[MischaHY]

I'm approaching the first draft mark on a fiction novel and starting to think more seriously about how to take things forward.

I was curious as to whether there are people on here who have been involved in the publishing process or have published themselves who could offer some advice/things they wish they'd known earlier/mistakes that first time authors always make?

It's young adult fantasy/~60-65k words and will close off as an independent book. I'd really appreciate any advice that might be available! I'm very certain I don't want to go down the self-published route.

[Wood FT]

I'm approaching the first draft mark on a fiction novel and starting to think more seriously about how to take things forward.

I was curious as to whether there are people on here who have been involved in the publishing process or have published themselves who could offer some advice/things they wish they'd known earlier/mistakes that first time authors always make?

It's young adult fantasy/~60-65k words and will close off as an independent book. I'd really appreciate any advice that might be available! I'm very certain I don't want to go down the self-published route.

Send Caff a message on Instagram. I think he's doing very similar.

[MischaHY]

I'm approaching the first draft mark on a fiction novel and starting to think more seriously about how to take things forward.

I was curious as to whether there are people on here who have been involved in the publishing process or have published themselves who could offer some advice/things they wish they'd known earlier/mistakes that first time authors always make?

It's young adult fantasy/~60-65k words and will close off as an independent book. I'd really appreciate any advice that might be available! I'm very certain I don't want to go down the self-published route.

Send Caff a message on Instagram. I think he's doing very similar.

Bizarrely I thought I'd already done this but apparently imagined it so I've done so.

[Johnny Brown]

I don't want to piss on your chips but my impression is your chances of getting a first novel physically published in that genre are vanishingly small.

I wouldn't be too down on self-publishing. It's never been easier or less stigmatised and you are far more likely to see a financial return. I know a couple of writers in the outdoor genre who have been published by majors and subsequently chosen to self-publish purely on financial grounds.

If you want to write in that genre long term I would look at ways of building a name and following online (would probably involve sagas not an independent book) before sinking any money - either yours or publishers - into a print run.

[shark]

Worth getting Yossarian’s opinion

[mrjonathanr]

If you want to write in that genre long term I would look at ways of building a name and following online (would probably involve sagas not an independent book) before sinking any money - either yours or publishers - into a print run.

For teens, series of books seem to be the way to go. If the reader likes number 1, they may well be keen on sequels 2-6 too.

[SA Chris]

Indeed, strong tendency to read series of books if they like 1.

[MischaHY]

For teens, series of books seem to be the way to go. If the reader likes number 1, they may well be keen on sequels 2-6 too.

This is definitely a factor but counteracted by (from what I've been told) an unwillingness from publishers to commit to multi-book series with a new author. For this reason I've been careful to make a contained story for it to stand alone but also done sufficient world building and background detailing that I have enough explorable plot for around 4 books of similar length. Hopefully this way I can avoid that initial stumbling block but still have potential for building readership over time. That's the hope anyway.

[MischaHY]

I don't want to piss on your chips but my impression is your chances of getting a first novel physically published in that genre are vanishingly small.

I wouldn't be too down on self-publishing. It's never been easier or less stigmatised and you are far more likely to see a financial return. I know a couple of writers in the outdoor genre who have been published by majors and subsequently chosen to self-publish purely on financial grounds.

If you want to write in that genre long term I would look at ways of building a name and following online (would probably involve sagas not an independent book) before sinking any money - either yours or publishers - into a print run.

Don't worry, my chips have got a strong anti-piss umbrella after the bottomless doom and gloom on the internet. Then again (without wanting to sound like a total narcissistic knob) when you see some of the stuff that does get published and sells well in that genre, it adds back a little confidence. In the end in a situation like this I feel it's necessary to simply give it your best shot and try to set yourself up for success. This is one reason I'm more keen to go down the literary agent route initially because I feel having someone in your corner who a) thinks the book is worth something and b) has a financial incentive to sell said book can't be a bad thing. Would definitely consider the self publish option if it's an absolute no-go the other way but from my understanding you need to plumb at least 10k into marketing etc to really stand any chance of selling.

[seankenny]

One of my ex-girlfriends had a novel published and an old colleague/acquaintance is one of the UK’s leading chick lit authors (the moniker is a bit unfair as I’ve read one of hers and it was very good and darker than I expected). They both worked as professional writers before, one a copywriter, the other a journalist, so they had most definitely put in their 10,000 hours of practice *and* they will have had their work thrown back in their faces and told to rewrite (often many times over). Those jobs are kind of boot camp. I have no idea how much work you’ve done so far on this novel or other work, but make sure you put yourself through boot camp before sending anything off! Boot camp can be self-administered obviously.

