Getting Published: What To Do If You Can't Get An Agent

[Paul Whybrow]

This article appeared in my Writers' Services newsletter, about the deafening silence that happens when one tries to get a book published.

The author, Tina Seskis, went through the usual setbacks of 'nice, but...' before turning to her twenty years experience in marketing and advertising to tackle the problem of making her novel discoverable.

Her work experience undoubtedly helped her, as did the £3,000+ cash investment she made to get her book into physical form—which would be beyond many of us. All the same, the article is worth a look as an example of determination and lateral thinking.

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk...campaign=What To Do If You Can’t Get an Agent

 

[Amber Zade]

She didn't have to pay 3000 pounds. Which is what.... at least 4500 pounds.....

I know people who self pub for less than 1000 a book. I was doing some research with a friend the other day and many of the services offered by companies who will help you self pub your book are bait and switch and services you don't need.

**PS I hope the article was about self pub because I'm only just barely able to focus. **

 

[Kitty]

A couple of options would be :

• Small independent publishers - often these take direct submissions and although their marketing budgets may be smaller they'll do their best to get your book into readers hands. I've had some good experiences with small publishers.
• Author collectives - where a group of authors set up as a publisher combining their various skills.
• Self publishing, these days becoming a much more viable option.

Paying £3K though just to get your book in physical form - that sounds like a rip off!

 

[Emurelda]

I think there is clearly more to it than the bare £3k = physical book.

I just read this piece and it shows where tenacity and determination gets you. The tipping point was the WHSmith buyer at 2,000. Like agents, once you find the right retail buyer who loves your work then you're very lucky to have struck that potential catalyst.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Interesting but who the heck has money to spend like that!

 

[Carol Rose]

Interesting but who the heck has money to spend like that!

Not me

 

[Patricia D]

All small independent publishers are not created equal. If you decide to go that route, do your homework first. I didn't and I'm sorry.

I decided ebooks would be easier for an unpublished author and found lists of reputable ebook publishers. I started at the end of the alphabet, and was accepted by the first one I queried. Great? No.

They are nice people, but... Their marketing is bare bones, a newsletter and a web site. They forward "marketing opportunities" to their authors, for which the authors can pay, with no information on effectiveness, etc.. When my first book was named best mystery by the ebook publishers coalition, they said they were "proud of me" but wouldn't put the award on the cover or in the on-line listings. Because I was not the publisher, I couldn't do it myself. Nor could I submit it to publishers weekly for review or control the price, etc. etc. etc.

Out of sheer frustration, I self-published in hard copy (I'd only sold the electronic publishing rights).

Right now, I'm trying to finish a new book--with new characters. When it's ready to go out, I'll be looking for an agent or a traditional publisher that accepts unagented queries. then, I'll focus on marketing the other three, which are a trilogy. I suspect it will require an investment of more than time to do it well.

Three thousand pounds is a lot of money--and she had a very good book--but three books (the contract gave them rights of first refusal if I used the same characters) was a lot of writing.

This is all hard lesson learned, and I sharing it here because I hope you all will be smarter than I was.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

And you can go the self-publishing (free) route and make an e-book version at the same time. Still, I think traditional publishing would be a lot better

 

[Robinne Weiss]

Thanks for sharing this, Paul!

 

[Patricia D]

I should have added on my rant that my contract obliges me to give the publisher right of first refusal on any future book using the same characters. Thus what might have been a series became a trilogy, and the new book is all new people.

 

[J. Rook]

Has anyone else had experience of the frenzy that goes on on Facebook on the subject of self-publishing? Mainly through loyalty to a friend, I'm right inside it, but I shall withdraw soon. If anyone else is a member of the group "Books go Social", I would very much like to hear what they think of it. From my point of view I have found some of the discussions helpful and informative, but . . .

 

[Emurelda]

Has anyone else had experience of the frenzy that goes on on Facebook on the subject of self-publishing? Mainly through loyalty to a friend, I'm right inside it, but I shall withdraw soon. If anyone else is a member of the group "Books go Social", I would very much like to hear what they think of it. From my point of view I have found some of the discussions helpful and informative, but . . .

I can't see what discussion referred to here as it's quiet there.

 

[J. Rook]

I can't see what discussion referred to here as it's quiet there.

I'm not referring to any specific discussion - just to the BGS phenomenon in general.

 

[Carol Rose]

Never heard of that, to be honest.

 

[Emurelda]

I'm not referring to any specific discussion - just to the BGS phenomenon in general.

sorry I'm a bit slow. What's the bgs phenomenon? Not sure it's tipped the viral scale yet.

 

[J. Rook]

sorry I'm a bit slow. What's the bgs phenomenon? Not sure it's tipped the viral scale yet.

