Katerina.

Looking at your main question... of course it helps if you 'know' the right people in the publishing field. It certainly will not be a disadvantage to come from a well-known family.

In so many aspects of the Arts and certainly in almost every other field of human activity (especially in business), 'having the right contacts' makes it far easier to travel along the well-worn paths towards 'success' - whatever that may be.

However by far the most important factor in all this is the talent, ability and creativity of the writer. You can have a father who is head of a large publishing house but if your writing is not good enough then your father would be a fool to push your book through his company. His main concern in business is to publish work that has the best possible chance of being bought by the punters.

One might dismiss the cult of the celebrity out of hand and as much as I dislike that 'easy way' of getting published it certainly works for those 'authors' and bookshelves are stacked high with such material. The same might be said of work from other writers whose only claim to fame is having a well-known Mummy or Daddy; in these cases it is the PR value of the parent and/or the relevant connections that the parent will undoubtedly have with friends and acquaintances in the 'right' places.

Some excellent suggestions have been made of ways to increase and widen your area of contacts with others in this field of writing. You might consider how you may best exploit your being a host to a Women's writing group. Remember that PR is essential even if you have the 'best contacts'.

Take on board a little ditty I used to teach my clients in the business development field:-

'He who whispers down the well
About the wares he has to sell
Will never reap the golden dollars
Like he who climbs the tree and hollers.'

Len

connections are sometimes only made after publication...it implies a sort of in-club that it's impossible to break into.

I think this is very true - authors all seem to have met each other, because it's a very small trade, but mostly they meet after they're published, apart from the occasional friend-from-the-writers-group or whatever.

I think we should ignore celebrity books in this discussion because they don't write them. What would be more worrying is if it were true that publishers routinely publish the substandard work of the child/wife/au pair of Mr Jack Famous-Author. I don't think they do, because as Len says, they want and need to make money, and if the work's sub-standard, it won't. If young Jenny Famous-Author has a built-in advantage it's more to do with what gets talked about round her childhood dinner table, and perhaps having Dad look over her work (and the latter we can all reproduce by doing a course). Yes, Ms Famous-Agent will read her lucrative client's daughter's work with more attention, but she too needs to make money, and won't spend her time trying to sell it unless it will. And if Jack Famous-Author is an arrogant and demanding old shit who the agent only tolerates because he brings prestige to the agency, she'll come to the daughter's work with, as Jess says, a prejudice against it, and it'll have to be utterly irresistible before she'll take Jenny on.

Emma

I know Holly, but those contacts aren't what got her the deal. And Susan was on her side, yes, but still didn't select it for the Long Barn competition (I work with Susan at LBB). So her contacts in the industry didn't really do anything for her in the end, what did was her doing something for herself and just sending her manuscript out to Dan Franklin.

Hello Katerina,
if your theory were true then I would never have been published! 8 years ago I was living in a tiny German village, miles away from a library or bookshop or even anyone I could communicate with in English, much less a writers' group. According to your theory my chances of publication - being a complete nobody and far away from the British publishing buzz - were less than zero. But I don't believe in chances. I had a story to tell and I was dying to tell it. I wrote every day, and when my first novel went through the round after round of rejections - five years long - I simply wrote another. That one found a top British agent at the very first try, was published by HarperCollins, and two more followed - even though I was living BEHIND the back of beyond.

It depends on one thing: write a good book.

IN a nutshell: write the best story you can and don't worry about publication. When it's the right book nothing will stop it from getting out there.

Good luck, and never listen to those nagging voices that say you can't. They are only looking for excuses not to finish.

never listen to those nagging voices that say you can't. They are only looking for excuses not to finish.

I think this hits the nail on the head. The anti-writing demon is a clever fellow, and very determined, and will try all sorts of different ways to persuade you to give up till he finds the chink in your particular armour. We all have one.

IN a nutshell: write the best story you can and don't worry about publication. When it's the right book nothing will stop it from getting out there.

