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The Paris Writers Workshop 2102

A couple of weeks ago the Paris
Writers Workshop (PWW 2012) was held in the 7th arrondissement, a couple of blocks back from the Seine, in the middle of a sweltering Parisian summer in a city yet to discover serious air conditioning. I wasn’t well, so missed almost all of it, except
armed with some morphine managed to make it to two one hour lectures when I had
medical appointments in Paris the same day anyway. I’m a fan of these and other
Writing Conferences, because they can be instructive and inspirational, can
tell you when you’re going right, and when you’re wasting your (and everyone else's) time. I had the
honour of going to one about six years back with Michael C Curtis, Atlantic
Fiction Editor, and it led to my first book being published.




There was an interesting discussion on publishing,
self-publishing and �gate-keepers�. A gate-keeper is someone there to assure
the quality of what is out there in retail and online bookstores. It means you
don’t pay for something (or simply download something free) and then realise it
is badly written, so it’s for all readers.




The
Traditional Model

Not that long ago, to get published you had
to spend years learning the craft, slogging over a manuscript, sending out
letters to agents and getting rejected, finally getting an agent, then spend
another year hearing from publishers saying it wasn’t quite for them, then
finally one would take it, you’d have to make major changes and agree to a
front cover you hated, and then it would be published with a champagne book
launch and much publicity, and in the haze of the next morning you’d realise
that you had to write the next book pretty quickly to maintain the momentum.




The gatekeepers in this model are the
agents in particular, who act as filters, determining if someone can write, and
if what has been written has market potential. The editors and others at the publishing houses are
also gate-keepers, and will add in the cost projections which can also unfortunately
prevent a really well-written book from ever seeing the light of day.




The
Dream, and the Reality

Of course there are success stories,
overnight sensations, and seven figure advances for people whose first book,
which took six months to write (we are told), sells millions of copies. But the
reality is that this remains extremely rare, and often the ‘overnight
sensations� are in fact people who struggled for years trying to get anything
published, and had to persevere through piles of rejection letters. Often, even
those talented writers who flare so brightly at this stage, then find it
difficult to repeat the performance, and become mid-list writers who after a
few years cannot survive purely on a mid-list writer’s salary, and so start
doing other jobs, preferably linked to writing, but maybe not.




How self-publishing
is changing all that

Things have changed incredibly in the past
few years, with Print-on-Demand, Ebooks, Amazon, and the economic crisis.
First, a lot of publishers have lost a lot of money with the rise of online
marketing and e-distribution, and a lot of editors have lost their jobs. The
big publishers are understandably risk-averse, and so tend to rely on ‘stable�
authors who already have a huge following, so printing another book of theirs
is guaranteed to make money. With the reading market so unpredictable these
days, the big publishers are hesitant about trying somebody new, knowing that
perhaps after an investment of $10,000 - $50,000, they may fail to recoup half of it.




Hocking
and Locke � busting the traditional model

Meanwhile, some people have self-published
and used social media to catapult their books to millions of readers, Amanda
Hocking and John Locke being two of the most obvious examples. But bear in mind
that these also were not ‘overnight successes�; John Locke spent $27,000 on
various forms of advertising, getting nowhere, and only took off after having
already produced five books, and came up with a blog/twitter formula called
the ‘loyalty blog�. But the trend continues, with �50 Shades of Grey� tearing
through the charts at the moment, and such successes often lead to contracts
with big publishers who know a good thing when Amazon finally brings it to
their attention.




Self-publishing
is not a bad thing, right?

The great thing about self-publishing is
that anyone can now get published. We might as well write it into a global
constitution as a basic right. There are companies who will help you get
published, see your work in press, for a price which is often commensurate with
a person’s dream to be published. But here is where you need to decide what
that dream is, exactly.




If, like a friend of mine, you just want to
publish something for your friends and family, and have in mind selling a
hundred copies in total, and it is just something you want to do in your
lifetime, then great, go for it. You can either do it yourself on Smashwords or
other similar media sites, or else go to a vanity press and get them to set it
up for you. By the way, I hate the term ‘vanity press�, and hope it will
disappear in time; we should accept it as a valued service. Just one thing,
though; if you are doing this, printing your dream, please don’t afterwards
call yourself a ‘writer�. That’s unfair to those who dedicate their lives to
this ill-rewarded passion.




Some good
writers feel locked out�

There are many writers who have good
manuscripts and who cannot get an agent, because the industry is ‘locked down�
right now. A friend of mine has a brilliant novel, and actually has a good
agent, but still can’t get a publisher, and they are slowly lowering their
sights from the big ones to the medium-sized publishers, then to university
presses, and eventually independent small publishers. I know this path well,
having had an American agent and an almost-contract with Harper Collins, but
then we fell foul of economic predictions for the book just as the global
economy began to crash July 2008, and we slowly spiralled our targets down until
I went for a small independent publisher in 2011, because I wanted to get off
that particularly painful merry-go-round and get back to writing book 2.      




So,
go it alone..?

So now, and I saw this at PWW, people are
starting to say “well just self-publish, put it on Amazon using CreateSpace and
get 80% of the profits in stead of 10%. It’s tempting, right, particularly if
people keep telling you how good your work is, and you see other self-published
books making six figures when it’s not that well-written in the first place?




