Working towards that breakthrough

[John Dean]

Hi guys
After a few questions from writers with whom I am involved, I penned this blog for my other sites. Thought it might interest..


Over recent weeks, I have been asked quite a few questions about the state of the publishing industry so here is an attempt to answer some of them. I know the UK publishing industry best but I imagine that similar considerations prevail around the world.
Yes, there have been changes due to the difficult global economic conditions and yes, publishers are ever more sensitive to the bottom line. But that was ever so - publishers have to make the finances balance, always did, always will. And yes, the industry is littered with tales of writers, including well known ones, losing their contracts. And yes, the publishers are still working out how the e-book phenomenon will change their world. And yes, certainly in the UK, the austerity measures are expected to hit libraries hard with the resultant knock-on effect on those publishers who sell heavily into them.
But in a sense little has changed deep down. Agents are still as swamped as ever with manuscripts and are only able to represent a relatively small proportion of the writers who contact them and publishers still reject many more than they publish. That has always been the case, always will be.
But at the same time, talent so often triumphs and publisher will still publish books. They may be hard-pressed but neither they or agents have not lost their antenna. They can still spot good writing, original ideas, fresh voices - and they still know what to do with them.
So yes, new writers still break through and always will. The Crime Writers’ Association, of which I a member, runs annual awards for writers just starting out on their careers and each year the judges honour bright new talent that has made the breakthrough.
And I am sure if you talked to each and every one of those writers, they would say the same. Overnight sensations takes years to happen. They will, I am sure, tell stories of manuscripts sent, rejections received, disappointments survived, determination tested - until that moment when someone said ‘hey, you’re good.’ Big-name authors have the same stories to tell. After all, how many times did J K Rowling receive that dreaded rejection letter from a publisher before someone said ‘hey, you’re good’?
So, to answer the question I get asked most, how do I break through? Well, as I always tell the many writers and writing groups with whom I work, there are things you can do to tip the balance a little. Make sure you target the right publisher and agent, make sure you read their guidelines (writers in the UK should head for the Writers’ and Artists’ yearbook, there will be equivelants elsewhere in the world). Make sure you send them what they want. If they want a covering letter and three chapters, don’t send them six chapters because you think it’ll impress them; it won’t. And a note about covering letters. Keep them simple: name, address, name of book, a little detail about yourself. None of this ‘please find enclosed my comedy novel. My mum read it and she laughed like a drain and I thought my brother was going to pass out so hard did he laugh when he..’ you get the idea.
Also, make sure your manuscript is as well written (and edited) as it can be and as clean as it can be in terms of grammar, spelling and punctuation. This is crucial. A publisher will look beyond the odd error when reading a MS that first time but if he or she comes across twenty spelling and grammatical errors in the opening couple of pages of your work, you have to pretty good to stop them throwing it on the rejections pile unless you are a truly rich talent.
And be determined. When, and if, your work comes back, send it to someone else and someone else and someone else. Currently, in addition to my crime novels, I have written a children’s book and a crime fiction novella and am sending them off and getting them back. But I will keep trying. Why? Well, I was forty four when my first crime novel was picked up by a publisher. I had been writing novels since I was fifteen, starting on a battered old typewriter. I had given up time and time again but something kept me hoping, sent me back to the keyboard, sent me out to the Post Office with those envelopes. In the end, it was a case of right story, right time, right reader. It took me thirty years for someone to say ‘hey, we’d like to publish that.' But if Flicker in the Night had not gone in that envelope that one last time….