HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHER SAY YES

This evening, in the Edinburgh Book Fest, I'm doing my talk on "how to make a publisher say yes". And I decided to put the bare bones of it below, or at least to try to decipher my notes and then turn them into something that will make sense to you.

I've done the apparently same talk for four years now, but each time I say it differently. Each time, I guess I've learnt more in the meantime. Each year, I throw my notes away because I know I'll do it differently next time.

So, this was how I structured my talk for this evening. I'm sorry you're not there, but you at least have the luxury of being able to relax with wine / chocolate while you're reading it. On the other hand, you don't get to experience my shoes. And, writing this as I am a week ago, I can't predict which shoes they'll be, so spontaneous am I.

WHY DOES CRAP GET PUBLISHED? (I won't use the word crap, because you can't do that in front of a captive audience, some of whom have only come in out of the rain and weren't expect the crabbit old bat to be so rude).

This is the question that frustrated aspiring authors ask. Understandably. The answer is simple: crap sells. Every published book is a book the publisher thought would sell. And, since crap sells in shedloads, you have to admit they were very often right.

Getting angry about why crap sells will get you nowhere. Besides, you're not here because you write crap and want to sell it. You're here because you think you've written something damned good and you're wondering what on earth you have to do to sell it.

I can't (or not here) teach you how to write, but I can show you the most common things people do wrong.

TWO COMFORTING THOUGHTS
The awfulness of the slush pile is reassuring - it means that good stuff shines. When an agent or publisher sees a jewel in a pile of crap, he will leap on it with enthusiasm and is quite happy to get his hands dirty in his efforts to retrieve that shiny jewel and clean it up so that the world can see its beauty.

Because the second comforting thought is: publishers and agents are desperate to find good books, great books, books that readers will love. If your book is good, they want you.

A SLIGHTLY COMFORTING THOUGHT
It's easy to get published: you just have to write the right book at the right time and send it to the right publisher at ther ight time in the right way.

BUT, in order to do that

• you must understand what makes a right book
• you must understand how publishing works, how commercial decisions are made
• you must know (and obey) the rules for submitting your work
• 
  

TO THE POINT
"How to make a publisher say yes" is not the best question.
The best question is "why do publishers usually say no?"

WHY DO THEY SAY NO?
One reason only: they think they can't sell it. (If your rejected book goes on to be published elsewhere and even be a huge success, that does not mean that the rejectors were wrong. They may well not have been able to sell it, for reasons which you'll find below.)

Before we proceed, you need to understand about the ACQUISITIONS MEETING (AM). (Blog-readers, go here; people in audience, sit back and listen.)

REASONS TO SAY NO
These fall in two categories.

1. Publisher-related - not in your power to fix
2. Book / author-related - your job to fix

1. PUBLISHER-RELATED (If even one of these three things applies to your book, it will not get through the AM.

1. book doesn't fit their list or their publishing schedule is genuinely too full. It might not fit their list because they've already contracted something too similar; or they've decided not to handle fairy books any more (thank the Lord). If it doesn't fit the list because they don't handle this stuff, that's your silly fault for not researching, but there are many other reasons that you had no way of knowing
2. the necessary investment is too great. Publishers have to pay a load of money months and years before they have a chance of recouping it. They have to budget and if your fabulous wizard series comes along when they don't have the required budget to invest in it over many years, they should not take it on and you would not (should not) want them too
3. the editor is not in love with your book. This may be because the book isn't good enough (in which case it's your problem) but it may be simply personal taste. Don't underestimate the importance of that. Liking or admiring a book is not an exact science. Hell, it's not even a science at all. And the editor must love your book otherwise she/he won't fight for it.

2. BOOK / AUTHOR-RELATED

1. The writing is not good enough - punctuation, grammar and basic techniques mark you as someone in control of words or not; you cannot expect the editor to overlook these; voice, pace and structure are essential to powerful story-telling and readable non-fiction; are you thinking of your reader at all times and have you avoided over-writing? (Those are the commonest faults which will make the publisher / agent say no)
2. Book is not marketable, even though the writing may be good enough - publishers have to make money (they may make mistakes but they are doing it with their money); you need a HOOK - the hook needs to grab the Sales and Marketing team at the AM; you must understand the current market - read current successes in your genre and read them analytically. This does not mean selling out; it does not mean putting commericality before art: it means thinking of your readers
3. Your submission is faulty - (there are loads of posts on this blog about submissions, so I won't go on about it here too much but here are the absolute bare bones and most common errors:

• obey guidelines for each individual agent / publisher
• write the perfect covering letter (a new post is coming up on 22nd August, during my workshop on The Perfect Approach) - you have 15 seconds to sell yourself
• don't do anything wacky or cool
• don't boast; don't say your kids / friends love it
• show knowledge of the market and willingness to work hard for long term career

TOP TIPS

1. every sentence counts and every word within that sentence must earn its place
2. think of your reader
3. read within your genre - but read like a writer
4. miss no opportunity to improve your knowledge of the industry
5. be very careful whose feedback you believe and whose you ignore. Believe experts before friends and writing group members

MOST TOP OF TOP TIPS
Instead of believing that you are hard-done-by and wrongly ignored or that publishers are stupid, accept that the likely reason is that you haven't yet written the right book well enough. Yet ...

FINALLY - regard the rejection of your book as the rejection of your book. Not the rejection of you. Write another one. Because if you can't write another one, you can't be a writer anyway.