And another nail firmly struck on the head. Discussions like this are so necessary, but it's all too easy to spend more time on trying to second-guess what will work best to get published, than actually making the book as good as possible. I don't think there's anyone like this on WW, because it's the writing we're passionate about, but most WWers have probably come across a would-be-writer who has a million reasons why they can't get published, except for what you suspect is the real one: the book isn't good enough.

Emma

I've been thinking about the people who helped me get my book taken up and how I came to know them. I thought it might be some use if I listed them.

David Rees was the editor of a small literary magazine which had taken one of my stories. He was the person who suggested I write a novel for adults, and kept on at me, for years.

Lynn Patrick of Real Writers (a comp I won) used to email me with suggestions about who I could contact. She was talked me through what I wanted to ask an agent, should the call come. Ditto Merric Davidson of The New Writer.

Katherine Frank was a tutor on an Arvon course. We kept in touch afterwards and she gave me advice on how to act when I went to meet my first publisher.

I also asked advice of two writers who came to speak at the school I taught in, Celia Rees and Sherry Ashworth.



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I should add, too, that I also had advice from the novelist Leslie Wilson. I met her through applying for an Arts Council Grant; she was my supervisor.

Lammi, that's really interesting, and backs up what I'd thought, because you made those contacts by perfectly traditional writers' routes. No impressive-next-door-neighbours or influential fathers-in-law required. Though it also underlines how you have to be brave and not shy away from making and keeping up contacts you do make. Email is wonderful for that.

Emma

So, it all comes back to the statement that it certainly won't do you any harm if you 'use' people and contacts to get yourself published. However this does not mean that one exploits those contacts.

However I think we can all agree that the talent and writing abilities must be there in the first place... unfortunately these may be lacking in so much of the material written today. If your writing is truly publishable the keyword is 'tenacity'.

Even saying this, in my opinion there are quite a few unrecognised and unpublished writers whose work is more worthy of appearing on bookshelves than a lot of the material that we see achieving the accolade of 'being published'.

One may dismiss or put to one side much of the 'celeb' literary efforts but visit any bookshop and see that such books do tend to occupy the best display positions within the shop. The 'life' of such books is normally very limited and these can truly be labelled 'products' by publishers.

It is a far more dificult task to guage the 'success' of what I would call 'proper books' and I think this is the category that most of us would fall into.

Len

Indeed, some people are very lucky, and others are not! That's the way of the world. I still don't think it means the unlucky ones don't have good stuff to offer - it's just not seen as "commercial" (which is a very, very different word from "good").

An argument I've used before many times, I know, but I still believe it's true. Not all good writing is commercially published. But, as a self-publisher, and also a small co-operative publisher, there are other ways into the market. Of course you won't sell as many copies and nobody more than a mile away from your home will have heard of you - but hell it's still "out there"!

)

And I also still think that if you're lucky enough to have the might of Susan Hill behind you (whether she actually publishes you or not), you still have a jolly good advantage over others. Again, it's the way of the world!

A
xxx

I should add that I didn't particularly feel I was 'networking' with the people I've listed. I kept in touch because I liked them - and sometimes the initiative came from them, anyway.

I kept in touch because I liked them - and sometimes the initiative came from them, anyway.

I'm sure that's the key to making this kind of keeping-in-contact that isn't really networking work; that it's the natural outcome of making the acquaintance of like-minded people, not some cold-blooded hunt. It's about letting go of the outcome, and just doing what comes naturally.

And I also still think that if you're lucky enough to have the might of Susan Hill behind you (whether she actually publishes you or not), you still have a jolly good advantage over others.

I notice that among the considerable media coverage Marie Phillips got, I don't think I've seen anything that mentioned her connection with Long Barn Books. A nice example of the road she's already travelled behind her being carefully repackaged by the publicity process. But actually, I'm really pleased that the struggle has - inevitably - been made more obvious because they can't ignore the name of her blog. The more noise is made about the struggle, the fewer people will assume writing novels is easy. And all writers will benefit from that.

