my comedy groove. Here are five things I’ve learned about writing to raise a smile – or, if you’re lucky, a belly laugh – from your reader.
1. Characters drive comedy (and plot)
In almost every funny book, film or play there’ll be at least one character who’s inherently amusing. Sometimes this will be because they subvert a cliché: think Sister Michael, the hilariously misanthropic nun from Lisa McGee’s Derry Girls.
Elsewhere, a character might have comedy chops because they embody a cliché. Jane Austen’s Mr Collins epitomises the kind of pompous, hectoring clergyman that nobody wants to sit next to in the drawing room.
If you’re creating a purely comedic character, bear in mind that they can’t exist only for the lols. They must serve a purpose or advance your plot. Sister Michael is the Derry Girls’ main antagonist, frequently an obstacle to their scheming. Meanwhile, when Lizzy, the plucky heroine of Pride and Prejudice, rejects Mr Collins’ proposal, he marries her friend instead. This throws Lizzy more squarely into the path of Mr Darcy, who (spoiler alert!) is her perfect match.
2. Don’t pull your punches – but throw them carefully
An important note on ‘laugh at’ characters: always punch up, not down. If you’re inviting your readers to find someone ridiculous, make sure they deserve it – and that they’re risible by choice.
Self-importance, snobbery and wilful ignorance are awful qualities in a dinner party guest, but brilliant foibles for a character you want readers to find funny.
My advice for writing such a person? Imagine someone you’d actively avoid in the workplace, would hide from at a family wedding or might refuse to get in a lift with, just in case it got stuck. Then, make them ten times worse.
3. Be specific
Close attention to detail can really help you nail a comedy character. Do they have a ridiculously elaborate hairstyle, or waft around in a cloud of too-strong perfume? Have they adopted a super posh, royal family-style accent, despite being from a small town in the middle of nowhere?
Think about little things that will help you to show, not tell, why this person is begging to be laughed at.
4. Comedy and empathy are cousins
Your next step is to force your poor, unsuspecting main character to interact with whoever you’ve just made up. If you’re as mean as I am, you might make the supercilious dullard their boss, or the interfering, hysterical fusspot their mother.
Putting someone your readers care about in a toe-curlingly awkward situation is not only a quick way to garner laughs – it’s a powerful way to stoke empathy, too. Who among us hasn’t experienced crushing embarrassment, or the intense frustration of having to be polite to someone they’d prefer to give a piece of their mind?
Comedy is a brilliant way to undercut a problem or circumstance that might otherwise feel bleak and depressing. In David Nicholls’ The Understudy, the protagonist is a failing actor. His hopelessness is underlined by the non-verbal role he’s playing as the novel opens: that of a dead body in a crime drama.
Far from sugarcoating the situation, the humour invites readers in – laughter somehow makes us participants in the story, rather than passive observers. From page one, the reader is invested in seeing this protagonist’s life get better. After all, it’s difficult not to root for someone who’s making a living by pretending to be dead.
5. Layer your lols
Some books – The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, for instance – have humour hardwired into their basic premise. However, even giving your book a funny foundation doesn’t guarantee you’ll keep readers amused over several hundred pages.
As you’re writing, keep an eye out for opportunities to include humorous moments that feel natural: witty asides, snappy dialogue, misunderstandings and embarrassments. These can be blended with ‘bigger ticket’ comedy incidents you’ve planned more deliberately. The main thing to remember is that the laughs you add to your story are like seasoning. Think of comedy like salt on a chip, or sauce on a steak. Too much could overpower your plot, but the right amount will sharpen, enhance and enrich other aspects of your writing.
Last week, I threw out a Feedback Friday challenge based off the first volume of our Good To Great course.
The essence of that task, and of the course material, was to consider your book’s elevator pitch not as a final thought – a sticker glued on to the book cover at the final minute – but as a blueprint for production. What’s the book’s DNA? What are its most essential ingredients, the elements that make it up? If your book is to succeed, that answer has to be compelling. Your book will stand, naked, on a bookstore table (or an Amazon page) that’s crowded with repeat bestsellers and authors much better known than you. There’s no way to win that contest except by having an idea that shines so bright and attractively that your book compels attention.
The course video (which I urge you to watch; it’s free) talks about how to start with an ultra-short pitch/blueprint – a list of ingredients even – and how to build out from there. To characters, to settings, to themes, and so on.
The aim here is that every aspect of your book should be firmly founded on your core idea – and that the idea itself should be so compelling that the book can’t not sell. The absolute key is to make sure that every part of your book lines up behind a single great idea.
Pitching backwards
Now, I hope it’s obvious that that’s a sound way to build a book… and yet – have I told you too late? Almost all of you reading this email have already written all or part of your manuscript. So me telling you now that you should have done something 60,000 words ago may not exactly strike you as terribly helpful. (One of you on Townhouse said that “pitching backwards feels like a feat of gymnastics” – which is a fair comment.)
And yet –
It is helpful. These things are helpful at any stage and every stage. If you know what you’re aiming at – a book where everything lines up perfectly behind one stellar idea –you can always navigate from where you are to where you need to be.
The trick is to navigate without cheating.
What you mustn’t ask is:
“How do I take the material I have already concocted and make it look as though it obeys these rules?”
What you must ask is:
“Honestly – does my material feel like it all lines up in this way? And is the idea strong enough? And, having thought these things through, are there adjustments I should make to the stuff I’ve already written, even though I know it will cost me weeks of work to make those adjustments?”
Anything else, you can bodge if you like. You can have a character who’s a bit limp, a scene that’s a bit weak, a plot turn that’s a bit contrived, a setting that’s a bit bland. All those things – and your book can still sell. None of my books has gone out into the world with no bodging anywhere.
But a weak idea? Or a book that doesn’t manifest the strong one that you started with? That book won’t sell. And it doesn’t deserve to.
So yes, pitching backwards is an arse-over-tip way to do things. (That lovely phrase comes courtesy of my sister’s long-ago riding instructor, a woman so sweary, she’d make Princess Anne look genteel.) But if you didn’t do the exercise properly when you started out, you need to do it properly now.
Is your idea strong enough?
Is there total unity between that idea and everything else in the book – characters, themes, settings, everything? Are those things so tightly glued together that your book feels somehow inevitable, necessary?
Those are the questions you must ask.
They matter.
And pitch backwards if you have to.
Standing stones and character Verdicts
When I set these Feedback Friday tasks, I’m often surprised at what comes back. Those surprises are always positive; I always learn something.
Last week, I realised that we build character up in layers. To we humans, the top layer is the one that matters most. To a pitch-concerned novelist, it’s the bottom layer.
Here’s what I mean:
Who is Fiona Griffiths? How do we describe her? Here’s how I think about forming an answer:
Standing Stones
I start with some key facts – rocks projecting unmissably from the landscape. They’re the things that any explanation of Fiona has to acknowledge. Any triangulation has to start from there. So:
Fiona had Cotards Syndrome as a teenager (she used to think she was dead).
Fiona doesn’t know her true birth mother or father. She was found in the back of her adoptive father’s car when she was about 2 years old. For a long time, she was mute.
Her adoptive father was (is?) a criminal.
Fiona can be violent. (A creepy witness once felt her bum. She broke his fingers and dislocated his knee. She was a police officer at the time.)
Fiona has a double first in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge – and won a university philosophy prize to boot.
At the start of the series, she’d never really had a proper boyfriend. When at university, she had a phase of thinking she was lesbian.
Fiona is a detective.
All these things are facts. They’re not things that are up for argument or discussion. They refer back to things that happened or are true in the present. They’re standing stones, your rocks, the first and most critical layer of character-formation.
(And in parenthesis: my character is quite big and highly coloured. If your character’s own standing stones are a little lower to the ground, that’s fine. You’re just writing a different kind of book.)
Dispositions
Now we get to the next level up – dispositions, ways of summarising your emerging character.
So, again for Fiona, we have something like this:
Fiona is electrically intelligent. She’s Sherlock Holmes level bright.
She adores murder investigation. It’s one of very few things that fully engages her.
She’s a dunce about many things-in-the-world. Her knowledge of pop culture is near-zero. She’s a hopeless cook. She has no dress sense. If there’s a glass wall in an office or a bus shelter, she’s quite likely to walk straight into it.
She’s funny. She’ll make you laugh.
Dead people calm her. She likes them. She feels them to be friends.
Yes, novel-detectives are always mavericks. But Fiona really is. Illegal handguns? Growing and smoking her own weed? Solo mission to shoot up some bad guys? Throwing Russian baddies off a cliff? Yep, that’s Fiona. (And that’s just book one.)
These things are facts, too. I mean, you couldn’t reasonably disagree about whether Fiona is intelligent or not. But this set of facts doesn’t have that standing stone like quality: single, obtrusive, unmistakable, un-ignorable – the marker-events of a person’s life.
This second list of ours – ‘dispositions’ – doesn’t comprise things as singular as our standing stones. You don’t really know whether Fiona is genuinely funny until you’ve heard her for a bit. If she makes you laugh once, that could be a one-off. But if she does it again and again, then you have to say, yes, she’s funny. Same thing with her intelligence. Same thing with her dunce-in-the-world-ness.
So, our second level of character analysis gets to things that are definite facts, but they’re not singular facts. They’re more like dispositions – repeated observations of a trait.
And then, we get to our third level –
Verdicts
Is our character conscientious?
Does she have a sense of right and wrong?
Is she loyal?
Is she open to new things, or does she prefer the tried-and-trusted?
Is she valiant – or, perhaps better, what is it that brings out her valour? When does she show her courage?
We as people like to discuss these things in relation to others, and as novelists we like to discuss them in relation to our characters. (And roughly: Fiona is not conscientious, she has a strong sense of right and wrong, she is loyal, she is open to the new, she is valiant in almost any context.)
But?
I don’t think these things should form part of your character analysis, or not really. I think something like the opposite is the truth. You build your character on the basis of your standing stones and your dispositions. Then you follow that character through the course of your story, writing her as carefully as you can. Then you can stand back and judge. Conscientious, yes or no? Valiant, yes or no?
As it happens, I think that in most cases, those questions won’t even have easy answers. I just gave a quick-fire set of responses in relation to Fiona, but they’re not very good.
Is Fiona conscientious? Yes: she goes way beyond expectations in anything murder-related. But in other spheres, she’s hopelessly unreliable. So: going through endless phone records because there’s just possibly a lead buried in there somewhere? Yes, she’ll do that, and without being asked. But: filling out a simple pension form, because someone in her office needs her to do it? Nope, she’ll avoid that until someone pretty much forces her.
Why I’m even talking about this
The reason why I’m plappering on about this (this word, courtesy of my elder daughter) is that when I asked you to give me your pitch / theme / character details, a lot of you shot straight through to the character verdict level. And I don’t want that. When you’re putting together the blueprint for your novel, the standing stones are way more important. The dispositions are next most important. The character verdicts don’t really matter at all – they’re something to argue about once the novel is finished.
I hope that makes sense. In any case, since this week’s Feedback Friday is going to hammer away at this topic, it’ll make sense before I have done with you, or I’ll want to know the raisin why.
This email is too long, so I will not tell you about the extraordinary encounter I had just yesterday with – but no. This email is too long.
***
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: STANDING STONES
Right. Character. I want you to outline your character’s:
Standing Stones. Big, singular, formative events or facts in your character’s life.
Dispositions. Unmistakeable traits that run right through the book.
Verdicts. What do you make of the character you’ve just created. (And, psst, I don’t really care about this bit of the answer. Nor should you.)
Do you want an extra bonus point? You do? Then also please tell me:
Your ultra-short pitch or list of ingredients.
What we really, really want to see here is a lovely reverberation between the pitch and the standing stones. We want to think, ‘Oh yes, that character with that past in that story situation and that setting? Sounds glorious. Tell me more.’ If you do that, you’ve won. When you're ready, post yours here.
There’s a sweet sadness about early September, isn’t there? The leaves aren’t quite turning, but they’re thinking about it. It isn’t quite cold enough for socks again, but my morning toes aren’t always so sure about that. The kids go off to school again, bravely, marking off their little transitions towards adulthood. And holiday mess is either put away, or lying around in piles, eyeing us balefully, awaiting disposal.
I mostly like the season – I just don’t want the kids to get a day older, really. I’d happily glue them into some groundhog present, where school always involves projects on the Vikings, and science classes revolve around magnets and things dangling on string.
And as for you? Ah me and oh my gosh – you’re to go back to school too, my hearties, and starting RIGHT NOW. Because, this week, we have a new course out, and it’s a goodie.
Specifically, we know that most readers of this email are reasonably seasoned writers. Few of you are hesitating over the very first pages of your very first manuscript. Far more of you are deep into your first novel, or working on your second or third. You’ve mostly wrestled not just with writing a book, but with editing it too. Plenty of you have made a serious assault on Planet Agent, and are planning further raids with some sober expectation of success.
This course is for you: the serious, competent, experienced writer. We call it Good To Great, because that’s the hurdle you now need to clear. You need to go from acceptable competence to writing something so compelling that an agent (or editor, or reader) can’t refuse the proposition you offer.
That’s a big ask. I’d say that plenty of people – if they’re serious, competent and committed – can end up putting together a decent novel. Something shipshape and watertight. A novel that feels tight and well-fashioned.
But none of that is enough. The competition writers face is heinous. If you’re a debut athlete, you work your way through multiple lower-level competitions until you’re expected to face an Olympic final. If you’re a debut writer? You get no kindness at all. No mercy. You are sent in to compete, immediately, against the most famous writers of the day. Your books are sold at the exact same price. And those other writers have a vast advantage in terms of sales footprint and brand recognition and marketing oomph. So, yeah, good luck.
This course is my best attempt to give you that luck.
Our aim is to help you, the competent writer, bring your book to the point at which an agent has to take it seriously. Yes, personal tastes and market movements will always play their part, but quality is still the most important factor in what gets bought and sold. Quality is the thing that kicks open doors, that arrests the flow of an acquisitions committee.
The first lesson in the course is free to all and I honestly think it’s one of the most useful teaching tools I’ve ever produced. The lesson is entitled ‘Pitch, Theme, Character’, but really it’s about how to lay out the foundations of your novel so that saleability is built in from the very start.
Most people (the merely competent authors) write the book that they want to write then consider their pitch as a kind of marketing sticker to be glued on top.
You, my fine furry friend, are not aiming at the merely competent. Your pitch is not going to be glued on; it’s going to be foundational. And it’s not just the story idea that matters here. We’re want to ensure that absolutely everything lines up behind a stellar pitch: plot, character, themes, settings – everything.
If you can do that – find a compelling pitch, and centre every aspect of your novel on fully delivering that basic promise – then the only remaining challenge is one of execution. And, OK, execution is a challenge, but it’s a doable one (and one which other lessons in the course will attack in plenty of detail.)
The first lesson is, as I say, free. You can find out about it here. The whole course is available to Premium Members and I’d just love it if you took the whole lot.
Feedback Friday this week is going to pick up on the task in that first video, so do please get stuck in. With any practical accomplishment, it’s never enough to read, or listen to, theory. You have to put it into practice. Actually shaping the words on a page or screen IS part of the learning activity. And when you team that up with Feedback Friday – where lots of intelligent and constructive writers in the same basic place as you offer a ton of thoughtful feedback – well, the learning impact is doubled, or trebled, I’m certain.
The leaves are on the turn. It’s back to school time. Your toes are cold. Let’s up and at em.
***
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: PITCH, THEME, CHARACTER
You need to register for the course here to get your first lesson free.
Watch that video; the assignment won’t really make sense without it.
Then, I want:
A total of about 300 words that comprises your:
Very short pitch for the novel. (Nothing fancy or clever or abstract please. A short list of key ingredients is fine.)
Notes on theme, character, settings, and anything else that seems relevant to you.
I want to see a great pitch and a set of notes which tells me that your book will be firmly centred on those strong foundations.
This could, just possibly, be the most important and transformative writing exercise you ever do, so jump to it.
Genre. It’s a bloody minefield, isn’t it? If anything (other than writing a synopsis) is going to turn us into inarticulate, sweating messes, this is it. But honestly, genre needn’t be that complicated.
A big reason we get in such a muddle is that there is a muddle over what genre “means”. Agents, editors and booksellers often include publishing or marketing categories, so we end up talking about “romantasy”, “cli-fi”, “uplit”, “bookclub fiction” “upmarket/crossover/accessible literary fiction” and heaven knows what else.
Many of these publishing terms actually refer to setting (e.g. modern-day / historical / fantasy / dystopia), literary style (e.g. comic / poetic / accessible / noir), or target audiences (e.g. teenagers / book clubs).
But by genre, I mean what type of story it fundamentally is.
Think of a chair, table, bed or lamp. Each of these is a basic “genre” of furniture, with specific elements we recognise and expect. For example: legs so it stands on the floor; a surface to sit on; some kind of backrest (ta-dah! A Chair). A Chair can be metal, wood, plastic; cheap or expensive; French-made or Chinese. But if I go to a furniture store for a chair, and I’m shown something without these key elements (or worse, something that’s half-chair, half-lamp), I’ll be pretty annoyed.
Main Story genres (not an exhaustive list) include:
Love
Crime
Action
Thriller
Performance
Coming-of-age
As with different “furniture genres”, each has certain elements and conventions (even tropes) readers will expect. For example, the core conventions of a Crime story include:
(Discovery of) a crime
A detective who investigates
Clues
Red herrings
The villain is unmasked
Core Love story conventions include:
Lovers meet
First kiss
Lovers break up
Proof of love
Lovers commit
If I pick up a book expecting a Love story (because the cover or blurb suggest that it is), but it doesn’t fulfil these conventions, I’m going to be annoyed and hurl the book on the floor.
“But won’t that make my book boring, if my Love story has the same things in it as every other Love story?”
No! Because just as you can create a Chair that’s the most unique and innovative Chair ever seen, you can write the most unique and innovative Love Story ever. It doesn’t matter that your chair is still fundamentally a Chair. Ditto, the fact that your story *is* recognisably a Love story is not going to put readers off — quite the opposite.
The trick is not to break or ignore the conventions, but innovate them.
Here are some of my favourite examples of stories that innovate brilliantly on their basic genre conventions (or tropes). (Recognise them? Answers at the end!)
Genre
Genre Conventions/Tropes
Innovation
Love
Girl meets boy
Boy is vampire
Crime
Detective who investigates
Detectives are ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly
Action
Bad guy(s) threaten a community
Jaws — but in space
Psych Thriller
Man murders wife
Woman sets up husband for the death penalty by faking her own murder
Performance
Music/sports/arts team compete for a prize
Jamaican athletes enter Winter Olympics
Coming of age
A naive protagonist must learn complexities of adult world
Naive protagonist becomes Empowered Woman by dancing the Mambo with Patrick Swayze
Top tips:
1. Get clear on the Story (not “marketing”) genre you’re writing. A clue can be the stories you love to read.
2. Read (or watch) lots of examples, especially “masterworks”. Pull out the recurring elements: these are your genre conventions.
3. Make sure you honour these in your own story. Readers will expect them, so don’t let them down.
4. Use your creative powers to innovate the conventions. What version of the “meet cute” have we never seen? How is your detective different to the many other fictional detectives? What’s a brilliantly original “hero-at-the-mercy-of-the-villain” scene (don’t tie them to chair AGAIN!)?
I hope this whistle-stop tour of Story Genre has been helpful. You can find out more on my Twitter threads.
'Whirlwind' is the perfect word to describe Ania Card's writing journey from writing her first novel, embarking on a summer of mentoring and landing an agent and a publishing deal within a year. The result? Above Us the Sea was published July 2024 by Dead Ink Books, an acclaimed indie publisher based in the UK. Ania's debut is a heart-rendering novel that explores the complexities of young love and identity with sparkling prose. We were thrilled to catch up with Ania and hear all about how Above Us the Sea came to life.
Hi Ania, thanks so much for taking the time to catch up with us. Can you tell us a little about where you were in your journey before working with Donna and what that experience was like?
At the time when I was about to apply for mentorship with Jericho Writers, I had been through two drafts of Above Us The Sea. I had no creative writing or literary background and had been to exactly one writing event.
I believed in my story but, alas, had no idea how good it was or how it could get better and what my ability as a writer was. I was basically a ball of insecurity, but a ball that was eager to learn.
I was thinking about my options; I had always been shy in groups and always preferred one-to-one contact. I also felt like the novel was pretty much in shape (ha! the sweet hindsight!). I didn’t need to be motivated to write: I needed an expert eye and guidance on what to do next.
I submitted my manuscript to Jericho Writers and was matched with Donna Freitas. Within a couple of weeks she came to me with feedback. Donna started off by sending me a detailed report on the entire manuscript that spanned a few pages. She outlined key issues with the manuscript and identified areas that needed a bit more work.
