Questionable Question No. 5
How come my agent told me my book would never sell but a similar one has just been published?
Literary agents are often asked these QUESTIONABLE QUESTIONS by writers looking to understand how book publishing works. They’re reasonable questions and yet they reveal a misunderstanding about the industry. I hope this series of answers is useful.
5. How come my agent told me my book would never sell but a similar one has just been published?
I’ve only been asked this question twice. The second time it stung.
First time, an author was talking me through the death throes of her relationship with her previous agent. I could handle that – though dissing your previous agent isn’t a wise move when interviewing with your potential next agent. I may loathe your last agent ‘as a human being’ but I will still have some professional empathy for the small mistakes they made whilst representing you.
The second time was tougher. I’d advised my non-fiction writer that their idea for a biography of a minor literary figure wasn’t a commercially viable project. I warned them that I would struggle to sell the book to a publisher paying a financial advance equivalent to a living wage. Maybe two years later the author is in my office. The Sunday Times have reviewed a new biography by another writer of that “minor” literary figure. It’s published by an imprint known for quality non-fiction within a major UK house. They probably paid good money. What do I have to say for myself?
I went with “Duh. I was wrong” and I didn’t like saying it. Who does? Especially since I judged the publisher daft to have published that book then. I’m not pretending to be a seer. No one knows much for certain in this business. Yet it seemed a weird decision. Sometime later I sneaked a question into discussion with the editor about why they’d bought that biography for publication in the current market. They hadn’t. A previous colleague, long departed, had acquired the book over a decade earlier. The author had taken those years to deliver the manuscript. The contract hadn’t been cancelled, the publisher being decent enough to wait and then publish at a time when few reviewers or readers could be coaxed to notice.
I’m not saying, ‘yah yah, see - I wasn’t wrong’. Though I did feel that. My bigger point is that the books just published aren’t a good reflection of what publishers are thinking about the market right this minute. The decision to publish was often taken one or two or three years ago. Non-fiction books are typically sold to publishers by agents when only 20% of the book is written. The author has another year or more to write the rest. Then, and only when they have delivered the whole manuscript does the publishing plan commence. It can be another year before the book is in the shops.
The publishing process really lasts. Authors can see their acquiring editor change job and leave after they bought the book. A replacement editor is appointed to take over. That person works a couple of years in the role and then moves on. The writer is then introduced a third editor who will take their book to market. Publishing is sloooow man. Think thick cut marmalade settling on a dish. Think about a slug making their way from the garden four doors down to your row of lettuces. Think of your nonagenarian granddad reversing their car around a corner onto a main road. Think erosion. When making a book, our industry takes its time.
I hesitate to follow publishing trends. You need to be sure it’s a long-term shift in public taste not a fad, or end up favouring authors submitting this season’s genre crush and feel dopey that readers tired of that stuff well before your author’s book went on sale. I don’t like working that way. I eventually respond to changes in what people are buying. For me it means I decide to halt (perhaps temporarily) taking on a genre that isn’t working. I don’t feel right pursuing what’s ‘so hot right now’. Sure I love it when the world agrees with my taste and publishers salivate over what I’m selling. But when I have tried to fall in step with the march of current taste, I find myself feeling the yips of self-conscious falsity. Do I want my taste to feel special? Or to feel my authors’ books are more than what’s in vogue? Who knows. But what I do know, is that I want the finding of new writing talent to feel natural and personal first, and fitting for the marketplace second.
[ENDS]
Read disclaimer and hint for writers here.