Hi Yellowhair, don't give up! Just to add my two cents worth... my book idea was rejected by 'several' (and I use that term lightly) agents a couple of years back. I then entered a competition set by Long Barn Books, that , Emma, has listed and got a publishing deal with them. You absolutely NEVER know what is around the corner and where you may find your niche. I'm agentless but at the moment, totally unbothered. Small independent publishers are really personal and give you heaps of support.

I had lunch with my agent today and gave her my list that Emma had given me of independent publishers. She said she would send off the book and was actually very supportive as she usually is. She had a list of all the comments publishers had made - 'flat writing' and 'no magic' and 'gloomy' were among the worst - one said my writing was'brilliant, seductive, plausible and strange; but they couldn't make it work. Also saying writing 'orginal and intriguing' but not one they were prepared to 'break out with'. bloody hell............

Still got to hear from Hodder, snowbooks and Maia which she had already sent to before you list....

Best wishes

Sophie

Hi Sophie,

I work in advertising and tend to find that ideas that strongly polarise are often the most successful once someone has the courage to make them. It doesn't seem to matter if some people really hate an idea as long as other people really love it. It's the work that evokes a universally warmish reaction that doesn't do well even though clients often feel more comfrotable with this stuff.

I don't know whether the same would apply to publishing but it sounds as though this may apply to your writing - for everyone who hates your work there's someone who loves it.

Good luck, I hope it comes right for you.

Saturday

Nmott...
DO NOT GIVE UP!!
In fact, get on with writing a new one, whilst you wait for the first to be picked up.
When I finally got my agent after years of trying, I thought I'd get a deal straightaway. But It took another couple of years ... Just read my Blog for further proof of this (www.upadiary.blogspot.com).

Anyway, I was so low and tried my hand at another book (that didn't feel right) put that away then wrote the present one, which found a publisher within a few days.

It can happen.

Please, use the 'waiting' time to get another book down. You have proved you can write one!
Good luck

Lola

www.lolajaye.com

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I mean Sophie!
So sorry

Dear Lola

Thanks so much and well done for your success. This is my second but the first one was pretty awful and I am glad nothing happened in a way..
I am going to start another - just gearing myself up... I know we all have pressures but it is hard because of work and children and blah blah. Your story gives me hope I must say

Love
Sophie

It doesn't seem to matter if some people really hate an idea as long as other people really love it. It's the work that evokes a universally warmish reaction that doesn't do well.

A psychotherapist friend said to me recently, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference, and I'm sure that's true. Furious hate is fine - just as hating a character in a book doesn't mean it's a bad book. It's not caring tuppence that's worrying.

I think this is true in publishing too - the difficulty as ever is finding the person who will really, really love it. Indeed, I've sometimes think you can spot the books where the editors said, 'Well, it's fine, does what the genre needs, quite nicely done, we know how to market it,' and there's a kind of lack-lustreness about it which translates the whole way through, from agent to tick-box cover to marketing to bookshop... And lacklustre sales follow, and guess how easy it isn't to get a new contract.

And if it's any comfort, TMOL is the seventh novel I've written, and I had an agent (not my current agent, may her shadow never grow less) from novel number three...

Emma

A psychotherapist friend said to me recently, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference

How funny, the last line of my novel (not the current one, one I wrote a few years ago and am planning to rewrite) says something very similar! I always knew I was a latent psychotherapist

Sophie, I can imagine it must have been hard to hear the more negative comments, but think the positive ones should give you real hope. You know your strengths now, or at any rate what others perceive them to be. You can build on this while writing the new book...and it certainly doesn't sound as if the old one is dead in the water yet, with all the small publishers still to try.

Hi there. I had a similar experience and thought I was the only one unlucky enough to go through it. Interest from two agents (relatively small although well respected), leading up to the point where I rejected one for the other, then swapped back when the agent I went with didn't seem to cut it...how that decision back-fired! Agent v confident of a sale..then cue lots and lots of "positive" rejections. What a great book, what a talented writer etc. but don't think it's one for us. I would have preferred it if they had said the novel was crap, rather than giving me a modicum of hope and then crushing it simultaneously. In the end, no book deal...then novels 2 and 3 are rejected by the agent, leading to swimming in the ether, firing the agent...many times I've thought of giving up...but something in me, tells me to write write write. Love, T.

Dear Traveller

Blimey, our experience seems spookily similar. I sent out two hastily written books to two agents and had the odd experience of them both wanted to go for different ones. I suggested that they represented different books but they didn't go for that, oddly enough. Went with my agent now and despite many rewrites she didn't sell my first book and now this one which is starting to be rejected by the small publishers now......
I agree about the comments - I have had long feedback about why they like it, ending with a 'no' and people always say 'that's encouraging' - well no - like you, I feel even more pissed off and depressed.
Are you going to try and get another agent?

Love

Sophie

Yes, I'm looking for one. It didn't help that I fired my last agent via a drunken email where I told him I already had a new agent, but I guess it was for the best. Seem to be getting more luck with agents based in NYC, don't know why that should be..perhaps I'm on a UK agent blacklist now :-) I don't have a coherent strategy though, kind of rehashing and improving old novels, and continuing to re-write my first novel while working on new material (1st novel has had so many re-writes it's insane - from 3rd person to 1st, from present tense to past tense - and now I'm thinking of going back to the original version!) Anyway, hope your luck changes, my ex-agent gave up on my first novel without submitting to the smaller presses (although I suspect the answer would have been the same).

My agent has submitted my book to nearly all the small publishers on Emma's list.
She was very sure that she should be the one to do that rather then me. Do you think this a mistake? I wonder if the small publishers will think that I am not what they are looking for because it comes from a agent. Inverse to the usual behaviour.
It got rejected by snow-books by the way.No explaination. Hope it wasn't because of fancy agent.

I wonder if the small publishers will think that I am not what they are looking for because it comes from a agent.

I very much doubt it. Small publishers by their very nature only publish a few titles per year so the chances of being picked up by one of them is slight. The only advantage of being signed with an agency is your MS would be more polished than a lot of non-agented submissions. I can't really see a down side to your agent submitting on your behalf. Being agented is not a 100% guarantee of being published, especially if this is your first novel.


- NaomiM

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apologies, I've just seen this is your second novel.
All you can do is leave it in your agent's hands while you keep writing.

No, Yellow Hair - I doubt very much whether your choice of agent had any influence in the small publishers' decision. Having an agent can only give you leverage when dealing with publishers. Perhaps there are exceptions - I remember when my ex-agent submitted my work years ago - most of the detailed comments were from the big publishers. But I always felt, Serpent's Tail, an indie publisher was the one for me - my agent agreed to submit to them, and they rejected me in a one-line email which was extraordinarily arrogant (three months after submitting) given that those with presumably much more commercial pressures had the courtesy to properly consider my work. Small presses aren't necessarily the best option.

Yes - I just wondered if you had to play a different game with small publishers.