It was great to have that overview to refer back to as we worked through individual sections one by one. We focused on a section per Zoom call and Donna would always leave me with homework for our next call. I had next to zero belief in myself at that point, desperately needing validation to keep going. Donna’s love and enthusiasm for the novel in those early stages was the fuel I needed.
That’s amazing. Mentoring can be such a nurturing process, but it’s also so collaborative. What was that process like for you?
I was repeatedly blown away by Donna’s insightful remarks and ideas. It was so invigorating and such a joy to be able to talk about the novel in this new (for me) way; reconstructing, building, doubting and taking risks. I always say that those two months working with Donna were my creative writing learning on speed. I didn’t know a thing about character arcs, stakes, building tension or story structure when we started, all and any of those essential writing craft terms completely foreign to me.
We had a few Zoom calls together and I left each one buzzing with ideas, wanting to do better, improving and learning. With Donna’s help, I felt invincible – together we could do great things.
And those big, scary things we did: we moved chapters and sections, threw away characters... We binned the opening section and one in the middle, too, and under Donna’s guidance and a deadline, I fully rewrote the novel twice, making my biggest cuts and edits. There was one moment when I had to completely rewrite two sections and compress them into one, and I almost crumbled under the scope of it. Donna believed I could easily do it in a month, and because she had that faith in me, I believed in my ability, too. I handed in the edits within a month.
You must have both worked incredibly hard during those two months! How would you say Donna’s mentoring helped you not only finish your manuscript but polish it to the point you knew it was ready to go out into the world?
Donna always pushed me to do better and use every opportunity to raise the stakes. The stakes was what was ringing in my ears for months! I had always been a character writer; emotions and interior worlds were my strengths. I crumbled and cried at the feet of a plot, a timeline and stakes (timeline had me tearing my hair out at points). But by the end of our time working together, I felt I had a much stronger grasp of all three.
I had new skills, and I had this new confidence in my ability as a writer. By the end of two months, Donna was confident the work was ready to be sent out to agents. In our last meeting, she still pointed out a few small things that might benefit the story further and I actually ended up implementing those further down the line.
Fantastic. What happened next?
I signed with my agent Clare Coombes from The Liverpool Literary Agency only two months after working with Donna. We worked through minor edits over the summer and went on submission in November 2022. I signed with Dead Ink Books in February 2023 and the finished novel was published last month.
To say that my novel benefited hugely from having a mentor would be an understatement. It did, completely, but I have also become a far better writer, smashing my own glass ceilings time and time again.
Your journey has been such a whirlwind. Is there anything you wished you had known earlier, or been prepared for?
Oh, there would be so many things! In hindsight, having connected to many debut authors over the last few months, I now know that everyone’s publication journey is completely different. It’s hard to have expectations in our industry where there are no guarantees. I would say to all writers embarking on this journey, go with the flow, say yes to opportunities coming your way and enjoy all moments, and always come back to writing. This is what we do and it’s the only thing in our control.
Do you have any advice for writers working on their first draft?
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and write bad sentences, bad paragraphs and bad chapters. It’s all part of the process. There are so many ways to write, structure, plot, build characters, there are many writing routines, none of them are right or wrong. Choose your own adventure, one that works for you because there are no right or wrong answers. Read as much as you can, and read for joy. Make connections, connect with writers, booksellers, book influencers, your own writing community can be your rock through the good and tough times, and the lovely booksellers and book influencers are absolute heroes of our industry and champions of our stories.
Can you let us know what are you working on now?
I am currently working on my second novel. It’s still in very early stages but I’m so excited at every opportunity to dive back into it, which hasn’t been easy post-publication. It’s set in Brighton and spans an eco-thriller, a climate anxiety story, a bit of folklore, AIDS epidemic and as those themes always bubble at the edges of me; looks at identity and migration with a touch of the surreal I can never resist!
Submissions are at an all-time high, and not every agent is the right fit for every project. So, understanding where your book fits in is essential. It’s not because agents are lazy – it’s because we have to be selective.
How you present your manuscript gives us a sense of your vision for it. If we can tell that your vision for your book is different than ours, it’s probably a sign that it won’t be a very fruitful artistic partnership.
So here are some steps to help figure out where your book fits in this market:
Ask yourself, is my book really for children?
What is your age category?
What are your comparative titles? Ideally, these should highlight what you think are the strongest or most important features of your book
Does your book fill a gap in the market?
Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.
Is my book for children?
Children’s books are not about adults. Unless you are the ghost of Roald Dahl, your book needs a child protagonist. Arguably, there needs to be other children too, so they’re not just surrounded by adults.
Of course, there are books with animals and even objects – but even though they’re not an actual child, they’re usually child-like. Children’s books need to be about things that children care about, that see the world the way they do.
So my first step is to ask – is this book for children? Does it feature adult characters, dealing with things in their adult way?
Or, does it go too far in the other direction? Does it feature a child character, but told through a reflective lens of an adult perspective? Or is the content, even if it features a young child, not accessible to a child reader? Sometimes stories that are about children are not written for children, but are very adult handlings of very mature subjects.
What is your age category?
We know that it’s exhausting to constantly be asked to categorise your work, especially by age. But here’s the truth: publishing is a business. Publishers are selling a product. Booksellers (read: superheroes) need to make it as easy as possible for consumers to make the best choice in their selection. And we, in turn, want to make it as easy as possible for them to do that.
While categories in publishing may seem restrictive, we have these categories for the same reason that a supermarket has different sections – so that consumers know what they’re getting, and it’s easy for them to find it. When you need milk, you go to the dairy section. If you want to find a book that is aimed at a 6-year-old, you go to that section.
I did say ‘aimed at’ – this is important. Even if your 10-year-old is incredibly advanced, books for 16-year-olds can deal with things like abusive relationships, drug use, sex, mental illness, through the lens of a teenager who may be experiencing it. Just because a 10-year-old can read it, that doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate for them. Books aimed at 10-year-olds can deal with the same issues, but it’s handled with that age group in mind.
There is a lot of work done to provide age-appropriate stories for teenagers who maybe aren’t as seasoned as readers – if you want to write a story for a reluctant or struggling reader, who’s aged 15, great!
Comparative titles
Comparative titles shouldn’t feel like homework. They’re telling us so much about how you see your book.
Agents hope to see that you haven’t written your book in a vacuum. The best writers are readers, so we would expect that you’re reading widely in that space. That you understand your audience and what they’re reading. That you know what’s doing well with that age group.
But I do have some tips to make it easier if you’re really struggling.
For a start, stake out a bookshop. See what’s on the tables – they’re normally more recent publications. Picking a title that’s relatively recent shows us you’re keeping up to date and want to stay informed on the market. Talk to the bookseller! Ask them what’s popular, what’s selling, what people are asking for.
For a second comparative title, you don’t have to choose a book. You can choose a TV show or movie that you really related to, as long as it’s aimed at (more or less) your target demographic.
You can also isolate the elements of a book that you think add to your pitch but maybe overall, it’s not the right fit. Think about things like writing style, setting or time period, dynamics or tropes in the main relationships. You can say that your manuscript combines an element from Book X with something else from TV show Y. Play around with it.
Does your book fill a gap in the market?
I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about writing something specifically to fill a gap. Write what you want to write, write what you love! But you can always pitch something in a way that suggests it’s filling a gap.
The best way to do that is not to be cocky or arrogant. Don’t tell us “no one is writing about this” or “there are no books addressing this”. But what you can do is say, “I think my book would be perfect for readers who are ready to graduate from X” or “readers who aren’t ready for Y” – if you can highlight in that sentence along that there isn’t a lot of material for readers who are ready to graduate from a certain series or brand, that’s a USP that strengthens your pitch. See if you can find a gap that your manuscript fills? For example, I see a lot of calls for more STEM-based stories nowadays. Does your manuscript have a STEM aspect that you can talk about? I would never suggest changing or writing something to fit a trend, but if there is a part of your manuscript that fills a gap, let us know. If your book is the perfect next step (often a step up in difficulty) from a popular book, you’re creating a place for yourself in the market.
Ultimately, we want you to love your book as much as you did when you first sent it to us. It’s our job to sell it, but if you and your agent aren’t on the same wavelength about what you’ve written, along the way someone gets let down. So we ask that you give us a good sense of the book you want us to expect, so that we can find the perfect home for it!
From judging competitions, overseeing writer’s editorial services, being keen bookworms and writers of books ourselves, we’ve read a lot of first pages. There are many ways to tackle the opening of your story, so how do you make an informed decision that best suits your story?
First, let’s go back to basics.
The first page makes a promise to the reader. (So does the blurb, cover and pitch – but that’s another story for another day.) The opening lines tell the reader 'this is what you’re getting yourself into' and asks 'do you want to come along for the ride?'
When a reader is deciding whether they want to spend approximately 8-10 hours or 300+ pages with your book, you want to make the best first impression. So, how do we do it?
Our most important piece of advice? Save something for later.
Consistently, we hear agents and publishers turn down submissions that contain too much, too soon.
It's important to remember that stories are built from units of change. A reader wants (and expects) to see new details emerge, for the characters to evolve and reveal hidden sides of themselves.
By parcelling out information and aspects of your character, you can not only strike the balance between hooking your reader’s attention and overwhelming them, but you can offer them something new throughout the story.
Trust your reader. Let information unspool slowly and with care.
What is your opening image?
This first moment should achieve several things for your story:
Establish normalcy. What does this world look like on this particular day? What stage is the character at in their own life?
Establish a tension or instability, something that signals change is not only coming, it is necessary to the story. What challenges does the character face? Note: we’re not saying the change or inciting incident need to happen right away, but there should be signs, even if your character is unaware of them.
With this in mind, have a think about the moment you have chosen to start your story. Why now? If it doesn’t achieve the above, consider how you can adjust the timeline to capture your reader’s attention. And remember the advice: start late, finish early.
Now we’ve chosen our first moment, ask yourself are you ‘telling’ what you could ‘show’?
Full disclaimer, we believe that the ‘show don’t tell’ rule can be unhelpful to writers when followed blindly. Both are tools and have their purpose within a novel. Debi Alper’s Psychic Distance masterclass is an essential watch for all writers, but especially those wanting to understand the push and pull between show and tell.
Another way of talking about show and tell is scene versus summary.
A scene is in real-time. It is action, on the spot reflection, (and if you aren’t telling the story in 1st person and present tense, a narrator’s commentary but for more on this do go and watch Debi’s masterclass).
Narrative summary is exactly as described. It is writing that spans time in the story and it might include specific details and dialogue (and we think that it should contain both to create strong visual images in the reader’s mind).
For the opening of a novel you want to immerse your reader efficiently. This means, by providing enough detail to snag their attention, but not too much that you run the risk of overwhelming your reader with too much story, information or worldbuilding all at once.
A scene is an excellent way to do this, but before we dive in let’s look at some examples.
Pick up a few books that you’ve already read (so you are aware of the full narrative shape, and crucially, how it ends) and see how they open. Do they begin with scenes? Do any begin with summary instead?
Look at an example that starts with summary and think about why you think the author chose to do this. Are they using a retrospective point of view, with the narrator is looking back on events from afar and capturing a period of time? How long do they do this before moving into a scene? As you might find, there are plenty of books that open with narrative summary and do it well.
The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson begins with small sections of narrative summary told in quick succession. It breaks lots of ‘rules’ but with good reason that suits the style, the genre and the story being told.
Through quick glimpses into this world, the reader gains an instant and rich impression of the story we are about to step into. There is no info-dumping or heavy world-building, tension and impending change is established, and we are left wanting to know more.
If you want to take a look for yourself, you can view a sample of The Principle of Moments over on Amazon here.
Remember, if it makes sense for your story and engages readers, there are no rules to what you can and can’t do.
Now, we’ve discussed why you might begin by summarising events (though we caution against it as it is difficult to do well), let’s end with a brief note about scenes.
Find a book that opens with a scene.
What do you learn about the world the story takes place in? It doesn’t need to be set in a fantasy land or another planet, it can be a world similar to our own, but crucially, it’ll be dramatized by the author in a deliberate way.
As you read, note down what information you learn about the world. How do they deliver this information? Has the author trusted you to draw any conclusions? Are you left with questions or wanting to find out more?
Are there specific details that the author draw your attention to? If you know how the book ends, why do you think this is?
…
We hope this helps you consider how you open your novel in a more meaningful and deliberate way.
This may seem an odd thing for the tutor of Jericho’s Simply Self-Publish course to say, but I strongly believe that self-publishing is a misnomer. Here’s why.
Although self-publishing is author-centric, from first draft to finished book, the author is not the only person involved. Nor is the process DIY.
Self-publishing is not a game of solitaire, but a team effort. Successful self-published authors employ experts such as editors and cover designers to ensure their books match the quality of those traditionally-published.
Self-publishing may be author-driven, but it’s not only about fulfilling the author’s desires.
By all means, write the book you want to read – but also focus on what the market wants. Respect readers by making your book the best it can be. Don’t insult your readers by letting typos, plot holes or continuity errors through. Brand your book with a genre-appropriate cover so that it appeals to the kind of reader who would enjoy it. Publish on the right platforms and in the right formats to reach as many readers as possible.
Thinking of skipping ebooks because you prefer print? Do so at your peril: most indie authors make most of their sales and profits from ebooks.
Planning to bypass Amazon because you don’t like shopping there yourself? Only if you don’t mind skipping the biggest book sales platform in the world.
“You are not your reader” is a useful mantra to keep in mind.
Self-publishing does not operate in isolation from the mainstream book market.
Indeed, it shares many of the same production and distribution platforms as traditionally-published books. Although the business model is different, if you follow my recommended process to self-publish, your books will appear not only on online stores such as Amazon and Apple, but also on physical bookstores’ websites. Readers who prefer not to order books online may order your paperbacks and hardbacks from their local bookshop. You can also make your self-published books available to public libraries via their preferred distribution networks.
There’s no hard demarcation line between self-publishing and traditional publishing.
You don’t have to pick one or the other: you can be both. Many self-published authors go on to sign up with traditional publishers who headhunt new writers from self-publishing success stories. Savvy self-published authors selectively license the rights to the intellectual property that their books represent. While continuing to self-publish in your own language, you might license translations to specialist traditional publishers, e.g. French language editions to French publishers, or self-publish ebooks and print while licensing audiobooks to audio specialists.
Similarly, authors whose publishers want only limited rights, e.g. to a particular language, format, or territory, may self-publish different editions to reach more readers. Equally, when your contracts with traditional publishers expire (usually after five to seven years), and you get your rights back, you can create a new lease of life for those works by self-publishing them.
So, if I don’t like the term self-publishing, what do I prefer? “Independent publishing” or “indie publishing” has gained traction over the last few years. However, it’s not to be confused with “indie publishers”, who are essentially any publishing companies who are not affiliated to the main industry players.
I prefer the term “indie author” to “self-published author”, but as the boundaries between the indie and traditional sectors blur, I’d rather just call us all authors, however our books are published.
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If this article is making the prospect of self-publishing seem more complex and daunting than you first imagined, help is at hand. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, I teach Jericho Writers’ Simply Self-Publish course.
In ten weekly modules, I walk you gently through the process and fast-track you to self-publishing competence and confidence, with personal feedback and advice specific to your book(s) and to your goals.
Many course alumni have gone on to self-publish at least one book to professional standards, and many more are in the pipeline. Could yours be next? I hope so!
The journey to becoming an author can be full of challenges. Without support, guidance and a healthy dose of resilience, it can feel all too tempting to give up. A shining example of why you should always believe in yourself and never give up is author and former Ultimate Novel Writing Programme student Dani Raanan. We caught up with Dani following some exciting news to reflect on her journey so far and what she's learned along the way.
Hi Dani, thank you so much for chatting to us about your writing journey. One thing that strikes us about your story is how determined you are.
Hi, thank you for giving me this opportunity! It feels wild to be in this position and to be able to talk about this with you. It’s kind you think I’m determined – doggedly stubborn is more how I feel sometimes!
You recently signed with John Jarrold (from the John Jarrold Literary Agency) after completing the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme, can you tell us a little about that experience?
John was actually an agent I discovered years before I wrote The Crafter’s Wife on the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme. I queried him previously because I really felt that his specialisation and portfolio of current authors (all fantasy, science-fiction and/or horror writers) fitted me perfectly and that he’d be such a great champion for my work. It was his rejection letter that lit the fire in me to apply for the UNWP. I didn’t want my work to just be good. I wanted it to be special. He was therefore one of the first agents I queried after completing the course.
In his true fashion, he replied promptly telling me he would read it within two weeks, and if he hadn’t got back to me by then, to nudge him. After two weeks, I did – he then requested the full within two days. A week later, I had an offer. His level of communication blew my mind (and it still does – communication is so important to me, and I so appreciate his courtesy and transparency).
I ultimately had three full requests for Crafter’s Wife – two through opportunities with the course, and the one ‘slushpile’ offer from John. Of course, I let the other two agents know when John offered – I am actually still yet to hear back from one! Two weeks later, I signed with John, and I haven’t looked back. We’re deep in submission territory now – please keep fingers crossed for me!
What a whirlwind! I know that everyone here at Jericho Writers is wishing you the best of luck on submission. You’ve mentioned before about how your UNWP tutor Philip Womack helped you build confidence in your writing during the year on the course. Have you got any advice for writers struggling with their confidence?
Oof, that’s a toughy. The great thing about Philip was that he didn’t need to like my work. He was there to be brutally honest with me and to thus help me learn and improve. I think that’s a crucial thing – getting eyes on your work that don’t feel compelled to be kind [and perhaps inadvertently or with the best intentions lie] to you. Our partners, our friends – they mean well but haven’t always got the beauty or clarity of objectivity. So oddly enough, I think putting yourself out there actually helps build confidence. Joining writers’ groups, going to festivals, chatting to agents and editors – embedding yourself within the world you want to be a part of makes you feel the part, and sometimes that can be enough to quiet the self-doubt.
You've spent years developing your craft. Is there anything you have found particularly useful on your journey?
One thing I found particularly helpful was the early modules during the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme about plotting. I’ve never been a strong plotter (which is code for I HATE PLOTTING), usually pantsing my way through manuscripts with a vague outline of where I wanted to go. For me, that kept writing exciting.
The UNWP encouraged me to create a plot outline, encompassing three different acts, and I actually found it really helpful this time. I’d never go as far as to say I’m a plotter now, but maybe a reluctant plantser. I am definitely going to apply those skills (as well as the chapter breakdown and plotting sheets!) to the next manuscript I write.
Another thing I did differently for The Crafter’s Wife is I started with my cover letter. Which sounds a bit mad, I know – but having that short paragraph where I nailed the essence of what I wanted the story to be helped massively during drafting. Whenever I felt the story slipping or meandering, I would re-read the cover letter, re-align myself with what I wanted to achieve, and that gave me direction.
After having spent years writing and re-writing the same story, spending infinite amounts of time with your characters, and waking up sporadically in the middle of the night with ideas – how did you know it was time to submit?
I don’t know that you ever truly know it’s time. I think you just get so mind-boggled with your own story and words that the thought of editing for another minute just feels so repulsive that you know it’s time! And I say this as someone who’s favourite part of the writing process is editing. I love editing. To me, drafting is like making a giant mound of sand, and editing is sculpting it into a castle. It’s the bit where you add the beauty, for me at least. So when I can’t bear the thought of staring at my words a moment longer, I know it’s time.
We love asking our writers for one piece of advice they wish they knew at the beginning of their journey. If you could go back, what would you tell your past self?
Take your time. Make decisions with care. If you truly want this to be your journey – and hopefully one day a real career – it’s worth taking however much time you need to make these important decisions.
John is actually my second agent – I have been previously agented before. She was a genuinely lovely person, but not the right fit for my work, which I now know with hindsight. I rushed my first decision and made silly choices because I was excited and scared of losing the offer I had. Now, I know it’s okay to value myself in the process and take the time I need. We are all equals in this process – even though sometimes the power balance feels off.
Thank you so much for joining us Dani! We can't wait to see where your journey takes you next.
Next week … I want to look at how very basic plot summaries can give us important clues about the entire novel. If you’re doing our How To Write in 6 Weeks course, you’ll know just what exercise I’m talking about and (I hope) how illuminating it is.
What I asked people to do was to write a very short plot summary of their novel, either in 1-2 paragraphs or as bullet points: Status Quo, Inciting Incident, Midpoint / Developments, Crisis, Resolution.
Obviously, that kind of treatment is nowhere close to being an actual plan for a book. Writing a plan would take several pages of text, even if you were being quite compressed in your summary. I’ll also add that I pretty much never write a plan; it’s not how I work. It seems to me that a detailed plan is optional; a general sense of shape and purpose is not.
And, OK, it’s all very well performing an assignment, but what is it for? What are the lessons you’re likely to get?