(And then, after illuminating questions from the audience, the event chairperson thanks me for being so interesting and everyone flocks to the signing tent where they buy copious quantities of my book and we staying signing and chatting and generally bonding for about half an hour. Then, the chairperson escorts me across the summer evening grass towards the calming cavern of the Yurt, where I strengthen myself with a glass of wine and some dinky sandwiches and pastries. I then go out to dinner with my husband, older daughter and her French boyfriend and younger daughter who is working in the bookshop [putting my books face-out] and I tell them how a very kind blog-reader brought me chocolate and that three people commented on my shoes.)

I'll tell you if it happens like that.

BE CAREFUL WHEN FALLING OUT OF PIGEON-HOLES

Excellent example of how not to hook a publisher in this insightful post over on Editorial Ass today. And for once, it's silly agent behaviour, not silly author behaviour. Please read and then return here for my piercing insights.

Clearly the agent in question was clueless. Or you could say that he was actually very clueful: he gave loads of clues but no actual answers.

Let's do some unpicking and see what we can learn. EA says that the category of your book is "perhaps THE most important question for an editor and his/her sales team." It's an important and possibly somewhat shocking lesson. There was you thinking it was your writing or even the story that was the most important. Of course it is, to you and your readers, but you and your readers will never see your book at all if the bookseller doesn't know where to put it.

See, booksellers have a simple system, which you may not like. They have it for a good reason: customers are simple souls who do not wish to look far to find a book. Customers think they know what they like, and don't want to be told otherwise, so they really need to know where they might find it. Fast. You might wish that a bookshop could be a glorious muddle of treasures just waiting to be found serendipitously, with a squeal of glee. "Oh, how wonderful! A part-monograph-part-travel-guide-part-poetry-collection-part-local-history-of-the-inner-hebrides! I normally read sci-fi but this sounds quite delightful." But what real readers want is the exact book that they want (even if they don't know what it is) just THERE, under the label that says "book that you want".

So, first thing to do when you pitch your book is to know what it is. This applies both to covering letters (see on-going competition) and to query letters; it certainly applies when the editor pitches your as yet uncontracted book to the sales/marketing team in the Acquisition Meeting; it also applies when you answer the casual question about your WIP: what's it about? Because before you say it's about a boy and a girl who get lost in the woods, you have to say it's a fairy tale about a boy and girl who get lost in the woods.

If you are innovative enough to have written a book that defies categorisation, be afraid. I did. I wrote a book called Blame My Brain. Now, luckily for me, I never had to pitch it to anyone as I already had a publisher and an agent and all that happened before commissioning was a conversation that went almost literally like this:

Chris (editor): Would you like to write some non-fiction?
Me: Yes.
C: What would you like to write about?
Me: The teenage brain.
C: Good idea.

That afternoon I drafted a one-page plan and wrote the intro, and about three days later she'd come up with an offer.

Yes, I know. You hate me. I don't blame you. But I did take a long, long, long time to get to the point of having an editor trust me that much.

BUT, when it came to the bookshops deciding how to shelve it, then the fun began. Clearly, there is no category in any bookshop called "teenage non-fiction". (There may occasionally be a tiny little bit of a tiny dark shelf very near the floor, and occasionally when there is, I'm on my own in it.) Luckily - understatement - for me, booksellers thought the idea was so strong that they went out of their way to find a place for it but I still can't confidently predict when I go into a bookshop whether I'll find it in teenage/YA fiction, kids' non-fiction, psychology, parenting, popular science, neuroscience, mental illness or Scottish. (I joke not). Yes, this has been a problem. The only reason it was such a commercial success is that we got fab review coverage everywhere and there was nothing else on the market ticking the same boxes (still isn't - yay!); so word of mouth and market position now means that it doesn't matter that no one knows where to shelve it and no one knows where to find it. Well, it matters a bit ...

Anyway, that sort of situation is rare.

So, consider your WIP carefully, lovingly and calculatingly. Which shelf will it go on in the shops? I'll mention this and talk more about it - if I remember - in my Edinburgh Book Festival talk on How To Make a Publisher Say Yes on Aug 19th. (I don't mean it's about how to make a publisher say yes on Aug 19th - I hope a publisher will say yes on many other days as well). And do remember that it will hardly ever go in two sections, much as perhaps it should.

If you write for young people, in which age section of a bookshop will readers find it? I'll talk about the difference between 10-12s and teenage in my talk on Aug 20th. Again, a book that 10-year-olds AND 13-year-olds will love, will not be found in both 9-12 and the teenage sections.

However, there's more to categorisation than what shelf it will go on. We (humankind) like to pigeon-hole things. It's often an unattractive and unhelpful habit. Pigeon-holes are places of safety and comfort, but they are restrictive because you can't easily see out of them. However, while readers continue to be human and want categories, we have to work with them. And, actually, it is helpful when it makes us analyse the elements of our book, to make sure it ticks the right boxes or follows the right rules for that particular category or genre.

So, as well as knowing what section in the shop our book will end up on, we need to know in more detail what sort of book it is, so that we can describe it better and give people (agent, then editor, then marketing, then bookseller, then reader) a clearer idea as to why they might like it. Now, many books don't sit neatly within one pigeon-hole. And that's fine. No one ever said you had to sit neatly in the pigeon-hole. You're allowed to sit on the edge with your legs hanging out - it's a tad dangerous if you've had a bit much to drink, but just be aware of the dangers of alcohol and other substances and you can dangle to your heart's content.

