The Word Cloud

48 hours after the festival, and we have our first piece of stunningly wonderful news.

DAVID HEADLEY IS OFFERING REPRESENTATION TO SEAN WALSH  for his self-illustrated children's fantasy novel.

David Headley doesn't even represent kids' authors, or fantasy, but he was so blown away he had to get his mitts on this. Massive well dones to Sean. Massive well dones to David too, for being such an approachable, positive, and hard-working guy all weekend.

But also huge, fat, massive well dones to DEBI ALPER, who has done loads of editorial work with Sean over the past year and whose help has surely been one of the things that has made the difference here. Also - and how's this for personal, ultra-committed, WW-ish service - she made a point of seeking out David to tell him how much she rated Sean's work and how he should take particular care to look at it. Given that DH was not positively inclined towards kids' fantasy in the first place, then that little extra touch might have made all the difference.

Anyway, huge, fat, monster well dones to all concerned. And my goodness, I don't think those will be the first well dones either ...

Blimey! The Festival isn't exactly a restful weekend, is it? I thought this year would be a little less crazy than last, but I've still spent most of the day in bed recovering & drinking tea.

Lots to talk about, of course, but I'm not up to much. So I'll just say this.

Agents were very, very impressed by the weekend. Almost every agent / publisher I spoke to told me that they came across writers that they were really interested in. The majority I spoke to requested further material from at least one of the writers they spoke to - and in most cases, from more than one. That's a massive compliment to you all.

Also, we'll be sending out an email feedback request in due course - but this is the Cloud, so let's just let rip. Did you have a good time? Did you learn as much as you hoped? Did the one-to-ones go OK? Did your shower run cold? Did somone forget to give you the Festival Magic Energy Drink which guarantees to get you through the whole event without feeling knackered?

We've just received notice - very late it seems to me! - about an upcoming event in London: the Comedy Writers Festival. If you're interested in writing comedy for film or TV especially, then this seems like a must-see event. Details are on our website here. Or go direct to their website here. Either way, if you enter writersworkshop as a discount code, you'll get some lovely money off. Oh, and I think the more tickets that the organisers sell using that discount code, the more £££ they'll give to Comic Relief.

Meanwhile, preparations for York seem to be going OK. Now what have I forgotten ...?

At the Festival last year, one of the new writers whose work we really rated was Rachel Adams, who wrote a lovely, warm, funny children's novel about a vampire. This wasn't a Twilight reprise, it was a lovely comic novel and we tried to nudge it forward with agents/publishers.

And here - by way of a guest blog - is what Rachel recently wrote to me - a farewell to writing, in effect. I suspect that parts of this will echo with a fair few of you. Anyway. Over to Rachel:

I don’t think you’ll be surprised when I tell you I shan’t be going on with any further story-writing.  It wasn’t a conscious decision – it was one made for me.  For years I’ve enjoyed writing and always had a piece on the go without any external pressure.  But, after finishing ‘Viktor’ last year, all my interest seems to have died.  (Notes of the inquest attached.).  I’ve written nothing since nor felt any inclination to even during the long Winter.

 I am enormously grateful for all your help – always given so promptly and generously.  I’m glad I tried to get my story published.  Otherwise there would have been at the back of my mind the question of ‘What if..?’  Your comments reassured me about the quality of my work while your contact with Sarah Molloy gave me an accurate picture of the state of the market.  I might have floundered for years without your guidance.

The publishing world seems to be in a state of flux.  I say that not just because I couldn’t break into it but from comments by ‘successful’ authors I know.  They seem very insecure, uncertain whether their publishers will find room on their lists for their next book.  The concept of nurturing talent and loyalty to authors over occasional failures seems notable by its absence.  Everyone seems on the look-out for The Next Big Thing .

The notes of the inquest refer to are these: (I've edited them for length, because very long blog posts are hard to read, but made no other changes):

     “You can’t give up just because your first book has been rejected!  It happens to loads of authors and they go on to be published,” said my Younger Self.