The short answer to that is that you need to test your plot for seaworthiness – and doing that at book length is (a) extremely hard and (b) extremely time-consuming. Asking the key questions of a micro-summary isn’t going to give you all the answers by any means, but it does give you a fast, reliable way of understanding the basics.
Here are some of the things you may well find:
Blandness
Here’s a plot:
Status Quo Woman (45) is dissatisfied with her life
Inciting Incident Her best friend pressures her to go to a pottery class
Midpoint She resists the pottery, but ends up entering a competition, and failing badly
Crisis She decides to give up the class and revert back to her old way of life
Resolution Her new friends intervene and make her realise that she now has a group of friends who love her; she’s turned her life around
Now, I hope it’s obvious that something like this genuinely describe an important turning point in someone’s life. But as a novel? It’s hopeless. It’s just too dull, too lacking in bite to be picked up by anyone – agent, publisher, reader. Nearly all novels need a splash of the dark – and losing a pottery competition is not dark.
Scale
Another thing to ask is whether a novel has genuine novel-length scale. So take this example:
Status Quo Karob is a prince – the king to be. He’s had a sheltered life and a loud, dominant father
Inciting Incident Dragons prey on the northern territories. Defence is the traditional task of the crown prince
Midpoint Karob fights the dragons and fails
Crisis The king is ailing and courtiers are moving to prevent Karob from taking the throne
Resolution He returns to the north with a larger force and defeats the dragons.
And, OK, that has darkness. But does it have scale? Does that feel like a story that could sustain 100,000 words of prose? At the moment, it certainly doesn’t. It feels more like a middle grade story that might run to 30-40,000 words.
It’s always hard to be sure of these things when giving feedback to others. Is there more to this story than we’re seeing in those bullet points? Maybe.
But if you’re doing the exercise for yourself, you know whether there is or is not meant to be more. And at the moment, that story is just too compact, too simple – too dull – to sustain a whole book. Basically it amounts to: X fights Y and loses, then fights again and wins. A book that can be summarised as briefly as that isn’t really a novel. You have to be sure your outline has enough scale to build on.
Tangles
The last big route to failure is writing a novel that doesn’t know what it is. The first two examples might be hopeless, but at least they know what they’re doing. That’s not always the case:
Status Quo Jax (27) is in a job that offers geopolitical risk assessment. Even she doesn’t know what that is and she’s kind of bored. Her last partner broke up with her 6 months ago and she’s wanting to find someone.
Inciting Incident Yuri persuades Jax to help with his Azerbaijani import/export business. Jax also meets Luigi, a very good looking Italian personal trainer. Jax’s mother gets ill.
Midpoint Yuri is working with the CIA but had KGB roots and Jax isn’t quite sure who she’s helping. Meantime, she’s dating Luigi but he becomes very controlling. Jax can’t get to see her mum, even though the mum has a dementia diagnosis.
Crisis There’s a major shootout in Baku. Jax is wounded. Luigi tells her that she has to stay at home and be an old-fashioned housewife. Jax’s mother goes into a home.
Resolution Jax hands over her secrets to MI6, who give her a job as a central Asia analyst. She breaks up with Luigi. She sees her mum comfortably settled.
And – erp? What is that story? Who is it for? Is it a rom com? An action romance? Is there any connection between Luigi and Yuri? Quite how does the mother connect to all this? It’s not that you couldn’t slot a romance into a geopolitical spy story – of course you can – but there’s a theme about coercive control that just doesn’t seem to fit into anything else. It’s like there are three stories here and none of them have ever met before.
You usually get this kind of issue when a writer just wants to write about their chosen subjects and doesn’t take any feedback from the story itself.
Truth
And in the end that brings us to the essential element in this exercise – or really any writing exercise: truthfulness. You need to look at your work with a third-party eye, an unforgiving one. What, really, would an agent say about any of these three submissions, assuming they were being completely honest and not caring about the author’s feelings? They’d say: “boring”, “thin”, and “total mess”.
One of the advantages of an artificial exercise – like this bullet point one – is that it puts distance between you and your work. That distance should help you get as close to the truth as possible.
Pitch
And one more thing:
Do you feel your pitch echoing through your plot summary? You should. If your pitch isn’t there in the DNA, then your pitch is probably just a marketing sticker that you’re gluing on after the fact. That doesn’t work. The pitch IS your book, or should be.
That’s all from me. I’m going to take the rest of August off in terms of emails, but Feedback Friday will run as normal – and we’ll give you some of my greatest hits so you still get your dose of Friday yumminess.
The kids have built a massive fort in the garden, including a toilet (“but only for wees”) and a bath, which is a wheelbarrow full of water. So far, they’ve used a puppy crate, a guinea pig hutch, a ton of fence posts, an umbrella, two brooms, some towels and quite a lot of scrap wood. I’m not allowed to look too closely because if I try, they tell me they’re throw a spear at my head.
I don’t want a spear in my head.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to Write a Novel / Module #5 / Tools
Watch the lesson here (available to Premium Members)
Do your assignment:
Tell us what your themes are, and give us a passage (250 words) that shows them in action.
A great assignment, by the way. So get stuck in! Upload the result to Townhouse here.
The kids are off school. Yesterday was – complicated. And right now, I have seven kids in the house with me as the only (vaguely) capable adult.
So –
A short email today, but one with a useful moral.
On Wednesday night, I did (for our beloved Premium Members) a LIVE EDIT session, in which I took four short pieces of work and started to edit them much as I would if they were my pieces of text.
When I do these things, I don’t pre-plan my edits: the point really is to offer a stream-of-consciousness view into how I approach things. And each time I start one of these webinars, I always wonder if I’ll actually have anything useful to say.
I mean, I can always find trivia – this word repeated, an over-focus on bodily movements or sensations, a tiny muddle as to just how quiet a particular location is. At the outset, those things always seem to offer rather slim pickings. Good to correct, maybe, but perhaps not worth a webinar.
Except – and Wednesday evening was no exception – these little things normally lead to something bigger. So here, for example, is the first paragraph from one of the passages we looked at:
Aside from the weather and the hooting of an owl in the distance, it’s deathly quiet. Exactly what I wanted. But if that’s true then why do I ache for the comforting buzz of Jon’s Bar? Knowing he was asleep upstairs made me feel safe somehow, like I was alone but not really. Now there’s nobody, just me and the forest. Rain beats the roof above me in place of Jon’s footsteps on old floorboards, wind the only other breath for miles.
Now, this was from a really quite good passage and the key emotional transition which followed was well and movingly handled. The author, Rian, stands a decent chance, I think, of writing something which agents will need to give serious consideration to in time.
But? Well, the bit that niggled at me first was that damn owl.
The first sentence here says, “it’s deathly quiet,” albeit that the place isn’t totally quiet because of some (undefined) weather and a distant owl.
Only then, the last sentence says “Rain beats the roof above me.” It doesn’t say “patters lightly and almost without sound”. It says “beats”.
So which is it? Beating rain or deathly silent? It can’t be both.
And then, Jon’s bar is bamboozling too. Is the soundscape of that bar:
a) A comforting buzz?
b) Silent, because Jon is asleep upstairs?
c) Nothing from the bar below, but footsteps from Jon walking around above, presumably after the bar has closed for the night?
The answer seems to be all of the above.
Now, these niggles are – I accept it – utterly trivial. The first sentence said “Aside from the weather,” so it did, if we’re being strict, make some allowance for the rain. And the thing about Jon’s bar? Well, obviously, the soundscape of that bar varied with time of day, but the woman is perfectly capable of remembering each bit of it. We as readers are also capable of figuring these things out.
But these niggles lead to another. The structure of the piece at the moment is this:
Deathly quiet here
Comforting buzz of bar (past)
Me and the forest
Jon’s footsteps on floorboards (past again)
Wind the only breath
So we loop back twice to Jon, in the space of eighty words. That means that none of these soundscapes can be properly described or absorbed – we’re just shuttling to and fro too often. And what’s the emotional movement here? It’s got a bit lost in the shuttling.
So, on Wednesday, we took these niggles and arrived at this:
It’s quiet here. There’s the sound of rain on the roof, and dripping off trees, and somewhere an owl, hooting unseen. Otherwise, nothing – a forestful of silence.
Exactly what I wanted. But if that’s true then why do I ache for the comforting buzz of Jon’s Bar? Knowing he was there, either serving beers or, after hours, moving around on the old floorboards upstairs, made me feel safe somehow. Like I was alone but not really. Now there’s nobody, just me and the forest. Me, the trees, the owl and the rain.
That’s ten words longer, but clears up the niggles around what exact sounds we’re dealing with. More important, it cleans up the structure: we start with the forest, then we feel a pang for the buzz of the place left behind, then we consider again our solitary state here with the trees and the owls.
In bringing a bit of order to these smaller points, we also get greater emotional clarity. The new passage now shows a flow from external observation (“it’s quiet here!”) to an emotional one (“Wow! I’m really alone here.) That movement – a deepening – goes via a contrast (in terms of sound, and aloneness) with the world the character has just left.
This matters! The character is about to plunge into a howl of pain over her lost baby. The paragraph before that happens needs to set that up just right.
The new passage does just that. It gives us silence – nostalgia – oh crikey, I’m on my own … The whole paragraph is now getting us ready for what follows.
That, roughly, is how editing almost always works.
You start with a fairly low-level worry – in my case it was beating rain vs deathly quiet.
In solving that worry, we found others (was Jon’s bar buzzing or silent or footsteppy?).
And in solving all those things, we got to something that:
a) No longer suffered from those minor niggles, but also
b) Gave us a powerful and emotionally compelling route into the howl of pain which is about to come.
Little things lead to big things. That’s how editing works. That’s why jumping on trivia is almost always important: it opens doors to things that you might not otherwise have sensed and found.
For me, the activity has a free-form quality. Sometimes, I enter my text with a mission. (Turn character A from male to female. Improve setting B. Solve the plot conundrum in chapter X.) Often, though, I just read the text and respond to it.
I find a niggle and tease away at it.
Little things lead to big ones.
The text improves.
Next week, I want to do something a bit similar in terms of plotting. I want to look at how very basic plot summaries can give us important clues about the entire novel. If you’re doing our How To Write in 6 Weeks course, you’ll know just what exercise I’m talking about and (I hope) how illuminating it is.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to Write a Novel / Module #4 / Prose
Watch the lesson here (available to Premium Members)
Do your assignment:
Take a scene. Cut it brutally. Layer it up the way we did in the video. Then present your before and after efforts. (The “after” version should be a max of 250 words, please.)
I’ll be very keen to see the results of both the cutting and the layering up. I’m expecting beauty and wondrousness here, folks. Oh yes, and we’re at the one year anniversary of our Feedback Friday sessions. I’ve loved them. Thanks for participating.
Calling all short story writers! We’ve pulled together a list of short story competitions, awards and prizes for you to have on your radar. To the best of our knowledge, these competitions run every year, but do make sure to check with each of them directly for everything you need to know before submitting your work.
Short Story Competitions.
Aesthetica Creative Writing Award
This competition is run by the prestigious art magazine every year, writers can enter short stories up to 2,000 words. Find out more here.
Anthology Short Story Competition
Anthology Short Story Competition is open to original and previously unpublished short stories in the English language by a writer of any nationality, living anywhere in the world. There is no restriction on theme or style. Stories submitted must not exceed the maximum of 1,500 words. Get all the details here.
Bath Short Story Award
Launched in 2012 the International Bath Short Story Award has rapidly become established as one of the prominent short story competitions in the UK receiving over fifteen hundred world-wide entries each year and producing a yearly anthology of short-listed and winning authors. Head to their website to find out everything you need to know.
BBC National Short Story Award
This prize is run yearly and only open to authors with a prior record of publishing creative work in the UK. Stories up to 8,000 words are accepted and may be submitted by the author or by their agent. Shortlisted stories are awarded a prize of £600. Get the full details here.
Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize
Run by the well-known and beloved London bookshop, the Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize welcomes entries of original short fiction between 1000 and 5000 words. The winner will receive £1,000 and 12 shortlisted writers will be included in an anthology. Find out more here.
Bridport Short Story Competition
With one of the largest cash prizes for a short story competition, the Bridport Short Story prize has helped many writers launch careers and achieve success. Details here.
Creators of Justice Literary Awards
The Creators of Justice Literary Awards is an annual, international contest featuring works which highlight the struggle for human rights and social justice across the world. Writers can submit one poem, essay, or short story on an annual theme. More here.
Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction
Run by indie publisher Comma Press, this prize is open to both published and unpublished writers and aims to seek out the best established and up and coming voices in the form. Find out everything you need to know here.
Inclusive Voices Short Story Competition
A unique competition, the Inclusive Voices Short Story Competition asks writers for stories up to 550 words and 'should feature a character with a print disability' which aligns with their mission as a charity who have been providing audiobooks to people who struggle to read print for fifty years. More here.
Mairtín Crawford Awards
For the Mairtín Crawford Awards, both published and unpublished writers are invited to submit a short story of up to 2,500 words for the short story award, with the only stipulation being that they have not yet published a full collection of poetry, short stories, or a novel. Details here.
Manchester Fiction Prize
The Manchester Fiction Prize is open internationally to anyone aged 16 or over (there is no upper age limit) and awards a cash prize of £10,000 to the writer of the best short story submitted.
Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing
A unique competition, the Mogford Prize for Food and Drink Writing is an annual short story competition open to writers across the globe. The prize awards £10,000 to the best short story that has food and drink at its heart. Head to their website to find out more.
Mslexia's Short Story Competition
Run by the magazine for women-writers, Mslexia's annual competition is for unpublished complete short fiction of up to 3,000 words. Get the full details here.
Rhys Davies Short Story Competition
The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is a distinguished national writing competition for writers born or living in Wales. The first prize is £1,000 and publication in a short story anthology to be published by Parthian Books. More here.
Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition
The competition is open to original, unpublished and un-broadcast short stories in the English language of 3,000 words or fewer. The story can be on any subject, in any style, by a writer of any nationality, living anywhere in the world. Winner gets €2,000, featured reading at the Cork International Short Story Festival (with four-night hotel stay and full board) and publication in Southword. Find out more here.
The Aurora Prize for Writing
The Aurora Prize is a national writing competition, seeking outstanding new writing in short fiction and poetry run by Writing East Midlands. More here.
The Bedford Competition
Open internationally, there are prizes totalling £4,600 and all winning and shortlisted stories and poems are published as an anthology.
The Bristol Short Story Prize
This is an annual international writing competition open to all published and unpublished, UK and non-UK-based writers.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize
The prize is open to all Commonwealth citizens aged 18 and over entering a story of between 2,500 and 5,000 words. The regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives a total of £5,000. The winning stories are published online by Granta and in a special print collection by Paper + Ink.
The Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize
Galley Beggar Press' mission is to 'support talented new writers, and to demonstrate the wonderful things that can be done with the short story form.' Writers supported by the indie publisher's short story prize have gone on to achieve amazing things, such as signing with agents and securing book deals as a result of taking part in the prize. Galley Beggar Press have added that their 'winners have been profiled in the Bookseller, the Irish Times, Guardian and elsewhere.' Co-run by one of our brilliant Ultimate Novel Writing Course tutors Sam Jordison, we're big fans of this prize. Get more details about the prize here.
The Moth Prizes
The Moth Magazine runs an annual short story prize open to anyone from anywhere in the world, as long as their writing is original and previously unpublished. Details here.
The Royal Society of Literature V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize
The annual prize of £1,000 goes to the best unpublished short story of the year. The winning entry is also published in Prospect magazine and the RSL Review. Check their website for more information.
The Society of Authors' Awards
The Society of Authors runs annual awards, which are open to writers at all stages of their careers. Among them is The ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award for a short story (applicants need to have had at least one short story accepted for publication); and The McKitterick Prize, which is given annually to an author over the age of 40 for a first novel, published or unpublished. All details here.
Here are our top tips for entering writing competitions.
Write, write, write. Then put your writing away in a drawer.
Time spent away from your story can give you a chance to return with fresh eyes. This is crucial as it allows you to see the story the way a reader will. The next best thing is to...
Share your writing with a trusted writer friend.
We say 'writer' friend and not friends or family for a reason: constructive criticism is what you need most before you send your work out into the world. Sharing your story with someone who cares about you (and might not be a writer themselves) might only elicit good feedback. It's great to have a nurturing support system, but at this stage, you want to focus on making your writing as good as it can be.
Once you have submitted your work, follow any suggestions the competition might have.
This could mean adding their email address to your contacts so any emails from them won't be sent to spam or it could be making a note of key upcoming dates. Some competitions require longlisted and shortlisted writers to send additional words if they reach the next round.
Before you submit your work to a writing competition, make sure you have checked the following.
The competition deadline.
Competitions typically have strict deadlines to submit your work, make sure to put a reminder in your diary so you don't miss out.
The submission guidelines.
Competitions tend to have specific guidance on how to enter your work. Read them carefully and make sure to follow the rules as detailed. Remember, if you have any questions, the competitions are usually happy to answer them, assuming you have left plenty of time before the deadline.
The terms and conditions of entry.
Competitions will have stipulations around who can enter, make sure you've checked you are eligible before potentially wasting time submitting and/or entry free.
That's it from us, if you do enter any of these competitions we wish you the very best of luck.
I once wrote a book about payroll fraud. (Yawn.) The fraud in question involved some kind of messing about with employee tax deductions. (Snore.) The fraud was perpetrated using online tools for sabotaging corporate databases. (Dull, dull, dull.)
At one level, that book should not possibly have worked. It was like being trapped inside your very worst admin nightmare: dealing with government tax codes AND horrible tech stuff, both at the same time.
Suffice to say, I don’t think the book did fail – or at least, certainly not for that reason. Because I knew that the underlying subject matter was profoundly tedious, I basically avoided it. I mean, I couldn’t avoid it completely, because the crime was the crime, but I never did anything more than basic window dressing. So, for example, a character at one point says this:
“It looks like the basic mechanics of the fraud were initially set up by Kureishi. He installed software that gave external access to payroll. We’re confident he was not the ultimate beneficiary of the fraud. We simply can’t find enough money or signs of heavy spending. And the set-up looks remarkably professional. The fraud involves over a hundred and fifty dummy UK bank accounts. The money siphons via Spain, Portugal or Jersey to Belize. The Belize bank account is fronted by nominees and owned by a shell company in the British Virgin Islands. That shell company in turn is owned by a foundation in Panama.”
That’s pretty much as specific as I ever got. “He installed software” – well, shucks. That doesn’t really say much of anything. Dummy bank accounts, money siphoning to Belize – well, I have no idea how to do that kind of thing and I never got even close to an explanation.
In effect, my aims with speeches like the one I’ve just quoted were threefold:
Make the whole crime setup look plausible.
Make it look big and meaty – something that matters enough for my character to be deeply committed to the investigation. (I did that partly with the number of bank accounts, but more importantly with corpses – by this point in the book, my Kureishi character was very, very murdered.)
Avoid boring the reader with too much technical jargon.
You may not be writing about payroll systems yourself, but you quite likely are writing about something that involves technical knowledge – and if you are, you have some decisions to make.
Where your knowledge is actually interesting, then share it. I also wrote a book about the early oil industry and readers wanted to know how wells were drilled, what happens when you strike oil, what happens when gas leaks from a well, how wildcatting operated in those days, and so on.
Because of the intrinsic interest of the topic, I read a lot about it and shared plenty. Several specific accounts of striking oil in the book were drawn from actual strikes at the time – from huge gushers to small, but highly indicative, indicators that oil was close. Plenty of readers wrote to me saying how much they enjoyed that stuff. The former head of a major oil company wrote to me to tell me that he had an interest in the technology of the early industry and that I’d got my technical detail pretty much right. (Phew.)
But –
The reason I’m writing this email –
But –
Phones. Whatsapp. Messages. Facetime. Emails. Login credentials. Twitter. Who follows who. DMs. Verification issues. Instagram. Lost passwords. Account recovery process.
For all of us now, a lot of our social interaction is mediated through tech and much of that tech is basically horrible and boring. As a matter of fact, I think that one of the reasons why people pick up books specifically is to avoid the specific negatives of tech involvement.
With a book, the attention commitment is long not short – hours, not minutes or seconds. It’s emotional in a broad, deep, complex way, not in a “catty remark on Instagram” way. If we’re reading in print, then we’re doing so because we don’t want a screen in our hand.
All this says: you need to avoid talking about the detail of tech in your book wherever possible. If you need “convincers” – as I did with payroll fraud – then stick them in. But the purpose of those convincers is really just to say “I know this is boring, so can we please agree that I know what I’m talking about, and we can leave it at that?” That means, as short as possible, as little as possible.
You may think that this doesn’t apply to you – perhaps your book is a domestic noir psych thriller, not a book about payroll fraud or the oil industry.
But in fact, domestic noir psych thrillers are precisely the kind of area where this issue crops up.