But, while you're allowing your sci-fi book to dabble in romance or your historical novel to veer into magical realism, consider your reader. Are there enough readers out there who will go with you on your strange journey? Is your book like something else (something else successful - and not SO alike that you end up being cited in an anti-plagiarism fracas)? Does it fit a pattern? Are there good reasons why it contains several genre elements? Have you really got the experience to handle more than one? Are you genre-hopping because you haven't got your act together or have you genuinely thought this through?

If your book is a mixture of too many (say, more than two) genres, you are likely to lose readers. You are also likely to show a potential agent or editor that you haven't a clue what you're doing. Now you may well have a clue: you may be about to set a completely new genre-busting target of astonishing, innovative brilliance**: but the first page of your submission is not the place to tell your potential agent/editor this. Allow him to discover your avant-garde brilliance through your writing, not by leaping at him shouting BOO. Remember: eccentric brilliance often looks like crass lunacy at first sight and first sight is often all you get, if you're not careful. Later, the two of you can work out how you're going to pitch your magic to Sales and Marketing, but it will not be by telling them that it's a mixture of eighteen genres and hard to categorise.

** Edited to add: Have just seen a fabulous post by the inimitable Lynn Price, describing the inexcusable ignorance of the author who thought he was writing "literary action/adventure" - go read.

In short:

When you write, first consider your reader.

When you pitch, first consider your bookseller.

When you get your contract, first consider yourself: in my case, buy shoes, chocolate and sparkly wine.

There's no chocolate in that picture, for obvious reasons.

WHY WASN'T I PUBLISHED FOR SO LONG?

What, you mean apart from the fact I wasn't good enough?

Well, time I explained this, I suppose, after several weeks of appearing to know it all. Because the truth is that once I knew a lot less than I do now. Obvious, really.

First, for those of you who have missed the tragic enormity of this failure, it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. At the time, that was more than half my life, and certainly all of my adult life. Yes, ALL my adult life failing to achieve the one thing I really wanted: to be a novelist. That's some bruising failure. And bruised I was. Badly. It affected my health and happiness and my sense of self. Luckily (for them) few people knew about my constant attempts at fame and fortune. Unluckily (for him) my husband did. He's still here. Still waiting for me to earn a lot of money, I guess. I'm trying.

OK, I did get some "stuff" published during that time, but it wasn't enough. Home learning books (which have done very nicely financially and which allowed me to say I was a published writer) and stacks of magazine articles. Oh, and talking of doing nicely financially: I regularly get money from a magazine I wrote for ten years ago which keeps using my articles and pays me every time, with me sitting at home doing sod all - would you believe that today I actually sold "36th rights" for three articles?? This means they have used them 36, yes 36 times. God, who needs to be a novelist when you get paid 36 times for something you can't even remember writing?

And there was the odd moment of relative success (relative to abject failure), like appearing in Reader's Digest with my photo and actually being recognised on a bus, and a story winning an expensive pen in the Ian St James awards, and a couple of times almost making it through an aquisitions meeting. But almost is not really good enough, is it?

Anyway, reasons for my abject failure:

1. I thought I was better than I was. I just didn't know what mistakes I was making. This was in pre-blog days, when people like me (as in me now, not me then - me then would have been pretty useless) weren't sharing and there were few relevant books and nice helpful things telling me what a load of shocking errors I was making.
2. I wasn't thinking of my readers. Couldn't give a toss about them frankly - yep, it was all for me. Moi, moi, moi. Self-indulgent beauteous prose, right up my own backside, just gorgeous (but over-written) plotless stuff that gave me shivers of gratuitous pride, and gave any potential reader a severe case of "where the hell's the plot gone or going and I mean why should we CARE about your drivellingly unlikely character who murdered her husband just because of some arcane psychological problem to do with Samuel Johnson which we are supposed to guess through the boring fog of your however-erudite turgidity?
3. I hadn't written the right book. As in a book with a concept which would grab the agent / publisher with its stupendous hook, draw them into a tightly-written and either original or genre-specific plot, written by an author exuding wisdom and knowledge of the market. (Actually, I thought woman who murders husband because he's fat was quite good hook-wise, but hey, that was then.) See here for my post on this topic. (Not murders of fat husbands: I mean writing the right book.)
   
4. I wasn't even following the rules of submissions to publishers, despite the fact that I roll my eyes at you lot for sending toffees to agents and being similarly foolish. In fact, once I even .... but no, I can't tell you that. It's too embarrassing. (For rules for submission, see the Writers and Artists Yearbook, publishers' websites and relevant labels on this blog. There is no excuse for not following these rules - there wasn't then, and there isn't now. Well, unless you actually want to beat my 21-year record.)
   

And so followed the rejection letters. Because yes, I've had a few. There were the occasional ones that said lovely things but which gave suggestions contradicting previous ones (like "we feel it's too short" after "we feel it's too long" and "the plot is somewhat avant garde" after "the plot is somewhat traditional"); there were the "not right for our list" ones (unhelpful but true); there was my favourite (though not at the time) which consisted of my rubbish covering letter with the word NO! scrawled across it in pencil and returned to me in an envelope without a stamp even though I HAD included return postage; and there was the one which arrived back the day after I'd posted it, something which defies the laws of both postage and Newtonian motion and I can only assume that the postman was an Orion employee sent to destroy the slush pile before it occurred.

So, if you are now in the position I was in then - one of soul-searing awfulness, when you feel that life will be utterly meaningless if you don't get that contract, when your whole belief in yourself is shaken daily - I feel your pain, I really do.