      ‘Viktor’ began life as a bit of giggle about fashionable allergies and the many treatments on offer.  But I just couldn’t get it right, often setting it aside for months and then returning to it again.  I didn’t notice that, with every new version, my early fears and feelings were being expressed in the narrative.  It was when I rewrote it during the Winter of 2009-10, taking on board the advice of Heather Dyer and Shaun McCarthy (my tutors at a Bristol University course), that everything seemed to come together, loose ends magically weaving themselves into the whole.  Only then did I realise how girlhood angst had been transmuted into an amusing and well-written story.

     ‘There,’ I’d said to Younger Self when I’d finished writing.  ‘Mission accomplished.’  But she wasn’t giving up so easily. 

    ‘Why not try to get it published?  Heather and Shaun thought very highly of it.’

    ‘They were just being kind.’

    ‘Get a second opinion.’

    ‘That editorial service [Not the Writers' Workshop, I might add - Harry] I used was useless – and expensive!’ 

    ‘What about the York Festival of Writing?  You get advice face-to-face.’

Even though I didn’t get there she insisted I write to ask for comments and when  Emily [Diamand] and Harry wrote praising it she was triumphant. 

    ‘You see?  Now write off to the agents.’ 

I did point out that both Harry and Sarah Molloy felt the market was not favourable but she went ahead, submitting all through the Summer and into Autumn.

     She’s feeling rather aimless now but hasn’t suggested my revisiting ‘Chart-topper’.  She knows better than to flog a dead horse.  I’ve explained to her my need to write has gone but that I don’t feel writing ‘Viktor’ was a waste of time because I achieved my original aim.

     I’m glad I didn’t choose autobiography as a vehicle.  I’d have dwelt on my achievements as an adult, after turning my back on marriage and family life, and skimmed through my schooldays with barely a mention of my teachers.

    Writing ‘Viktor’ made me focus on the conflicting messages children receive in their early years and the reason why one rather than another dominates their thinking.  I’d always believed it was my choice to take ‘the road less travelled by’ and that I was walking it alone.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Those ‘bloody old maids’ were ahead of me.  And, when like Wenceslas’ page, I faltered, I drew strength from the fact I was treading in their footsteps.  It was they who ‘made all the difference’.  I shudder to think of what my life might have been like without them.  As Jill says of becoming human it hasn’t been ‘easy but I’ve never regretted my choice’    

     The results are on-going.  At the risk of sounding self-satisfied, my retirement (eighteen years and still counting) has, to date, been a mixture of creativity with contentment.  And, thanks to the insight I’ve gained by writing ‘Viktor’, I can add ‘and of celebration’.

The two questions I've been asked most about my detective story are: (1) When will I be able to read it?, and (2) What is it called?

I've already blogged here about the first of those questions - essentially, the book is still about a year away from launching, not because anyone is being lazy, but because that's just how the industry works. (Seasonality in book buying habits, plus the need to build buzz with the trade).

As for the second, the book is to be called .... um, I don't know. My first title for it was The Wisdom of the Dead, which sounded a bit bland, so I altered it to Battle Music, which I liked because it was simultaneously tough & lyrical.

My agent didn't much like either title, mostly because neither obviously branded the book clearly enough for publishers. So - for the purposes of sending the manuscript out to publishers - we altered the title to Talking to the Dead, because that title makes it obvious that the book is a crime novel, and because the detective does have (um) a special relationship with the dead. So the title was chosen as being descriptive of the book, rather than something that would necessarily grace the final jacket.

Now, of course, we'll need to come up with a title that will work for retailers and for ordinary book buyers ... but there's no great rush on that. It could easily be autumn before we have a settled title (allowing six months before the spring launch). Often things are more last minute than that.

And I say 'we'll need' rather evasively, because it's more than likely that Orion will suggest a title of their own. Or, if not, they may ask me to come up with ever longer lists of titles, from which they make the final choice. I do have a contractual right to be consulted on title, but the consultation could in principle proceed like this:

Orion: Do you like the title we've chosen?
Harry: No.
Orion: Thank you for your views.

That's not likely to happen in practice. Authors are often pressured to accept a particular title, but I haven't heard of a case where a book goes to press with a title that an author absolutely loathes.