Compare these two passages:
Tech-led
She looked at her phone and traced the unlock pattern to gain access. She navigated to Whatsapp and checked for unopened messages. There were a dozen or so messages in a school-related chat she was signed up to, but nothing from Emma. She tapped the search icon to bring up messages from Emma and was about to text her, when she saw a notice saying that the user had blocked her messages …
Emotion-led
She checked her messages – and found that Emma had blocked her. Why? Because of the Croissant Incident? But surely not. She’s already apologised for that and Emma didn’t seem like the kind of person to bear a grudge, no matter how covered in golden pastry flakes she might have been …
I hope it’s blisteringly obvious that one is terrible and one is good. My mother could basically understand the second piece of text, but she’d have no idea what the first one was going on about. Now, OK, it’s not your job to write for my mum, but the point is broader. One piece of text places tech-navigation at its centre. The other one places emotion and relationships at its centre.
You need to do the second, not the first.
These comments are acutely relevant to the kind of smartphone technology we all have in our lives now, but they’re also relevant to any kind of Boring Tech – like my payroll fraud.
If you’re writing about something interesting – navigating an ice-breaker, a 1930s gusher, Napoleonic artillery, the newsroom of a contemporary newspaper – then go for it. Find the rich detail and give us that. If you’re writing about something dull, give us the bare minimum and move away fast.
In my oil book, I remember I had a roughneck fall out of an oil derrick, bounce off the tin roof of the power-rig, and lie on the ground saying, “Would someone find a cigarette for this broken-assed sonofabitch?” I didn’t make that bit up: I just took it straight from eyewitness reports at the time.
The real gold? It’s reality – edited.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to Write a Novel / Module #3 / Plot
Watch the lesson here (available to Premium Members)
Give me your plot summary, as either:
Five bullet points (Status Quo, Inciting Incident, Midpoint, Crisis, Resolution), or
1-2 paragraphs
Either way, stay short. We’re focusing on the basic shape of the plot here; the detail can come later.
I know you’ve already done something towards plot, but I want you to get deeper and more specific this week. I’m looking for a further iteration of the work you’ve already done. If that means sharing something a bit more detailed than I’ve suggested, that’s fine.
Upload the result to Townhouse here. I’ll see you there. Everyone welcome.
BONUS FEEDBACK FRIDAY: 250 Words / Live Edit
I’m doing a live feedback event next week, so your task this week is really simple. Premium Members can register for it here. I want, please, 250 words (max) that you really like. Also, title and genre.
I’m going to give live feedback on this stuff next week, so if you don’t want your work torn to shreds in front of a baying mob, please mark it: NO LIVE FEEDBACK.
(Truth is, I only pick work I already quite like and I’m never that mean. But if you don’t want the live experience, then please just tell me so.)
After attending our Festival of Writing, Jo walked away the winner of our Friday Night Live competition and an agented writer! After publishing several books, we caught up with Jo to take a trip down memory lane.
Hi Jo, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us. Since joining us on the festival stage, winning the Friday Night Live competition and meeting your now agent, you’ve published three books. Can you take us back to that night and tell us a little bit about your experience?
It feels like such a long time ago! I’d heard Joanna Cannon talk about winning Friday Night Live and how it launched her career, and that inspired me to have a go but, ten days before the festival, I was rushed into hospital for abdominal surgery and told not to travel, but it was such a great opportunity that I ignored all medical advice (I don’t advise this, folks). I was shortlisted for Best Opening Chapter and Friday Night Live, and you can’t turn down a chance like that!
I was so nervous that I was sick before going up on stage. I knew absolutely no one there and was in a fair amount of pain, but everyone was so lovely and supportive that I came away from that night with a new writing group, many friends - and an agent!
What a whirlwind! How did your writing journey after winning Friday Night Live compare to beforehand?
I started writing the book that would become Sticks and Stones in February – seven months before Friday Night Live. I had no deadline and no expectations, and it was glorious! I must have done fifty drafts of my opening chapters because every time I got stuck, I went back and started at the beginning again, so I was really happy with the first third. It was the rest of it that was a problem!
Jo Jakeman's debut Sticks and Stones, published by Vintage
When I signed with my agent (the lovely Imogen Pelham) the ending was still pretty raw, so she helped me work out what I wanted to say. We went back and forth for about six months before she sent it out on submission to editors. Until winning Friday Night Live, my writing was all for me but, from then on, a team was involved – and they all had opinions. There were deadlines and it quickly went from a hobby to a job. I’m not complaining – it was exactly what I’d wanted – but I felt the pressure pretty quickly. I now look at it like I’m getting all this input so we can make the book the best it can be, but back then, I felt like I was clueless.
Do you have any advice for writers entering Friday Night Live (or indeed, any competition)?
Um, try not to have life-saving surgery in the days before the competition? Seriously, though, preparation is key. Make sure your work is of the highest quality possible. Seek advice from others. Take advantage of courses, read blogs, and practice in front of the mirror or the dog. I recorded myself doing the reading until I was comfortable looking up from my cards long enough to engage with the audience.
The London Festival of Writing 2023's panel of literary agents.
As you were developing your craft, was there anything you found particularly useful on your journey?
Goodness, so much. For years I wrote in the metaphorical wilderness with a handful of books on writing. I didn’t let anyone else read my work, I just plodded on. It all changed for me when I started to engage in writing courses and share my work with others. I went to talks by authors and volunteered at my local book festival so I could breathe in the rarefied air of my favourite writers. I soaked up everything they had to say. Surrounding yourself with others who share your excitement for books and writing is invaluable.
Were there any surprises along the way? Or perhaps anything you wished you had known earlier, or been prepared for?
I wish I’d understood the publishing process better. Or, at all. When my first book came out I felt like an observer. I didn’t know what to expect or how much I could ask for. I assumed that everyone else knew better than me, so I accepted all of the proof-reader's extra commas and didn’t push back at titles and book covers I didn’t like. I was so grateful for the opportunity that sometimes I forgot that my opinions were valid.
You need a certain amount of knowledge to be comfortable enough to stand your ground. Now I know enough to say, ‘How about we try it this way?’ I lost my confidence a few years back (Covid, poor book sales, changing publishers). I had to remind myself why I write and rediscover my love for it. Honestly, I could talk for hours about this, but I won’t bore you here. I’ll just say that confidence in yourself, and your writing, is the key!
Now you’ve been published, is there any advice you would give aspiring authors? Or anything you might have done differently in your journey up to now?
Never stop learning, questioning and observing. Read the books, listen to the podcasts, take a course. I’m currently doing an MA in writing for Script and Screen and I am learning so much that will affect the way I write – and structure - books. As I mentioned in my previous answer, confidence is key. The more knowledge and experience you have the easier it is for you feel assured in your writing. The reader needs to feel that they are in safe hands.
Thank you so much Jo, can you let us know what are you working on right now?
One Bad Apple is coming out on 19th September 2024. It’s a slight change in direction for me. It's less psychological suspense and more of a straight-up whodunnit about the murder of a headmaster at a prestigious boys’ school. Writing about pushy, competitive parents with secrets to hide and reputations to uphold has been so much fun.
I’m currently finishing my edits for The Vanishing Act, which will be released in September 2025. I can’t say much about that yet, but I am very proud of this one and loved writing it.
We had a good week last week: a flood of good replies, both in relation to “What do you want from writing?” and in relation to our Planning Your Novel module (which is the first lesson in the How to Write a Novel video course and completely free: access it here. You can still do the assignment and get feedback too.)
And –
I always learn something from this work. Last week was no exception.
There was a tremendous amount of interesting work in response to the Planning Your Novel assignment (you can see people’s work here.) And look: the entire point of this module and this assignment is to encourage a kind of safe play. You need to sketch out your idea for a novel, so you can see it and feel it – and change it.
In that sense, if someone gives me a page from a completed draft and I see obvious ways to improve things, then that page has weaknesses. It contains mistakes. But if someone gives me a sketch of an idea, then it can’t contain mistakes. Its job is just to exist – to make itself available for inspection. If you instantly see a way that the idea could be improved, that’s perfect. The sketch has done its job.
The planning process is always circular (plot, characters, settings, themes, plot, characters, settings, themes …). And it’s experimental. Would this story work better in Sweden? Yes? No? Or kind of? OK, so maybe not Sweden. What about Iceland? Or Greenland? A village set up to support oil drilling on the Greenland west coast? Better?
The fact is that you don’t get to the right ideas unless you give yourself permission to have the bad ones. And the bad ones don’t properly exist until they’re written down. You need to see and feel the plan taking shape in front of you.
So – no criticisms in what follows. Just observations.
First:
The pitch matters. Always.
Place your ingredients on a page in their barest, simplest form. Do you want to read that book? Would other readers want to read that book – remembering that your book will be sat next to hundreds of excellent books by authors much better known than you?
Look at these pitches:
Paleontologist + Murder + Theft of dinosaur bones
Jane Eyre + Lesbian romance + more enlightened approach to mental health
New intelligence agency + Run by women + New international crime
Now, I don’t know about you, but the first of those is obviously commercial. A murder story revolving around a niche-but-real area of crime, and one that’s of obvious interest? Yep. That works.
The next two pitches are (for my money, but you may think different) almost but not quite there.
Jane Eyre + lesbian romance: yes, perfect, it’s almost what the book is asking for. Adding a romance like that feels like an act of completion more than anything. But I got shivers of the wrong sort from the enlightened approach to mental health bit. I mean: yes, let’s in practice treat the mentally ill well, of course. But novels that have a “wouldn’t it all be better if we were nice to each other?” tone seldom make good reads – and agents and publishers know it. Now, I don’t think that basic idea needs a whole lot of tweaking to be right. I’d just want to scrub away any trace of the too-worthy from the pitch.
The last idea: yes, I’m intrigued. But the ‘new international crime’ doesn’t mean anything to me. And why is a women-run intelligence agency even needed? What’s the bigger idea underlying its creation? Again, I’m halfway there, but – if I were the author – I wouldn’t embark on writing the book until I’d got some decent answers to those questions.
Second:
Density matters. Almost always.
I came across at least two really interesting examples from your work:
One involved a couple running a teashop in the North of England, but involving some kind of story involving Welsh dragons. Now that’s potentially a nice contrast – the homely teashop, the wild dragons. But why separate them geographically? Almost certainly the book gets better if the teashop is relocated to the Cambrian mountains where (as everyone knows) the world’s best and most ancient dragons still live. The book gets better because, even when you’re in the teashop, you’re still in a location where the possibility of dragons exists. You’ve given every object in the teashop world some kind of ambiguity. Is this only a teacup? Well, yes, maybe, except that beneath those mountains outside lie dragons, and so nothing in this world is ever quite ordinary. If the dragons are a four-hour car journey away, you lose that sense of ambiguity. The book has lost just a splash of energy.
Another example: someone sketched out a novel running from the 60s to now about a mixed-race marriage in the UK. Now, there’s obvious interest there, but the story (as sketched and at least to me) felt a bit baggy – without obvious journey. That doesn’t work. So an author has roughly two choices. One, focus in on a particular time and place. Early 60s? The era of the Beatles and the miniskirt? A mixed-race marriage, with the couple based somewhere not obviously cool (ie: not Carnaby Street, London)? Yes: that clearly works. A lovely retro period feel combined with the iron tang of racial cruelty and complexity? Perfect.
The other way you could justify a 50-year stretch is by giving that journey some kind of purpose. Let’s say the couple has a daughter who goes wild – rejects contact with the mother – before reuniting as the central couple reaches old age. That way, the book is, on the surface, about the mother-daughter relationship, even though in practice the book will also study the evolution of race-attitudes in the UK.
In any case, density nearly always matters.
Geographical density. Density of relationships (a cast list that looks much the same by the end of the novel as in the first quarter). Density of time. When planning a book, it’s nearly always a good plan to close up gaps where you can.
And third:
Darkness matters, nearly always.
There was one planning assignment offered by a more experienced writer with an intriguing idea at its heart – a car crash, a ‘brother’ who’s really a son, a commune, some mental health strangeness. But … who or what was the antagonist? What did the whole story lean up against?
The writer was aware of the issue and had some (perfectly reasonable) hesitations about the exact solution I offered, but … darkness matters. Some external darkness is nearly always important. Even in what is a elegant and morally centred comic romance – Pride and Prejudice, for example – the shadows are present. (The family’s potential poverty. The potential destruction caused by the Lydia Wickham elopement.) That book without those shadows? Basically inconceivable.
So.
Pitch. Density. Darkness.
And plan – revise – plan – extend – plan – revise …
If you haven’t yet joined our How To Write a Novel course, you’re missing out. The peer feedback is abundant and excellent. Always encouraging, always thoughtful. Premium Members can just register here for free. If you’re not a PM, you can alwaysjoin us.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to Write a Novel / Module #2 / Character
Do your assignment: Give me a 250-word scene that shows a rich, rounded character – we’re looking specifically for inclusion of multiple dimensions in the one scene.
Everyone is welcome to take part and upload the result to Townhouse here. I’ll see you there.
Hello writers, we have TWO tasks in this week's email. If you want to take part in this week's Feedback Friday, keep reading to find out how to get involved - Jericho Team
Superquick housekeeping to start off with: My How To Write A Novel in 6 Weeks course kicks off NOW. Anyone taking the courses gets a weekly video, an assignment, and peer-to-peer feedback via Feedback Friday.
The first module (on planning) is free to all. I hope you get stuck in and make maximum use of it. More information in the PSes below about what to do next.
After this first module, you’ll need to be a Premium Member to complete the course. If you’re not a PM and want to take part, check out our membership options here. I hope you join us.
Righto.
And today, I want to start with a simple question: What do you want to get out of writing?
Don’t give me the ‘in your wildest dreams’ answer. We all know what you dream of: agents stalking you, publishers sending you limos with huge bunches of flowers, a bestseller list electrified by your presence, surging crowds at festivals, your own skincare range, Margot Robbie pestering you with requests to be in your movie, Ryan Gosling inviting you to his island birthday bash …
And, OK, I’m sure that’s all bound to happen, but let’s have a sober version of your aspirations too.
If you want to answer just that simple question, then do. We’ve put together a Townhouse forum, and please – everyone, not just Premium Members – get involved. The short version of the question is just this: What do you want to get out of writing?
If you want to be more discursive (and please do!), then you might want to address any of the following questions which seem relevant to your situation:
Do you think your basic idea for a book is strong enough?
Are you going to finish your book?
Do you intend to get help with the book (eg: via a manuscript assessment)?
Do you intend to get help with your skills (eg: via a writing course)?
If you’ve finished your manuscript, do you think it’s strong enough to market as it stands?
What’s your preferred publication outcome: Big 5 traditional publication? Niche trad publication? Digital first publication? Self-pub?
What will you do if you get your book out there and agents aren’t interested?
What will you do if your self-publish your book and sales are miserable?
What financial outcome would make everything worth it to you? Give us a figure.
What other factors would make everything worth it? (eg: seeing your book in a bookshop. Holding a book in your hand. Getting some emails from readers.)
Does critical acclaim feel important to you?
Does feedback from readers feel important to you?
Do you intend to write more than one book? If yes, then will you be writing in your current genre or multiple ones?
Do you want to make a full-time career as author (ie: earn enough to live on from books alone.)
Do you want to make a substantial part-time career as author? (Like loads of the team at JW, in fact.)
Does a film / TV adaptation feel important, or is that just fantasy-land stuff for you?
Don’t feel confined to that list. If there’s something I’ve missed that seems relevant, add that into your answers.
And …
Well, when I started writing, I definitely wanted a big 5 publisher. I definitely wanted an agent. I definitely wanted to make meaningful money.
But I think the biggest thing for me was simply being a writer. I’d wanted to be an author since I was about 10 years old; I just always assumed that’s what I’d do. So being a writer for me was mostly about becoming me; anything else would have felt a bit strange, like having been born into the wrong body.
I have had my work adapted for TV. That didn’t make a big difference to me, either emotionally or financially.
I have had my work sold all over the place. That’s been gratifying, for sure, but not in an especially deep way. It’s fed my ego, not my soul, and these days my ego isn’t that fussed either.
I’ve generally had very positive reviews from critics, but, honestly, that means less to me now than it might have done once. I feel that I know reasonably well how good or bad my books are. I’m not massively affected by what some third-party thinks. If someone doesn’t like my book, that’s as likely to be a matter of personal preference as it is to be something more fundamental.
Getting really committed, insightful communications from readers? Well, that’s always been special and it’s become much more frequent in the internet age and (especially) with a bit of self-publishing.
I’ve always enjoyed trad publishing (though it has also, often, frustrated the heck out of me) but I’ve always liked self-pub too (which has been much less frustrating and more reliable in terms of income.)
I like writing fiction and non-fiction, but fiction is definitely harder – a lot harder, in fact.
I definitely want to publish more books, but I don’t have the same fever around it as I used to. (Nor, admittedly, the same financial pressure.)
I’ve never taken a writing course, but I have done courses on self-pub (well worth it) and no book of mine has ever been published without deep, professional editorial input.
So: those, roughly, are my answers.
What are yours?
Write down your answers and actually give them some kind of sense check. If you have things like “Explore merchandise range to accompany my middle grade novel”, then ask yourself how many authors you know who have successfully done this. If your answer doesn’t get further than ‘JK Rowling’, you may want to reconsider things.
The fact is that writing is hard. Getting published is hard. Not getting published is more common than getting published … and getting published in a small way is more common than getting published at scale.
So, what's the point of all this? Well, we're not in the business of daydreaming. I want you to think practically about your writing future. If you have a goal in mind, it's much easier to reach if you
know what that goal looks like and
have concrete steps that will bring you closer to achieving it.
Ask yourself: what does that journey look like? What can you do today, this very minute, to bring you closer? This could be any number of things but some ideas include:
Clearing a set space in your week for writing
Improving your home-writing set up to remove niggles or distractions
Getting formal expert feedback (Try a manuscript assessment, but do this only after you’ve worked hard at self-editing your work. It doesn’t pay to rush in.)
Really structuring what your book is trying to be. Getting specific about things like your elevator pitch, your plot outline, your character plans, and so on. (That means writing things down, by the way. Thinking about these things while walking dogs won’t achieve the same thing.)
Cultivating a writing community (Feedback Friday is a great place to start)
Improving your writing craft. Why not dip your toe with this week's How to Write lesson? If there's another area you need bolstering, hit up our Masterclass library (available to Premium Members). There are also more rigorous, structured options like our flagship writing course. It really depends on where you are at and where you want to be.
Doing the scary stuff. Not sure if your manuscript is ready to be marketed? Try sending it out to agents. See what response you get. Or book an agent one-to-one and ask for direct, truthful feedback
For now though, that first step could be as simple as writing out your answers to the above questions and making sure every goal has a first step you can realistically make in the near future.
Post your writing goals and next steps here. Don't want to share with the wider world? Reply to this post and let me know.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: HOW TO WRITE / MODULE #1 / PLANNING
Now, last week, in Feedback Friday, we were looking at your mysteries – not detective novels, for the most part, just places in your book where a mystery intrudes, presses itself at the characters.
And one of the things I noticed was that there’s very often a sense of something sacred about the actual places or artefacts involved in these mysteries. So a letter, written in 1944 and being read by people in 1948, can have the quality of some treasured relic – a saint’s bone, a lock of Mary Magdalene’s hair.
Place too can acquire this sense of being close to something magical – inhabited by spirits. As though a deserted house gathers some of the spirits you might expect to find at Stonehenge during Solstice, or Glastonbury Tor, or Tintagel Castle.
That sense of powers that lie beyond the ordinary and known can enter any book at all. You’re likely to find those passages:
In portal scenes – any time that your character steps from one world into another, less known, world where the rules seem shifted. This could be a really ordinary type transition – a working class student entering some high end and ancient university for the first time, for example – in which case, the sense of the sacred clearly exists in the character’s head alone. Or it could be more clearly linked to the spiritual – a Western adventurer entering some tribal burial ground, for example – in which case, the sense of the sacred is at least partly ‘owned’ by the space itself. Either way though, there’s a transition which needs marking.
Where you have some kind of relic. That could be a Dark Ages sword, obviously, but is more likely to be a family letter, or a heavy iron key, or a set of war medals. But the meaning and history attached to that relic can give it weight, no matter how ordinary the object or how (relatively) recent its past.
Where you have a place around which some special sense hangs – a mystery, the past presence of someone important, a place heavy with memories from a different time.
Where you have a person that – even just temporarily – seems to shimmer with something a bit unworldly: a tiny flash of superpower, a hint of the mage.
Once you find these moments in your book, I think it’s good to ask yourself the question, ‘Am I making the most of this?’ If you’re not writing fantasy, you can’t jump straight into magic, but you can borrow some of the tones of magic. You can introduce a note of the strange and perhaps the sacred too.
A very talented kids’ author, who used to work as an editor for us, once told me that whenever he wrote a portal scene in one of fantasy novels, he always wrote it as poetry first, before tucking it back into prose. It’s that sort of attitude that I think any of us can use.
