Here's an idea, publishers: a first-novel imprint

The publishing industry is having an interesting time - and I am purposely saying 'interesting', not 'challenging' because we can all put forward our own interpretation of things. What's clear, though, is that we can't do things the way we used to, not even how we used to do them three years ago. We are in  the Customs queue for a brave new country; some of us have visas for it and some of us don't. Some of us will be granted asylum there but will still have to prove that we have the credentials to be there.

What's needed in this brave new country is, well, bravery. New ideas. Old ideas reworked. A willingness to try something different. What's not needed is a whimpering poor-me look back to the past. The past is past, appropriately enough. We can't change what happened then to make what's happening now different. We can, however, change the future.

In my private time - mostly spent on public transport each day in the company of hundreds of strangers - I occasionally come up with ideas. Sometimes I tell people these ideas and they don't like them or say they can't work. And that's fine. But in this instance I have an idea that I've been mentioning now and again for about seven years and no one has yet taken it up despite the inherent merit I'm convinced it has (bien sûr). It's not an idea I can do anything about without a big business loan that I probably will  never be able to pay back. So maybe if I put it on this blog, someone else can use it.

In the past I've written about why people, perhaps, don't read Australian novels as much as the industry would like them to. One of the reasons is, no doubt, the cost of those novels. Most people I know in the publishing industry won't pay $30 for a debut novel - let alone $35 - so I can't imagine why they want other people to do just that. Part of the cost of putting any book together is paying an advance to the author, getting the cover design  and so on. There's also the challenge of letting people know that the novel exists - how do you promote a debut novelist when there are so many other writers competing for that publicity attention.

I believe that the solution is a first-novel imprint that is visually branded and marketed as such, with a price point between $15 and $20 for physical books and $10 to $12 for ebooks (but it should be the same price each time, not changing with each book). The cover design could be templated, to cut down on the costs - each cover would look subtly different to the others but not enough to require a new design each time. The advances could be modest and maybe offer the author a reward if they sell a lot (a royalty riser at 5000 copies sold, for example). In my experience a lot of novelists would happily take no advance if they thought it meant their book would get out into the world with support from a publisher who will edit it and promote it effectively. The novel is already written - it's not like the advance pays for their writing time, as it can do with non-fiction books.

Having an imprint that is identified as being for first novels only enables booksellers to consistently sell books on that imprint. The price of the books also makes it easier for them to convince people to try a new author. Most of us would take a risk at $15; we're not going to take it at $30.

And if the figures don't work for print books, at least do it for ebooks. There are plenty of debut novels out there as ebooks, yes, but there is still value in a publisher saying, 'This is what we've chosen to publish, and we've edited it and given it lots of attention, and we believe it's great.' That sends a signal to booksellers and readers that the book can be trusted, to an extent. And we do need to win back readers' trust where Australian novels are concerned. Wouldn't this be something we could try, to do just that?

The Australian market cannot be treated like the American or UK market. Our closest comparison is Canada, in terms of size. A first-novel imprint wouldn't work in a huge market but it can work in a small one where it would be different and new (for a while) and get attention for being so. It can also work in a small market where you're not dealing with hundreds of thousands of potential debut novels - just thousands of thousands. So maybe some publisher will see this post and think it's a good idea, and do something about it, and bring more Australian storytellers to public attention. Then they can have second novels and get published on the standard old imprints - and make way for still more new voices to be heard, and new stories told.

Follow-up to post on shipping costs

To everyone who has yelled at me about the shipping costs post, saying I'm an idiot, lying etc etc, please read this post by Elly Keating from the Fancy Goods blog. Postage and shipping in Australia is between 80% and 90% more expensive than it is overseas. So before you presume that I'm an idiot, please presume that I'm not just plucking these ideas from the ether. Also, please remember that I'm a human being who writes this blog due to a (it now seems) misguided sense of duty to writers, in my spare time and without putting Google Ads on the side - I'm not a robot and I don't appreciate being yelled at, even over email. Please also remember that I'm an agent who reads submissions and when you use your real name, I can easily check if you've submitted something to me ... *evil cackle*

Let's pick a scenario

I have written an epic fantasy novel (in the 6th-7th draft stage, I lost track...) and was extremely lucky to establish contact with the sci-fi &fantasy editor at a major Australian publisher. They were happy for me to send them my manuscript which I did, however they resigned shortly after. Before leaving they gave me some good feedback, asked me to trim from 240,000 words to 180,000-200,000 words, and then resubmit to their replacement. Two days ago I resubmitted and am now wondering about agents and what the best next step is for me. Should I start looking for an agent using the feedback I have so far received and the fact my manuscript is currently with a publisher? Or should I wait and see the response (I know it is highly unlikely I will be offered a contract but I will at least have a great deal more feedback) then ask the editor if they have a preferred agent they have a good working relationship with and get an introduction from there?