That not being good enough thing? In a way it's true, I wasn't good enough. And maybe ... sorry ... you aren't either. But maybe, by listening and learning and improving, you can become good enough. But remember too that it's not just about being good enough - it's about writing the right book at the right time and sending it to the right publisher at the right time. I know, I've said it before. I could even become boring. (If you're new to this blog or need a reminder, use the label "right book" on the list of labels to the right.)

The trick, and the one which this blog tries to help with, is to work out whether:

1. you are good enough but haven't written the right book yet
2. you are good enough and have written possibly the right book really beautifully but haven't sent it to the right person in the right way
3. you aren't good enough but could become so, with time, practice and/or help
   
4. you aren't good enough and won't ever be published satisfactorily
   

Thought for the day: actually, a lot of published writers aren't good enough either. Some of you may well be better than some of them. It all boils down to what a publisher thinks will sell. And I've already done a post on Why is crap published? But you're not writing crap, are you? Please say you're not. Though I have to be brutally honest and say that if you ask any agent or editor they will tell you that the vast bulk of the slush pile is absolute utter crap, of a meaningfully finger-in-the-throat boggingness.

After that bit of brutality and after all these weeks of listening to me seem to know it all, you deserve to know that embarrassing thing I did. I think I can trust you now. Please don't laugh.

Here goes. Deep breath. Will you still respect me? I was young then. Young and really stupid.

The thing is ...

I
once
wrote
a
covering
letter
in
rhyme
...

People! Don't do it!

WHY IS CRAP PUBLISHED?

Why do people crochet pink toilet-roll covers? Why do manufacturers produce orange psychadelic wallpaper? Why does anyone bother to grow broad beans? Or make mint-flavoured white chocolate? Or offer holidays on cruise ships with karaoke every evening?

Because there's no accounting for folks and some people actually like that stuff.

Same with books. Publishers produce what they think people will buy and generally-speaking they're right. (Apart from the dolt who paid a fortune for unappealing UK footballer Wayne Rooney's FIVE VOLUME autobiography when the guy was only about 17. Must have been very big print. And probably a load of pictures to help him along, but still ...)

You'll have noticed that the biggest best-sellers can often arguably be categorised as utter drivel. And you may rightly surmise that a lot of people like reading drivel, otherwise they wouldn't have bought it.

And don't go all politically-correct and hit me with, "Who're you to say it's drivel?" Drivel is in the eye of the beholder and in this case the beholder is me. If the reader of Katie Price's autobiog wants to say that Madame Bovary / The Blind Assassin / Atonement / Life of Pi /The Moth Diaries / Silas Marner / The Little White Horse are rubbish, fine. They're wrong, but what do they know? And it's not the point: the point is to answer the question, "Why is crap published?"

It's published because it sells. Blame the readers. Publishers have to make money and all readers are different and are entitled to enjoy and choose whatever rubbish they want and like or dislike it for whatever reason they want.

A much more important question is "Why does great stuff NOT get published?" In other words, why has the genuinely beautiful and wonderful work which I am sure many of you produce not been snapped up?

I've gone a long way to answering aspects of that in other posts, but it boils down to one or more of these reasons:

• although it's genuinely beautiful in many ways and you are a talented writer, you have not yet crafted a book which is good enough to be in the "great book" category but it is way too great to be read by readers of the crap category
• it doesn't have an adequate "hook" - a snappy "high-concept" tag that will make sales and marketing people drool. (See Acquisitions meetings.)
• it's otherwise goodish but falls down in eg voice or structure and the editor isn't sure that you'll be able to improve it enough
  
• you haven't written the right book at the right time or sent it to the right publisher at the right time ...
  
• ... and in the right way - the submission must be right, especially the covering letter
  
• an agent / editor admires it but hasn't fallen in love with it - see the Behler Blog here - possibly because it's neither brilliant nor drivel, but middly
• for one reason or another, it's simply not sellable in enough quantities, although your mother absolutely loves it (which, as you should know by now, means nothing - unless your mother happens to be accidentally right)
  

For rubbish to sell, it has to be seriously good rubbish. Your average kind-of-OK book just won't cut the mustard, especially if it's a book which looks as though it could actually be quite good with a bit of work done on it.

Unfortunately, seriously good drivel is what many large publishing houses now need to survive. See - you're just all too good and surely I'm doing you a great disservice in writing a blog designed to make you better. I should be teaching you how to write really bad stuff. Trouble is, I've never quite worked out how to do that myself. I like to think.

Because, of course, rubbish is other people's success.

THE ACQUISITIONS MEETING - AT LAST

It has not escaped my attention that this is supposed to be a serious, adviceful blog and that you are meant to be serious about getting published. Remember that burning desire bit? Hmm, well, I am disappointed in you. You are like schoolkids who think it's so funny to let their teacher go off at a completely self-indulgent tangent about turquoise boots and Klingons, instead of following the statutory curriculum. You'll get me sacked at this rate. So, today we are going to behave and we are going to discuss Acquisitions Meetings. "At last," I hear the swots in the front row mutter.

Also, my editor and agent both believe that I am working flat-out to meet the looming deadline from which my novel currently suffers. They will not be best pleased about yesterday's advice on Work Avoidance Strategies, ("WAS", as we call them, which even those of you at the back must know by now) so, for their benefit, I would like to point out that obviously I was working yesterday - all talk of WAS was merely artistic licence. Of course I don't vacuum behind the fridge, ever. I've never heard such a ridiculous idea. Nor would I be so stupid and time-wasting as to take a dead mouse to the vet - arranging for Pest Control to scour the house with sonic detectors occupied quite enough time, thank you very much.

