Sponsored by
How we booked our place as writers
When it comes to getting published, is it a case of who rather than what you know? Stephanie Smith asks five authors how they got their work into print.
When a Sunday newspaper sent the opening chapters of two Booker prize-winning novels, submitted in manuscript form as the work of aspiring writers, to 21 agents and publishers recently, all but one replied with rejections, begging the question: is the publishing industry now incapable of recognising true talent?
Here five authors tell how they managed to beat the system to get their first novels published.
GP Taylor
I started writing as a very bored vicar and did it for my own enjoyment.
I realised that the publishing world was operating a cartel and that for anyone without a background in that world, it is virtually impossible, no matter how good your book is, so I decided to self-publish early on. I sent it to an editor who didn't hold out much hope of it being sold to a major publisher – I paid her 80 for the privilege.
I got a list of printers from the Society of Authors and rang round. I ended up with a company in Finland – it would have cost about 11,000 in the UK, but I paid 3,000 for 2,000 copies, and that included the typesetting, the Pdf files – just over 1 a copy.
After that, I went to local bookshops – Waterstone's and The Whitby Bookshop. I had two signings. It's very hard work when you self-publish. You don't do it for the fame and fortune, you do it because you want people to read it. There are lots of obstacles and people saying no. Vanity publishing still has a very bad name.
There was a piece in the Yorkshire Post about me, and once that had gone in, people all over the country were asking to read it, and they told others. It spread like wildfire and became a bestseller. The Sunday Times called it "hotter than Potter". The 2,000 copies were gone in four weeks. Faber and Faber picked it up a week later and the rest is royalties. I'm signed up for 14 books, all with Faber. Nobody accepts unsolicited manuscripts. That's why I've just become the director of a publishing company called Grosvenor House Publishing which helps people self-publish at a cheap price.
GP Taylor is the author of Shadowmancer, Wormwood and Tersias, and former vicar of Cloughton, near Scarborough. He has signed a multi-million pound deal to turn Shadowmancer into a film.
Trisha Ashley
My big breakthrough
came as a direct result of having a novel rejected by the publishers Transworld.
I had been writing funny, slightly satirical contemporary novels for years and having them rejected, though with increasingly longer and more enthusiastic letters.
Then one day I went to hear the wonderful Diane Pearson, then chief fiction editor of Transworld (and herself the author of the bestselling novel Czardas) talk on what sort of books they were looking for. She happened to mention how infrequently they were offered a really good first-person novel so, thinking I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I sent her mine a few days later, reminding her of what she had said.
Although she didn't take it, Diane liked it enough to recommend me to the literary agent Judith Murdoch, who took me on. She persuaded me to turn my satires into romantic comedies, which I did, and my first, Good Husband Material,
was taken by Piatkus. Now, several years later, my fifth
novel, The Generous Gardener, is now out and all my novels have been issued in large print and audio.
They have been published in the USA, and translated into languages including Russian, German and Serbian.
Going by my fanmail, my most popular novel to date is Every Woman for Herself, with its contemporary twist on the
Bront sisters and West Yorkshire setting.
Novelists are always striving to develop their own individual writing voices and my agent says mine is instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever read one of my books.
Trisha Ashley's most recent novel The Generous Gardener is published by Severn House, at 19.99.
Check out her website: www.geocities.com/trisha_ashley
Liz Kettle
Mine is a very jammy story. I submitted the final manuscript of my book Broken Biscuits (then called Chocolate Fingers) as my final project for the MA in writing at Sheffield Hallam University.
It got quite a high mark, and so was sent out to the external examiner. This happened to be Bill Hamilton, managing director of AM Heath, a major London authors' agency. He liked my book and was confident he could sell it to a publisher. I got the train down south for the day, we had lunch, and I signed up with him. He then went on to sell Broken Biscuits to Penguin very quickly.
I have to say that the whole experience has been a bit of a fairy story for me. As part of the MA course, we were continually warned about how hard it is to get a novel published.