[owensum]

Lurker here.. thought I'd chime in. I work as a technical editor, edit/write/produce a magazine (in the US), have self-published a guidebook and have written speculative fiction novellas—unpublished however.

A few thoughts. If you truly want to be published in the truest sense then what you're asking for is a new career. Publishers are looking for energetic writers who are prolific (can knock out a short story in a week kind of thing) and are willing to make significant sacrifices for their passion.

Are you looking to pivot to a new career? Most of those who manage to pull it off have put in a significant chunk of time working in some adjacent career—as said before, journalism, publishing, editing, screenwriting, or have completed an MFA or attended prestigious workshops (or all of the above). I've hung out at a few online creative writing workshops, and I've been frankly shocked at how bad the writing is. I just couldn't believe how unaware these people were, who all thought they could get published.

I don't want to give you a hard time, but what are your reasons for wanting to be published? I think that writing something is a tremendous achievement in of itself, and it doesn't need to be justified by an arbitrary societal trophy. What you want is to get readers, and traditional publishing is just one way of achieving this. Attending workshops, conventions, writing blog posts and essays on literature (how well do you know your canon?) as well as producing short form lit are all ways of getting your name out and connecting with a potential audience. Ultimately you need to be prolific, whichever route you end up pursuing.

[TobyD]

The strong advice that I've had is to get your draft, then spend as long as you spent writing it editing it and re editing it until it is as good as you can possibly get it, and then find a really good agent.

[MischaHY]

Lurker here.. thought I'd chime in. I work as a technical editor, edit/write/produce a magazine (in the US), have self-published a guidebook and have written speculative fiction novellas—unpublished however.

A few thoughts. If you truly want to be published in the truest sense then what you're asking for is a new career. Publishers are looking for energetic writers who are prolific (can knock out a short story in a week kind of thing) and are willing to make significant sacrifices for their passion.

Are you looking to pivot to a new career? Most of those who manage to pull it off have put in a significant chunk of time working in some adjacent career—as said before, journalism, publishing, editing, screenwriting, or have completed an MFA or attended prestigious workshops (or all of the above). I've hung out at a few online creative writing workshops, and I've been frankly shocked at how bad the writing is. I just couldn't believe how unaware these people were, who all thought they could get published.

I don't want to give you a hard time, but what are your reasons for wanting to be published? I think that writing something is a tremendous achievement in of itself, and it doesn't need to be justified by an arbitrary societal trophy. What you want is to get readers, and traditional publishing is just one way of achieving this. Attending workshops, conventions, writing blog posts and essays on literature (how well do you know your canon?) as well as producing short form lit are all ways of getting your name out and connecting with a potential audience. Ultimately you need to be prolific, whichever route you end up pursuing.

Yeah I've got room for a new career direction so I've gone into this with the aim of publishing from the start. I enjoy writing short form fiction/non fiction for myself or just to post online, but I've not deluded myself about this that I want to sell it if possible. If I write just for me it is mostly up to 1500 words 'onsight' fiction based on some fun little idea I'll have thought about - but with long form I'm definitely much more focused on practical elements of the writing and how it guides the reader where I want to take them, including in-depth world building and planning. It's something I've written with the strong intention of other people reading it! 

I'd love to hear from folk who have been through the 'agent finding' process and can offer a direct perspective on it. Not that I don't value the contributions - I absolutely do - but I'm curious to hear from the horses mouth, so to speak.

Incidentally Caff reports he has no idea and won't be looking into it until November. No wonder he is such a good OS climber!

[Yossarian]

This is an interesting thread. I don’t know that much about fantasy, but I do know that Annabel Steadman got the biggest advance ever for a kids novel for Skandar (along with a Sony film deal) and I vaguely know a guy who wrote a thing (The History Keepers) which got optioned for film and he made a lot of money. On the other hand, much better to treat doing books for the love of it rather than expecting to make a load of cash, as most authors don’t.

My story - I wanted to write books from a pretty young age. I don’t really know why (other than it being some kind of subconscious proving something to the world / idiots I grew up with). I tried doing something when I was about 12. I then pitched two food and drink related things after university, direct to publishers (I was doing food and drink journalism at the time) - neither got anywhere. A couple of the years later I wrote a 120,000 word spoof thriller - did better research and found the right agent (on the basis that he’d worked on things with a similar sense of humour. But he said no. (Spoof thrillers are v hard to pull off because you basically have to be as thrilling as those airport novels AND be funny at the same time).

