Why You're Not Getting Your Novel Published.

My pal Larry over at The Nonfiction Novelist has a good entry about why you’re not getting your book published. There are plenty of reasons that could be, but many times it has nothing to do with the quality of your work. Give it a read and check out Larry’s other entries.

Five Reasons You Can’t Get Your Novel Published – And Why It’s Not Your Fault

By Larry Kahaner

Dear Author:

            Thanks for sending us your manuscript. The plot is unique, the characters are compelling and the writing is top notch. It’s one of the best books we’ve ever read.

Unfortunately, it’s not right for us.

            Best Regards,

            The Publisher

What the…?

As an author with long-term success in publishing non-fiction books, I can tell you that publishing is not an easy game. It takes talent, perseverance and luck. Even more so for fiction writing. And missives like the one above seem to defy logic and common sense.

Let’s first dispatch the most obvious reason why you can’t get your novel published. Your book stinks. It’s poorly written, the characters suck and the plot is ridiculous. Assuming that’s not the case, that your book is just as good as, or better than, anything else out there, here are the top five reasons why a publisher won’t touch your novel.

1 – “We don’t have room on our list.” Legacy publishers are limited in how many books they publish every year. With so many good authors around they’re often booked solid for this year and maybe the next year. Some of their list is taken up with their perennial money-makers (think the James Patterson writing machine) and editors at these large houses are allowed a few new authors each year that they’re permitted to bet on. There’s not much room for others.

2 – “It’s not our kind of book.” Authors hear this a lot. You might be thinking “but I thought you published mysteries; mine is a mystery.” Your book may be just outside their comfort zone for many different reasons  – like there is a kidnapping and the editor doesn’t care for snatch jobs. Romance publishers often are sticklers for their own particular ironclad rubrics that can seem to outsiders as frightfully picky.

3 – “We’re not accepting any new books.” This is related to reason #1 but applies mainly to small, independent publishers who may publish only a handful of books annually. I’ve been a business reporter for decades and I’m often amazed at how companies (not just publishers) are reluctant to grow revenue by producing and selling more products – often out of fear of making it big or sacrificing quality control. For some smaller indies, producing more books and thus more revenue, might upset their cozy way of doing business. Again, this always strikes me as small-minded. Many industries are hamstrung by not having enough raw materials. Not so with publishing, If you have good authors clamoring for you to publish them, why not hire part-time or gig editors and production people who are willing to go with the ebb and flow of things?

4 – “It’s not a book that we know how to sell.” Publishers often will be blunt in saying these exact words or they’ll couch it by saying something similar to #2. In other words, they’re saying that your book doesn’t fit nicely into a genre that they recognize. For example, your protagonist might be an intergalactic PI. The publisher may know how to sell alien novels or PI novels but put them together and, ummm, we’re flummoxed. I find this shortsighted, too, because bestsellers often break these rules and do well for the publisher that takes a chance. Best example: When John Grisham tried to sell his first legal thriller publishers shied away because it was a new genre and it didn’t fit in with what they knew. Count how many rejections he received and how many books he’s written that have been blockbusters.

5 – “Right place wrong time.” An author friend of mine sold a book to a publisher that hadn’t been active in his particular non-fiction genre. As luck would have it, they were interested in expanding into this genre and were looking for a book such as his. Lucky guy. But it works the other way, too. A publisher may have just decided that they’ve had enough of one genre and are getting out of it for any number of reasons.

All of this should not discourage you. In fact, it should bolster you because these turn-downs are not under your control. You’re probably doing all the right things.

Here’s a last thought: The publishing industry is becoming more and more like the movie industry. Moviemakers are relying on the blockbuster film to help them turn a profit. Instead of making money on smaller movies throughout the year, they focus on only a few films and market the hell out of them to protect their expensive investments in exorbitant actor fees and promotion. When they fail, and they do, backers can’t complain too much because, ‘hey, it has George Clooney in it.’ It’s classic CYA.

On the other hand, we’re seeing this model get bashed by cable and streaming video companies like Netflix, HBO, Amazon and others who are producing lower cost films and making money doing it.

In the same way, I believe that e-books will disrupt the current book publishing model by lowering some production costs and taking book roster  constraints off the table for solid, hardworking and talented authors.

After the dust settles it will be a better time for authors and publishers.

It’s only a matter of time.