One other thought, though, which is this. In the pre-digital days, there was no particular need to choose a title any faster than retailers (3-6 months lead time) or publicity people (3 months lead time) required. But we're not in the pre-digital age any more. You're reading this blog about a book ... and you don't know what the book is called. I've got no cover image. Nothing to tweet about. No home page to build. I've got nothing, in short, that could possibly start to 'go viral' or 'create buzz'.

It seems to me this is old-media simply not waking up to new media possibilities. It's not as though having a title any earlier would transform the sales outlook ... but it would help. Not just for me, but for any author with any kind of serious digital intent. In a few years time, I think authors will be trained in digital publicity from the moment they're contracted. They ought to be now. But - so far - I'm not aware of any moves at all in that direction.

So for now, then, let's just celebrate my forthcoming crime novel, HarryBinghamTitle1. Catchy, no?

One of the frustrating things about the books trade is how slowly it moves. The book I sold to Orion before Christmas will hit the shelves about a year from now in hardback. But it's a mass market book by nature, so its heyday is still most likely eighteen months away or more.

This slowness is perfectly logical. Although retailers place their actual orders increasingly close to publication date, the conversation about what they're going to buy starts at least six months beforehand. And since bookselling is a seasonal business, if that six month gap happens to drop your book somewhere inappropriate (such as slap-bang in the middle of the Xmas selling season, for example), then it's perfectly common for there to be a gap of 12 months or more between deal and publication.

Yet there's normally one rather nice flipside to this slowness: namely, leisure. Once a book is sold, the author is seldom rushed off his or her feet until (with a little luck) the time comes for a spot of publicity.

It hasn't been that way for me with my latest opus. My agent, Bill Hamilton, is very keen to get international rights sales organised as soon as possible. The obvious place and time for many of those deals is the London Book Fair (coming up in April). But of course you can't sell a book that people haven't read, so it's necessary to get the book into people's hands well before the LBF, which means now, or now-ish.

And, ideally, you want to get a final manuscript into their hands. Overseas editors aren't going to produce a set of editorial notes, but a UK editor jolly well is ... so my agent has been pushing my editor at Orion into producing an (excellent) set of editorial notes. That's way sooner than Orion's own schedule would require, and my editor has played along just to be nice.

I got those notes about two weeks ago, and was then under pressure myself to deal with them as fast and fully as I could. So just weeks after popping the champagne for the deal, I've been sweating away to finalise the manuscript. And sweating quite hard, as it happens. The changes weren't huge, but it had been a few months since I'd last re-worked the book and you do see more things given that time away from it, so there were innumerable small changes I wanted to make, as well as a number of biggers ones.

That's now done - hooray! - and all those lovely European publishers can get their hands on my MS. AM Heath has a very good foreign rights department, and they'll be very effective at selling as hard as they can.

And, of course ... this isn't yet the end of the editing road. There's at least one more round of major edits to come. (I want to interview a number of Welsh detectives to make sure that I've got some of my facts and settings as accurate as possible). And then there'll be copyediting. And then proofing.

Good job I enjoy these processes, really, otherwise I'd be going bananas.

Hi folks, as you know we occasionally invite guest bloggers onto the site. On this occasion our guest is Adam Charles, the brains behind a new writers' site,
iwritereadrate.com. The idea of the site is an old one: what if writers read and rated each others' work? Wouldn't that be a good way to help each other out and help the cream rise to the top? (The Word Cloud, of course, has a rather similar purpose). So far, these sites have helped individual writers and perhaps built thriving little communities, but they haven't had any real impact on the industry. On the other hand, I'd say that Adam's site looks more interestingly put together than most, and it's got a much better than average chance. Anyway. Enough from me. Here's Adam:

For me, and maybe for you too, admitting to being an unpublished writer is sort of a little bit like admitting to having contracted some disease in some bizarre circumstance. However, here I am, admitting to the wonderful readership of this blog that I am an unpublished writer; further to this that I'm proud of it too.  This feels good, cathartic almost, like my first night at Writer’s Anonymous.

I’m enthralled by literature, and always have been. I’ve learnt about myself over the years that the gratuitous acts of writing and reading just do it for me.