I then largely gave up, and much later thought about publishing something myself. (I later did something which was quite similar to self publishing - I recently spent a month clearing house and garage pre house sale which included taking around 10,000 copies of this thing to the tip).

Then I got some publicity in an interiors magazine for some educational / infographic posters, and few months later discovered an email that had been in my spam from a months from a kids publisher, asking if I fancied doing some books. He then offered me a three book deal for illustrated NF and I found an agent who I liked the look of.

Did those, spent a long time on an adult NF pitch (like months). Decided I wasn’t sure about that agent. Found another one, who then dropped me sometime later. Found another one and went on a weird tangent and we eventually decided the thing i was working on was a bit of a crap idea.

I now have an awesome agent for kids and an awesome agent for non kids.

However, it’s very hard to get anywhere without having a profile. My kids agent would prob currently reply to a speculative pitch after around 8-10 weeks. Because I had done stuff before which I first contacted her she replied in a couple of hours.

That first deal I got was from a publisher who likes to “find” people, rather than be pitched stuff.

So the best advice I have is to think laterally about how to make yourself stand out, or how you can get someone’s attention from a sightly oblique direction.

Eg - I am working on a sitcom script. It’s going to go to a TV / film agent at the same agency that’s does my kids stuff, so I kind of have an in but I’m feeling like I am pitching from scratch, so I’m already thinking about how I can do something performative that they won’t forget (in a good way) as I want to give it every chance.

And I’ve had a kids middle grade novel with my agent since May that they’ve still not come back to me about.

So I would do a lot of research re agents and find one (or two, but no more) who represent people who do similar stuff to what you’re doing. And spend an equal amount of effort stalking them on social media, Google stuff they’ve written and figure out if there are things you can say / do when you approach them that might make you stand out. And just consider that they get hundreds of speculative pitches every day. I wouldn’t contact anyone until later in the year because all the agents I know are dealing with or about to deal with inbox backlogs post their summer holidays which might take till October to completely catch up on…

[Yossarian]

If it’s any help (and everyone has their own ideas about how they work best) I’ve completely changed how I approach plotting / writing fiction recently. The previous thing I did was a massive slog on a computer on a desk plus some sporadic note making. Doing loads of walks during lockdowns etc over the past couple of years, I wrote the first draft of my kids thing almost entirely into my phone whilst going for extended lunch break walks. It literally took me decades to realise that being outside / walking is like opening a creative tap in my brain.

I then tidied it up at home, printed it all out, and then started writing it again from scratch with the first draft as a guide. (I remember Will Self saying ages ago that was why he used a manual typewriter for first drafts.) That forces you to rethink things rather than be lazy and leave stuff in because replacing it is more effort. Then i tend to print that and go for more walks, scribbling on the paper for as long as it takes to eliminate as many crap / awkward bits as possible.

I think 4 drafts was enough for me, but you might want to consider getting some target age group people to read it when you think you’ve got it as good as can, and tweak after that.

Anyway, you might have a writing technique / approach dialled - I thought I did but like I said, I had no idea about what actually worked best for me until fairly recently.

[SA Chris]

I'd love to read your spoof thriller if it's in the vein of Anthony Horowitz / Diamond Brothers books, my son and I are big fans of them.

[Yossarian]

It was more spoof Andy McNab / Frederick Forsyth. It was fairly terrible (I don’t even know if I have the final draft any more, as I chucked two old computers recently clearing the house) but I still maintain it was superior to Sasha Baron-Cohen’s The Dictator. It was about a crazed Saddam Hussein type (and his henchman) who wanted to wipe out the British population via the cunning ruse of biological agent-laced donor kebab meat. And the story of the ultra secret special forces team who were on their tail. It started off as The Donors of Death, and ended up being called FEL-8: Rendezvous with Destiny.

[Rocksteady]

I can add my 2p to this. Like Yossarian I kind of always wanted to be a writer, tried writing my first novel aged 11 after reading The Lord of the Rings etc. Did an English degree, have worked as a journalist, reviewer, marketing copywriter but ultimately the only thing I really like writing is my own fiction.

I self-published my adult fantasy novel 'The Hand of Fire' after getting disillusioned with the traditional publishing world and struggling to find an agent (I tried about 8 which meant I gave up way too soon). I know more now and I made loads of mistakes in the submission process and followed outdated advice about number of agents to submit to etc. As below I am trying for trad publishing on another novel so think it is still worthwhile.

