I read you, Terry.
I had the great good fortune (!) to be published simultaneously with Tony Parsons for two books. I remember when our second books came out on the same day, and I was doing a very low-key book signing in the back room of a bookshop, and the publishers PR lady and the bookshop owner were going on about the huge launch party they'd been to the night before, for Tony Parsons.
It's always particularly galling when you don't see any merit in the books so promoted.
Then there was the time when I was trying to get my own promotion campaign rolling, and I wanted to go to an AuthorDay for Newbooks.mag, and I got the message back than no, they had invited Tracy Chevalier instead.
Nothing against Tracy and it;s not her fault, but she was already a big seller by that time and I felt it was rather unjust! And then they blame you for not getting the sales they want.
Oh well. That's the name of the game I guess.

Aruna,

It's getting very close to the situation where having a book published by a mainstream publisher won't actually be much advantage over self-publishing. I did two non-fiction books a couple of years ago and because the publisher didn't or couldn't spend much money on them, I ended up not only doing the editing myself but also all the promotion/publicity. I worked out I was getting 37p per book, and therefore decided that if I did another one for the same sort of market, I'd publish it myself and make £5 a copy. But that's non-fiction, where there is often a targetable market. With fiction, we're buggered in that we don't know where the audience/market is.

Now, it could be argued that the publishing business is merely catching up with the music business – heavily investing in the promotion of the popular acts at the expense of the less easily marketable. However, there is still plenty of good, non-marketed music to be found, mainly because there are still many opportunities for it to get heard. For example, one kind of music I like is folk. So on Sunday I can sit at the computer and write while listening to various folk radio shows via the BBC radioplayer. When I hear something I like, I check the name of the artist and order the record immediately off Amazon. Similarly, there are several venues within 10 miles of me where I can go and watch folk and World and Americana bands. In other words, if you're a singer-songwriter and you're work is good, you'll get it heard and gradually build up an audience. At the very least, you can take your guitar down the nearest music pub and get instant feed-back. I've thought about reading my novels aloud in my local but somehow I don't think the fag machine would be more popular.

In other words, it's getting much harder to build a world of mouth audience for novels. It used to be easier – when publishers would bear the cost of a good writer's first few books not selling, while he built his market. But not any more. Now, pretty much the first couple of books have to do well or the writer's looking for another publisher. And so we end up with a situation where the shelves are full of 'novels' by 'writers' like Tony Parsons, or Jo Brand for God's sake, because their fame will get them enough sales to get the ball rolling. In children's fiction, lots of books now start with a bang – grab their attention – and then the author spends the rest of the book frantically back-pedalling to explain it, usually not very well. Good examples are 'Artemis Fowl' and 'The Amulet of Samarkand' – great starts but totally without foundation; then you get a book full of expositional dumps and slapped on character motives. But then, what do I know – these things sell in mighty amounts.

Terry

Apparently, the deal was really £40,000 and I think for two books. This opens up a new debate - is it ethical to lie about a publishing deal for the sake of publicity? It's probably good marketing given that newspapers are obsessed by the sizes of authors' advances these days.

Interesting thread. Will come back to it properly later, but just wanted to mention Shelagh Delaney who was 18 when she wrote 'A Taste of Honey' and S.E. Hinton, who was 17 when The Outsiders was published.

Cath

It is VERY noughty to add naught to the advance!!!

It actually never occurred to me that the £400,000 story wasn't true! I read this in so many 'reliable' sources that I assumed it was true. £40,000 explains much more why the young author doubts she can make a living as writer.

As for needing to be young, female, ethnic and Oxbridge; I'm youngish (30s), female, Mexican and Oxbridge, yet the same agent has now rejected my first two mss! In his reply he stated that he goes gut instinct; by whether something grabs him or not. And that someone else might well feel differently.

Mind you, I'm new to this and maybe that makes me less cynical. I like to believe that a good, well written story will eventually get out into the world.

Go on then, laugh.

It's really quite amusing how even though she has stated somewhere that the £400 000 is grossly exagerrerated, it's hard to find any confirmation of how high the advance actually was - I've searched for confirmation on the internet and couldn't find it anywhere, just the above secretive denial.

I'm not laughing; I believe like you that a wonderful book WILL find a publisher, but it does need determination and perseverance.

Today on the BBC I saw an interview with the winner of the Orange prize, who is strangely enough called Lionel with first name. (I wonder if that's her real name - I mean, we're used by now to Terry, Jamie etc being used by women, but LIONEL? And the interviewers didn't even question her about it - that's how politically correct we've become. Soon it will be perfectly OK for men to call themselves Mary and Ann, I suppose, and women to be called Henry and William. Oh well.)

Anyway,what i was going to say is that if I remember or heard correctly, she also was rejected by all major publishers and then was taken on by a very small unheard of publisher - who incidentally had two books on the Orange prize shortlist. Which just shows that we should not just depend onthe big ones when looking for a publisher. Such stories are very heartening.

Maria,

OK, apparently "Lionel" changed her name to a boy's when she a child. I did that too; but I changed mine to Jo (a la Enid Blyton's Fanous Five) by adding Josephine as middle name, and changed it back when I wanted to be a woman again!

Here's an interesting article from the Independent. Apparnetly this year all the writers are older, and all are from Britain or the US. That at least eliminates two of the variables in said theory.

Hi Aruna, I caught a snippet of woman's hour which said that Lionel chose that name aged eight or nine, but was previously called Margeret Anne. Each to their own!

As for the size of people's advances, in England it's normally frowned upon to ask people how much they earn, and although my nosey side would love to know, I can see why people here are reluctant to divulge this information. Anyone in the public eye is open to bitching and back-biting, so why hand out ammunition?

Having said that, if my book ever gets published, it will inevitably lead to speculation about how much I used to earn, as my heroine has to disclose her earnings to an employment tribunal and I know that people will relate the character to me. C'est la vie. I'll wear a tin hat.

Adele.

As for the size of people's advances, in England it's normally frowned upon to ask people how much they earn, and although my nosey side would love to know, I can see why people here are reluctant to divulge this information. Anyone in the public eye is open to bitching and back-biting, so why hand out ammunition?

I quite agree with this and definitely keep quiet myself, it were me; but it's the inconsistency I don't like. If we like discretion about money, then why all the publicity abdout the "£400 000 deal", and in fact all the 6 figure deals? It seems we only like to shout it from the rooftops when it can sell more books! Nobody would really care if it had never been mentioned in the first place.

I would imagine the figure came from the publisher, not the author. In fact, I also heard Icarus Girl on Woman's Hour (the fount of all knowledge) and she denied the £400,000 figure, but, sensibly didn't say what the correct number was.

I wonder if anyone has researched the correlation between the size of advances publicised by publishers and the sales of the books. If a book has been sold for a high price, is it seen to be more "valuable"? I would love to see the data!

However, perhaps the figures are simply used to justify marketing budgets, and if the mention a large advance means more marketing behind an author, then it's certainly not to be sneezed at.

We need an industry insider to spill the beans. Any volunteers?

Adele.