There is absolutely no harm in looking for an agent now, and there's also no harm in waiting until you hear from the publisher. Let's look at the different scenarios, though, just to make sure ...

A. If you get an agent and then the publisher doesn't want to publish it, you will have someone already in place to support your writing and help you find the right publisher for you. 

B. If you get an agent and then the publisher does want to publish it, you will have someone already in place to negotiate the deal for you and, hopefully, provide editorial support (depending on the agent - not everyone does this) and give advice.

C. If you don't get an agent and then the publisher doesn't want to publish it, well, you're in the same position you're in now.

D. If you don't get an agent and then the publisher does want to publish it, you have about a week in which to find an agent (if you want one at that stage) before the publisher starts pressing you for a response to their offer.

If you ask the publisher if they have a preferred agent they are likely to tell you that they don't, as it's unwise for publishers to play favourites lest they incur the wrath of the well-known harridan agent cabal. They may unofficially suggest someone but this does not usually happen. Your best bet for finding the right agent for you is to query agents who represent authors in your genre or authors who are on this publisher's list. Sci fi/fantasy is not represented by a lot of Australian agents so you probably won't have to send a lot of queries.

Good luck! And good on you for doing that many drafts - many people fall well before that hurdle.

There's a reason why books in Australia cost more

It's called Perth. Also Darwin, Broome, Far North Queensland and Hobart.

Australia is a big country - as large in land mass as the continental USA. Our eastern seaboard is heavily populated and also the location of our major publishers and their warehouses. There are no warehouses in Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania or Far North Queensland. Yet books that are released in Sydney and Melbourne on, say, 1 August still need to be available in these other places - and rural and regional centres - on that same publication day. Usually the only way to get the books to those places on time is by aeroplane. Aeroplanes, obviously, cost more than the trucks that are taking the books from the warehouses to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. The cost of those aeroplanes is factored into the recommended retail price of each book you buy.

When I mentioned this to someone recently she asked why people in Perth couldn't just pay more for their books - and it wasn't because this person presumed that everyone in Perth has Mining Money. It was her reaction to living in Sydney and having to pay what she considered to be too high a price for books. Well, yes, they do seem expensive. And it's not just because they have to get to Perth.

While we have the land mass of the USA we have, of course, a far smaller population than the USA. Therefore we don't enjoy the economies of scale that arise from shipping books to ten times as many people over the same area. We have a small population for such a big place. If we were shipping 10 000 copies of each book to Perth instead of 1000, economies of scale dictate that we'd be paying less for each copy of that book. But we're not.

Yes, the GST is a factor in the price of books. These freight costs are also a factor. And no doubt you're going to say, 'Well, then, ebooks can be so much cheaper!' Yes, they can be cheaper but publishers are still trying to work out how they can stomach dropping a book's price from $35 for a paper copy to something drastically less for an electronic copy and still keep their shareholders happy. It's a process. We're in the middle of it. Publishers shouldn't be shouted at, because from what I can tell they're genuinely trying to work out a way forwards. And we'll get there in the end - the market will force a solution if the industry can't come up with one on its own.

You're not all going to make it

At one point in 'The Gift', episode 100 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy turns to Spike and says, 'We're not all going to make it.' What she means by that is that some of her friends may die that night as they try to fend off an apocalypse. While those circumstances are dramatic, the line sometimes seems appropriate when I think about the legions of hopeful writers out there in the world.


So here's the blunt truth: you're not all going to make it. (And by 'make it' I mean 'get published', but you knew that.) The numbers alone suggest that, because there are arguably more writers than there are book-buyers in every single market around the world. And most book-buyers don't buy lots of books each year.


Does that mean you shouldn't try? Of course not. The trying is the thing. The trying is what makes you a better writer. In the great ever-shifting ratio of talent:application that is the difference between getting published and not, application is the more influential component. There are lots of talented writers out there. The ones who 'make it' are usually the ones who keep trying and learning as they go. But not everyone will. And nor should everyone expect to.


My example, for comparative purposes, is this: not all musicians expect to get a record deal, so why do all writers expect to get a publishing deal? I am yet to come across a writer who says they're doing it for their own enjoyment - they all seem to want to get published - but there are lots of musicians who do it just for the love of music (I'm speaking from personal experience). It could just be the circles I run in. But those circles are crowded with people who are constantly disappointed because they haven't been published. Some of those people - many, perhaps - will now self-publish a digital book. What's going to happen if they don't turn out to be self-publishing superstars? Statistically, most won't. So then there will be more disappointment. And this disappointment is completely preventable, because the sole cause of disappointment is expectation.

So here’s what I’d tell you if you were my friend and I was your bossy agenty friend:

Write without expectations.
Write because you love it.
Write because you have a story to tell.
Write because it makes you feel alive.
Write because that's where you're most present, in the moment, in the flow.
Don't write because you want to get published.
Don't write and then focus all of your energies on getting published. Just use some of your energies, if that’s what you want to do, and keep writing with the rest of your energies.