Emma

most WWers have probably come across a would-be-writer who has a million reasons why they can't get published, except for what you suspect is the real one: the book isn't good enough.

Well, possibly… but how does a writer come to accept that? I entered TWH in this year’s Long Barn comp, and got an email to say it wasn’t accepted because I ‘hadn’t taken myself out of the story enough’ – or words to that effect. This baffled me so much I asked for an explanation, and it turned out she had got me mixed up with someone else. She still didn’t want TWH (called it a cliché) but the point is, if I hadn’t questioned that strange remark, I would have possibly been tearing my novel apart wondering where ‘I’ was in it.

I don’t think that’s quite addressed the point I wanted to make. I can see the connection, but it’s difficult to be detached when, in the space of a month, one publisher calls your work a cliché and another calls it superb – but still you can't get it published. It’s just not that straightforward. Sometimes the subject of a novel just isn’t in step with what publishers think they can sell at the time it’s presented to them.

Dee


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I think the point I wanted to make is that publishers/agents do make mistakes – I don’t mean in the sense that they're wrong to reject a writer’s work, but in the sense that they can get wires crossed, names or titles confused, and give someone the wrong impression of why their work hasn’t made the cut. I'm not suggesting that we query every rejection, but it could explain some of the mystifying comments we get – the ones that result in the familiar cry of ‘have they even read this?’

I entirely agree with your comments, Dee - and this is exactly what I'm trying to say - good writing is not necessarily going to be published in the usual way, (it's a lie to say that it always will be) as the mainstream publishers aren't interested in what's good, but what's "commercial". It's a crying shame for the UK book market as it means that gradually things reach the lowest common denominator, and nobody will bother with good stuff at all.

Pause for brickbats here - but before people start throwing them, let me say that (on a personal level), it may well be that I'm fooling myself and all my books are rubbish. Perhaps the awards I'm shortlisted for and sometimes even win are simply blinding me to the inevitable?

Of course I must point out that I can't speak for you, Dee - but I do note that TWH has in the past been taken on by an agent, considered seriously by publishers of all sizes and already has a market of readers who will buy it when they see it - and yet, like my stuff, still can't get published. Hmm, I rest my case as to the downright blindness of the mainstream publishing world ... And, actually, the more I come into confrontation with it (and I do - frequently), the less I like what it tastes of.

Ah well - as you can see, six years of pure publishing frustration, tears, anger and rage are beginning to take their toll. But I do have to say that - coming from a long line of small - and big - businessmen, to my mind the publishing business seems from the outside to be the most self-serving, and least interested in quality or development enhancement that I've ever come across. If any IT consultancy operated like this, they wouldn't last a week.

Apologies that this post may be rather too strong, but heck I can't always be fluffy!!

A
xxx

But Holly, when you say 'the might of Susan Hill behind you' I'm interested to know what you think Susan actually did? She mentioned the book on her blog, which quite a few people read, granted. But that's it. Like Emma said, it wasn't in the media as far as I'm aware. And any connection Marie has with Long Barn is a friendly but very much unofficial one. So I'm not sure what your point is regarding this, or what advantage you think this connection gave Marie?

the mainstream publishers aren't interested in what's good, but what's "commercial".

Absolutely agree, Anne. Of course, we all have our own definitions of ‘good’. A publisher thinks commercial is good but, in many cases, it’s short term gain. And the writers who are swept up into it are feted and applauded, until their second book bombs – due to the lack of the same level of supporting publicity from the publisher – and they're dumped to make way for a new face.

But we still keep trying. You're getting your books out by alternative avenues, and I suspect that, once I've got my finances sorted, I’ll go the same way. We’ve discussed this a lot in other threads, and there's much to be said for keeping that control.

Dee