I also have learned a lot about self-publishing and will do that differently next time (for the sequel fantasy novels). I've done OK on sales and have good reviews but it is extremely hard to cut through the noise and get noticed vs the other million books a year that get self-published! Johnny Brown is right re: building an online following. Also a lot of self-published authors use their first novel or novella as a 'reader magnet' and make it free, with the idea that readers will then pay for the later novels. Check out Will Wight for an example of how to smash it in self-publishing with 11 books.
My caution on self-publishing is that it takes a lot of time and effort and cost in marketing to make it successful. More time and money than I personally have as a fully employed father of young children.

I've recently finished one of the writers workshop courses in the UK and plan to go for trad publishing for a separate historical fiction novel on which I'm nearing completion of first draft. Some tips:

- Do not submit anything remotely resembling a first draft of your opening chapters to an agent. It needs to be more like 4th or 5th edit. Might be worth paying for a review service or joining a writers club to get feedback too. NB mostly friends and family do not give very useful feedback as they are too biased towards you succeeding.
- Make sure your first few pages are among the best in the whole book. I don't really like this trend myself being a fan of a slow build, but modern novels nearly all start with an insane pace and hooking dramatic scene in the first couple of pages. This is what agents are looking for.
- Make sure you can describe your novel in a punchy one-liner
- Write a pitch document of a couple of hundred words that describes the protagonist, the key plot developments and the emotional story arc. That will be the core of your agents' letter and also lay the foundations for your synopsis.

Do loads of research on agents, follow them on Twitter etc. Every agent has different submission guidelines, make sure you follow them. When you're ready make a list of twenty or thirty and submit in three or four batches with a break between to see if you get any feedback etc. Don't submit at the time of the big book fairs or at Christmas or the beginning of January.

In terms of writing being a whole career our workshop brought back a lot of successful alumni who varied on their approach to this. One young girl had written a very successful fantasy that got six-figure deals in UK and US. But they pay in 14 instalments over time, so it was barely a replacement for her existing salary. A lot of the others (some with 7 or 8 novels published) actually still worked part time as they felt it gave them better structure in their life and enabled them to do more writing.

Hope this helps, and very best of luck!

[Yossarian]

That’s all really interesting Rocksteady - bravo!

Re self-publishing - I don’t think I would / could ever do it because I think the things I’ve done so far have all been improved a lot by agents and publishers and even they they’ve not all worked out that well. Plus I imagine you have to be super organised and on it, and I’m absolutely neither of those things.

It’s an interesting thing re money / deals. It’s really important to realise that hardly any UK authors are not working fairly full time with proper jobs. I recently met a really impressive author who’s a creative writing lecturer most of the time. Ditto Gwendoline Riley - lauded, award winning, plenty of incredible reviews in the guardian, but has publicly stated that she can’t afford not to do other work. Conversely, plenty of crap author / illustrators whose picture book stuff sells well in WH Smith are raking it in.

One kids novelist I heard about - their stuff isn’t v big here, but has sold quite well in other languages. Something like 12 books, most translated into 10-20 languages. One is on it’s 12th reprint in the Netherlands, for which they get a decent 5 figure royalty payment every year. Just for one book of many, in one language of many.

Conversely, the deal for the illustrated adult thing I’ve been working on for hundred of hours over more than 3 years was for an insanely tiny advance, and made no financial sense at all. But it’s going to look amazing, it’s for an amazing publisher and might be a stepping stone to other things so I don’t really care that much…

[SA Chris]

It was more spoof Andy McNab / Frederick Forsyth. It was fairly terrible (I don’t even know if I have the final draft any more, as I chucked two old computers recently clearing the house) but I still maintain it was superior to Sasha Baron-Cohen’s The Dictator. It was about a crazed Saddam Hussein type (and his henchman) who wanted to wipe out the British population via the cunning ruse of biological agent-laced donor kebab meat. And the story of the ultra secret special forces team who were on their tail. It started off as The Donors of Death, and ended up being called FEL-8: Rendezvous with Destiny.

Maybe not then. Sounds like a better version of Attack of the Herbals (I anyone knows the NE Scottish coast they would recognise a few of the places where it was filmed)

[MischaHY]

Thanks for the detailed responses folks! A lot to take in but I'll have several good reads through and try my best to apply the advice. Much appreciated. I'm juggling a lot of plates at the moment (also close to pushing the button on a small business  ) but it's all chugging along.