If it looks like a duck ...

A writer friend of mine is excited because the publishing house she likes is accepting non-fiction. She's writing a memoir and I'm encouraging her to call it fiction because she has told me it would be a 'fictionalised memoir' with bits of it made up. She is a journalist who blogs about her life and I know that in her blog entries she has embellished - no, lied - to make things sound more interesting. That's not journalism and that's a whole other story. I've told her how angry and duped readers of A Million Little Pieces felt with vast portions turned out to be fabricated. How would you classify her manuscript - is it fiction or non-fiction?

If she's making up more than the odd childhood conversation and name of her favourite TV show - and some leeway is given to memoir writers because we all understand you can't remember all the little details - she's writing fiction. If her life isn't interesting enough to make a memoir that people want to read, she shouldn't try to get her memoir published. That doesn't mean she wouldn't write a great novel. And while it's okay to pretend it's true on her blog - she's the only one responsible for that - it's not okay to pretend it's true with her favourite publishing company's money and reputation riding on it.

A couple of other points to make:
1. I love it when people say they have a 'favourite publishing company' because this is usually only based on the books they've seen in bookshops, not on anything else they know about the company. And while that's fine if you're buying the books, what about when you're wanting to get published? What about the other publishing companies? Some of them may be just right.

2. James Frey's A Million Little Pieces was hugely controversial but there is a story - perhaps apocryphal - that it wasn't his idea to label it as a memoir. He apparently wrote it as fiction. And is now rumoured to be writing all sorts of fiction stuff under pseudonyms.

Names, dates and places

I am helping a new author with a manuscript that is based on a true story with several real people mentioned. It's reasonably tame content, but to avoid offending some people I suspect some of the storylines/occupations/names (and possibly the setting of the story) will need to be fictionalised before publication. Is it better to let an agent consider the manuscript based on its raw form, or should these changes be made before contacting an agent?

It doesn't really matter either way: the agent could consider the manuscript with the real place and people names included and a note saying that some names will have to be changed; or they could consider it with the names changed but you'd still have to tell him or her that some names/place names have been changed. And if the manuscript gets published, the publisher will certainly need to know the real names, occupations and so on, and what they've been changed into, so the publisher can give the list to the defamation lawyer who will read the manuscript for them ...

So, really, the author should do what he or she is comfortable doing and keep meticulous records of the details that have been or will be changed.

Submissions and competitions

Can I enter a manuscript into a contest if a publisher is already considering it? Would the contest folks and/or the publisher dislike me doing this?

There is no publisher I know of who has a rule saying you can't send your manuscript elsewhere - including into competitions - while they're considering it. However, it's quite possible that the competition will have rules about what you can do with your manuscript so you would need to check those. If the rules say you can't have the manuscript under consideration anywhere else, you can then decide whether or not it's worth it to restrict yourself this way. (I've made my feelings on this subject clear elsewhere.)

If the competition rules don't preclude you having the manuscript under consideration at another publisher, the polite thing to do would be to send a letter to the publisher who's considering it saying that you're planning to enter the manuscript into the competition. That way there are no surprises if they decide they want to make you an offer.

Copyright and Hello Kitty

I have a copyright question for you, in regards to the publication of artwork.

A very talented friend of mine has a business painting portraits of childhood toys. Parents (or generally nostalgic adults) send her their photos of favourite toys, dolls, plush animals, etc., and commission a beautiful expressionistic portrait on canvas. This business is growing, due to the quality of the artwork. She is now interested in putting together a book featuring this artwork, to submit to an agent. However, she's concerned there might be copyright infringent issues at hand, because so many of the subjects in these paintings are recognisable as commercially produced toys.

For instance, she knows that a stuffed 'Hello Kitty' toy is already protected by a world of trademarks and copyright laws. Would a painting of it create a minefield for a potential publisher?

Yes. I think it probably would. And there's something else you haven't mentioned: people have paid for these artworks. That means they own them. That means that the artist can't just put them in a book unless she has express permission from the owners of the artwork, especially as she's creating these works on commission - the owners of the toys (or their parents) have asked her to do the paintings, so they're not her original idea. Even if the toy isn't as recognisable as Barbie, the owners of the toy may not like having it depicted in a book.

Presuming that all of the toy/artwork owners have given permission, there could be issues of trademark (more trademark than copyright). I don't know intellectual property law as well as I used to, so I can't say what's allowable in terms of artwork. Some things are allowable if they're 'satire' but I don't know whether or not there are other exemptions - it's possible that if she'd painted Hello Kitty wearing a hula skirt it would be easier to put the painting in a book than a straight-up portrait. A straight-up portrait could be considered 'passing off'.

The best thing for your friend to do is to seek a legal opinion before she does anything else. She needs an opinion on her ability to reproduce the works and also on the content of the works. An intellectual property lawyer specialising in copyright and trademark should be able to help, and $300 or however much they charge per 6 minutes (joking! I'm sure you get at least 12 minutes for that much money) is, actually, not a lot to pay to either know she's in the clear or to avoid doing a large amount of work - putting the book together, submitting to publishers - for nothing. Why spend a lot of time worrying about it when you can pay a professional to put your mind at ease? Now, if I can just get an IP lawyer to sponsor this blog ...