We had masterclasses where poor bedraggled writers would come along with lists of the 75 agents they'd sent their manuscripts to. I was fully preparing myself for this, and at the end of the course was already arming myself with synopsis, selling letter and a copy of the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook.
However, I've been cheated of this demoralising experience. It all feels fantastic and exciting for me, obviously, but I also know that the reality for most people – including many of my friends – is very different. But it can happen.
Liz Kettle's debut novel Broken Biscuits will be published by Figtree in March.
Carol Clewlow
My first novel, Keeping the Faith, is about growing up in the Plymouth Brethren faith which I did. I wrote it in my last year at university as a mature student in the mid-1980s. I'd never written a novel before, never thought of doing it. It took me two years to write. At the end of that time I thought it the most abysmal piece of self-indulgent twaddle.
I had this romantic idea of making a pyre out of it and burning it on the beach (I live by the sea). Luckily, a friend came to stay who was a thriller writer. He read it and thought it was good and told his agent about it. His agent (still my agent) said send it, and I spent 40 having it typed up which seemed a lot of money at the time (1987). He sent it to Faber, who bought it a month later. It was published the following year and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel prize. I remember saying to my agent: "Why would anyone want to read a novel about the Plymouth Brethren?" He said: "It's not about the Plymouth Brethren. It's not even about religion. It's about growing up".
I teach now on an MA in creative writing and I tell that to students because it's true. We'll never get tired of rites-of-passage novels about the trials and tribulations of being a teenager with a different view of life to that of our parents.
Carol Clewlow is the author of Keeping The Faith and A Woman's Guide to Adultery. Her latest novel Not Married Not Bothered is published by HarperCollins at 8.99.
Peter J Murray
The Mokee Joe books were inspired by a "spiced up" game of hide and seek I played with my children 17 years ago. After writing the story, with no previous experience of writing to get published, I paid a literary consultant to read through the manuscript and point out its strengths and weaknesses (and its potential for the children's market). It was the best money I have ever spent.
I rewrote the story, and produced what I knew was a strong, marketable product. Four or five rejections later, I decided I needed to get an agent... impossible! Agents willing to take on new clients were (and still are) rarer than hen's teeth. I decided life was too short and chose the self-publishing route. Under my control, and my son's – Simon is the illustrator of the Mokee Joe books – we produced a very attractive book which looked totally mainstream and would fit on to any bookseller's shelves.
Mokee Joe is Coming! came out on July 5, 2003 and we managed to get the local branch of Waterstone's to launch it for us.
It sold 400 copies and was noticed by Waterstone's head office. A bigger print run followed and the book began to spread nationally. This was due to our non-stop publicity drives on radio, TV and in newspapers. I also used my teaching contacts and experience to get into schools and spread the word. One of the parents at my school, Eve White, became passionate about it She became my publicist, PA and agent and is now a full-time literary agent.
At the end of six months more than 12,000 copies had been sold and the mainstream publishers starting phoning.
In the end, three bid for the publishing rights and Hodder Children's Books won out and republished the first book along with the new sequel (Mokee Joe Recharged) in September, 2004.
The third and final part of the trilogy (The Doomsday Trail) came out in June last year. I have now given up the day job (teaching) and present the books in schools all over the UK. Mokee Joe has just been published in Japan and is doing very well.
Peter J Murray has a new Viking book out in May, Bonebreaker, authenticated by the Jorvik Viking Centre, and his fifth book, Dawn Demons is out in October.
Email to a friend
Print this page- Leeds lose Ward to Palace: Is there anyone they can afford now?
- Sheffield Wednesday leaving it late to hijack Leeds United over Ward
- As Snodgrass dithers over Leeds, Warnock throws a lifeline
- Ball is in Leeds United’s court over contract - Snodgrass
- Police turning blind eye to Asian voter fraud, says MP
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: East