So, the Acquisitions Meeting. This part of the process cannot be underestimated, ignored or wished away. Of course, it is not as important as writing the right book in the first place, but I believe that understanding it is a surprisingly crucial part of writing the right book. It is my guiding principle that if all authors understood exactly what goes on in and leading up to the AM, they would a) understand why a well-written and worthy/beautiful book may easily still be rejected and b) be better able to write, pitch and sell a book that won't be rejected.

In the old days, the process of acquiring your book was simple. An editor, wearing a tweed jacket and brown suede shoes and taking an old-fashioned attitude to personal hygiene, would read your manuscript over a glass of port at his club, be bowled over by the beauteousness of your prose / piercing insight into the life-cycle of the Lesser Galapagian monkfish, finish his dinner at the Groucho Club, totter to bed, totter out of it, make a quick phonecall to the office and tell them that he'd acquired a book and that he'd tootle along to tell them all about it once he'd finished a long lunch with his new best friend, the author. If a marketing department existed, which it probably didn't, the editor would never have met anyone in it, and if he did, he wouldn't talk to them because they would most likely pass the port the wrong way round the table.

Lest that paints an unfairly negative view of the old days, let me also properly point out that very often, especially in the more recent old days, an alternative process involved a passionate, inspirational and knowledgable editor (very often wearing turqoise boots, if a woman, or a red bow-tie, if a man - though these roles may perfectly easily be reversed or even combined without detriment to the acquisition process) falling deeply, madly, dippily in love with your book and being allowed to make the decision over a muesli breakfast, often to the benefit of all concerned.

Occasionally, but decreasingly so, the above still happens. But don't rely on it - the vast majority of publishing companies, whether large or small, now follow the process below (or at least something intrinsically similar), and you would do well to understand it absolutely. In fact, forget the above two paragraphs: they are the product of a nostalgic and over-caffeinated mind.

Also in fact: if a publishing company nowadays does not follow a similar procedure to the one I am about to describe, ask them exactly what it is that makes them so much wiser than everyone else. If they insist that they don't need to think about such unpleasant things as projected sales figures or marketing strategies, ask them about the sales figures and/or positive review coverage for their last six books. Then ask them what happened to the second books of each author. Remember: being published the first time may seem difficult but being published a second time on the back of a book that has done a passable impression of Lord Lucan is immeasurably more difficult. And much harder to explain to your friends, who will absolutely not understand. Remember: your friends think writing is easy. After all, everyone's got a book in them and you just happened to be lucky enough to have time to write it. (See Dealing With Taxi-drivers ...)

BEFORE THE ACQUISITIONS MEETING CAN HAPPEN
First, as ever, the editor must fall in love with your book, or at least be bowled over by its commercial potential. (Both would be nice, but let's not get too carried away.) The editor must also have an informed intuition that this is the right book for this publishing company and that he/she will be able to persuade marketing and sales departments that it will be easily marketed and sold.

Second, the editor will often pass the book/proposal to another editor for a second opinion. This may be a junior editor (if the editor is quite senior) or a senior one (if not).

Third, if the editor continues to be sure, having read your book probably twice and done some more informed intuition about marketing and sales, he/she begins to work out an acquisitions proposal, or something which may have a different name or be slightly less formal but essentially does the same job. (You can probably see already why the process of accepting/rejecting your book is rarely quick, unless your book is absolute rubbish, in which case you need only wait the amount of time it takes for the postman to deliver it back to you - once, a book of mine was returned to me 36 hours after I'd posted it, which almost defeats Einstein's special theory about the impossibility of anything travelling faster than the speed of light. I would have been impressed if I hadn't been so insulted.)

Fourth, the editor begins the difficult process of preparing the acquisitions proposal. This will have to be presented at the Acquisitions Meeting (henceforward AM in the pages of this blog). The proposal outlines things such as:

1. The book - why is it so good? Why does the ed love it/what does he/she feel about it? Unique selling point? Genre? Likely page length and actual word count? Price point? Timing of publication, to fit the publisher's existing plans? Likely print-run? Why right for this publisher? Gap in market? How does it fit on list (qv in Common Words You Should Know). Who is the readership?
   
2. The author - who? Publishing history? Marketable life-story? (Penniless single-mother writing wizard fantasy series in café with small daughter in buggy because can't afford heating bills has been done ...) Likely to be presentable to the public or better hidden away under the pretext of being related to Salinger /otherwise hermetic /possessing a tragic illness/life-story/prison-sentence?
   
3. Finance - what advance is needed/possible, based on all the above, incl likely sales figures? When might this be recouped? Costings at desired format/print-run etc.

Are you daunted? Do you feel sick? Are you saying, "Ah! Now I understand what I'm doing wrong and why they haven't said yes yet"? Because you should be all those things. And more. You should have hit the chocolate big-time and while I would never recommend over-indulgence in alcohol, I wouldn't blame you if you succumbed briefly.

Then, you should pick yourself up and say to yourself, "Well, if the editor has done all that in preparation for the AM, then surely my book now stands a great chance. She/he must really really like it, and that's hopeful, isn't it?"

You would be right, because now your book does stand a great chance. And yes, it is hopeful, or, to be more accurate, you are.

THE ACQUISITIONS MEETING
This is much more scary for the editor than it is for you. After all, you're at home twiddling your thumbs. (No, you're not - you're at home writing your next book. You are not indulging in any WAS, no, not at all.) But it is seriously scary for your editor, because he/she has already invested significant time in preparing the proposal and now has to run the gauntlet of those hard-faced, pointy-lapelled, French-polished people in Sales and Marketing (S&M?) who have MBAs and keep going on assertiveness courses when that's the last thing they need. (They often wear great boots, I have to say, because being more stylish than authors is part of the job spec. And not the hardest part, believe me.)