The in-between times

I'm in a bit of a quandary. I managed to sell an urban fantasy trilogy myself to a large publisher here in Australia. However, after the stress of that, and following various head-thumpings from author friends, I've decided I want an agent to work with in the future.

My question is - do I need to wait until I've got the next project to a suitable level before approaching agents to represent it, or could I get one based on what I've already sold and a proposal for the follow-up? Note that the publisher has world rights both print and electronic, so all I've got of this trilogy for an agent to look after is things like film rights.

I'd rather get an agent sooner rather than later, so I can just keep plowing ahead with developing my career and not having a major break between publications because I need to finish the project to get an agent.

First of all, congratulations - it's a big deal to get a one-book contract, let alone a trilogy!

Now, to your question. It's a tricky time to get an agent, but you've already identified why. There's not much for them to do on your existing contract, so there's no way for them to earn commission and, to be blunt, an agency is a business and we can't afford to work for nothing. Also, again to be blunt, there's unlikely to be a film option because 'fantasy' translates to 'big budget' - when was the last time you saw a big-budget Australian film that wasn't made by Baz Luhrmann? It would need to be optioned in the US and that means you need an agent who has US film contacts. And even if they had those contacts, they're unlikely to take it on just for film because film usually takes a long, long, long time to pull off.

So, yes, it's a bit of a quandary. You can starting talking to agents about your next project - you send an email or call and say you've got the contract and your next project won't be written for a while, but would they like to talk. You may find someone who loves fantasy and is happy to talk to you now. What's more likely to happen is that they'll ask you to keep in touch until you have a little bit of your next manuscript ready to show and then make a decision based on that.

However, there's another way. If what you want is for an agent to come in on the existing contract - to ask questions about foreign rights, to do film, for you to generally chitchat with - then you may be able to come to an arrangement. It's not common but I've heard of it being done - you may ask the agent if, in exchange for commission on the rest of the advance payments on your existing contract, they will take you on for any work relating to that contract (and that can include editorial feedback on the rest of the trilogy). The agent should not - cannot - take a fee for this, it has to be on commission. But the option is there and you can ask about it.

The commonwealth of stories

As the Australian publishing industry is still trying to get its head around this digital thing - and still somewhat acting as if the internet will go away if we just close our eyes for long enough - it occurs to me that part of the confusion and resistance could be caused by the fact that the internet is simply not a medium many of them are comfortable with, particularly in terms of their work. They use the web for email, to find out information, perhaps to order groceries. But they don't think about the pages they read in terms of content - thus, it's hard to perceive how a book may also be considered content, or content source.

There could be something else behind the resistance, too. A lot of us in the industry were library nerds or, at the very least, bookish children and teenagers. We formed our identities around the idea that we loved to read. Reading was our refuge from the harsh world; it gave us our own commonwealth, even if we were all so introverted that we rarely interacted with other bookish people. And our love of reading let us tell ourselves that we were smart, and apart from others. I read, I don't play sport, I don't watch television. Sport and television are for people who don't like reading and my reading makes me somehow superior.

I'm speaking from personal experience - I was a horrible reading snob. But it didn't mean I was smarter than everyone else. It just meant I was a horrible reading snob.

Now take a horrible reading snob and plonk them down in front of the idea that e-books just may reach people who play sport and watch television. E-books - because of ease of research and purchase - may reach people who didn't read books as children, not because they didn't want to, but because they couldn't. I mean people with dyslexia, for example, who want to read but for whom reading is torture - so much so that they'll never go into a bookshop because they don't know what they want to read and they don't want to have to explain that to the horrible reading snob behind the counter. But e-books mean they can take their time trying to find something they may like and they can, if they want, read it on their phone so no one can see. E-books - digital publishing - open up the world of stories, both fiction and non-fiction, to many, many more people. And inherent in that is a threat to the safe world order of the horrible reading snob who believes that stories belong to readers alone.

But they don't. Our first storytellers did not write their stories down - they told them out loud. When all storytelling was oral, the stories belonged to everyone. The advent of the printing press changed the dynamics of storytelling and oral storytelling now takes place on - wait for it - the television. And the cinema, radio and theatre.

However, that doesn't mean that the stories contained in books should belong to only those who can read them. Stories belong to everyone - to every single person who speaks the language they're told in. The stories that are contained in books do not belong only to the horrible reading snobs. They belong to the people who can't read so happily; they belong to the blind; they also belong to the illiterate. While e-books won't appeal or be accessible to everyone, I do think they will open up more stories to more people once the devices are more affordable and access to e-books is more widespread. At this point in time it's just my personal theory - I have no proof of it. But my safe, protected, printed-book, horrible-reading-snob world is coming to an end, and I think it's exciting.

Ten rules for writing fiction - from The Guardian

A friend sent me this link yesterday - different writers such as Elmore Leonard and Roddy Doyle each giving their ten rules for writing fiction. My favourite list is by Anne Enright, who wrote The Gathering, amongst other things. Here's a snippet:

'1 The first 12 years are the worst.

'2 The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

'3 Only bad writers think that their work is really good.

...

'6 Try to be accurate about stuff.'

Words to live - and write - by.