Here, by way of example, is a chunk from my The Deepest Grave. Th characters are in a remote Welsh church. They have just interrupted a robbery and are trying to figure out what the thieves had been looking to find. So far, they’ve found nothing. Then:
The light now has failed almost completely. The two men won’t be found unless they’re the stupidest or unluckiest criminals this side of Oswestry.
The uniform goes. The forensic guy goes. The church lighting somehow just emphasises the darkness. It thickens the air into something yellowey-orange. Gluey.
We regather in the vestry, just because Katie’s left her coat there.
Bowen lifts the 1953 fish-restaurant newspaper out of the wooden wall box.
‘I suppose that can go.’
He looks glumly at the mess behind the cupboard, knowing that it’ll be his job to clean it. Katie looks into the box, now missing its newspaper floor.
Glances once, then looks more sharply.
‘No, that’s not right,’ she says, and starts picking at the bottom with a fingernail.
I already looked under the newspaper and saw just the pale, bleached colour of old pine – pine that has never seen the sun – but that was me being dumb. Me not knowing how to see.
Katie picks at the bottom and it comes away.
A sheet of paper, blank on the upper side, but with writing in clear purplish-black ink on the lower.
Latin text.
A hard-to-read medieval hand.
Bowen stares. I stare. We all stare.
‘Katie,’ I say, ‘This paper? We can get it dated, presumably?’
In the gluey light, she shakes her head.
‘No. No, we can’t.’
‘We can’t?’
There’s something about this light, this thickened silence which makes everything seem slow, unnatural.
‘We can’t test this paper, because it isn’t paper. It’s vellum. A dead sheep, basically, scraped clean and stretched out thin.’
On the one hand, this is a cop and archaeologist just doing their job. But those comments about the ‘gluey’ light and ‘this thickened silence’ give the moment the quality of something like the discovery of a sacred relic – as though some other, more ancient, world were suddenly touching this. That’s sharpened up, I think, by a sense of these layers of history: from a 1953 newspaper to Latin text, from a sheet of paper to a sheet of vellum.
Those are the signals that, if you like, lie in some external reality. But the characters’ reaction also expresses their sense of transition: ‘Bowen stares. I stare. We all stare.’ The way everything come to ‘seem slow, unnatural.’
Because the characters are feeling that, the reader does too. And what could have been an ordinary moment in a detective novel, temporarily at least, wears the clothes of something deeper, older, stranger and perhaps more magical.
Poetry, then prose. The magical, in the ordinary.
That is a power you can seize, if you choose to seize it. I hope you do. There’s another chunk from the same book that operates as a proper portal moment: a transition that, in this case, involves a literal door. Again, I didn’t write that passage thinking about portals and fantasy and magic … but those things are present nonetheless. I’ve popped that chunk into the relevant Feedback Friday forum, so you can see it for yourself.
Don’t forget about that How To Write Course. I’ve done all-new videos for it, and the feedback from the first viewers has been all positive. You can take the first lesson for free now, the rest is available for Premium Members only. Details on how to join here.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Fantasy / Magical
Three weeks back, inspired by historical fiction, we looked at research. Two weeks ago, inspired by romance, we looked at the Absent Beloved. Last week, inspired by crime, we asked you to find mystery. This week – inspired by fantasy or any kind of magical realism – I want you to find a moment where some sense of the magical or sacred intrudes into your book. That could be:
Discovery of a ‘relic’
A portal moment
Some shifting sense of a character possessed of a not-quite explicable power
A place that has a touch of something beyond the ordinary
If you are writing out and out fantasy, then those moments will be easy to find, obviously. If you’re note writing fantasy, then those moments still probably exist.
What I will say is that you may well find (let’s say) a portal moment in your book that slightly misses or underplays its sense of magic. So do please feel free to edit / rewrite those moments before uploading them to Townhouse. Try pushing the magical gas pedal a little and see if people like the results. You could even try writing the scene as poetry first, before putting it back into prose.
I think Sofia Samatar talking about ‘the strange, the weird, the speculative’ is quite inspirational here. It almost feels more fun to me finding the strange in a book that is basically not strange.
So what I’m after this week is:
Title
Genre
1-2 sentences of explanation, as needed
250 words where something a bit like magic intrudes into your book. Some sense of a dimension beyond the ordinary. I really don’t mind if what we’re seeing here is a trace – a hint – a suggestion and nothing more. Just something to suggest that dimension beyond.
I’m kind of interested to see what you make of this task. I’m quite interested to think what I’d find in my own books too.
That’s it from me. We’re getting our one week of English summer this week – with actual sunlight – and the kids are celebrating by running around half-naked and building barricades in the garden. Teddy told me, quite peaceably, that he needed a better weapon, and marched off (mostly naked) to find one. He came back with an eight-foot fencepost. I didn’t intervene, but am mildly worried as to what will happen next. Post yours here.
We had a nice exercise on Feedback Friday last week – all about finding the romance between him and her, when one of the two is not present.
This week we’ll be dealing with mystery – more about that below. But as of July, we’ll be devoting ourselves, for six weeks, to a complete course in writing a novel. Every week, there’ll be a (roughly half hour) video from me guiding you through particular aspects of writing. Each week, I’ll give you a task. Then we’ll all meet on our regular Feedback Friday form to upload our tasks and exchange feedback. The modules will cover:
Week 1 Planning
Week 2 Character
Week 3 Plot
Week 4 Prose
Week 5 Tools (points of view, etc)
Week 6 Self-editing
If you are a Premium Member already, you don’t need to do anything at all – you’ll have access to the material automatically. That said, if you want a plump little video from me to plop into your inbox trussed up like a fat little partridge with bacon on top, you can register for the course here.
If you’re not a Premium Member, you won’t get the course videos (or feedback from me), but you can join us here. (The cost is as little as £12.50 / about US$16 per month.)
Okie-doke. Enough of that.
Pigeons.
I came across a great phrase the other day, from someone frustrated by a particular issue – they said it was like ‘playing chess with pigeons.’
So you think: OK, I’ll get a ready for a game of chess. I’ll brush up my knowledge of openings. I’ll play a few practice matches. I’ll push for territorial advantage early one, maybe get slightly ahead in terms of pieces, then I’ll move in for checkmate.
You go to the park, lay out the chessboard – and find that your opponent is a pigeon.
So you make your move. Perhaps the pigeon starts by making a few somewhat random-n-wild moves of its own.
You get ahead in the game earlier than you had expected. And yes, perhaops, you find yourself picking up pieces from the ground and resetting them on the board perhaps a little more often than if you were playing a FIDE grandmaster. But you make allowances. This is a pigeon, after all.
And then – ha! – you still have your queen and both rooks. You command one file completely. The pigeon’s king is trapped behind its own pawns. You are ready to move in for the kill.
You make your move and say ‘Check!’
The pigeons flaps its wings and knocks over a piece.
You put the piece back where you think the pigeon maybe intended to move it and – another move. One more and you’ll be ready for mate.
At which – the pigeon flaps its wings, knocks everything over, pecks crisps from a litter bin, craps all over the board, and flies away.
So: have you won? Or not won? Was this even chess at all?
Now, I really don’t want to exaggerate, and there are plenty of really great author-publisher interactions and loads of really excellent author-agent relationships, but …
Well, there are also far too many episodes where authors – trying really hard to play a disciplined and professional game of chess – discover that they have ended up playing with a pigeon.
For example:
The agent who gushingly requests your full manuscript, then never replies to you again.
The agent who wants to take you on, but asks for some edits, which you do and send, but then the agent never responds meaningfully again.
Or the agent claims to have sent your book out to editors, but never tells you who has seen it and there’s something unsettlingly vague about the nature of any feedback received.
Or publishers who take your work on with mwahs and champagne, but then the marketing seems absent or just never really thought about
Or your editor is changed on you, without you getting a say, and you feel that your new person is basically totally uninterested in your or your book
Or your book gets published, but you get very little data on sales and very little to tell you if those sales are above or below expectation, and you relly don’t know if your authorial career is basically dead – or just stalled – or doing pretty much fine, actually.
There are a million variants on these basic stories and you don’t need to hang out with professional authors for long to encounter them.
What’s more: neither agents not publishers ARE pigeons, but they can exhibit pigeon-like behaviour for perfectly rational reasons. Take that change of editor issue: the new editor didn’t acquire your book. Maybe they don’t like it. That editor has a heap of other books to publish. He / she might perfectly rationally think they’d do well to concentrate their attention on what they see as their more likely wins. That’s tough on you, but no one has been an idiot.
Or a publisher goes from mwahs and champagne to chilly silence? Well, OK, maybe the sales team pushed your book hard with retailers and just didn’t make sales in the expected volumes. So that publisher, has now ratcheted down its expectations from X to maybe one tenth of X. So you are now getting the treatment standard to an X/10 author. Again, that’s hard on you, and not your fault, but that’s just how it is.
And? People often come to us looking for solutions. We offer (I hope) sensible, intelligent, experienced advice.
But …
Well, you can’t play chess with pigeons. Or, if you do, you’ll find they crap on the board, knock the pieces over and are more interested in pecking at crisps than exploring what its knights could do in a more advanced position.
In the end, if others don’t act professionally, you need to do whatever you can (in terms of mitigation, trying to rescue things, etc) but accept that maybe there’s nothing much to be done. Except of course, write another book, find another publisher, sign up with another agent – or, of course, self-publish. The more omni-skilled you are (writing craft, industry knowhow, author-led marketing competence), the more your career can rest in your hands, not those of others.
Meanwhile – chess with pigeons? A bad idea. Or rather, one that doesn’t necessarily offer any winning strategy. I’m playing chess with 8-year-olds at the moment, and that’s strange enough.
Squawk! Flutter! Yikes!
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: mystery
Two weeks back, and inspired by historical fiction, we looked at research. Last week, inspired by romance, we looked at the Absent Beloved. Today, inspired by crime, I want you to find mystery in your novel. We want any moment where your character encounters a puzzle – about the past not the future – and feels its mystery.
Crime fiction, more or less by definition, will have these moments, but almost any novel will – no matter how big or small the mystery, how temporary or how permanent. What I want from you is a sense of that mystery: especially the atmosphere in the room, the character’s reaction, etc.
250 words where your character is toying with mystery, where we feel that mystery present in the room. This is an especially good task for anyone not writing crime fiction – that is, where the mystery may not already be at the heart of the book.
We think romance is about him and her, right? That it’s Lizzie and Darcy dancing at a ball, emotions pushing at each other. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler. Anna Karenina and Alexei Vronsky.
And, OK, that’s true. But there are two sides to romance and they both matter.
There’s romance when the two protagonists are on the page together. And the romance that happens when they’re apart. They both matter – and I want to do a little bit of dissection of both.
Him and her
So here, to start with, is a chunk of early Fiona, with her at an early stage of her first important relationship. The two not-yet-lovers are both coppers. In this scene, they’re sharing a moment on the office stairs. My comments in square brackets.
The door at the top bangs and Brydon’s tread starts to clatter down. He’s both heavy and light. Heavy because he’s a biggish lad, and light because he has a natural athleticism, a bounce that carries through into every movement he makes.
[In any decent romance, the physical presence of the other is a note that wants to carry through into most encounters. The constant awareness plus a good splash of attraction.]
‘Hey.’
‘Sorry to grab you. I just had to see you. Sorry.’
Brydon is on the step above me and I’m talking somewhere in the region of his belly button. ‘First things first, Fiona,’ he tells me. He comes down a step, then hoists me up to where he’d been standing. We’re still not eyeball to eyeball, but we’re a lot closer.
[This shows the man being manly – taking control, lifting his girl. She’s accepting of all that – in effect playing a very traditional female role here, though she is not in general very traditional at all.]
‘Do I see DC Griffiths in a dress?’ he says. ‘Have all relevant authorities been notified?’
That’s Brydon humour for you, like it or lump it.
‘And heels,’ I say. ‘Look.’
[Here, we see both Fiona’s inner and outer worlds. The inner one notes Brydon’s rather ponderous joke – affectionately, yes, but without admiration. But she doesn’t give Brydon that ‘rather ponderous joke there’ memo. Instead, she flirts in a tiny way, by calling attention to something prettily feminine. The fact that she chooses the soft route here, not the more abrasive one, tells you a lot about her choices, her inner emotional state.]
He smiles at me. A nice smile, but I know that half his mind is occupied by the clock. He needs to get off to London as soon as he can […]
‘I just wanted to tell you I might need to take things slow.’
‘OK.’
‘It’s just . . . things can get a bit crazy in my head, and slow tends to be better than fast.’
‘OK.’
‘I don’t want you to think that because I—’
I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, so I end up not saying anything.
‘You don’t want me to think that, although you almost walked out into a line of cars on Cathedral Road last night, you’ve got some kind of death wish.’
‘That’s it,’ I say. ‘That’s exactly what I was trying to say.’
The scene closes with female, emotional awkwardness and a male rescue – a rescue notable for the simple directness of Brydon: he physically moves her to a better position, he makes dad-jokes, he says ‘OK’ when she signals emotional complexity, and so on. That simple directness isn’t a limitation of Brydon: it’s what Fiona seeks and needs. (And what, ultimately, will prevent their union.)
What I really notice about this scene, reading it back, is that Fiona adopts, for the purposes of this early romance, the posture of girlfriend. She simplifies herself and feminises herself. It’s not fake, that. She’s flirting. She’s in love. But nor do we see the full Fiona here – the one who is quite likely to throw a bad guy off a cliff, or smoke a joint, or expose others to her abrasive humour.
I think that, probably, in any early romantic scene, we’ll feel the presence of the physical, the jostle of traditional male / female roles, and self adapting to the presence of this lovely other.
Her without him
Now none of this is at all unexpected. But I do especially want to point out that the romance continues – and is just as intense and maybe even more so – when one of the parties is absent. Here’s how the scene above plays out once Brydon has gone:
He’s off. Up the steps. Heavy and light. Thumping the door at the top open so hard that it whacks against its doorstop. The stairwell echoes with the noise of his departure… [A big male departure in other words. Even the sound of his going carries his physical presence.]
I sit on the step, getting my head into shape again. My pulse rate is high, but it’s steady. I count my breaths, trying to bring my breathing down to a more relaxed range …
This isn’t love and this isn’t happiness. But it’s like I’m in the hallway and can hear their music spilling out of the living room. Their laughter and candlelight. I’m not there yet. I do know the difference. I’ve had just a single date with Dave Brydon. Nothing that remotely constitutes a relationship. These are early, early days and anything could happen from here. But for once in my life, for once in my hopeless crackpot life, I’m not just in the same timezone, I’m actually shouting-distance close to the love-’n’-happiness twins.
I feel the feelings, piece by miraculous piece. Bum on a concrete step. Heart thumping. A floaty green dress and sandals with two-and-a-half-inch heels. A man who hoisted me up a step because I was talking into his belly button. This is what humans feel like when they are getting ready to fall in love.
I get up from my step and walk slowly back upstairs to my desk.
I’ve compacted this scene quite a bit for reasons of length. (Fiona’s relationships with her own feelings is odd, so it takes her awhile to figure out her own thoughts.) But what you feel here is the huge presence of Dave Brydon, even when he’s not there. I almost want to say: especially when he’s not there.
When the two of them are together, Fiona can’t get into the detail of her feelings too much: there isn’t the space to do it. With him gone? The world opens up: “I’m in the hallway and can hear their music spilling out of the living room. Their laughter and candlelight.” She can start to review those feelings in detail. Her review of the situation still includes all the elements necessary to the start of a hot (and hopeful) relationship:
Self as feminine. (The floaty green dress and sandals.)
Self as physically embodied. (Bum on a concrete step. Heart thumping.)
Physical and masculine presence of the other. (A man who hoisted me up a step.)
Feelings as rare and precious (piece by miraculous piece.)
Him and him, her and her
If you only felt the romance on the page when the two people were present, that romance would fail to ignite. It would be incomplete. It’s the two things together – romance with, and romance without – that gives you your complete brew.
I’ve never really written a gay relationship, so I can’t speak with authority there. But I think the basic principles remain the same. In the chunks we’ve just read, we see Fiona self-simplify, into someone more feminine than she really is, in order to get her man. That process of self-simplification will, I think, happen in gay relationships too, just not necessarily along classic masculine / feminine lines. If you have insights here, do please share them!
Romance with a lower case r
I’ve only once written something that would be classified as a real Romance novel – it was longlisted for a romance award and a German publisher wanted to publish it under the name Emma Makepeace. But all my novels have had the flutter of romance somewhere, and nearly all novels need them. There’s a particular pleasure, in fact, in interweaving romance and action. Both elements shine the brighter. Just don’t forget all about the romance when the action happens. If the Beloved leaves the Lover’s thoughts too long and too often, it’s not much of a romance at all.
Feedback Friday: Romance
Last week, we relished an excursion into hist fic. This week, it’s all smooochy kissing and close dancing. Or actually – the opposite.
Here’s a useful masterclass on romance in all its different manifestations – from a woman so prolific, she needs two names. Please don’t ignore that video if you don’t write capital-R romance. We all need to know how to write about love.
The exercise this week involves scenes where your character is thinking about their beloved, when their beloved is not present. It’s your version of the ‘her without him’ bum-on-a-concrete-step scene.
Specifically, I want:
Title
Genre
1-2 sentences of explanation, as needed
250 words where your character is thinking about their loved one, without that person being physically present.
I’m going to be looking for physical awareness, strong feelings, and some sense of the way that the character is being squashed into a different shape (perhaps just temporarily) as a result of their passion. Off you go – and ah! My heart beats faster, my cheeks are a little pinker …
That’s it. Feedback in Townhouse as per usual. If you aren’t a Premium Member, you can’t access the masterclass.
Have you heard? Innovative digital-first publishers are changing the landscape of the industry. Any savvy writer on the lookout for a way to get their books into the hands of readers would benefit from keeping their eye on this exciting new frontier. We've put together everything you need to know about digital-first publishing, including which publishers are accepting submissions.
What is a digital publisher?
A digital publisher is a publisher like any other, but they tend to bring books to market in purely digital formats, like eBooks and audiobooks.
A digital-first publisher works slightly differently. Whilst they tend to prioritise digital formats, they also publish books in physical formats such as hardbacks and paperbacks.
What's the difference between a digital-first publisher and a traditional publisher?
The clue is in the name! A traditional publisher (like one of the Big Four: Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins and MacMillan) tend to prioritise publishing a book in a physical format (like a hardback or a paperback) over other formats, though there is usually a variety of formats available for each of their titles titles.
The important word here is prioritise. Ask any published author and they'll tell you that marketing and publicity can be instrumental in a book's success. While a traditional publisher might put their efforts into selling physical copies, there are other successful ways publishers sell books.
Digital-first publishers prioritise selling digital formats (which have grown in popularity in recent years, especially in certain genres), this means their business model is slightly different to what a trade publisher usually offers their authors.
There is no one size fits all approach and it's important for authors to be well-informed of the options available to them.
If we take a step back from the nuts and bolts of the industry's inner workings, you'll find that digital-first publishers aren't that different to traditional publishers! In many cases, pre-conceptions about traditional publishing being the more enticing option for authors are often disproved when talking to digital-first published authors about their experience.
What are the benefits to working with a digital-first publisher?
In short, there are many! If you care about reaching readers, removing barriers that prevent them from getting your book into their hands and the business of book-selling is important to you: digital-first publishing is worth your consideration.
For one, digital-first publishers tend to be more open to unsolicited submissions from un-agented authors. That means you don't need to be represented by a literary agent to send them your submission! However, many still accept submissions from agents on behalf of their writers. It's worth noting that a small number of the digital-first publishers we found were only accepting submissions from agents, but this doesn't seem to be the norm.
To dig deeper into the benefits of working with a digital-first publisher, we thought we'd let author and our very own Head of Membership Becca Day talk about her experience being published by Embla, a digital-first imprint of Bonnier Books. Turns out, one of the main benefits is how their fresh approach invests in their authors' careers.
'The digital first strategy focuses on building your audience. My books were listed as 99p eBooks that were FREE for anyone with Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime. That’s a lot of people getting my books for free. But you know what? I still got paid. The way Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading works is you get paid a (tiny) amount per page read. While the pay per page is tiny, the amount of people you can reach with a publisher who knows what they’re doing is not. Digital first publishers are typically much more ‘on it’ when it comes to advertising, and they have a much bigger budget for advertising because they’re not wasting it on printing costs. My debut has now been read by nearly 1 million people. How NUTS is that? 1 million x a tiny amount = a substantial paycheck.' - Becca Day, author of THE SECRETS WE BURIED
But, what if you still want your books to be published in physical formats - and end up in bookshops?
That is an understandable goal, one that many authors share, Becca included. The good news is, Becca's books are published in multiple formats, including paperback. Let's hear what she has to say about it...