Getting published is a separate enterprise - it's a different undertaking altogether to writing. There are some authors who will get published because that's just where their writing falls: in the publishable stream. It doesn't make it better or worse than the writing that doesn't get published. Quite often it's just about the planets aligning for that writer at that time. When I take on an author, I have to love the writing, yes, but I also have to think hard about whether or not I can get the author published. I've rejected a lot of manuscripts that I loved, just because I didn't think I could get them published. In my ideal World of Me, where all the writing I love gets published, things would be different. But they're not. I have to live in this world. And, as Buffy also once said, this world is 'hard, and bright, and violent'.


Now, in the words of Dan Savage, 'I'm gonna get so many caaaallllls ...'

Agents here, agents there, agents not exactly everywhere

Contrary to the literary scene in the US, many Australian writers still approach publishers directly. Why do you think this happens? Is there a paucity of literary agencies in Australia, or is it that this vocation still remains unexploited here?


I've kinda covered this territory already but what the hey, I'm looking for a distraction. So here's an answer.


Yes, there's a paucity of literary agencies, and that's because the business model of agenting makes it hard for people to start an agency and, these days, to stay in business. Agents work on commission, so unless an agent is independently wealthy, it's hard to start an agency from nothing knowing income won't flow, possibly, for several months, and even then it won't be much. Advances aren't that big, and agents only get a fraction of those advances. In Australia we need to take on quite a lot of clients just to break even. Moreover, those advances are getting smaller or disappearing altogether, but publishers still want agents to exist, because we do serve a role in the publishing food chain - we act as consultants, of a sort, to publishers in that we do a lot of the submission-filtering for them, and we often handle authors' concerns and queries, which means they're not calling their publishers and asking. 


Agents are also, often, the ones staying abreast of what's changing in the industry and we're able to disseminate information to authors and publishers alike (and, yes, this blog is one of the ways I do that). One of the reasons this blog hasn't been updated in a while is that I'm flat out trying to keep on top of everything - all agents now have to spend a proportion of their time each day reading about the latest developments on the industry. This isn't something that was in the job description five years ago. 


I can't actually imagine how we're going to get more agents in this country, although it would be great if we could. The difficulty of the business model is one reason; the fact that it requires a certain amount of experience to be an effective agent is another. It would be hard to parachute a university graduate into an agenting job if they had no prior experience of the industry.


One of the things that would be helpful is that publishers could realise that we'll all disappear if they keep squeezing the money the way they are. Yes, things are really, really difficult at the moment - more difficult than any of us can remember - but we should actually be trying to work out a way to fix it, not just all running to the corners of the ring and waiting to see who comes out fighting first. If publishers gave agents the benefit of the doubt - if their default answer to us wasn't always 'no', even if we have a lot of books with them - that would help. They want our expertise but then don't trust it enough to not make us jump through the same hoops every time (and by 'publishers' I mean the companies, not the individuals who are called publishers - the individuals usually trust us but their acquisitions meetings don't).


So that turned into a bit of a rant; it's been coming for a while (and I have more to come). And, no, it won't get more agents into the industry but right now we just need to focus on keeping the ones we have. 

Let's split the difference

There are publishers now who don't give advances or royalties but share the book's profits equally with the author. Do you think this would be a better deal for authors?


It's a different deal for authors, and possibly a better one, but it's really too early to tell. I think what's good about some of these contracts is that the profit-sharing arrangement indicates more of a partnership between publisher and author than the previous overlord-underling situation (as authors have perceived it - in truth authors have always had the power, because there is no publishing industry without them and if authors collectively decided to not be published by publishers the whole industry would collapse).


What's also good is that a lot of these new contracts are for limited terms - three years, five years, nine years - not life of copyright. A limited licence puts the onus on the publisher to 'perform' within that time frame, knowing that their performance will be reviewed at the end of the licence. It also means that either or both sides have a way of extracting themselves from the relationship if it's not working, and that way is bloodless - the licence comes to an end and off you go.


From my unofficial surveying of authors it seems that novelists (for any age) are the writers least likely to be upset about not receiving an advance. They've already committed time, energy, brain space and love to their novel - now they just want it out in the world. If they get a cash money advance for it, great. If they don't, well, they'll get royalties once it starts selling. What's more likely to interest them is editorial and marketing/publicity/sales support - these are the things publishers can do for authors, often very well, that authors struggle to do for themselves, whether because of financial or time constraints.


We're likely to have the traditional publishing models for a while, and they will peacefully coexist with the new models; some authors will be able to choose between them and some won't. Sometimes the author will decide that it's better to not be published at all than to take an arrangement that isn't right for them - and it may be that it's the traditional publishing deal that ends up being the arrangement that isn't right. We'll just have to wait and see.