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| Aydon Castle |
MS wants a brief query letter, 3 chapters and a synopsis
which he may read after he’s looked at the 3 chapters. He gets on average 10 submissions a day,
every day, and may only read the first page before deciding he won’t go any
further. He wants good writing he can sell, relies on his own judgement of good
writing and storytelling that appealed to him. He thinks if he likes it,
others will, too. (He once passed on Alexander McCall Smith’s Lady’s Detective
Agency and tried to sell an author called Dennis Donnelly, but no publisher
would accept the book.)
His method of working sounds fine – but when asked if he ever put forward
something he considered good writing even though he didn’t personally like it, he said no.
Challenged that this bordered on arrogance, he had no answer except that he was
happy to work that way. The challenger agreed that it was his prerogative to do
so. Rustlings around the room suggested his audience disagreed with the
statement.
JD wanted commercial fiction and looked for good
storytelling that gripped her.
AB thought that these days e-publishing has empowered authors. They can
chance work agents may not like on the market place and discover that the
public likes it. The UK is a couple of years behind the US, where publishers are discovering they must cater to the public’s requirements. Agents may lose out in this new world.
Editing is vital before any publication. Time is good, too;
finish a story, put it away for three months before looking at it again. The
distance enhances critical faculties, and results in a better book. In
e-publishing, Amazon holds control and agents dislike and fear this. 10k sales
via Kindle may interest a mainstream publisher, but if the book is selling
copies in excess of 70k, why is a publisher needed unless the author wants the
kudos of holding his book in his hand, or seeing it on Waterstones’ shelves.
The other reason is that PR etc leaves little time for the self-published author to write. Having a publisher takes care of that side of
things and leaves the author free to write.
The panel agreed tht Authors get 25% of each book sale as opposed to 10% of a
hardback sale, which I found debateable, for I know that Independent e-publishers sometimes offer more, and noone mentioned that Amazon Kindle promises 70% on books priced over $2.99.
1 comment:
Thanks for that fascinating overview, Jen - sounds a great day out. I do think some publishers/agents are going to have to embrace the 21st century publishing 'revolution' a bit more!
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