Remember, importantly, that at this stage the people in the pointy lapels have not read your book - the most they'll have seen is a synopsis and small sample, but often not that.

Essentially, the AM is simple: the editor presents the proposal, passionately, coherently, inspiringly. And there follows a conversation which may be very short (a good sign) or fairly long (not). Between them they have to answer three questions:

1. Can we spend thousands of pounds (in staff salaries, editorial input and redrafting, advance to the author, design, type-setting, printing, marketing), knowing that we won't get anything back for at least a year (if the book is already ready to be published) or maybe much more, on the basis that this editor thinks it's a good bet?
2. Is this the sort of book a book we can sell?
3. Is it sufficiently different from everything else on our List and yet sufficiently similar? (Is it right for our List?)

When they say yes, they are taking a gamble. It's an informed one but it's a gamble nevertheless. If they lose, they lose money but they also lose whatever book they could have taken if they didn't take this one, because they can't take all the good books that cross their desks. They are also taking a punt on you, the author, and hoping that you will be as good for them as they will be for you, and that there's every chance of a long career for you with them (unless this is a celebrity memoir we're talking about, in which case all common sense evaporates and gibbering lunacy enters left field.)

On the one hand, this is all too horrible to think about for you, the hopeful author. And exactly the same process applies to every single book, however many times its author has been published - though of course the published author stands a better chance, though only if previous publication has been successful .... Indeed, it is painful to think of your dreams being deconstructed in this way by strangers.

On the other hand, it should also be a source of comfort to you: because when you are rejected, it may not be anything to do with the quality of your writing. It may be that your book has fallen down for one of those many perfectly valid reasons. In which case, understanding the reasons can help you submit a publishable book in future. Getting to the AM is a huge hurdle and says a great deal about your potential. It doesn't say everything - "yes" would say everything - but it is genuinely important.

But we also have to end on a very sombre note: at some point you may have to force yourself face a gut-wrenching understanding - that it may be the case that you have not yet written the right book. You may have to start again. I will say that again, as it is something that we all have to consider sometimes (or if we don't, we should): you may have to start again. The next sentence comes with a health warning, for what I am about to say may shock you: it took me 21 years of rejection before I wrote the right book. Since that moment, yes, my life has changed beyond belief and I have had moments of joy that I only dreamt of, but much more important to me is not how my life has changed, but how much I have learnt.

If you take that very, very difficult decision to start a new book, and gently lay your previous efforts to rest with a few elegaic words, I can tell you one thing for certain: you will not regret it, for what you write next will be better. You may, like me, come to thank those publishers and agents who have decided not to unleash your writing on the undeserving public. Yet.

After such a serious and professional lesson, with admirably few tangential and self-indulgent diversions by me, and with you all listening so attentively, I think we all deserve coffee, chocolate, and pretty much anything else that activates the brain's reward centres.

Anyone for shopping?

COMMON WORDS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Your lesson for today, children, is vocabulary. There are certain words and phrases which you will come across in your journey and of which you may not ask the meaning without looking foolish and unpublishable. Some of them you may already have met in rejection letters.

Many of them may seem as though you won't need to know them until you have a contract, but a) I believe that the more knowledge you can have of all stages, the better chance you have of that contract and b) many of you have already been published once or even more often, and have discovered the inconvenient truth that being published does not mean that publishers will tripping over themselves to sign you up for the wonder that is your second /third etc book.

My teachings come in no particular order, as usual. You must by now be beginning to know the haphazard "creativity" of which my brain is capable. Some might say I should make such lists alphabetical but alphabeticalisation is the domain of librarians, who are incredibly good at it.

1. List - as in "your book is not right for ours". A publisher's list consists of several lists. There is the entire list of its publications and there are lists within lists, such as the literary fiction list or the mind/body/spirit (MBS - there's another "word") list. One day, a publisher might have a literary MBS list, but this is hard to imagine - though I guess the Bible might be a contender. Anyway, the point is that the editors for that list know what they want on it. And, sadly, that is not your book. (Remind me to do an article on "What rejection letters are really telling you" - in fact, I'll put it on the list right now.) Thing is, suppose you had a shopping list - would you include an item "do tax return"? See? On the other hand, the item "anchovies" is a perfectly valid thing to put on a shopping-list and for you to say it's not right for your shopping list would be simply to say you don't like anchovies. Similarly, to say that your book is not right for the list can sometimes be a way for the editor to express not liking it.
   
2. MSS - were you listening in the early lesson on "Inexcusable Ignorance"? MSS is in fact a misnomer, because your manuscript is not really a manuscript - ie hand-written while lying on a sofa eating peanuts and drinking nicely-matured grape juice - but a typescript - ie beautifully and clearly typed. (Please don't tell me yours really is a manuscript because if it is you'd better get it transmogrified asap). Pedants among you will want me to point out that also MSS strictly stands for manuscriptS, and that MS is a singular manuscript. But although agents and editors like careful authors, they don't like pedants, so please get with the lingo even if it's wrong.
3. Agent - a person who quite rightly takes a % (10-15 and more like 20 for foreign/TV/film rights) of what they earn for you. (See the article on To Be Agented or Not ...). If you grudge this, don't have one. Trust me, they are not coming looking for you - it's up to you to show (show not tell) them that you are going to be so very successful that they will want their % even though it will be a long time till they get it.
4. Acquisitions meeting - (forthcoming article alert) the crucial meeting held by your publishers, at which the editor who likes your book has to persuade everyone else to like it equally, and that it is perfect for their list (qv). In the US, I have heard it called a Decide meeting by by US publishers, but a comment (No 10 - thank you, Marissa) from one of you helpful expert readers suggests that this might not be widely-used. Mind you, the US is quite a big place, she says, with gentle understatement. And "Decide meeting" would be a very sensible term. Go for it, US, I say!
   
