YOUR AGENT SECRET
Last week I wrote about the separation of Creativity and Commerce.
I recommended that you – The Writer - The Creative – take the time to understand Book Publishing - the commercial world that determines the impact of your book.
I’m here beginning a series of articles that over the coming weeks will explain why and how we do that.
Most of you are novelists I believe. That’s good because it’s fiction writers who typically need this kind of guidance.
Even those novelists who work in business come into book publishing with little understanding of how this industry works.
It's because of the dream, I think: the dream of writing a beautiful captivating book that becomes widely read and admired. That vision sustains many writers through writing, editing, and rewriting.
The dream keeps you going.
Whereas it’s unsettling to think about what happens between writing a manuscript and your book being admired: agents, publishers, advance monies, foreign rights, marketing plans, book genres, quick pitches, author endorsements, comparative titles, writer profile, social media buzz, book reviews, book sales, no book sales…
Reflecting on those things can sap the creative will.
Yet eventually you – the writer - will show up in Bookland.
You may be a debut novelist, or someone who overcame great obstacles and has written a memoir, a spiritual guru with a following and a message or a subject expert who enjoys sharing their knowledge.
You may even be a successful businessperson who wants to tell the world how they can make it too. We are agents for all such writers and we enjoy the work.
But help us to help you.
Because without your deep involvement, your book will probably flop.
Because pretty much every successful author we know works closely with their agent.
The way you play the role of The Author is at the heart of everything that is going to happen.
Yet it won’t feel like you’re in the centre during the publication of your book.
Your publisher is creating a marketing plan without you in the room. Sure, you’ll be told – excitedly - about the key items on that plan. But you won’t be privy to the more ambitious, more exciting, more expensive communications ideas that were dropped.
You’ll hear nothing about the marketing budget that wasn’t found or the staff that were instead allocated to your publisher’s other bigger title, being published in the same month.
Nothing I tell you here will get you into the publisher’s office during those decisions. Your agent isn’t invited either.
The publishers make all those difficult choices in-house – in a small team – all by themselves. They have to. There’s too many books and not enough money. Hard calls have to be made. Brutal choices about which author gets investment and who’s book is left to die on the vine.
What you can do and must do is change the way the publisher sees you and your book – before they make those calls.
You might now reasonably ask me: isn’t that your job?
You might add: after all, you’re my agent and you’re taking 15% of my book royalties in return for promoting my work to my publisher.
You could even say: I became a creative precisely to escape that business shite. Writing was a low door in the wall that allowed me to escape the joyless commercial reality of my regular job. Are you really telling me that being an author means I need to do… marketing?
If you’re indifferent to how your book sells or whether it gets reviewed or can be found in good book shops or is a lively online topic, then fine – go ahead and opt out.
If you’d like your book to have a full and happy life and maybe sell enough copies to support your life too, then there’s a lot of things only you can do.
Your agent can help but you are at the centre of your book’s life.
In the following weeks, I’m going to attempt to guide you how to better:
1. Think Like An Agent
2. Connect Like An Agent.
Don’t have a half-assed relationship with your own success. Wake the hell up out of your Matrix pod. Lift up the lid. Step out.
Don’t delude yourself that your publisher is thinking about your book when they have twenty others in front of them.
Don’t waste time disparaging how the industry works.
This is your book. It may mean a great deal to you and might come to matter to your readers. But it’s also a product – a commodity in a market with a price tag, managed by a supplier which needs to be demanded to stay alive.
Don’t imagine other authors have it easier.
Sure, a ‘celebrity novelist’ is getting attention you can’t hope for. That didn’t happen in a vacuum. Usually, they’re now enjoying the result of their years of effort winning attention for what they do. The time they spent becoming well-known gives them a platform. Don’t resent it. Do what you can do for your own book.
You spent so much time writing to make your book great. Now insist on trying everything to get it in front of the right people.
I intend for this series to pan out like a training course for new authors.
I’ll run through ways of identifying, finding and building your audience, as well as discussing ways of connecting with other writers, useful groups and individuals.
Here are topics I plan to cover (they’re likely to vary a bit as I get into them):
I will help you “think like an agent”
This involves stepping back and looking at your book as a product. Here you identify your niche, your genre and your sub-genre. You take note of who else writes in a way you respect in your space. You read them (at a point when you feel this won’t muddle your writing). You monitor the bestsellers. You think about what draws their readership. Perhaps it’s a big-name author whose book isn’t very good but whose fans stay loyal. Perhaps it’s a book with a fresh hook in a familiar genre. You study it all.
I will help you “connect like an agent”
This involves dealing with other people or groups. You link up with writers and readers. You share work, writing and reading, collaboratively. This is about networking and working the net.
Don’t worry. You’ll enjoy it. There’s lots of fun stuff to learn.
And fear not, you won’t end up a “business person”. You’ll remain Creative, not Commerce.
Your teeth won’t sharpen into points as the weeks progress. You won’t need to adjust all your clothes to accommodate the shark’s fin growing out of your back.
It’s all pretend.
You’ll act as if you work in publishing for little bits of the day. Later, you can return to your own people. It’s make believe.
You like make-believe, don’t you?
[ENDS]