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This series of posts is intended for unagented authors who are thinking of submitting their book directly to a publisher, or have already done so with no success. I read submission emails and letters every day, and have noted down some common annoyances (and delights). They are based on my personal experience and may not apply to all situations, but I hope you’ll find it useful nevertheless.
The other night, my friend was telling me about a get-together for young IT professionals he went to. He met several interesting people with various orientations and specialties. Someone had a business idea about doing A, and another one was really good at B; a third was pitching his side project to venture capitalists.
I listened and compared this to how events for young publishing professionals sometimes turn out. There’s usually more women, for one thing, and they’re more light-hearted occasions somehow – you often end up part of a comradely chat with a group of people quite like you, talking about your quite uniform experiences of working as an assistant.
Would that be fair? Those evenings are fun and lots of names and numbers get exchanged, but they’re not usually very productive in terms of new partnerships or businesses getting the first spark.
I often hear this phrase from people who have abandoned a book: ‘Life’s too short to read bad books.’ I disagree. I’m in the stubborn habit of finishing every book I start reading. Long ones, boring ones, annoying ones, offensive ones – they all get finished. Let me tell you why.
In August, job site Adzuna.co.uk published the results of their analysis of salaries on 500,000 job ads, and it turns out that only half of all employers disclose salaries on job adverts. The rest say things like ‘competitive’, ‘very attractive’, ‘dependent on experience’ or ‘available on application’ – alluring phrases which really just mean that there is a salary, but it’s a secret.
I recently heard a talk by Eric Huang, Development Director for Made in Me, who is, in short, brand-minded and believes that publishers could be doing a whole lot more with brands, including branding themselves. This inspired some thoughts.