I think we may have different ideas about BGS so I will withdraw(gracefully I hope) from the conversation.

 

[Carol Rose]

@J. Rook, we're only asking because we haven't seen it on Facebook, that's all.

 

[Emurelda]

I think we may have different ideas about BGS so I will withdraw(gracefully I hope) from the conversation.

Am very confused. I have no idea on bgs so there is nothing to differntiate with me on this. I just wondered what it is? Surely searching for knowledge can't be seen as intimidating??

 

[Emurelda]

Btw @J. Rook if you wanted to share your social media accounts on here you are more than welcome to. There is a thread for that somewhere.

 

[Richard Sutton]

I've self-published six novels to date, and my entire cost up front (Since I'm a career designer, I don't pay for any marketing or book cover design, etc.) for each book has been in the range of US$20-30 for proofing and ISBN purchase. I don't produce anything in hardbound, and use CreateSpace for all print. I use both Amazon and Smashwords for eBook production and sales as well as two levels of distribution internationally from each. All my titles are in Bowker's catalog as well as the distributor's catalogs, including Ingram. Here's my point, if you can write a good novel, edit it properly and be ready to go, once you've figured out that you're not going to be an agent's cash cow nor a publisher's best investment (and many of you actually might, depending upon your work and its genre niche) then you can make an attempt to self-publish and give it a go for small cost. If you have access to a few thousand pounds/dollars, it will certainly help with the cost of professional marketing, which is the most important part of it as it is with traditional publishing. As far as FB and Twitter for social media marketing goes, both are now so saturated that it's very hard to get noticed unless you have an excellent system to parse your followers down to a very tight niche. My 800 some odd followers don't really produce much in the way of sales directly, but exposure is exposure, I guess. I keep the number of followers low by weeding constantly to stay within my genre realms and reader interests and not spamming every day, but I've been told that unless you have at least 1500 followers, you just aren't that attractive as a marketing tool. So Twitter at least, remains a purely numbers game.

 

[KG Christopher]

When I started earnestly collating my stories into 4 books, just 4 months ago. I honestly thought that all I had to do was send the finished manuscript to an agent and then sit back and see what happens. I never even considered self publishing. I suppose the Internet / Web has taught us that agents in the past always could turn a buck because they had specialised knowledge that we do not. They know the business, they have the contacts. Think of travel agents, before the arrival of the Internet, travel agents where extremely profitable businesses, based on their specialised knowledge, now , its hard for them.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

When I started earnestly collating my stories into 4 books, just 4 months ago. I honestly thought that all I had to do was send the finished manuscript to an agent and then sit back and see what happens. I never even considered self publishing. I suppose the Internet / Web has taught us that agents in the past always could turn a buck because they had specialised knowledge that we do not. They know the business, they have the contacts. Think of travel agents, before the arrival of the Internet, travel agents where extremely profitable businesses, based on their specialised knowledge, now , its hard for them.

If you haven't done so already, have a look at the Smashwords site: https://www.smashwords.com/

Founded by Mark Coker in 2008, the site is free to use and allows authors to upload their work as MS Word files, converting it into multiple ebook formats for the different e-reading devices. Smashwords acts as a publisher, with your book on their shelves for sale, and also distributes it to other vendors such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Sony. It's relationship with Amazon is rather iffy however.

Mark Coker has written several useful ebooks that are freely available, including one on book marketing and another on how to style/format your manuscript.

 

[Emurelda]

When I started earnestly collating my stories into 4 books, just 4 months ago. I honestly thought that all I had to do was send the finished manuscript to an agent and then sit back and see what happens. I never even considered self publishing. I suppose the Internet / Web has taught us that agents in the past always could turn a buck because they had specialised knowledge that we do not. They know the business, they have the contacts. Think of travel agents, before the arrival of the Internet, travel agents where extremely profitable businesses, based on their specialised knowledge, now , its hard for them.

A similar experience shared by many no doubt there. I still see my route to traditional publishing as the best way but I also think that self-publishing for me is just testing the market. So I don't aim to, at this point anyway, go crazy with self-publishing. I have found a sponsor that will contribute to paying for a few hundred books. Once that is done I will try to approach WHSmith and Waterstones IF the kids that read it gave it a thumbs up. If not I will go back and rethink. If kids do like it and I have some orders from retailers then I will approach publishers directly with this as a formal proposal. That way I would have done most of the work needed to show interest and that it is a potentially marketable book.

There's nothing stopping any of us who have completed MS just buying a LuLu printed copy then approaching bookshops with proforma orders. If you get enough of say 1000 - 5000 orders (depending how ambitious you are) then you can reapproach agents/publishers and show them the names and contacts of interested people.

