Getting published: finding the hook

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Published by: Harry on 18th Aug 2010 | View all blogs by Harry

I blogged just recently about the challenge that writers have (myself very much included) in working out whether what they are writing is appropriate for the market. We have to write what we want to write, of course - the puzzle is how best to choose from all the things we might want to write about.

It so happens that I came across the following piece today, which recasts the challenge very successfully, I think. (The author, Nick Sayers, is now at Hodder, but he was at HarperCollins ten years back ... and had the good sense to acquire my first three books. A thoroughly nice chap, to boot.)

Anyway, with the normal deep respect I have for other people's copyright, here are Nick's thoughts in full:

When I first started in this business as a young editor, in the days when all books were sold by sales representatives visiting each shop for an order, somebody gave me some good advice: think of that sales rep trying to explain each book to the bookseller, who is working at the till and answering the phone and looking out for shoplifters and filling out a tax form, and thinking that he doesn’t really need any new books because he has enough already, all at the same time.

However complicated and beautifully written and philosophically challenging your book might be, it’s not going to make an impression on that bookseller if the rep can’t get across what it’s about in a window of approximately twenty seconds. And the bookseller is going to think that if the rep can’t sell it to him, then he can’t sell it to the public.

Well, in the age of laptops and multiple retailers with central buying policies, it’s a long time since sales reps visited every shop to sell every book in that way, but I think the advice still holds good! If you can’t explain your book simply, or if that simple explanation doesn’t sound compelling, nobody else can do it any better. And you’ve got a problem.

It can be worth thinking about this before you start writing.

Nick Sayers

Publishing Director

Comments

8 Comments

by maryluv 1 year ago

What an excellent piece of advice - helps with writing the synopsis and blurb, too! Thanks for posting - membership of this site should be compulsory for all writing sutdents.
by maryluv 1 year ago

Especially those who post responses without proof-reading them first! I meant students, of course.
by Gerry 1 year ago

Hey, what about us sutdents? (Old joke, admittedly.)
by EmmaD 1 year ago

Yes, that's the point it's easy to miss, in all the to-do about the barbarians being at the gates and the nation going to hell in a handcart. It's the nature of a book that they have to be persuaded to buy it, before they've read it. And, actually, creatively speaking it's positively good for us to have to think in those terms...
by Steve 1 year ago

Thanks for posting this, Harry. It's solidified my thinking on the opening lines to a synopsis. My presumption was that even if you get to the interested publisher bod stage, they still have to compete to sell the book to the rest of the in-house bods. A couple of lines that encapsulate your work in a compelling way helps that process (as much as preceding processes, so who better to feed those words into the right mouths than you, the author.
by Harry 1 year ago

Steve: you're absolutely right. A two line synopsis of the synopsis can work really well - a way to encapsulate the book's premise or USP in a twenty word morsel. I recommend just this in my Getting Published tome, but it's not something you often see suggested elsewhere.
by Steve 1 year ago

Wow, that's impressive. I'm quoting your work before I've even read it. Talk about being in tune with the market and your readership.
by MarkR 1 year ago

Some of the best advice I've ever had was to describe my novel in a compelling key sentence. It's a great discipline but it's really hard to get right.

I had about thirty, eventually chose one, changed my mind after a while and do so periodically. I found it tough, but enormous fun - part of the process of thinking of the book as a product rather than just a story.

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