'The reason I suggest digital-first publishing to debut authors is because it’s the perfect jumping off point. It’s a way to build your audience and your readership so that when your books do eventually get into bookstores and you do eventually move to that more traditional publishing model (it took me three books to do it, but I got there) you’ll have that audience who know you and are willing to spend the money to get a hard copy.'
'And you know what? My books are now in bookstores and I still don’t make nearly as much from paperbacks as I do from eBooks. Not even close. The world is changing.'
These quotes were taken from a blog post Becca wrote about her experience of digital-first publishing, read it in full here.
Vanity Publishers and Hybrid Publishers
We should probably also include a note about vanity publishers. These guys are the snakes and serpents of publishing. They essentially pretend to be a real publishing company contemplating the commercial publication of your book. Inevitably, however, you’ll be told that the “editorial board” or something other fictional entity decided they couldn’t quite afford the risk of going it alone. So you’ll be invited to spend some quite large sum of money on “partnership publishing”, or something like that. If it smells bad, it is bad. Just say no – with emphasis. If you feel like adding a cuss-word or two when you say so, then we won’t be offended
Hybrid publishers are a somewhat cleaner version of the same thing. They’ll ask for money to get you published, but be more candid about likely outcomes. If you encounter honesty and openness, the publisher may well be trustworthy. If you encounter heavy selling and a lack of candour, then avoid, avoid, avoid.
How can I find a digital-publisher?
Drum roll please... We've pulled together a list of active, reputable digital-first publishers. We've included as much key information as possible about each publisher, from what they publish to whether they accept submissions from un-agented writers, but please be aware that this information is only accurate at the time of writing. Make sure to check with the publisher directly if you have any specific queries about their submission process.
Digital-first publishers
Below, we've shared a variety of reputable and thriving digital-first publishers. Whilst this list is accurate at time of writing this article, we're sure more and more will pop up in the future. If you do spot a new digital-first publisher, let us know by sending us an email. Don't forget, before you trust any publisher with your submission, make sure to read our guide on how to spot vanity publishers and hybrid publishers.
Got it? Great! Let's dig into some digital-first publishers. All of the following tend to publish general fiction (which means they cover most genres) but be sure to check out their websites for specific details about their titles and their submission guidelines.
Boldwood
Boldwood are one of the most exciting digital-first publishers in the industry. We were lucky enough to be joined by Nia Beynon from Boldwood Books for our Ask A Publisher Anything event. Premium Members can catch up on the replay now. Not a Premium Member?Join nowand get access to masterclasses, events, video courses, AgentMatch and so much more.
Boldwood accept submissions during specific windows, so make sure to follow them on social media or check their website for any future openings. They publish commercial fiction in all sorts of genres.
Avon
A commercial fiction division of HarperCollins, Avon publish across multiple genres and often with a digital-first approach. We can't find their submission details, but we think it's likely they only accept agented submissions. We did find a handy Author Testimonial page on their website that is worth checking out if you are interested in being published by Avon.
Bookouture
Bookouture is another leading digital-first publisher making change in the industry. We love that they cover most genres in commercial fiction and that their submission guidelines are super clear and easy to follow. Find out more here.
Embla
Embla publishes our very own Head of Membership Becca Day and so they hold a special place in our hearts. They specialise in commercial adult fiction, covering thrillers like Becca's and compelling stories across all popular genres. Head to their website for more.
Hera
The publisher of our Managing Director Sophie Flynn! Another publisher dear to us at Jericho Writers. Hera specialise in crime and thrillers, romance and sagas, but they publish most popular genres. Agented and un-agented writers can submit to them directly, more details on their website.
HQ Digital
HG Digital are a leading digital-first imprint of HarperCollins, publishing commercial fiction. We believe HQ Digital accept submissions from un-agented writers. Keep an eye on their submissions page for updates.
Joffe Books
Joffe are an independent digital-first publisher that boasts bestsellers. They publish across all general fiction genres, but specialise in crime and mysteries. Joffe kindly joined us for a panel event that Premium Members can rewatch here. Joffe accept submissions from un-agented writers, find out more here.
One More Chapter
A digital-first imprint of HarperCollins, One More Chapter publish 'page-turning' fiction across most genres and accept submissions from un-agented writers. Find out more about their submission guidelines here.
Orion Dash
Orion Dash is a digital-first imprint at Orion, part of Hachette. They publish commercial fiction and in their submission guidelines specifically mention that they are looking for women’s fiction, romance, saga, historical, crime and thrillers. Head over to their website for more information.
Digital-first publishers by genre
It's no secret that certain genres seem to thrive in digital spaces. We've compiled digital-first publishers that specialise in their chosen genres.
Crime and Thrillers
Many of the biggest and most prolific digital-first publishers we've already mentioned specialise in crime and thrillers, even if their list of titles spans all genres. We recommend scrolling back up this page and checking out the digital-first publishers listed above.
Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction
Speculative fiction is another area of the market that seems to perform well digitally. If you're writing sci-fi, fantasy or anything speculative, consider submitting your manuscript to one of these publishers:
Baen - an independent digital-first publisher of sci-fi and fantasy books. Accepting submissions from un-agented authors, find out more about their submission guidelines here.
Berkley - during a recent open submissions call (in 2024), Berkley included romantasy in the genres they were looking for. We recommend keeping an eye on their website and following them on social media for information about how to submit to them.
DAW Books - an imprint of Astra, DAW publishes widely across the sci-fi and fantasy genres, they also mention on their website that they aim 'to publish a wide range of voices and stories, because we believe that it is the duty of the science fiction and fantasy genres to be inclusive and representative of as many diverse viewpoints as possible.' We can't find details on how to submit to DAW at this time, which leads us to believe they accept submissions through agents only.
Solaris Nova - an imprint of Rebellion publishing, Solaris Nova have detailed guidance on what they are looking for in their open submissions. As well as accepting sci-fi and fantasy, they are also looking for horror submissions!
Romance
Romance is booming in digital spaces, whether it's on BookTok or in the Amazon Kindle charts, so it's no surprise to see so many digital-first publishers specialising in this genre. As one of the most popular genres out there, devout are always on the hunt for the next sweeping love story, and digital formats allow them to find new books in an instant. If you're a romance writer, don't discount working with these publishers.
Carina Press - Harlequin's digital-first imprint accepts both agented and un-agented submissions. From their clear submission guidelines, we can see that in rare circumstances, they will also consider previously self-published works.
Entice - publisher of BookTok romantasy hit Fourth Wing, Entice clearly have the power to help a book become an overnight hit. Unfortunately, at time of writing, they do not accept submissions from un-agented writers.
Evernight Publishing - specialising in romance and erotica, Evernight Publishing accept submissions from all writers. Bonus points for clearly stating their submission preferences.
Forever Yours - an imprint of Hachette, Forever Yours impressed us with their clear submission guidelines. They accept submissions from both agented and un-agented writers.
Mills & Boon - a staple in the romance space! The iconic Mills & Boon seem active in their search of new and un-agented writers to work with.
SMP Swerve - whilst this publisher specialises in romance fiction, at the time of writing, we couldn't find specific details on how to submit to them but we believe they only accept submissions from agented authors.
How do I submit to a digital-first publisher?
Usually, digital-first publishers ask for the same materials you would expect a literary agent to request in a submission. These are typically the opening section of your manuscript (up to a certain number of words, pages or chapters), a synopsis and query letter. Some might forgo the query letter and instead ask you to complete a form and include your information.
When can I expect to hear back from a digital-first publisher with the results of your submission?
It's difficult to say - but within the digital-first publisher's submission guidelines they usually offer a rough estimate of how long it takes for them to respond to submissions. If that time has elapsed since you have submitted to them (and you've double checked your email inbox and spam folder!) then reaching out is usually acceptable. We recommend keeping in mind that open submissions tend to be popular and it can take a considerable amount of time for editors to read, and make a judgement, on the submissions they receive.
Disclaimer: this article seeks to compile information for writers interested in digital publishing. We do not have direct affiliations nor do we endorse any publishers mentioned in this article. If you have experience working with any digital-first publisher and would like to share this with us, or if you think we've missed out a digital-publisher, please send an email to info@jerichowriters.com. We'd love to hear from you.
This week marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. And yes, the military significance of those landings looms a little larger in Anglo-American eyes than it does in German / Slavic eyes, but still – golly. That invasion involved what was by far the largest invasion fleet in history. In one single day, 133,000 men landed in France, under fire. By the end of June 1944, almost a million men had been put ashore, along with 150,000 vehicles and an infinitude of supplies.
Now, I happen to have one of those little author soft-spots for this bit of history. I wrote a historical novel once about the oil industry, and D-Day featured in the climax of the book. It was all very well to land 150,000 vehicles (in less than a month) – but how were those vehicles to be fuelled? There’s no oil in Normandy and slow-moving oil tankers were desperately vulnerable to attack. So … PLUTO: The PipeLine Under The Ocean. It had never been done before, but, eighty years ago, it was done, because it had to be done. A pipeline unrolled on the ocean bed to feed petrol through to the liberating army. Wow.
I’m always moved by those things, but also – listening to voices and memoirs on the radio – I’m struck by the precision with which ordinary language captures the fleeting moods of history.
If you had people today talking about a similar venture, they’d sound different. They’d use different language, pick out different details, have slightly different humour, and so on.
For example, I heard an account of the moment, written by someone then only 8 or 9. Some American soldiers were camping out in Hampshire. And they had this ‘big bit of lamb stew’ cooked up in ‘great tin pot’. The soldiers (‘very generous’) offered the boy some of their food, and the boy, used to sparse wartime rations, clearly revered the memory of that meal.
My kids are the same age now as that boy then. They might talk about a lamb stew, but they wouldn’t talk about a ‘great tin pot’ and I think they’d be a lot less likely to talk of a ‘big bit’ of stew. And obviously, they don’t even know what ration cards are or were.
Now I say this, with both a narrow focus and a broad one.
The narrow focus is simply this: if you’re writing historical fiction, you need to get as close as possible to the words and experiences of the people who were there. So yes, you need your grand history books: the military histories which tells you about what the US 1st Army achieved, how fast or slowly the British and Commonwealth 2nd Army advanced, and so on.
But that’s background – of secondary value almost. The closer you can get to the texture of life, the better. That means letters and diaries. Scraps of newsreel. Any opportunity you get to hear or read actual dialogue of the era. What did those soldiers eat? Did they have tents? Bivouac bags? Nothing? What? Those things don’t matter much to military history, but they made up the experience of life on the day. How heavy was a Bren gun? How was the ammo for it carried? Did it jam? What noise did it make? The closer you can get to accuracy there, the better. There’s no substitute for as much real-life memoir as you can get.
That’s the narrow focus, but the issue is broader too – one that affects every novelist and, indeed, any memoirist too.
The presence of (actual, or very well faked) authenticity matters hugely.
If you’re writing about, let’s say, ad industry execs in London, or New York, or Paris – do you have their voices right? Do you have their attitudes right?
Another bit of memoir I heard on the radio today came from a (then) young woman who had parachuted into France to support the Resistance. Her job was to transmit coded messages back to England. She landed in a wood, feeling understandably anxious, but her memoir commented, ‘I thought, well, I’m here now, so I might as well get on with it.’
You can just feel the 1940s matter-of-fact spirit oozing from those words. How does a modern-day, urban-elite ad exec talk? What attitudes do they unwittingly convey in everything they say / do / feel? I’m not too sure – it’s not my world – but the perfect ad-land set book will nail those things. The vocab, the attitudes, the minutiae of life.
With historical fiction, the need for a certain kind of precision is clear: you can’t get History wrong. But it’s the same thing with all other story-telling too. You need to be true to your world, not just in big ways (Spitfires? Or F-22s?), but in little ones – great tin pots and the ‘might as well get on with it’ attitudes.
That’s all true, even if your world is utterly imagined. You might be writing a book about a mining colony on Mars, and it would still matter what people eat, what attitudes they evince, what they call a ‘great tin pot’, what kind of footwear they have, and so on.
My mother-in-law was born in Poland in 1942, to a German-speaking (and Protestant) father and a Polish-speaking (and Catholic) mother. She survived, and might not have done. Her family survived, and might not have done. They all, in time, made it to Munich and the glorious, beautiful safety of the American zone. Thank you, D-Day. Thank you, generous American soldiers and their big bits of lamb stew.
Feedback Friday: Catching the mood
This month, we’re going to be tackling projects attuned to specific genres … but will also make sure that the disciplines we focus on will be applicable to most writers.
Today, I’d love you to take a look at one of our hist fic classes – here - on researching your book. That has a huge relevance, of course, to historical writers, but it’ll affect loads of others too. (Even, say, people writing about mining-on-Mars. I mean, what minerals does it have? What are the Mars-specific extraction challenges …? Those things really matter.)
What I want this week:
Title
Genre
1-2 sentences of context if needed
250 words that show your research in action. Everything from tone of voice to the specifics of (guessing, here) Martian molybdenum mining.
The thing that will please my soul here are things like “Well, I’m here now, so I might as well get on with it.” The tone there is just perfect for the age and the historical moment. These things are hard to pin down, but they matter so much …
That’s it. Feedback in Townhouse as per usual. If you aren’t a Premium Member, you can’t access the masterclass. So um, you could join us – or invade France – or make a really big ball out of rubber bands.
Oh glory of glories, it’s election time in the UK, a summer election whose most notable emblem so far is a Prime Minister getting fabulously wet in the late spring rain.
Whichever way you're planning to vote (and this isn't an invitation to let me know who you're voting for because that's not what this email is actually about) something I haven't been able to help but notice as I've been watching the various parties campaigning is how they all use this time to come up with their sexy new offers.
The Conservative Party have got their national service fairy tale, which probably would never even happen but is a good way to get lots of people talking (again, not an invitation to let me know your thoughts on this). I heard someone talking on behalf of the Green Party and, unless I was much mistaken, she got pretty close to promising the country more frogs. I haven’t in fact heard someone from the Scottish National Party promising us all better porridge, but they probably will.
(And, by the way, this isn’t a way to get you to vote one thing or another. I dare say that the Green Party probably would produce more frogs. My point is that the type of promises varies according to how likely they are to be called on.)
Which is all a roundabout way of talking about YOU.
What do you really want from writing? From this book that you are now working on? From the one after that and the one after that?
And what nature do those hopes and aspirations have?
Are you in the more frogs / better porridge zone, where you list hopes in the secret confidence that you’ll never truly be called on to deliver?
Or are you in the zone of grim realism about budget realities and overstretched public services, where your promises don’t really sound great, but they have a chance of actually being implemented?
It goes without saying that there’s just no point living in the more frogs / better porridge fairytale zone. It’s not just that these things won’t happen. It’s that if you tell yourself fairy stories, you’ll make worse decisions.
Take the tiny, but crucial, matter of book title.
If you simply avoid having to think about the commercial realities of what it will take to get published and sell books, you may end with a title that you love … and makes no commercial sense.
Now, I’m not in fact all that good at thinking of titles.
I think the working title for my first Fiona book was Cardiff Bay. Which is a nice title, in a way, but doesn’t tell the reader that the book is a crime novel and doesn’t allude in any way to the book’s basic USP which is weirdo-detective-who-used-to-think-she-was-dead. My agent suggested Talking to the Dead, which isn’t a brilliant title but ticks both those boxes very nicely. So we went with that. If I’d been living in more of a frogs-world, I might have stuck with the less commercial title that had greater emotional appeal. I’d have been less likely to sell the book.
Another example: I had a completely mad ending for The Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths, which I loved. But it was kind of mental, and my editor kept nagging at it. Frog-world? I’d have stayed with my mad ending. Real-world? I edited the damn thing into shape – as I always do, and always will.
So you need a hard commercial answer to the following questions:
Is your work good enough? Sorry, but it probably isn’t. I say that just because only 1 in 1000 manuscripts are taken on by agents. At digital-first publishers, who may have looser entry criteria, the ratio is still about 1 in 100. So probability says that you’re still in the 999 or 99. The way to jump out of that category and into the top echelon is simply work. Self-editing. Improving your craft. Being honest about what’s not yet good enough. Using Jericho editorial services as needed. All of that. But grim realism, please. This is the most important question to ask.
Is your basic idea strong enough? Too often, it isn’t. I’ve blathered on enough about elevator pitches, so won’t do so again here, but they matter.
Does the basic commercial proposition of your book work? That’s similar to the question before, but it’s slightly different and it still matters. You have to be able to imagine your book in a store, or on an Amazon page, and competing with its peers on equal terms.
Is your book one that will sell most in e-form or via print? That question will surprise plenty of you, but it matters too. I’ve seen people trying to pitch books to trad publishers that are really digital-first books through and through.
Should you self-publish? These days, that’s a foundational question. You need to know the answer.
Do you know enough about the industry? On things like approaching agents, picking titles, writing blurb – and, in fact, more or less every decision you make outside of actually writing the book – some industry knowledge matters. When you write blurb, what is the point of that blurb? What is it there to do? What length is standard? What do your competitors do? Any serious pro author brings some real knowhow to those questions. You can’t avoid them.
Do you have realistic thoughts about marketing? Lots of people don’t. That matters less if you are being handled by a trad publisher. (Though even then, do you want to leave your career security in the hands of an editor who is handling 20 books like yours each year and whose life will not be much affected if your book fails completely? You do not.) But the more your route looks like indie-publishing, the more you have to have a grip on these things.
I could probably more questions there, but that seems like a decent set to start off with. And of course, Jericho Writers is on the Grimly Realistic side of things always.
Your porridge will not improve.
We will not deliver frogs.
No frogs, but … we will deliver a brilliant introductory course on HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL IN 6 WEEKS. Premium Members will get the whole course for free – course material, weekly tasks, and feedback via Feedback Friday. The first module will launch next week. This is ideal for people towards the start of their writing journey. (We’ll offer a more advanced course later in the year.) If you aren’t a Premium Member and would like to be part of this course, this would be a good moment to join us.
Feedback Friday: Tools Season - Should you Self-Publish?
I said above that the question of whether or not to self-publish was foundational. And it is.
And really, that’s the homework. Just spend a total of 9 minutes watching something that could push your career one way or the other. You need to make a smart, informed decision on this topic, so don’t put it off just because it’s scary.
That’s not much of a Feedback Friday type task though, so on this – the last week of our Tools season – I just want you to Ask Me Anything. Whatever’s on your mind, so long as it’s to do with the business of brand / platform / tools / marketing architecture. I’ll do what I can to help.
...
That’s it from me. Post your question here. There’s a Scotsman in my kitchen and frogs in my larder. My children are going to be snatched from me and turned into soldiers. It’s too much!
The first (the lovely one) is the writing brain. This gives you your purpose, your depth, your flow, your joy.
In any really well-written book, any bit you care to pick will have multiple jobs to do. It’ll set the scene, show a glimpse of character, raise a laugh, allude to theme, move the story on a notch, and so on. The biggest task in writing, in a way, is not to do any of those things – they’re all, individually, easy enough to do. The biggest challenge is to do them all at the same time … and make it look easy as you do it.
But that’s writing-brain. It’s not the brain we’re talking about now. Because you also need to deploy selling-brain, and that one works very differently.
For one thing, you don’t get to write lovely, lovely stories. And you have to engage in tech things and explore dashboards and (yuk!) Live in the Real World.
But selling-brain does help you shift some books and make some money and create the space in your life to let writing-brain do what it does the best. So we need to help it do just that.
And one of the big, big rules when you’re in selling-brain mode is that (nearly always) you need to ask: what is the one single point of this thing?
Some examples:
The welcome email
Someone has just read your (paid-for) book. They loved it. They want more from you. They sign up to your mailing list because you offer them a nice free story if they do. You send them an automated email which has a download link for the free story.
What is the purpose of that email?
Most writers think they’re meant to pitch something. So they start selling. They try to sell the novel that the reader has in fact just read and enjoyed. Or they try to sell the future series. Or they try to push that reader to follow them on Instabook, or Facetok, or something like that.
All that misses the point.
The point of the email is to welcome that reader to your club. That’s it. It’s called a welcome email for a reason. Don’t sell. Just welcome.
And that means that you shouldn’t talk like some brochure for dodgy Floridian timeshares. You need to talk like you. (In welcome-mode, obvs, not shouting-at-a-broken-vacuum-cleaner mode.)
The point of the welcome email is the welcome. Achieve that, forget about everything else.
Your cover design
What’s the point of your cover design?
Most writers, if they start to design their covers (either solo, or with a designer), are worried about honouring the book.
There’s a key scene in a cave, right, where Elida comes face to face with a dragon that represents her past self? That’s key. So we need Elida (long red hair) and a cave and a dragon and obviously Elida’s serpent-sash, because that’s the key to the Elidian prophecy …
And that whole line of thinking is just rubbish. Sorry, but it is.
