{"id":1858,"date":"2022-03-02T17:02:42","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T17:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2024-12-23T04:24:47","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T04:24:47","slug":"publishers-and-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/publishers-and-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"Publishers and agents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/6766f4022dc5d9b993aeca62\/6768dbe425a0b820a2f0f484\" width=\"100%\" height=\"80px\" frameborder=\"0\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>This caused quite a bit of interest when I posted it on a writers&#8217; Facebook group, so I thought people might like to see it here as well.<\/em><\/p>\n<div dir=\"auto\">I used to think that finding a proper agent and a proper publisher was the be-all and end-all for a writer. Now I&#8217;m not so sure.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Back in the 1980s, I thought I had written a best-selling thriller. My hero among writers was Ken Follett who started as a reporter on the Evening News. Once he was successful, I interviewed him over lunch at his local restaurant and he ordered Dom Perignon champagne and a claret that would have wiped out my entire week&#8217;s expense account &#8211; but he insisted on paying.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">I sent my book to the Laurence Pollinger Agency. They told me to cut it from 108,000 words down to 60,000, said the result was &#8220;workman-like&#8221;, and started sending it round the publishers. All of them sent it back with modest compliments but declined to take it. One said it was &#8220;too good for the general list&#8221;, but since they had already chosen their lead titles, regrettably\u2026<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Honestly, how ridiculous is that?<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">So I put the novel away in the attic and forgot about it \u2013 until 2014 when the theme became rather topical. I thought it might be fun to self-publish it on Amazon. It sold a few copies, which was rather gratifying but hardly amounted to literary success. Instead, my writing was confined to this blog which by 2020 had 163 followers.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">I kept this number rising gradually by writing posts about particular sailing topics and then posting the link as a comment when one of the subjects came up on a sailing Facebook group.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Then, along came Lockdown. But instead of Locking Down at home, I went off sailing. When I got back, I found myself talking about it on the Jeremy Vine Radio2 show \u2013 my ten minutes of fame.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">By midnight that night, the blog had received 45,000 hits. More to the point, Jeremy Vine&#8217;s literary agent called to say that if I could write a book about it, he was sure he could find a publisher.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">I wrote the book in double-quick time \u2013 a lot of it was on the blog already &#8211; and he sent it to his chums. All five of them came back and said they liked it but asked what was my &#8220;platform&#8221;. In other words, was I a contestant on Big Brother? Was I a pop star or Premier League, footballer? Did I have ten million Twitter followers? Was I Jeremy Vine, for heaven&#8217;s sake?<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">When they heard I was just a bloke who had gone sailing, they all regretted that the book was &#8220;not commercially viable&#8221;.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">But, of course, now I had written it \u2013 and having one book on Amazon already &#8211; the obvious thing to do was put this on Mr Bezos&#8217; electronic bookshelf too.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">And, of course, I put a link on the blog.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">A year later, it is still selling between five and fifteen copies a day. In the run-up to Christmas, this was running at 20 and 50 a day &#8211; and the other day, I was astonished to discover that it was the Number One bestselling Amazon sailing book in the USA.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Here&#8217;s another thing: If one of those publishers had accepted it, I would have been given an advance of \u2013 say &#8211; \u00a31,500 (of which the agent would have taken 15%). The book, with colour pictures, would have been priced at \u00a316.99 in hardback with a print run of maybe 2,000. My family and friends would have bought maybe 50 copies and, by the following January, it would be remaindered down to \u00a33.99.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">There would have been no second printing.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">With Amazon, I was able to set my own price: \u00a311.49 for the paperback and \u00a36.99 for the Kindle edition, of which I receive \u00a32.76 and \u00a34.86 respectively. No pictures are included, but there is a link to the gallery here. During the current month, my income is \u00a3719 on top of $829US and $95AUS \u2013 as well as various smaller amounts from places like Spain and Brazil.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">And, of course, I get to keep it all &#8211; before tax, of course.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Because the marketing is done entirely through the blog (which now has some 700 subscribers), people leave comments and sometimes mention how much they enjoyed the book. I am able to reply, asking if they would be sure to leave some Amazon stars \u2013 stars are so important.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">And reviews, of course \u2013 one was so good I couldn&#8217;t resist re-posted it. Well, wouldn&#8217;t you, if someone wrote: &#8220;Now and again, something or someone comes along that invokes a shift in the way we think and view the world. Thank you, John, for opening my eyes to a new paradigm and a reality I thought was beyond the reach of a mere humble town planner. I&#8217;ve had a few laughs along the way and all for a few quid. I hope to buy you a beer in some far-flung place one day. Keep up the blogging.&#8221;<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">(Oh dear, I seem to have posted it again&#8230;)<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Meanwhile, if I look carefully, I can see that, in among the sales of the new book are a few for the old one.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Am I despondent that those publishers turned me down? Not a bit \u2013 if they had taken me on, the book would have sunk without trace. Instead Yachting Monthly called it &#8220;a word-of-mouth bestseller&#8221;.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Now, I would advise any new writer to ignore the traditional route entirely.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Do it yourself \u2013 you won&#8217;t regret it.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">And here&#8217;s a tip: One of the hallmarks of a self-published book is dozens of typos and mistakes in the text \u2013 you just can&#8217;t spot them yourself, no matter how many times you read it through. But a professional editor is expensive (and not always effective).<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Here&#8217;s what I did: I included a line in the foreword asking people to email me any mistakes they found (just send me five words, including the error, so I can search for it). If they were the first to report something, I would refund the cost of the book.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Three people took this to heart and, between them, cleaned up the whole manuscript. Only one of them accepted the refund.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">With Amazon, you can go back in and change things as often as you like \u2013 not a luxury you have with the traditional publishers.<\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\"><\/div>\n<div dir=\"auto\">Of course, I would be happier if Mr Bezos paid his staff a decent wage \u2013 and paid his taxes, come to that. But he&#8217;s paying me every month, so I can do my bit on his behalf\u2026<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff This caused quite a bit of interest when I posted it on a writers&#8217; Facebook group, so I thought people might like to see it here as well. I used to think that finding a proper agent and a proper publisher was the be-all and end-all for a writer. Now I&#8217;m not so sure. &#8230; <a title=\"Publishers and agents\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/publishers-and-agents\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Publishers and agents\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1858"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3076,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1858\/revisions\/3076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}