Before
you do that�

Here is where you need to stop and pause
for thought, and here is where we come back to gate-keepers, and what you want
out of life. If you go the self-publishing (Print-on-Demand and/or ebook being
the most viable options) and Amazon route (okay, Barnes and Noble, Omnilit and
a few others are in there, too), who are your gate-keepers? Who will assure you
that what you produce � because it will be linked to you forever (even if you
use a pseudonym, you’ll know) � is quality material, good writing? Does it matter
to you? Do you want to produce the best book you can, or just get something out
there? Are you going to write one book, or would you like to write more, become
a writer, even if not full-time (very few can afford to be full-time writers)?




Noise
and visibility

Roughly half a million books are produced
each year. How will your book get visibility amongst all that noise? People
will tell you that you can make it work with social media and twitter etc., but
everybody is already doing that, so it doesn’t get any easier. Once there is a
sensation like Hocking or Locke, within months thousands are doing everything
they did, but of course do not ‘make it�. What works once doesn’t necessarily
work twice, especially in connection with creative arts.




Fake
it till you make it?

At PWW 2012 Stephen Clarke who wrote the
‘Year in the Merde� series of books, amongst others, was jovially advocating
the ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it� approach, saying that people often fake reviews
and put a lot of positive spin on things, so just do whatever it takes to get
your book noticed. I actually enjoyed his first book immensely, so am glad he
‘made it�. But I can’t personally agree with that approach, even if it means
I’ll never ‘make it�.




Write
the best novel you can, then edit, edit, edit�

The general advice that kept coming out
from PWW, and of course it would since they are mainly writers talking to
writers, is to make sure your manuscript is the best you can produce. My own
book was ‘ready� in 2008 (by which I mean the chief buyer for science fiction
at Harper Collins wrote to us that she liked it and would table it to the team), but
as the contract didn’t materialise, I inevitably carried on editing it. It had
a total of 20 revisions in five years, I’m not joking (version #1 back in 2006 was
pretty awful writing, I still have it�).




Many writers, most I know, already do this.
They spend about five years on their first book, learning the craft, going to
courses, joining writing groups, getting their work critiqued, polishing it, hurling
it into a drawer at some low point and starting something else, coming back to
it, editing, editing, editing, and finally saying ‘it’s done� more out of
despair than conviction, and then sending it off to agents. We drink a fair
amount of wine at our writing group meetings (called Men with Pens,
incidentally, though we’re evenly split gender-wise)�




The
gate-keepers for would-be self-published writers

But at PWW, new writers wanted to know how
they could be sure they are ready. So, here is the answer. There are literary
consultancies who can tell you. They cost money, but they are not going to rip
you off. They have either anonymous readers who have worked in the industry as
agents, or published writers, or editors who know what it takes to be a writer,
and know what the required standard is. I’ve used three of these, plus a
‘writing doctor� earlier on, and they work. Typically for a novel, you might
pay £500 for a review, which will take a few weeks to complete. You’ll
typically get an eight page report back on your manuscript (you can also send
the first few chapters for a quicker and cheaper review, or get a more in-depth
editorial review where they will do line corrections etc.). What you will get
back is a judgement about whether your writing is up to scratch or not. The
first two times I did this, the clear answer was no, which was tough medicine
because my writers group loved it, and already a few people had read and loved
the draft mnuscript. But I took the advice on board (well, most of it), and
produced a much better book, and my writing improved. At my paperback launch in
October last year, I told a bunch of writers that not getting the Harper
Collins contract had led to me becoming a better writer, with a better book as
a result. They didn’t look convinced, I have to say.




Will
your writing improve after your first book is published?

One of my favourite authors is Iain Banks.
Like a number of authors I like, it took him a long, long time to get
published. His writing is sublime, I just read some of his Science Fiction last
night and it almost makes me think of giving up, except of course I don’t,
instead I just try harder. I’m reading one book by a friend right now, and it’s
not bad, but I can’t help think he published too early � another few rounds of
edits would have made it a much better book, one that would have ultimately
gotten more notice.




So, if you just want to see your name in
print, then go for it. If you want to be a writer, and if you’ve been going to
courses, maybe even done an MFA (Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing etc.),
belong to an established writing group where people tell you when your writing
sucks, and have finished your manuscript and edited it at least six times, then
you can try these gate-keepers, or try getting an agent, or do both at the same
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Agent
or Gate-keeper first? A salutary lesson�

I sent around my query letter, synopsis and
first three chapters to all the SF agents in the UK, and got rejected by all of
them, some were quite nice about it, most it was a ‘form� response. It’s okay,
they’re busy, I know. Then I contacted one of these literary consultancies
(Cornerstones, actually), and sent them what I had been sending the agents.
They said the three chapters were pretty good, and had market potential, but
they’d be surprised if any of the agents got that far, as my query letter and
synopsis were unnatural disasters. I couldn’t go back to the UK agents, because
you can only really apply once. I made the changes requested, and within one
week I had two US agents interested, and chose one. Not that it got me a big
publisher in the long run, but I felt I’d crossed a threshold and was now being
professional about the writing; after all, it’s an industry.




Here are links to the UK ones I’ve used
personally, as I know them and trust them. There are doubtless similar services
in the US and elsewhere. There are also book doctors galore, especially since
so many editors have lost their jobs in the past few years, and such people can
really help you.













Reading has always been a passion for me.
Our fantastically diverse literature defines us, and we as writers define our
literature. So, tell me, tell me you get it, tell me who are the ultimate
gate-keepers?









The Eden Paradox is available in paperback
and ebook on , Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and Ampichellis




Eden’s Trial is available on as
ebook, and will be in paperback in Fall 2012.






Eden’s Revenge is coming out in ebook Xmas 2012, paperback Easter 2013.