5. Advance - an amount of money which is always much less than the papers will say. If the papers even mention it it means it was a lot, but still they are exaggerating. You don't get it all at once either. A common system is to get 1/3 on signature of contract, 1/3 on final delivery of MSS (pay attention at the back), and 1/3 on publication day. Or half on signature and half on publication, or some other system agreeable to you and your agent, though not as agreeable as getting twice as much twice as soon.
6. Royalties - elusive things which only come when your book has "earned out" its advance. Most/many books never actually earn any. You have a royalty percentage (say 10%, but this varies hugely and for very good reasons depending on whether hardback, paperback, ebook, audio, serialisation etc etc and nothing to do with how amazingly brilliant you are) and essentially you get that % on each book sale (usually based on the publisher's receipts and not the cover price, which is where high/low discount (qv) comes in). I know, you've switched off but don't worry: only sad people understand their royalty statement.
   
7. Returns - ugh. Bookshops buy your books "sale or return" and when they are returned they appear unpleasantly on your royalty statement and their previous earnings are deducted. And the books don't get sold again because too many customers had jam on their fingers when they picked up your baby - sorry, book - and fingered it before not buying it. (Please can we not talk about returns any more?)
   
8. Publication day - OK, you you know what it means but do you know what it really MEANS? Often, it means two years from now. So I hope you've got some writing to do in the mean time. Or a paper round or something, because you're going to need it.
   
9. Sales and marketing departments - two parts of a publishing company that sometimes might as well have offices on different planets, and on different planets from the editorial dept. And absolutely in a different universe from the author. (Note to my publishers - this is hearsay: of COURSE I don't mean you - you all communicate stupendously well.)
10. AI - not A1, which is a very dangerous road between Scotland and more southerly parts of the UK, but AI (pronounced AY - as in May - EYE) - stands for Advance Information. This is a document which in the ideal world would tell that world accurate details about your book, and you, and why everyone should buy said book. Of course, this is not an ideal world, and as I mentioned in a previous article, the AI may be written by a 12-year-old who lurks virtually unpaid in a cupboard somewhere and who bases her description of your book, understandbly from her p.o.v., on your description of your book before you wrote it. Therefore, one of the first things you should do once you've signed your contract, is enlist your editor to ensure that what ends up on Amazon is something you can be proud of and that has a close resemblance to the truth. Otherwise you will have a hell of a lot of explaining to do when you are asked to talk to the Bognor Regis Women's Institute and they discover that the book they thought was an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery of a whimsical and traditional nature is in fact a post-surreal pastiche of American Psycho with shades of In Cold Blood.
    
11. Hook - every book needs one. The sales and marketing departments need a quick phrase that sells your book, tells the potential buyers what it is in a pithy way that makes it different from anything else in the world and yet exactly like a book they'd love to read. I once went to speak at the publisher's sales conference before the publication of my historical adventure, The Highwayman's Footsteps - (that's called a plug by the way, which is a very important word and should always be preceded by shameless and yet performed with a pleasant smile so people don't hate you too much) - I had to speak for 10 minutes to the sales team, to enthuse them without teaching them their job; so, I wanted to make them want to sell the book and also give them something that would make it easy. They won't remember anything else I said that day except for my hook: "Robert Louis Stevenson on caffeine." My agent tells that story as an example of a hook that works. So, get yourself a hook for your book. (If you want to know a secret: actually, caffeine wasn't the word I used. But I write children's books so let's keep this appropriate, please.)
    
12. Prelims - the pages at the front of your book before your actual words start. So, the title page, any foreword and acknowledgements, list of your previous books, little biog. Not a dramatic word but at least now you can respond sensibly when your editor asks you if you've got anything you'd like to add to them. (Your name is the most important bit, by the way.)
    
13. Trade publishing - publishing of books that you can reasonably expect to find in a good bookshop. As opposed to eg educational or academic books, which will be sold in different ways and not usually through high-street bookshops.
14. Trade paperback - I confess I've always been a bit mystified / bored by this distinction because it really only refers to the size/format of the book, which is a pretty boring thing to get too involved in. Essentially, your book will either be published as a hardback and later "go into" paperback (once the publisher thinks it's squeezed enough higher-profit sales out of it); or it will be published as a "paperback original" and not be in hardback. Sometimes the publisher will publish as a hardback while simultaneously (or almost) bringing out a "trade paperback" which is always for some odd reason fatter and bigger than the pb (paperback) original would have been. Absolutely fascinating, I am sure you agree.
    
15. High discount - publishers sell books to retailers at high or low/normal discount. A powerful volume retailer like Amazon, or a big high-street chain, can command a higher discount, especially if they are going to put your book in a price promotion. And it matters, because you get less dosh out of it. But it also doesn't matter, because a) you can't do a damned thing about it and b) you're just ecstatic that anyone is buying your book at all.
    