Copyeditors: Why We Love Them

Gather around Little Ones, and let Thriller Guy tell you fantastical stories of days of yore, back when giant publishers ruled the vast book markets and special stores sold brightly colored paper objects stored on shelves and tables, where “readers” would stand happily thumbing through these objects, buying them and going home to spend hours in comfy chairs as time flew by. But how did these objects appear in the stores? Certainly not by magic, though it might have appeared so, no, there were hundreds of intervening steps that these publishing houses went through, painstakingly inching these books through a traditional pipeline that took eighteen months from the time the writer signed the contract until the books ended up on the shelves.

There were many people along the way who participated in the process. Some, like the sales department, were a pain-in-the-ass to deal with; they always had too much influence on the final product, influence that never related to sales, as far as TG could tell. The marketing department was always manned (womanned?) by an endless series of young women, all recent graduates of one of the Seven Sisters Colleges, all named Jennifer. (email: ”Hi, this is Jennifer, I’ll be handling the marketing for your book. We’re all really excited here and know that this is going to be a really fun project! I’ve attached a three hundred page questionnaire and we’d like to have it completed and back in a week. I know that’s pretty quick, but we just can’t wait to get started!”) Jennifer was always gone in six months, replaced by another Jennifer who would have the same in-house life span. Nothing good ever came from these Jennifers.

But many months after the project was turned in, the manuscript would be returned to you, the writer, and it would be marked up by the copy editor. These copy editors -- always young ladies in TG’s experience -- were brilliant. They would take your manuscript, which was shitty, you just didn’t know how shitty, and correct all your misspellings, typos, and ignorance, gently pointing out your stupidity, always in a pleasant manner, never accusing you of incipient moronness, and attaching a list of rules and suggestions at the end for future reference. TG always pictured them as looking like Audrey Hepburn, with or without the cigarette holder, curled up in a comfy armchair working on a pile of pages, your manuscript. TG loved these women. They made your writing sing. And now, alas, they’ve mostly all been let go by publishers, who suggest you hire one freelance and pay for it yourself. Unless you’re Stephen King, of course.

The thing is, this is very doable. There’s a bunch of really great copy editors and editors of all stripe out there, just waiting to take your manuscript under their gentle wing. Many of them used to work for big publishers and have now been “let go” because those same publishers are floundering around trying to figure out their own industry in the brave new world of the Internet. It was a stupid decision – fire everyone that doesn’t directly influence the economic stream of the best sellers they are looking for – but it doesn’t surprise me. When a person, or a business, is in trouble and in danger of dying, lots of stupid decisions are made.

I was reminded of this recently as I needed a good editor to copyedit the memoir I have been working on. I first put it up as a blog, and when the reception of the material was overwhelmingly positive, I decided to expand it into a regular book. I can stand to make some mistakes that aren’t totally egregious when (like this blog) I’m putting something on the Interweb for free, but when I ask folks to pay for my work I expect to give them clean copy. I found my expert, Bev Weiler, close to home, in that she had written me back when I put my last time travel book, TheTest of Time, up on Amazon. Bev is a fan of the series, and noted that while she liked the most recent entry she found there were plenty of mistakes in the copy. She suggested that in her free time she might go through and edit the book for me so the Kindle version and any later paper editions would be clean. I gratefully accepted her offer.

The copy she was referring to, The Test of Time, had been rewritten seven times, edited and copyedited by a number of my friends, and I still did not doubt that there were plenty of mistakes that made it through uncaught. Any writer will tell you that this is so in almost anything written for publication. And the longer the piece is, the more difficult it becomes to ferret the gremlins out. Here’s where you need a professional.

So, vowing that I would not send out another piece with errors, a hired Bev to do her professional magic on the memoir. An author can tell how good an editor is by how terrible they feel when reading the edited manuscript. Bev was brilliant, and I was the lowest piece of writing scum that was ever dragged inside on someone’s bootheel. I’m an idiot, a moron, a writer so pathetically inept I shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of a keyboard. But Bev worked with the same patient, gentle demeanor of her clan, and fixed my book so I don’t have to be embarrassed about it when it comes out.

So here’s to you, Bev, and all your brothers and sisters toiling away out there, fixing the broken manuscripts, from the unreadable to the just-not-quite-right, with your quiet courage and steely resolve. May you and your tribe live long and prosper.

If anyone else out there wants to put up a product they can be proud of, even though they think that they can do the editing themselves, Bev can make you look really good. Send her an email – bevweiler@gmail.com. And stick a finger in the eye of Big Publishing when your book -- clean, sleek, error free -- sells a million copies.

(P.S., Bev, don’t bother copy editing this blog, it’s too late.)