Here I am in Brighton, live from FantasyCon 2012. I've just been to a panel entitled 'Ask the Editor', and thought it might be useful if I post the notes I made:


The panel (all editors):

Duncan Proudfoot - Constable & Robinson
Oliver Johnson - Hodder & Stoughton
Simon Spanton - Gollancz
Gillian Redfearn - Gollancz
Nicola Budd - Jo Fletcher Books

What's more important - the commerciality of a book or that you love it?

(There was some contradiction in the answers!) All at first said they have to love a book; that you really can't tell what's going to sell. On the other hand, one said he couldn't think of a single example when he'd pushed through a book he loved, against a negative consensus from the board. Another made the point that it's more important that an editor knows what to do with a book (i.e. how it can be marketed).

Has the speed of getting out a self-published book affected the traditional industry?

Yes, and trad. publishing is lagging behind. Trad will become more instantaneous, particularly in genre. However (another said), you have to bear in mind that I might spend 6 weeks editing a ms; then the author another 6 after that; then say another 3 on line editing, all of which means 18 months is not slow; not if you want the book to be better. You can self-publish now but it might be crap. In 18 months, it could be great. In other words, 'It might be worth the wait'.

Editors no longer have to rely on agents or the slush pile. They look at self-published books that have passed the test - succeeded when the author has nothing to help but word of mouth. So we look at the Amazon Kindle charts, etc: now a very important contribution to trad. publishing.

Is there any point in a new author submitting to you, especially if he's only got one book?

You're looking to build a brand (out of an author). One book is fine but you need to have in place ideas for book 2, 3 and 4. As a new author, what you write about is crucial - because you don't have a name. So if you write about a detective monk you have to be willing to keep writing about him; and to take direction (in this) from your editor. OJ (John Grisham's editor): John Grisham got rejected a lot of times until his agent went to a publisher and said, I have 'The Firm' here and ideas/outlines for 12 more legal thrillers. He was signed because the publisher could get his vision.

All agreed: a ms free of spelling mistakes and with good grammar will get you a look in.

As an editor, you can teach structure but you can't teach 'it', and an author must have 'it'.

Don't put your ms out to too many readers; it will dilute it. You just need a couple of readers who know your genre.

How important is it that an unpublished author has web presence and/or success in short fiction?

Very important. We all look at the short form and sometimes approach writers because of it; and they use it in their approach to us.

Web presence is important. We're looking for writers who don't hide behind their books. However, we recognise the contradiction, in that writers spend most of their time alone with a screen, with the world shut out; yet we want them to be sociable too.

I don't want an online nutter, though. I want to be able to tell from your online presence that you're not mad, that you don't pick fights with people in the industry, that I'd feel comfortable with you in the room.

Don't forget that your job is to write books. No point in having a great online presence if you aren't actually writing any books.

Quality vs quantity?

The industry hasn't needed self-publishing to get crap out there.

It's a myth that everyone has a (good) book in them. When we reject your book saying something like, the characters are great but the world-building isn't quite there, it's not what we're looking for at the moment - do we want you to re-write it and send it back? No. We're being nice. We probably really mean it's crap but we don't want to crush people - even though our lawyers tell us to be honest.

Do you use readers?

Not any longer - no money now. So, a book gets put in front of a senior editor, say, and if he likes it, he'll pass it down the food chain to an assistant or someone in Marketing. If they like it, he'll take a look.

Are you affected by marketing trends?

(Again, some contradiction here.)

General consensus was that you can't anticipate or follow trends. Trends happen for various reasons, e.g. reader/viewer taste translating (eventually) into what writers write. The 'hive mind' plays a part too, e.g. when several publishers put out the same kind of book at the same time. However, there was also agreement that publishers will occasionally jump on a trend, like with '50 Shades of Grey', and that is not a very noble thing, especially when it always quickly leads to rubbish and spoof.

Are you affected by stylistic trends in writing? e.g. a lot of YA Fantasy novels hit the ground running, plot wise and don't let up until the end, even if at the expense of character.

General agreement was that there are stylistic trends, and that books for children/YA are affected by short attention spans and games/TV/movies where action plots are essential. On the other hand, good writing is good writing whatever the style.

Terry, I think is fantastically useful to writers not just from this genre but across the board- good plain sensible advice and right from the top editors too. Keep posting and I'll keep tweeting it.

Terry,
Thanks.
As a relative newbie, it's great to read this.

Amusing: As an editor, you can teach structure but you can't teach 'it', and an author must have 'it'.

'It' - simply priceless

Anna, Alan, thanks. I've written some more about the convention on my blog, if you want to take a look: http://www.td-edge.com/blog/ (apologies if the print is a little bunched and the formatting not consistent: I'll be putting it right soon!).

I attended another panel discussion yesterday: 'Print vs Digital' but didn't take too many notes. Again, it was five editors (three of them different to the other panel). One started by giving out some figures for 2011 (for the UK only, I think):

- 366% increase on digital book sales (on 2010);
- digital books have 6% of the market (not sure I got this figure right);
- 20% of publishers' revenue now digital;
- 70% of digital sales is via Amazon; 10% via Apple; 20% the rest.

There was a general consensus that this could become the golden age for smaller, independent publishers. This is because the big publishers will increasingly focus on the top end of the market, i.e. the mid-list will move to smaller publishers. One likened it to breweries, where many people are happy with the products produced by the big brewers, but there is also a thriving market of micro-brewers because enough people are prepared to pay more for a quality product made the way they like it.

There was a discussion about piracy and DRM (digital rights management). Most agreed that piracy is theft although one raised Cory Doctorow's (and others' argument that piracy is good because it gets your book wider coverage than it would normally have, leading eventually to more sales. DRM was generally seen as a not very good answer to piracy, but perhaps better than nothing. The problems are a) lots of people can hack DRM anyway, b) it's not right that someone pays for a book but can't read it on more than one device. Darren Turpin (of Angry Robot books) said his company doesn't use DRM for this reason.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the panel didn't really know what kind of future print books have although (also not surprisingly) they all believed there is one, e.g. as one of them said, you can't give an e-book as a Christmas present [although I know someone who is working on being able to do just that!].

One editor thought there would always be a market for high-quality (in terms of how they're physically made) books but Darren Turpin was sceptical because he firmly believes sales/trends are driven by what customers want, i.e. if you print a load of quality books and they're not bought, you'll end up having to lower the price anyway.

Terry