So, a few years ago I decreed that no longer would I watch from afar, no more would I be content with reading, I wanted to become part of the writing world, a world where ideas and images conjured by language are king. With my mission confirmed I set down to diligently sketch out a story that had been bouncing around in my head for a decade.  It went well, the words flowed, my pen moved effortlessly and almost supernaturally across the page: I was fulfilling my dream of writing.

I reached a fair point, some 35,000 words and had judiciously self-edited a few times.  I decided that it was time to send off my baby to be critiqued by those in the know to see if my delusions had any substance.  I packaged up the first few chapters, bought a load of stamps and envelopes to send to publishing industry bodies. 

I waited and I waited and finally they started to return home to me.

I opened the first one with adolescent enthusiasm, tearing it open.  Sadly, all that was contained inside was the returned, unmarked, extracts I had sent and a standard rejection note on a tiny complements slip.  I, however, was not deterred.  I posted off another batch of submissions.  The curse of the standard rejection letter continued. 

Were they even reading it?  Surely they could pass some kind of judgement?  Surely I could get more feedback than this? Doubt began to creep in, maybe I’d never know.

After three batches of submissions I coalesced.  I didn’t know whether I had something entertaining - even interesting - to say or if I should just stick to reading other people’s ideas and give up on my dream.  I wasn’t upset or disappointed, I just wanted to know whether it was me or the system that had cast me aside.

Research followed into all the facets of the agencies, editing, and publishing process.

A couple of years ago I eventually hit upon an idea. If the professionals can’t tell me, then how can technology help me and people like me to find out whether our work is any good?  I trawled the internet but couldn’t find anything that I could use for these objectives.  This is where the first seed began to grow for our new website - www.iwritereadrate.com. 

In 2010 we began building out this idea; the seed began to germinate.  An online community for unpublished writers by unpublished writers.  A democratic cyber-city where writers can upload, sell, and receive ratings and reviews on their hard work.  Where unpublished writers can sell their passion for writing as well as their stories.  A place where readers can provide direct feedback direct to writers, have access to them and become part of the writing process.  A brave new world in the dynamic between unpublished writers and readers everywhere. 

After all, the only way to know if what you’ve written is any good is to have other people read it.

We successfully launched our Registration Page in December 2010 and are now looking to launch the full site during the first few months of 2011

Because I've been a bit out of things just recently, I haven't passed on all the good news I should have done. So, congratulations to:

Barbara Tate, whose West End Girls has just come out in paperback.

Alexander Mortimer-Moore, whose biography of Marshal Leclerc has just found a publisher (Casemate, in the US). Robert Dudley was the agent.

Louisa Larkin, whose eco-thriller has been published by Murdoch Books in Australia / NZ, and whose second book is coming out with them shortly.

I've a horrible feeling that I've forgotten various other clients who have achieved significant milestones recently. So, um, big fat congratulations to them too. Congrats to everyone, in fact. Champers all round.

One of the nice things about my Orion deal was that it proved I could still cut the mustard. Obviously I've written novels before and sold them, but the market has got tougher (as we keep telling our clients) and the fact that I sold a few novels some years back doesn't prove anything in today's market. Here then are some ruminations about how things have changed - not just for the market, but for me selling my work as a published author rather than a total newbie.

A good agent really, really helps
After I finished my last novel, I wrote a history book. My agent at the time said that if I wanted her to continue representing me, she would, but history wasn't really her passion and if I wanted to move on I should feel free to do just that. And so I did. I knew enough about the industry that I could feel my way to good quality agents, and - because of my track record, and because of the WW - I knew that pretty much any agent in town would have a meeting with me. That's a blessing that total newcomers don't have.

The first draft of the book I wrote was definitely improved by discussion with Bill. I don't think my first draft would have sold at auction. Almost, but not quite. I DO think that any alert agent would have seen one of those early drafts and thought, 'Gosh, I could be onto something here.' All the same, I had an existing agent to talk things over with. I wasn't in the position of having to use an almost-but-not-quite-ready draft to hook an agent, in order to rework the book, in order to sell it to publishers. In that sense, published authors do have a headstart over others. I was lucky.