There's always a route if one can be bothered to try.

 

[Jay Aitch]

If you haven't done so already, have a look at the Smashwords site: https://www.smashwords.com/

Founded by Mark Coker in 2008, the site is free to use and allows authors to upload their work as MS Word files, converting it into multiple ebook formats for the different e-reading devices. Smashwords acts as a publisher, with your book on their shelves for sale, and also distributes it to other vendors such as Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and Sony. It's relationship with Amazon is rather iffy however.

Mark Coker has written several useful ebooks that are freely available, including one on book marketing and another on how to style/format your manuscript.

I tried to format a Pages manuscript into a Smashwords viable file ... God's teeth on a stick, it was painful tedium, and somewhat put me off.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I tried to format a Pages manuscript into a Smashwords viable file ... God's teeth on a stick, it was painful tedium, and somewhat put me off.

I couldn't agree with you more. When I first started trying to format my manuscript to upload to Smashwords, I sat for about three days with steam coming out of my ears attempting to interpret what the hell it was Mark Coker was telling me to do. I eventually realised that it's a bit like reading the theory of anything, be it how to rebuild a car engine from memorising a workshop manual or how to ride a bicycle by someone just telling you—it's best to jump in and do it. Uploading a manuscript to Smashwords sees it go through a checking process, and their Autovetter will kick it back at you with a list of faults.

It helped my efforts to download the free Adobe Digital Editions, which allowed me to see how my short stories, poems and novellas looked in ebook format, spotting any mistakes and correcting them with an edited version.

http://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html

 

[KG Christopher]

I suppose the best of both worlds is to pursue a tradional agent once you have an MS finished, but backed up with the self-marketing that is essential now. So I'm thinking an author website, with your current WIP blog, plus some short stories? a bio and a 'seeking representation' section for your finished MS? I think thats the format I shall pursue. For me, I have to get to finish my MS. I really don't ever want to be knocking on the doors of Waterstones or WHSmiths, I expect an agent to do that. If not, then I will go down the digital route.

 

[Jason Byrne]

This article appeared in my Writers' Services newsletter, about the deafening silence that happens when one tries to get a book published.

The author, Tina Seskis, went through the usual setbacks of 'nice, but...' before turning to her twenty years experience in marketing and advertising to tackle the problem of making her novel discoverable.

Her work experience undoubtedly helped her, as did the £3,000+ cash investment she made to get her book into physical form—which would be beyond many of us. All the same, the article is worth a look as an example of determination and lateral thinking.

https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/945/preparing-for-submission/how-to-find-a-literary-agent/?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=What To Do If You Can't Get An Agent&utm_campaign=What To Do If You Can’t Get an Agent

One would think after twenty years of writing she would know how to put lines of text in the right order.

 

[Richard Sutton]

I now use the SW formatting guide to format all eBooks, first. Run the autovetter, set up the ToC (NEVER use the auto-generated ToC from MS Word. It wreaks havoc with the formats and won't work on a reader!) Once everything checks out on SW, I change the title page, for Kindle information and title the version for Amazon, change the ISBN, remove all SW links at the end, etc. and upload the pdf to KDP. It took a while (3 books, actually ) to get it down, but it is worth it overall. The thing with an agent is that they certainly can grease the skids for you, if you write a mass-market genre that they can turn a few bucks with. If you don't, no matter how well you write, you're never going to find an agent willing to give up their time with little return guarantee. I will never write a best seller. I will never write a urban thriller. Etc., etc. The truth about the industry is very simple to understand. It's a business, not an institution of learning. If a lot of money can be made with your work, they'll happily take it on, even if the only cache it has is your celeb cred. If you write in an obscure academic style, you may find academic presses willing to publish it for the glory of discovery alone, but if you write in between genres, etc., even if a good writer, you will probably never get a publishing contract. Such are the facts on the ground that I've been able to discover.

 

[Jason Byrne]

A couple of options would be :

• Small independent publishers - often these take direct submissions and although their marketing budgets may be smaller they'll do their best to get your book into readers hands. I've had some good experiences with small publishers.
• Author collectives - where a group of authors set up as a publisher combining their various skills.
• Self publishing, these days becoming a much more viable option.

Paying £3K though just to get your book in physical form - that sounds like a rip off!

I think there is clearly more to it than the bare £3k = physical book.

I just read this piece and it shows where tenacity and determination gets you. The tipping point was the WHSmith buyer at 2,000. Like agents, once you find the right retail buyer who loves your work then you're very lucky to have struck that potential catalyst.

It worked for her though! I think this is more of a "the ends justify the means" story.

 

[Jason Byrne]

Interesting but who the heck has money to spend like that!

Marketing reps apparently...