Following your story with interest, Shooter! Keep posting!

Absolutely! And GOOD LUCK!

This just in:

My jammy dodgers have clearly been landing on the right saucers for non-fiction. A second publisher has come back with a 'we'd be interested in taking this project further' with a look at a second book in the series already.

Now, how do I start my own bidding war (although personally I've never been a fan of them)?

These two publishers were who I'd specifically tailored my pitch for. Goes to show, well, something, bit shocked really. Having a madly positive week all told and running that thin line between jumping around the house yipping wildly and going "Eeeek!" a lot.

EEEKs good....
many many congratulations! It just goes to show it CAN be done, cut out the middleman and go for it!

I've been told a cheque is coming tomorrow, advance on a book and news that another is to come out in February (these are printed books) with one of my kindle books due out next month. No middleman here!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic news Dot!

And always good to hear the sound of cheques hitting the doormat. It does indeed show what can be done without a middleman. My former agent pitched this same project, got zero response, and did zero follow up.

And if I'd stuck with them I'd only be pitching one project at a time. Now it's on to the negotiations (drum roll please) just got to read some contracts for another job first.

Thanks for all your support btw.

Fantastic news Dot!

And always good to hear the sound of cheques hitting the doormat. It does indeed show what can be done without a middleman. My former agent pitched this same project, got zero response, and did zero follow up.

And if I'd stuck with them I'd only be pitching one project at a time. Now it's on to the negotiations (drum roll please) just got to read some contracts for another job first.

Thanks for all your support btw.

<Added>

Weird double post there - APOLS!

Great stuff, congratulations!

Wow, well done Shooter and Dot. I think it's definitely the way to go with non-fiction. I got a non-fiction book accepted some time ago with a publisher - never even occurred to me to go to an agent. Just submitted a synopsis and the first chapter and the advance cheque arrived pretty pronto.

Sadly, the publisher went out of business not long after, but I got to keep the cheque!

Hi all,

So thought it was about time for an update on this pitching without an agent lark.

Here it is:

Fiction: Lots of initial interest, some gushing rejections, then nadda for six months. Followed up, no-responses across the board.

Non-fiction: Had two publishers come back. Went for meetings, did follow up research costing hundreds of pounds in one instance.

Both publishers came back with 5k or sub-5k advances, arguing that they would be expensive books to produce as they include maps and colour.

That's fine as an argument, however, I'd been open about the costs/formats from the outset, they were both still keen to publish - it is a clearly defined long-term, mid-list market that sells every year and hasn't been exploited in the UK - but they'd effectively only publish at my expense. One was clear enough to tell me that they expected all of their authors to foot the costs of research.

So, say for example, initial costs would have been 8k, advance 5k paid in three tranches, you'd get 1600 up front and have to cash flow the rest with advances/rights etc coming back years down the line. Very bad business case. Sadly neither publisher could talk coherently about rights or royalties without getting aggressive and insinuating that as an author I should be thankful for whatever they offered.

If I had to parody their names, they'd be Spunk Publishing and Triple AAA (hint: both names have too many letters).

This second book is still out with other non-fiction publishers, which I'll follow up on in due course. But I have figured out that if I research each section of the book as magazine articles I would make around 20k for the research and could then publish myself. I also have a large motor sponsor on-board for that project.

So, not great news fronm Trad publishing from my end I'm afraid. However I have self-pubbed the fiction work this morning: http://amzn.to/y9PxB9 Which means I'll be writing from now on rather than waiting around!

The upshot of this process is that I had just as much success as my former agent and will continue to write and pitch as always

Really interesting post, Frank. Knowing how good you are at pitching, I'd say this is a pretty strong indication that self-publishing is increasingly the way to go.

Just took a look at your book. Great cover! Did you do it yourself? If so, it looks very professional. I've mentioned on here before, but I've commissioned an artist to do covers for my short stories (and novels) since I'm not a fan of the vast majority of author-made covers: most look very amateurish and cheapo.

Very kind of you to give me an editing credit, by the way. You didn't have to. As you know, I've always thought this book and the lead character have a lot of potential. But thanks for that.

With my non-fiction project - "Subbuteo for the Soul" - I'm going to do it as a blog project to begin with, once my website is fully functional. I had a lot of interest from publishers but none with enough balls to invest.

Terry

Thanks Terry,

Here are the pitches for the two books for anyone who's interested in seeing my pitches:
Fiction: http://www.darkmarket.org.uk/
Non-F: http://www.coolrides.org.uk/

Self-pubbing is definitely one way to go. To be honest following the traditional route I'm doing less writing than I've done in a decade and it's driving me insane - you spend so much time pitching and arsing about that creativity is stifled, workflow falters - for me at least.

It's fine if you're working at a publisher as your day job, but for me it's my business.

This DWS post was a kick up the proverbial: http://bit.ly/ytd9wc

The cover was designed by http://richardkgreen.com/ He did a bang up bespoke job for about £150. His template covers are much cheaper and way better than most things I could do. I loved the old Ed Mcbain covers - which is where this one came from.

Hey, you did the editing you get the credit. Let me know when the book is up. Just migrating my own site, there's a lot to learn when you're self-pubbing for sure! Take notes!

I'm working with Ben Baldwin. Here's one of the covers he's done for me:

http://benbaldwin.co.uk/Designs%20-%20main%20images/System%20Magic%20Spirit.htm

The amount of sheer stuff you have to consider with self-publishing is a challenge, to be sure. I'm on Dean and Kris's Oregon Writers' Forum and have trouble just reading all the stuff about self-publishing that writers post on there every day - tips, wheezes, ways - let alone put it in to practice.

I'm aiming to get several short stories and a novel up fairly soon; will let you know when. Then I'm going to work on a separate site for my YA stuff. Been going through the scanned copies of older books I have the rights back to, correcting the odd scanning mistake. Interesting experience, seeing how my writing has changes; not to mention having to resist editing it!


<Added>

I've just noticed, Ben's put two more of my story covers, either side of this one.

He's got some nice designs!