If you were designing a cover for yourself – ie: someone who knows your book intimately and adores it – then that would be the perfect cover. But the total audience for that specific cover is just one – namely you – and you’re not going to buy the book, because you’re the flipping author.
So again: what’s the point of your cover design?
It’s to get “warm” readers interested in buying your book.
(A warm reader is anyone looking to buy a book in your approximate genre, but who hasn’t come to this bookstore specifically to buy your book.)
That’s it.
The point of the cover is NOT to sell the book. It can’t do that. It can induce someone to pick the book up (if they’re in a physical shop) or to click through to the specific book-page (if they’re on Amazon.)
Once the reader is at that level of exploration, then it’s down to blurb, and price and reviews, and the text itself to make the sale.
The job of your cover is to get warm readers interested in your book.
Those readers don’t know who Elida is; they don’t know what the dragon represents; they don’t give two flying hoots about that serpent sash. They don’t know and they don’t care.
So a good cover is one that says, “I look like an exciting dragon-n-sword type fantasy novel. You’d better pick me up and find out more.” The cover needs to advertise mood and genre and entice more exploration. (It’s extra good, if there’s some useful reverberation with the title.) But it does not need to speak especially about the content of the novel.
Now of course, you can’t totally disregard the novel content. My second Fiona book (in the US, not the UK) had an image of a frozen landscape because a couple of the key sequences in the book involved the cold. But the allusion wasn’t very specific at all. The cover had a solitary tree in a snowy landscape. There was no solitary tree mentioned anywhere in the book and, in fact, the image on the front cover did not match anything referred to in the book. That didn’t matter. It was a great image. It invited exploration. It didn’t totally betray the content of the book. Job done.
Here's one more example before I finish:
The Facebook Ad
What’s the point of a Facebook ad?
Pretty obviously, it’s there to sell books. Except that on FB’s choice of options, you have to click the thing that says “website traffic”, where the website in question is Amazon. (You can’t click an option which says “make sales” because you can’t force Amazon to share sales data with Facebook.)
OK, so Facebook thinks you want to increase traffic to Amazon, and if you really want to do that, here’s a failsafe tip:
Don’t put a book cover in your ad.
That way when you have a brilliant image for your dragon-n-sword trilogy, you’ll attract readers … and people hoping for a movie … and people wondering if you’re offering a video game, or a T-shirt, or a set of fancy candles. The number of clicks through to Amazon will be impressive – and your sales will stink.
So you need to put a book cover in your ad to deter the clicks you don’t want. Facebook will make sad faces at you and your total clicks will go down and your cost-per-click will go up. And that’s fine.
The point of the ad is to make sales, not to maximise clicks.
***
And that’s always true when you’re selling (especially digitally.) You need to know what the point of any particular element in your selling chain is.
The point of a welcome email is to welcome.
The point of a book cover is to invite more exploration.
The point of a Facebook ad is to make sales, and to hell with what Facebook might think the point of the ad is.
At every single touchpoint in your selling chain, you need to ask “what’s the point of this?”. Then deliver that objective to the absolute maximum of your capacity.
The more you load additional objectives onto a given link in the chain, the less well it will achieve its one true purpose. Forget omni-layered writing-brain. Go with uni-purpose selling brain.
You’ll achieve a load more. There’s some really good content in Feedback Friday this week, so don’t stop reading here …
Feedback Friday: Tools Season - Author Brand
OK, we’ve got some really brilliant content for you this week.
Gwyn GB, our presenter, is a really capable marketer, who also happens to be a really capable author and self-publisher. You’re in very good hands with her.
This kind of material is critical if you’re self-publishing, but it’s also important if you’re heading down a more traditional route. And in any case: the more you know, the better your decisions will be.
To take part in Feedback Friday, you caneither:
Give me a plan for your author platform and brand in 6-8 bullet points. Make sure that the first bullet point establishes very succinctly what you’re selling. What do you want to achieve in terms of cover design, mood, website, social media, and so on? It’s really fine (in fact, it’s actually positive) if your bullet points also cover what you’re not going to do. Is there an author out there in your genre who has a profile similar to what you want to achieve?
Alternatively:
If you have questions arising from Gwyn’s masterclass, then just ask. I’ll get to as many of your questions as I can..
...
That’s it from me. Post either your bullet points or questions here. Blooming Elida has got a dragon’s tail caught in that serpent sash. Again. I need to go and sort things out with my Scissors of Arandor and the Thimble of Ezagon.
Come on a journey with me back in time five years. I had just sat down to write my first novel (note – not the one I ended up getting published as my debut) and I was daydreaming, as you do, about the day I’d see my book in a bookstore.
Little did I know that publishing had other ideas for me. The book deal I would end up signing would not see my debut proudly displayed in the windows of my favourite bookstores. It wouldn’t take me on a tour across the country doing signings. It wouldn’t even involve the ability to sell my books at a launch party. That’s because I signed a digital first publishing deal.
What is digital first publishing?
There are lots of digital first publishers. In fact, more and more are springing up every month (and with good reason – but we’ll touch on that in a bit). Often, they are smaller ‘imprints’ of a larger publisher. Mine, for example, is called Embla Books, and it is a smaller imprint of the much bigger publisher Bonnier Books. What sets these smaller imprints apart is their main focus is on the digital world – eBooks and audiobooks. So, when I signed my book deal, I was entering into an agreement that, though they would produce my book in paperback via Print-On-Demand (AKA the book only gets printed when it’s ordered – there are no copies sitting in a warehouse somewhere like with a traditional publisher), the primary focus would be the eBook and the audiobook. This meant all those typical release activities I had expected from being a published author just didn’t happen.
Ugh. That sounds awful. Why would anyone want to go with a digital-first publisher?
If you’re sitting there thinking that, I wouldn’t blame you. I, too, felt a little let-down by the whole thing when I first started. I thought I was settling. Like perhaps I wasn’t good enough to get the window displays and the book tours and all of those lovely writerly things. What I didn’t realise in those early days when I felt like I was just playing pretend at being an author was that it would turn out to be the best business decision I could possibly have made.
Digital first is where the money is at.
Now, I’m not raking in millions as an author. Clearly. I’m still working full-time! However, I’ve undoubtedly earned more than I would have if I had gone down a more ‘traditional’ route of publication. The trouble with those deals is, unless you’re one of the magical unicorn lead titles who get all the publicity, you’re highly unlikely to make any decent money off of physical books. The reason for this is simple – people tend to only buy physical books from authors they already know and like. Because why? Because money.
The digital first strategy focuses on building your audience. My books were listed as 99p eBooks that were FREE for anyone with Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime. That’s a lot of people getting my books for free. But you know what? I still got paid. The way Kindle Unlimited and Prime Reading works is you get paid a (tiny) amount per page read. While the pay per page is tiny, the amount of people you can reach with a publisher who knows what they’re doing is not. Digital first publishers are typically much more ‘on it’ when it comes to advertising, and they have a much bigger budget for advertising because they’re not wasting it on printing costs. My debut has now been read by nearly 1 million people. How NUTS is that? 1 million x a tiny amount = a substantial paycheck.
Okay but… I still want my books in bookstores.
I know, I know. Me too. The good news is, now my books are. The reason I suggest digital-first publishing to debut authors is because it’s the perfect jumping off point. It’s a way to build your audience and your readership so that when your books do eventually get into bookstores and you do eventually move to that more traditional publishing model (it took me three books to do it, but I got there) you’ll have that audience who know you and are willing to spend the money to get a hard copy.
And you know what? My books are now in bookstores and I still don’t make nearly as much from paperbacks as I do from eBooks. Not even close. The world is changing.
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If you want to know more about digital first publishing, why not watch the replay of our Ask A Publisher Anything event with Nia Beynon from Boldwood Books. They’re another digital first publisher that are absolutely storming the bestseller lists right now, so Nia is the best person hear talk about this exciting area of publishing.
This replay is available to Premium Members as part of our Masterclass library. Not a Premium Member?Join nowand get access to masterclasses, events, video courses, AgentMatch and so much more.
With an impressive background in the finance world, Nuala's TUNE IN is a practical guide on how to make decisions in an increasingly chaotic world. We caught up with Nuala to chat all about her writing journey from first draft through to becoming a bestseller. Complete with new directions, lessons learned along the way and a little help along the way from one of our editors, this is the story of how TUNE IN was published...
As a former Chief Marketing Officer in the investment industry, I went back to school after 30 years and did a MSc in Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. Although I always thought I would write a book, being able to make sense of the psychology of decision-making and apply it to real-world situations was the catalyst.
I think it’s easier to get decisions right and avoid regret than we think - and when we hold power, it’s an obligation to do so. As I sit on boards that span sport and non-profits, I see misjudgement impact people’s lives, I wanted to apply behavioural insights to set people up for success and provide a simple framework to prevent error.
What is TUNE IN about and why is it different?
Despite popular opinion, the most underestimated risk isn’t economic, technology or climate risk. It’s human decision risk, triggered by our tendency to tune out what really matters especially in high-stakes political or emotional situations – i.e. when we feel under pressure, crisis, conflict or uncertainty. I draw attention to a neglected source of misinformation which is ironically a source of opportunity.
I make the case that human decision risk is an underestimated source of misinformation but also a source of advantage and opportunity. Every day we hear less and misjudge more. TUNE IN explores the rising threat of misjudgement and explains why so many feel unheard and tune out who or what really matters. I introduce a practical framework of ten traps to avoid regret and prevent error.
Can you tell us a little bit about the process your book went through from writing the first draft, through to publication?
I wrote the first draft of TUNE IN initially and looked for an agent and publisher. The final product was vastly different of course as the idea took a slightly different direction. I think this is the case whether fiction or non-fiction. The agent search was tough as mostly focused on fiction rather than non-fiction so I engaged Jericho Writers to help refine the pitch. I eventually went direct to a publisher and secured a deal with Harriman House, an imprint of Macmillan. Then, I worked with a wonderful Jericho Writers manuscript editor. This was helpful before I submitted my first version to the publishers. From there, I had three different editors. I found all varied in terms of their focus, interest and attention to detail but together the product was enhanced. My final editor was especially patient interested in the topic, allowing more last-minute changes than I thought possible. Finally I pressed the send button in Dubai. And TUNE IN was born!
Is there anything you found particularly useful on your journey?
The process is a lot harder than it looks and can be really off-putting. I had read a book on how to make a pitch and found that incredibly useful as full of samples. I also scoured existing books to find agents from other authors. I found that made little difference as psychologically they compared you. The fact that I was in the Jericho Writers community was terrific for a debut non-fiction author. Scribes was also a very good resource for first-time authors which helped TUNE IN. By far the resource I valued most at this early stage was an editor who gave excellent directional feedback and confidence to keep going.
Were there any surprises along the way? Or perhaps anything you wished you had known earlier, or been prepared for?
I underestimated how much marketing the author needs to do for launch and thereafter; and how you can’t rely on publishers alone. It also costs. Part of this process requires securing endorsements which is very time-consuming. For TUNE IN, I secured 14 phenomenal endorsements from across business, sport, academia and even an FBI Investigator, including some well-known individuals who were extremely generous in their praise. I think it’s worth the effort to do this even though you’re getting tired, and it feels like a luxury.
What advice would you give to writers working on their first draft?
I had surprises throughout! I don’t think my idea was articulated sharply enough when I first approached agents. Now I think I know what they want. I tried to cover too much in an area people think they’re good at already. For the first draft, I would structure it better and also write the elevator speech. It focuses the mind better. I think it’s important to write the PR pitch in the beginning. If its not strong enough, don’t write at all as it will go nowhere.
After having spent years working on your book – how did you know it was time to submit?
I had a deadline, so I had no choice about when to submit. That said, once I was excited about the message and the fantastic breadth of stories, that was a signal that TUNE IN was good enough to submit. I had incorporated a lot of real-life characters that made it interesting, pacy and relevant. Most people now comment on the vast range of examples and are pleasantly surprised at the number of current industries and professions covered. I think I will enjoy listening to this again - with so many facts and stories to make a serious point, I need to remember them all now too!
Can you let us know what are you working on now?
Within the first few days, TUNE IN was an Amazon #1 new release in six different categories, the most wished for and a top three bestseller in three categories. Of course, this changes regularly and can still get better or worse. I am now having a holiday then focusing on gathering reviews and spreading the word – this is the next stage of the journey!
We’re talking (mostly) Tools this month – and Feedback Friday is going to hammer relentlessly at that topic, even when these emails decide to go spinning off route, down some cedar-scented hillside.
And this week, we have an elephant to deal with.
The elephant is Amazon or, more broadly, the digital domination of bookselling.
The fact is that (so far as fiction is concerned) most books are digital. Ebooks and audiobooks together account for well over 50% of all fiction sales. The true total is probably over 70%. That’s not a stat that you’ll see bandied around by the big trad publishers – their digital share is a lot lower than that – but it’s the correct one, nevertheless. Big trad publishers account for the vast majority of bookshops sales, so their sales are skewed towards print. But that still leaves a ton of high volume digital-first publishers and the whole self-pub market which is, on its own, larger than the whole of Penguin Random House.
Furthermore, print vs digital isn’t quite the right way to analyse things, because a lot of print books are sold digitally and the paths that lead up to a digital sale of a print book are normally themselves digital. So, for example, I recently read a very positive review online of Tom Holland’s Dominion, and I ended up ordering it from Amazon. The discovery, investigation and purchase process all happened online; but I still have a (very fat) book to read in the bath, not a screen.
Non-fiction is a bit less digital-first than fiction. And children’s books are (thank the Lord) still mostly physical, but digital selling tools are huge no matter what.
The upshot of all that?
You can’t ignore the digital route to sales, no matter what you’re selling or who your publisher may turn out to be.
There are lots of things that you may well choose not to do. For example, you may decide you don’t want a Twitter account, in which case I don’t care and nor will your publisher. The same goes for pretty much all other social media accounts. Social media is not an especially powerful way to sell books (or at least not to readers. If you’re super-engaged in books chat with the editors, agents, booksellers, reviewers, etc in your niche, then having those relationships will only be useful to you. But you can’t fake that engagement. If you’re not engaged now, that’s probably because you don’t want to be.
But you do need a website. It can be simple. It can be one page long if you want. But you do need one. At the very least you need the following:
A domain name
This is the top-level web address – so in my case, it’s harrybingham.com.
If you happen to have a very common name, or one you share with someone better known, then identify yourself with the “author” tag: so, mikejacksonauthor.com, for example.
Don’t name a website after your first book. That’s kinda fine for the first book itself, but the name will stale very quickly once we’ve written others. The exception would be if you KNOW you’re writing a particular long-running series. So, you could maybe call your website chroniclesofebradia.com, but in most cases, I think that’s an approach best left to experienced self-published authors. You can’t really go wrong with an author-led domain name.
Costs for domain names should be trivial – the Jericho writers domain, for example, costs us a little more than £10 a year. (But you do have to keep renewing your purchase, or your website will vanish. You’ll get reminders, so don’t panic.)
Hosting
This literally means that your website has to sit on a computer somewhere, and different hosts will look after that for you. (In fact, they probably rent space from Google, or Amazon or one of the other big cloud companies, which means you shouldn’t have to worry one whit about security.)
Your site will not make big demands of speed or memory or anything like that, so pretty much any web host will do for you.
Content management system (“CMS”)
Unless you fancy coding from scratch, you will need to build your website via an existing system designed for just that.
You have two basic alternatives here:
Simple / limited. Wix and Squarespace both offer affordable, drag-and-drop website builders. Pretty much anyone can use these, except my mother-in-law who comes out in a rash and starts swearing at things in German, whenever she has to deal with tech. If you are like my mother-in-law, then ask someone for help. They can do the drag-and-drop stuff. You can choose the pictures and get the tea.
More complex / powerful – or, in other words, WordPress. You need to be technically competent to handle this beast, or you need to pay someone.
Back in the day, WordPress was really the only way to go for people who wanted a powerful site (ie: one capable of handling a very wide range of functionality) but these days the simple options probably have enough power for 95% of authors, perhaps more.
Design
Yes, you’ve got a great cover design for your first book. Yes, everyone loves it. No, you cannot use this for the major images of your site.
The reason is that any such design ages rapidly as you write more books. So your design idea – pictures, colours, fonts, and mood – need to highly consistent with your book cover and genre, but shouldn’t be too closely tied in. You can go and take a look at www.harrybingham.com by way of example. No major element there is tied in to any one book, but the whole mood is very well synchronised with my US covers. (Which look different from those in the UK, because of the way the books got published. I prioritised the US because the designs were better and because I sell more books there.)
Content
Unless you’re a real superstar – JK Rowling level, or almost – people aren’t going to spend long on your site. They’re going to use it, not read it, if you see what I mean. So help them – simple, clearly signposted blocks of content is all you need. Give readers what they need/want, then shut up. In most cases, less is more.
Here are the pages you need:
Home page
About me [ie: you the author]
The books [an in-order listing of what you’re selling]
Probably a page each on individual books, once you have more than 2-3
Contact
Maybe a set of blog pages, if you like blogging
Readers’ Club sign up page
With a simple site, you can have the first five items on that list as sections on your home page. You don’t have to have a blog under any circumstances – though it can make life easier when it comes to add pages. But you certainly don’t need to start your site with a blog. It’s easy enough to add it later.
The Readers’ Cub sign up page is essential for a properly run mailing list, but that page is delicate enough to deserve its own email.
Just do it
And finally – please don’t overthink this.
When I first sold my Fiona Griffiths stuff in the US, I flew out to New York to meet my publisher. At that stage, I didn’t have a website. I spoke to a junior marketing person who said, yeah, you need a website. So I sat in my hotel room and spent 2-3 hours building a site. When I saw everyone for lunch the next day, I had a nice site to show them.
I don’t turn red when I deal with computer things and I don’t swear darkly in bayrischce Deutsch, but I wasn’t especially skilled. I just got on with it. Nothing on this list costs much money. And the tools are now so developed that they’re super-simple.
Got that? Schön. Ende gut, alles gut.
Feedback Friday: Tools Season - The Freebie - Website
Two options for you this week.
Either – the freebie task again
Not many of you attempted or nailed the freebie task last week, so I recorded a short video to help explain a little more accurately how readers actually find and sign up to your mailing list:
Feedback Friday: Tools Season - The Freebie - Website
The key things to remember are:
Readers will find your “Join my Readers’ Club” message after reading your paid-for book. So you’re not seeking to sell that book. You are looking to cement your relationship with the reader. (And of course get their email address: you can’t have a relationship if you don’t have a way to get in touch with them.)
When they click the link that that message, they are taken to your website where they give you their email address. You have promised to give them a freebie, by way of reward, so …
You use automation tools to deliver the freebie to your reader.
The freebie is going to be read by readers who have read your paid-for book, liked it enough that they want to stay in communication with you, and have downloaded your freebie. You are not selling anything to these people – or not now anyway. You are cementing a relationship. Say that phrase fifty times every morning after doing your Salute to the Sun or your 10km Ruck-a-thon. Don’t sell to your mailing list sign ups. Welcome them.
If you want another go at the freebie task, then watch this video and give me:
The title of your full-length novel and 2-3 sentences about it, so we know what the freebie relates to.
The title of your freebie.
2-3 sentences about what that freebie will offer.
Your welcome text. That’s probably only 150 words or so, but be warm and welcoming and personal.
Or – your website
If you have a website, give us the link so we can all laugh at you.
If you don’t yet have a website, tell us what you’re planning.
And obviously when I say, “we can all laugh at you”, I mean offer supportive positive feedback.
We were thrilled to hear that Samuel Burr's debut had found a home with Orion books. We caught up with Premium Member and now Sunday Times bestselling author, to hear all about his writing journey so far.
Hi Samuel, congratulations on the publication of The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers! You've had a whirlwind writing journey that includes being a part of our community but also writing for TV, and now having your debut novel come out. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got here?
Thank you! It’s been a mad few years, but I’m thrilled to finally be sharing my Puzzlemakers with the world! Ever since I started dipping my toes into the world of novel writing, I’ve tried to embed myself into as many writing communities as I can - not least for the brilliant resources that are so widely available, but also to build my network and make friends with fellow writers. Writing a novel is no mean feat and it’s also a very solitary pastime, so having people to lean on for help and support is totally invaluable. Jericho Writers has been a brilliant for that.
I started writing my debut at the Faber Academy, having previously completed an online course with Curtis Brown Creative, but I realised quite quickly after graduating from Faber (and securing an agent) that I wasn’t done learning! In fact, I was hungry to continue developing my craft, and to meet more writers! So that’s when I joined Jericho Writers as a Premium Member, whilst editing Puzzlemakers, which ended up selling in an auction in Feb 2022. It’s being translated in 14 languages around the world, which is something I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get my head around!
