This is the title of an amusing book by Rupert Heath - about the trade. It is fairly up to date and rather more useful perhaps than Carole Blake's book From Pitch to Publication. I encountered it while "researching" agents, i.e. I had been given the names of two agents by Tara Moore who got them from Polly Courteney - who are allegedly molto in gamba and I sent The Ash Grove to one - and will probably write a letter to the other, since the agency doesn't actually accept unsolicited MSs apparently. But we'll see. More submissions next week, I think 2 isn't bad for the first working week of the year.
SL&BP advises you to do multiple submissions, but not to tell the agents you're doing them, whereas other agents have said they like to know if they are part of a multiple submission, and some agents (Standen) don't want to be part of a multiple submission. Conville & Walsh tell you to do them. Oh dear, it's all so confusing.
http://www.kitwhitfield.com/publisherdating.html has an amusing account of what not to say in covering letters... I think I've avoided most of them over the years. But I rather hope lousy writers will continue to write lousy covering letters, so that those of us who can write a decent letter might get to the top of the pile sooner.
One of the lies I spotted in the book was this: at an early stage he states that agents/editors always believe that talent will out and eventually all the good books in the world will get published. However, he says there are lots of good unpublished works out there. Later in the book he encourages writers to persist in the face of rejections. Of course, we are always being encouraged to persist... but what of the lament I heard on R4 a week or so ago "Just received another rejection from an agent - after 30 years, should I bother carrying on?" Of course one doesn't know what that means really - in fact I got my first rejection letters well over 30 years ago. And they paralysed me for a long while... then again, I am more or less inured to that now. I don't like rejection letters of course, but I can cope with them. I realise they aren't "personal" and represent all sorts of factors that are nothing to do with my book or my writing (although in part that's the issue). However, I don't know whether that lament came from someone with a whole lot of novels under his/her belt - all of which were being constantly rejected - or someone who had not been writing full-time etc.
Persistence may be the biggest lie of all - if you are not writing what the market wants. Literary fiction is safer in a sense - the writing might transcend the market. But if one persists in writing simply to please oneself - I know I have a hack tendency - I definitely wrote TRF originally to please myself, I re-wrote it to please Judith Murray - and the market - but she still didn't like it enough - so. Oh dear. I will argue myself out of writing if I persist in this argument. Actually I won't, because it's virtually the only thing I can do.
SL&BP advises you to do multiple submissions, but not to tell the agents you're doing them, whereas other agents have said they like to know if they are part of a multiple submission, and some agents (Standen) don't want to be part of a multiple submission. Conville & Walsh tell you to do them. Oh dear, it's all so confusing.
http://www.kitwhitfield.com/publisherdating.html has an amusing account of what not to say in covering letters... I think I've avoided most of them over the years. But I rather hope lousy writers will continue to write lousy covering letters, so that those of us who can write a decent letter might get to the top of the pile sooner.
One of the lies I spotted in the book was this: at an early stage he states that agents/editors always believe that talent will out and eventually all the good books in the world will get published. However, he says there are lots of good unpublished works out there. Later in the book he encourages writers to persist in the face of rejections. Of course, we are always being encouraged to persist... but what of the lament I heard on R4 a week or so ago "Just received another rejection from an agent - after 30 years, should I bother carrying on?" Of course one doesn't know what that means really - in fact I got my first rejection letters well over 30 years ago. And they paralysed me for a long while... then again, I am more or less inured to that now. I don't like rejection letters of course, but I can cope with them. I realise they aren't "personal" and represent all sorts of factors that are nothing to do with my book or my writing (although in part that's the issue). However, I don't know whether that lament came from someone with a whole lot of novels under his/her belt - all of which were being constantly rejected - or someone who had not been writing full-time etc.
Persistence may be the biggest lie of all - if you are not writing what the market wants. Literary fiction is safer in a sense - the writing might transcend the market. But if one persists in writing simply to please oneself - I know I have a hack tendency - I definitely wrote TRF originally to please myself, I re-wrote it to please Judith Murray - and the market - but she still didn't like it enough - so. Oh dear. I will argue myself out of writing if I persist in this argument. Actually I won't, because it's virtually the only thing I can do.
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