16. Editing / copy-editing / proof-reading - these probably need an article to themselves, but briefly: your editor is the one who helps you mould your book in major ways. He/she will suggest that a character isn't developed well enough, or your pace is not varied enough, or this bit doesn't work, or that bit was too short / long / shocking / boring. This then becomes a dialogue that you hope doesn't become an argument. Who has the last word? Hmmm. I play a tactical game with mine - I give way on things I don't care about so much, or which she might even (it happens, Chris) be right about; and I reserve the full power of my persuasion for the rest. I reckon I have the last word; she probably reckons she does. Which is a happy conclusion. Then she passes it on to the copy-editor, who picks up small things - not as small as punctuation but things like sentences that she / he doesn't understand, places where I've forgotten I said it hadn't rained for weeks and then have sunlight sparkling on the wet road (not that I would, as that would be a cliché) or I said someone was riding without a saddle but then I mention stirrups. Copy-editing can be a very painful process if you get a lousy copy-editor who thinks she/he knows best or a great process if the c-ed picks up really embarrassing things which an annoying reader might harangue you about in the distant future. Then, when all of those glitches are sorted, comes proof-reading, and you know what that is. It's skilled and picky and you REALLY want a good proof-reader because by that stage you've read your damned MSS so many times that you're starting to sleeptalk it and worms crawl across the page every time you look at it. Also by this time you hate your book and think it's rubbish and you go into a decline to which the only solution is chocolate. Luckily, chocolate solves everything.

Which seems like a good time to go and have some because I see that it's six minutes past midday, which is one of the many perfect times for chocolate. Also, I feel that on the one hand this article is too long and on the other I expect I've forgotten loads of useful words. If you have any others you'd like me to mention, please tell me - and if you are worried about seeming foolish in public you can email me through my website - www.nicolamorgan.co.uk (spot the second shameless plug of this article) - and I promise not to name and shame you or even make you feel slightly embarrassed.

Trust me: I'm a novelist. No, seriously, do.

Need chocolate badly.

ARE PUBLISHERS EVER WRONG?

Everyone is wrong sometimes. (Don't tell me about spritual leaders claiming a hotline to a higher being - we're talking ordinary people here, and publishers are as ordinary as the rest of us. In fact, sometimes being ordinary is what makes them publishers and not writers. Hold onto that thought.)

But, more interestingly and relevantly, define "wrong". You will all have heard many stories of famous authors/books who were rejected 99 times before going on to be massive. So, does this mean that all the publishers who rejected them were wrong?

You will also have heard of authors who were serially rejected, then self-published, and then were picked up by a publisher and given a contract. (Thanks, Nick Green, for your comment to that effect on another article, because it gives me a chance to make an important point, not that my other points are not important, of course.)

So, the implication is that those publishers were wrong. And they might have been, not being infallible etc, but I'd like you to consider some other possibilities. (And nearly all of these apply to agents, too.)

As I say, define "wrong". If by "wrong" you mean that they have missed making a load of money because they too would have made a huge success of this book, then no, not necessarily. If you mean that they ought to have said yes because any non-stupid publisher would have recognised the commercial merit of the book, and since they didn't they must be stupid, again, no, not necessarily.

In order to understand, consider the reasons why a publisher may validly and sensibly reject a book that goes on to be a success. Even a good book. Even occasionally a really really good book.

Good reasons why a publisher might reject a potentially commercially successful / critically acclaimed / classic book and not feel like blushing afterwards:

1. It's not the sort of book they publish and therefore they would not make a good job of it / wouldn't have the necessary marketing (eg) budget for it - different books do require different expertise. If they'd taken it on, we might never have heard of it.
   
2. They have filled their list for the next year (or whatever) and can't take on anything else and commit time and money to it in a time-scale acceptable to an agent/author who might be knocked down by a bus before the next possible publication date 25 years hence - publishers tend to have a very small number (depending on the size of the company) of "lead titles" each month, scheduled up to 18 months (or sometimes more) ahead. If they have their max of lead titles and your book is important enough to require it to be a lead title (or your agent wouldn't have it any other way), then they can't rightly commit to it and would be doing you a disservice in taking it. Publishers have to take on only the amount they can deal with well. Remember that a lot of their costs have to be paid long before they can expect any income, so budgets are an issue.
   
3. They are scheduled to publish another book which would be in competition with it. In some cases this might not be a problem but it easily could be.
4. The editor in question just personally doesn't love the book enough. As you will agree, everyone has different opinions about books, and you DO need an editor who loves yours. If she/he doesn't, she/he can't speak up for it at the acquisitions meeting (of which more another day) and it simply won't get taken on, even if another editor in another company might have loved it. It really is and MUST be largely personal choice. The same hugely applies to agents.
   
5. Some books that become huge commercial successes, are, in the humble opinion of yours truly, utter tripe, and have absolutely nothing about them that anyone who fulfilled the criteria of sanity and consciousness and wasn't drunk or stoned would ever detect.

Apart from that, yeah, publishers are sometimes "wrong" - in the sense that sometimes they say no when they should say yes and sometimes they say yes when they will wish they'd said no. But let's not get it into our heads that this whole business of saying which book is going to work or not could or should ever be an exact science. Luckily, it's a weird weird world out there, with beautifully unpredictable readers who can turn a dead-cert into a disappearing act or dress the Emperor in the most glittering new clothes.

For you, the poor author trying to deal with another rejection of what you must hope is a dead-cert, it is perhaps no consolation to be reminded that all that glitters is not sold.

All I can say is that perseverence is essential - so, do keep polishing your gold.

And by the way, over indulgence in metaphors is considered very bad style.

But you can start a sentence with "and". And "but". But you really shouldn't end an article totally off topic.