My role in television involved devising, developing and selling new unscripted TV formats, so I’ve always been someone full of ideas. During my career I’ve also learnt to develop my pitching skills. I understand that the most sellable ideas can be pitched in just a few lines, and so I've honed the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers elevator pitch over and over!
We’re thrilled to have been part of your journey, and, we’re always keen to talk elevator pitches. They are so tricky, but once you’ve nailed your book’s concept, they can be a secret weapon. If you’re up for it, could you share your pitch with us? (And anyone who isn’t familiar with The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers).
Of course! It’s the story of Clayton Stumper - a young man who is a bit of a young fogey. Clay dresses like your grandad and drinks sherry like your aunt. At 25 years of age, he finds himself as one of the surviving members of a very British institution. The Fellowship is a retirement community made up of some of the smartest minds in the country and it’s where he was abandoned at birth. Among the residents are a mazemaker, a quiz setter, and a jigsaw artist to name just a few.
But there’s a mystery at the heart of the Fellowship…. a puzzle that’s yet to be solved…. and that’s how Clayton came to be there, and where he came from.
When the founder of the Fellowship – an esteemed cruciverbalist (or a crossword compiler) called Pippa Allsbrook passes away, she bequeaths her final puzzle to the young man she’s raised as her own. And so, we follow Clayton on a quest, as he pieces together the clues of his past, and finds himself at the same time.
At its heart, it’s a story about young man finding his place in the world. But it is also a celebration of the wisdom of age and the friendships that can exist between the old and young.
We know how much a manuscript can transform during the process of writing the first draft through to publication, what was that process like for The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers?
As one of my characters points out in the book, ‘…nothing worth solving is ever easy…’ and it was no exception with this book. I think editing any novel is a bit of a puzzle in itself – trying to work out where all the parts belong, searching for missing holes to fill in. I suppose what made my novel particularly challenging to write (and specifically to edit) were the interactive elements embedded into the story. I knew I wanted to feature actual puzzles within the text for readers to solve – to make it a book you can read and play. After countless revisions and tweaks we finally got there! But it was anything but easy!
Were there any surprises along the way? Or perhaps anything you wished you had known earlier, or been prepared for?
Adapting the text for the audiobook was another very unique challenge as you obviously can’t see the puzzles while listening, but I’m thrilled with how it’s turned out. I think that’s something that doesn’t really cross your mind when you’re writing, at least it didn’t for me. It was only after signing the deal that I realised we’d be making an audio version of the book and that’s when I had to put my thinking cap on! I must say, our readers Dame Penelope Keith and Russell Tovey are just perfect and it’s a fantastic listen!
You were developing your craft for several years before you were published, is there anything you found particularly useful on your journey?
I’m always impressed by how many brilliant resources there are out there for aspiring writers. I benefitted hugely from plugging into the community as quickly as I could. Coming from television, I didn’t really know anyone in books, so I knew I needed to build my network of contacts in the same way I had done in TV. I attended countless events – in real life and virtually – signed up for courses, followed my favourite writers on socials, as well as the big influencers, publishing houses etc, just so I could understand how the industry worked, learn from other people’s experiences, and build my own writing tribe. It’s been completely invaluable, particularly in the run-up to publication. I’m so lucky to have people cheering me on, helping to spread the word. Of course, I’m now keen to pay it forward and do the same for other debut writers.
After spending so long writing and re-writing the same story, spending infinite amounts of time with your characters – how did you know it was time to submit?
It’s so difficult to know! Someone once told me a book is never finished, but it is ready, and I found that immensely helpful. I think by the time my agent and I were going out on submission I had reached a point where I knew I couldn’t continue without the input of someone else. I needed fresh eyes on it. I had done as much as I physically could with the story, honed every sentence countless times, and I felt proud of the story I’d created. I think that’s quite key. Are you comfortable sharing this with others? Do you feel good inside about it?
Do you have any advice for writers hoping to get published?
Nail your comp titles! I really think this is key. There is so much competition and agents are so overworked that you need to be able to say where your book might sit figuratively on a shelf. I always encourage people not to go too literally when coming up with comps. Think about the core elements of your book – its identifying features – and find other books that have similar touchstones. If you can’t think of any, you might have a problem. Selling a book that is entirely ‘unique’ (i.e. It can’t be compared to anything else in the market) makes it almost impossible to sell. Publishers can be risk averse so make it easier for them to say yes. Nail your comps!
Before we go, can you let us know what are you working on now?
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to write a second book with Orion Fiction, which is another standalone novel. While I can’t say too much at this point, I hope that anyone who has read and enjoyed The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers will also enjoy my second book. Nostalgic joy. That’s all I’m saying for now!
When I was a lad, and the sun shone hot, and water was bluer and the grass was greener, I used to do a fair bit of hiking and mountaineering. My slightly random claim to fame? I once climbed the highest mountain in Africa not to have been previously climbed. It wasn’t much of a mountaineering challenge, but there was a lot of very jungly jungle to get through first.
One of the biggest issues in planning those expeditions was always: what to pack? What food, what camping gear, what clothes, what climbing kit?
All those decisions, of course, operated under a hard constraint of weight and volume. The question wasn’t “would an X be nice?” but “can I justify an X, given its weight and given all the other things that are also needed?”
Same thing with authoring, of course.
You need to write a book. You need to edit it good and well. Then – publishing.
Here the path divides quite sharply. Trad publishing calls for a fairly light day-pack. The self-publishing path is more demanding, more arduous. The cliffs are higher, the gear needed is more significant. You can’t load too much – weight isn’t a constraint, of course, but time certainly is. Either way, you need to pack with care.
Now, last week I asked y’all about topics you’d like to see covered in these emails. I got back a lot of really useful thoughts and comments. The rough summary:
A lot of you liked the somewhat random nature of these emails, and I’ll keep that going.
But we will do more to cluster our Feedback Friday material by theme.
Specifically, we’ll be running 2 or 3 mini courses through the year. (A starter-type one on how to write. A more advanced one on getting your manuscript from good to excellent. Maybe something on getting published too.)
But we’ll also tend to cluster things into topic groups. We might have a season on character, for example. Or plotting. Or marketing things.
As far as possible, we’ll link these topics to Masterclasses and the like (available to Premium Members.) So there’ll be high quality tutorial material AND an assignment AND feedback by the forum each week – and those things will be grouped up into mini-seasons with rough thematic coherence.
I got a lot of thoughts from you about specific topics you’d like to see covered, and I’ll get to as much of that as I sensibly can.
This week – and for the rest of this month – I’m going to be talking about Tools. How to stow your backpack.
That’ll be the themes for both the Friday emails and for the FF topics too.
This week, let’s just list out what you need for your backpack.
Trad Publishing
What do you need? As in need-need? Well, arguably not much, as plenty of authors climb that mountain with only the skimpiest little bivvi bag for protection. I don’t recommend that though, much as I love a good bivvi bag.
I think any serious 21st century trad-published author needs:
An author website
An Amazon author profile
A mailing list, probably MailerLite
A Bookfunnel account
A free gift to entice users to sign-up
A bit of messing around with tax forms. If you live in the UK, you don’t want to be paying US taxes on US sales, and vice versa. What you need to do depends on where you and what your situation is, but unless you live somewhere quite exotic, you should be able to receive overseas income without significant tax. (You’ll pay the tax in your home country on that income, of course; you don’t win – you just don’t double-lose.)
Social media accounts, if you happen to like that kind of thing. I have em and I never use em.
It’ll surprise a lot of you to see my scepticism about social media, but SM doesn’t really sell books, or not directly. If you like interacting with bookish people – I mean, booksellers, critics, reviewers, agents, etc – then good. Do it. It’ll only be helpful. But yelling “please buy my book” on Twitter doesn’t work. Never has, never will.
Digital first publishing
Digital first is trad publishing, really – it’s still selective; entry is still controlled by gatekeepers – but it belongs in a different category because the kit-list is different. I do think that if you’re publishing digital first you need to add:
Social media accounts – the ones you think you’ll actually use. There’s zero point having five inactive accounts. One good one easily beats five bad ones. For most authors, Twitter and Facebook will be the places to start. (And yes, I know it’s not Twitter, but I’m not going to use stupid names for things, just because a billionaire wants me to.)
Maybe Booksweeps as well – but talk to your publisher about ways and means to build that email list.
Self-publishing
Here, you need the full works. As well as all of the above, you need:
A KDP account (that is: the Amazon platform from which you upload and sell your books)
A Draft2Digital account, if you want to sell your books beyond Amazon. (It’s not a given that you do, by the way. Tastes and experiences differ.)
To make use of Amazon ads – probably.
To make use of Facebook ads, almost certainly. This will mean that you do need a “Jon/Jan Jones Author” page as well as your own personal account.
To be knocking regularly on Bookbub’s door (though access to that profitable beast has been harder for indie authors than it used to be.)
To use promo sites in support of major activity, for example during launch.
To use Booksweeps (probably) as a way to get your mailing list charged up to start with.
That’s not an exhaustive list – plenty of indie authors will do more. At the same time, you could argue that this list goes beyond real essentials. The only things that you have to have as an indie are: (i) a book, (ii) an Amazon account, (iii) a mailing list and everything which goes with that, and (iv) one other source of traffic, probably Facebook ads.
***
And that’s it. It all looks a bit daunting written down in this way – but expedition packing always does. The fact is that the tools have got so much better and slicker over time, and they’re built by people who know that their audience is not naturally techie. It’s all built to be simple.
Do please take a look at the Feedback Friday stuff this week. Whether you’re a Premium Member or not, this stuff matters.
Once, when climbing a different mountain, my climbing buddy used a dodgy petrol stove and set his head on fire. Luckily, we managed to put him out and there was a glacier not too far away, so we even had ice. Lesson of that story? Equipment matters. And, OK, glaciers.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY / TOOLS SEASON / The Freebie
All good email lists are seeded by a free gift. The offer to readers is “you give me your email address; I give you something you want.” That something is a free gift. For novel writers, it’s almost always a short story. For non-fictioneers, it could be an anything – a checklist, a case study, a questionnaire, whatever else.
The actual setup of your mailing list is a relatively drab, technical affair. The design of your short story is anything but. It’s joyous, or should be. The normal specs for a free story is that:
The story is set in the world of your novel / character
It’s a decent length. I think that less than 6 or 7,000 words feels a tad lightweight. Anything over 15,000 words is more than you need to do for free.
The story should enrich your novel in some way. Add a dimension, not just content. I have two freebies available. One is a Fiona Griffiths prequel, and give us a glimpse of the younger, rawer Fiona. The other one is told from the viewpoint of an important secondary character and both enriches him and gives a third-person view of Fiona too.
And, critically, some welcome text. That’s the letter to the reader that goes right at the front of this free gift, which will say, in effect, “Welcome to my reader’s club. I’m your author and I thank you for joining and I really appreciate it, and I’m going to look after you.”
So your challenge this week is simple:
What’s your freebie?
I want:
The title of your full-length novel and 2-3 sentences about it, so we know what the freebie relates to.
The title of your freebie.
2-3 sentences about what that freebie will offer.
Your welcome text. That’s probably only 150 words or so, but be warm and welcoming and personal. You’re not selling anything and you shouldn’t talk like some AI marketing robot. Talk like yourself and be warm and welcoming. For some reason, people freeze at this part of the brief, but they shouldn’t. It’s easy and it matters.
Mostly I write these emails according to whatever wind, breeze, draught or zephyr happens to be in my mind at the moment I start writing.
But what if … I was actually a little bit more structured? What if our Feedback Friday challenges were a bit more disciplined?
Here’s the vision:
I want to span the year with a collection of little courses, or themed blocks of material. So, for example, let’s say that we choose one month to be entirely on the topic of character. In that month:
My Friday emails will mostly talk about character. (I say mostly, because there’ll be times when it’s helpful to be able to wander around a bit.)
The Feedback Friday tasks will consistently hammer away at the exact same theme– so one week might be on character appearances, the next on dialogue, the next on knowing your character, and the last maybe on characters in relationship. Remember that anyone is welcome to post work in our Feedback Friday group. I’ll only be giving feedback to Premium Members, but the peer-to-peer stuff is massively helpful on its own.
For Premium Members, I want to send out supporting video tuition too. So it might be a ten minute video from me. It might be a whole Masterclass or course module. That material might be presented by me or by some other amazing person. But that means if you want to dive more deeply into a topic, you can.
The idea, really, is that if you just stick around, we’ll cover everything you need to know about writing & publishing & marketing your work. As always, these things are repetitive. It’s not like we can just ‘do’ character, complete the tasks and never think about it again. Writing isn’t like that. You encounter a topic one time and learn lots. Then you encounter it again when you have more miles under your belt, and you’ll learn more.
But this week, my question to you is simple.
What do you want?
What shall we cover?
I think we should assume that the maximum length of any course or mini-course is six weeks, but apart from that, anything goes.
Here are some ideas, together with some (very rough) guesses as to how long we’d need for each unit:
A four-week (ish) course on planning a novel
Two or three weeks on non-fiction
A compact “write a novel in 6 weeks” course
A 4-week season on Character
4-weeks on plotting
A week or two on plotting software
An advanced mini-course on making a good novel better? (4-6 weeks)
4 weeks on Getting Published
4 weeks on the basics of self-pub
2-4 weeks on agents (how to choose them, how to work with them)
And of course loads of one-off things: how to use social media, author productivity, writing & wellbeing, how to source a book cover, choosing a title, writing a blurb, making the trad vs self-pub choice.
And so on!
In a lot of cases, I’ll create and film totally new material for this, so I do want to know what you want. We’ll also use your responses to shape things like our Festival of Writing and our programme of live events, so the more you tell us, the more we can shape things around you.
And that’s it.
What do you want? What would you most like us to help with? Please let me know.
You can either respond by filling out this form or by hitting the reply button, I doubt if I’ll be able to respond to every single-pingle thing that comes my way, but I will read absolutely everything.
Thanks very much.
May is genre month and the task this week ties-in with the upcoming events, both the Defining Your Genre workshop next Tuesday and the following virtual genre mixers.
Please pick a passage that you feel particularly encapsulates your genre. Please keep your feedback for my Friday emails and Feedback Friday to the form we mentioned above and in response to this email rather than sharing it on Townhouse.
Hi, Jericho Writers here! This takeover originally featured in one of our email newsletters in 2022. Since then, Marve's career has sky-rocketed. After making the Friday Night Live final at our Festival of Writing, Marve went on to secure a three-book deal with Penguin. Take a walk down memory lane with us and enjoy Marve's advice on how to persevere as a writer...
Hi! I’m Marve, a writer and a recovering sore-loser. I wrote my first poem at eleven. It was NOT the best-written piece of work, but it helped me articulate the feelings I previously didn’t think had words. A couple of years later, I started writing a novel. I’m proud to say I wrote up to 10,000 words before losing my handwritten manuscript– four times! Why? Because I was so excited for anyone to read my work that I literally gifted it to them. It took me a decade to finish that book, but one thing remained the same - I still can’t wait for the world to read my work.
I pour my heart into every draft, so when my work isn’t the best thing my reader has ever read, the crash hits hard and burns fast! It’s an unrealistic want– somehow, it still hurts.
In 2017, I took a loan from my dad to publish my first novel and did all the marketing myself. I sold over 400 copies in the launch weekend and sold enough that month to pay back the loan (my dad is a banker, so he’s very by the books). In hindsight, that was pretty impressive for a 22-year-old - but a couple of years later, sales slowed to a near halt. Something wasn’t working and this sent me right into a writing slump for another couple of years.
It felt like an uphill battle with the saboteur in my head, and while I was terrified, I wasn’t ready to give up yet. So, earlier this year, I dared to write again, and later got a manuscript assessment report. The feedback was– amazing and unique story, but this draft needs a lot more work. Oh! The pain! This feedback hit harder because it was my first try after my writing slump, so in my head, I’m thinking – time to quit.
But now, I’m back, and that’s because I learned something that’s changed my mindset. I learned to embrace the 'sulk’. I’ve come to understand that it’s okay to be disappointed, to take as much ice cream as I need, and mindlessly rewatch Friends for the 200th time when things don’t go according to plan. This has been a real breakthrough for me because I've allowed myself the time to first, reflect and then do what was most important- move on. Moving on is much easier when you've grieved whatever disappointment or letdown you're dealing with. Whether it’s the 10th or 200th agent rejection, two years stuck on submissions, not getting that award you really wanted, or maybe it’s the sour words of a beta reader. Nothing is too big or small to feel bad about, but you must remember that the goal is to get moving. Allow yourself to feel the feelings. Take however long you need, then come back to the mission, ready to take on the world. At least, that’s what’s worked for me.
This year, I’ve had to be a lot braver. I applied to five competitions in one day, and got shortlisted for two, including Friday Night Live! Who’d have thought? Did I cry when I missed out on winning? Yes! Did I apply for more? Yes!
Now, my final draft is nearly clean enough for submission, and with five full manuscript requests, two partials and two editor requests, I feel like I'm much closer to getting an agent.
I’m also self-publishing again, and while I hope for a greater launch than the first one, nearly six years later, these old bones creak, and I wonder if I have the guts of a hopeful 22-year-old girl. We'll see.
The mission is to do it afraid. So, to you, I say, TRY, FAIL, SULK, MOVE ON!
Folks, this is the last Friday in April, which means it’s the last Friday in our self-editing month, which means that this is the last of our editing-themed emails. Outside my window, there is a chorus of sad ukelele music, accompanied by one sorrowful kettledrum and a blackbird with a nasty ear infection. The blackbird is consistently one semitone out of tune – but, you know, it has an ear infection, the poor thing. And who doesn’t love a kettledrum?
And, you know what, last week’s feedback Friday asked people to ADD text to a passage from their work in progress. Unusually for me, I thought that pretty much everyone doing the task ended up improving their passage. Sometimes that meant going from good to excellent. Sometimes it meant going from OK to better. But no one’s passage got worse. Not one.
But it’s also nearly always true that when people focus hard on deleting surplus text, that text gets better. Again, when we’ve done one of these exercises, there’s nearly always been a consistent improvement.
And at its heart, maybe 80% of editing comes down to just these three tasks:
AIM
If you don’t know what your elevator pitch is (the one that’s just for you, not for an agent or for anyone else on earth), it’s hard to check that your book is on track.
So yes, I think you need to understand your pitch before you start writing anything. But inevitably the act of writing the full text will change your understanding of that pitch, so you need to check, refine and tweak it before you get too stuck into editing. Remember the boxes, remember those imps.
SUBTRACT
Kill surplus text.
Be utterly perfectionist. Two unnecessary words in a 16-word sentence is a massive issue and those words have to go. Three descriptive sentences will in most cases be at least one too many. Figure out what the best bits of that description is and make it more compact.
Anything approaching a cliché should be treated in the same way as surplus text. It’s like a little bit of dead wood. A place where the reader’s eye is likely to skim forwards waiting for the narrative to engage properly again.
Nearly all this skimming happens on a near-microscopic level. Two or three words here. A sentence there. An underpowered image over yonder.
But those things are like plastics in the ocean or low-density cholesterols. The damn things cumulate. Slowly the poison the whole bloodstream fills / The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
Don’t let that happen to you – either the verbiage, or the cholesterols or (if you’re a porpoise) the whole sea-plastics thing.
ADD
Then figure out where your work is underweight. At key moments in your book, you need to linger to get your reader to feel the depth of what happens. What does your character think about what’s happened? What do they feel? How does this connect with other things on their mind (a husband, a loss, a quest)? What is the experience like of having this thing happen to this person in this particular setting?
The challenge here is about layering. It’s about adding relatively small amounts of text in a way that adds whole layers of depth to the passage. We had our refresher on layering last week here.
And that’s it. Aim. Subtract. Add. I’m not saying that’s all that’s involved, but it is definitely most of what’s involved.
Grr. Attaboy. Attagirl.
Those ukeleles are starting to annoy me.
Feedback Friday: Edit, Edit, Edit
So, your choice of challenge for this week:
Aim: Give me your (just for you) elevator pitch plus a pretty one (for agents). Keep em short, please.
Add: As for last week, give me a 200-word passage to which you have added 50 words or so. The aim is for that extra material to add richness and depth to the action which you already have on the page.
Subtract: Give me two versions of the same passage, please. The first one needs to be 300+ words. The second one needs to be 250 words or fewer. And they both need to say the same thing. I’m looking for editing that produces no meaningful loss of content.
As always, give me title, genre, and a word or two of explanation if needed. This exercise is always open to all, but I’ll only give feedback to you lovely Premium Members. If you happen to think ‘Odzooks and Jiminy Cricket, given that the whole membership paradise is available for just £12.50 a month (approx. US$15.50), I really would have to be duller than a country-turnip not to avail myself of all this writerly goodness,’ you can just scuttle over hereand do what needs to be done.
That’s it from me. Post yours here. I’m off to re-home a blackbird and murder some ukelele-ists.
Til soon.
Harry
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