But not much of a headstart: quality counts. On the other hand, when it came to selling the book, publishers reacted exclusively to the manuscript. They just didn't give a damn that I'd published stuff before. Why would they? I had no track record in detective fiction, and my sales record in other areas is hardly overwhelming. Indeed, the one thing that I did carry with me from my past is that I've lost a lot of money for HarperCollins, my previous publishers. So although they were very nice about things, they bowed out pretty early: their sales team just couldn't take any more of me. In that sense, I actually had a disadvantage going into the auction. One of the four big publishers was out of the race before it started.

The market has become more timid and more sales-led
This book - the one Orion has just bought - is the best book I've ever written. It's got a stronger character, a stronger concept, more interesting writing, and a good succession of reveals at the end of the book. It's also very much of the moment. I didn't base my book on Stieg Larsson. (I'd written most of the book before I first read Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.) But there's no question that my book (featuring a very odd female protagonist with some violent tendencies) is in the same mould as his ... while offering something distinctively new.

So that's what publishers should be looking for, no? A decent book which takes the current market hotty and takes that forward into new territory. A little bit by luck and a little bit by design, that's what I had. And, as I say, it's the best book I've ever written. That doesn't mean it's a work of genius, just that I reckon it should have sold at least as well as my first crop of books did.

And it didn't. My first novel sold easily and for loads of money. This one sold tidily and for decent money. Curiously, the two publishers who went for it were (a) arguably the most commercial publisher around , and (b) the most literary. All the publishers in the middle were, I think, taken aback by it. It's as though they were saying, 'Your heroine is odd. We're not sure that detective books about odd heroines could sell.'

Larsson obviously proves that they can sell in shedloads, but there IS an editorial risk in backing a book that is - well - odd. In a more adventurous climate, odd would be good. These days, I reckon, it isn't ... except that readers 'umbly beg to disagree (Harry Potter, Stephenie Meyer, Stieg Larsson &c &c).
That does give new writers a really tough task. Be brave. Travel to new places. But not too brave, or too new. Humph. That's no good for writers, and it's not much good for publishers either. Thank goodness for the folk at Orion who just reacted to what was put in front of them, and bought a book cos they liked it. Good for them! That's proper publishing, that is.

Just before Christmas, I had some wonderful news, which I'm only now able to share.

In December, Bill Hamilton, my agent, started to get my Talking to the Dead manuscript out to publishers. He sent it to ten names, with 2 or 3 more names in reserve.

There was a lot of interest expressed. One or two "nice but no thank yous". A few more "loved it, but couldn't convince the sales teams". And two lovely offers from two lovely publishers.

At this point it was a week before Christmas and Bill was asking for "best and final" offers. To be able to issue those offers, the two editors in question needed to get together all the key people in their respective companies - sales people, marketing people, paperback people &c - in order to force a consensus decision.

I was very concerned at this point that this task simply couldn't be accomplished during the weekend before Christmas. Were busy people really going to give up a big chunk of their weekend in order to read yet another manuscript from yet another author? It was a nail-biting time, and I was a troubled old soul that weekend.

In fact, however, the publishers were immaculately professional. Both companies made revised and much-improved offers. I loved the underbidder (a relatively literary outfit), but was absolutely delighted that the final successful bidder was Orion.

Orion is a publisher that's superbly good at delivering big commercial books really well. They did (nay, are doing) a fabulous job with Barbara Tate's West End Girls (she was a WW client, and her book became a hardback bestseller and will, I'm sure, be a paperback bestseller too). They also boast the best crime list in the UK - Ian Rankin being its most obvious star.

I wasn't able to say any of this until now, because we had to agree a contract and get a press release out. The press release is out today, so I can share the good news at last.

I'm really thrilled to be writing fiction again. I've got a 3-book deal with a fabulous publisher and we're on the hunt for foreign sales now. Best of all, I'm back in the swing. Editing the first book, getting ready to start the second. I do really like writing non-fiction, but I LOVE writing fiction ... and the character who dominates my current novel has simply taken possession of me. While I was at my busiest with the novel, I literally dreamed about it most nights. I didn't have to think up the plot - I just went to bed and dreamed it.

Now that all this is in the public domain, I'm going to use this blog to keep you as up to date as I can with the whole process. Inevitably there'll be limitations on what I can say - commercial confidentiality, don't you know - but I will say as much as I possibly can. And I'm excited, I really truly am.