Write That Book Already!: The Tough Love You Need To Get Published Now (22 page)

Practices vary from house to house. Some publishers emphasize selling frontlist and don’t do much with the backlist. Others take a longer view and concentrate on backlist. Some do both. Trade publishers need hits that sell big right out of the gate—is that a mixed metaphor?—but they also appreciate the value of backlist. Smaller publishers—specialty houses and academic presses—have to believe in modest books that will have long lives, because their mission calls for this approach, and because they generally aren’t in the business of competing with the big trade houses.

In other words, you don’t have to
think
bestseller to get published. You can write a good book, one that a publisher will buy because your editor believes it will have legs and sell year after year. In publishing lingo, this means the editor thinks your book will “backlist.”
Moby Dick
has done well in this regard, though we suspect this has something to do with assignments in high school and college English classes. (But we love your work, Mr. Melville! Where do you get your ideas?) Does your book meet the needs of a proven market that is currently underserved? Then it will likely backlist. If you think your book has serious backlist, or long-term, potential, say so in your proposal and back it up with sound reasoning and analysis.

Tough Love from the Author Enablers

As we said earlier, know thyself. Someone said that once, and it’s good advice. Don’t set out to write a bestseller—set out to write the best book you can. Discover and develop your unique message and voice. Know your field—who has written similar books? Have you read them? You can’t be a writer if you don’t read, and you can’t be an expert if you don’t do your homework. ‹«

Backlist titles that sell year after year generate income for authors and publishers, which is obviously the ideal situation all around. The publisher will use the revenue to buy and promote more books (and pay salaries) and will want to keep you as a “house author.” They will want to publish more books by you.

NEW PRESSURES AND TRENDS

In recent years market pressures have forced the large trade publishers to put more emphasis on books that will sell in large numbers right away and to pass over projects that will sell modestly but steadily over the long haul, while smaller publishers have remained open to the latter strategy out of necessity.

The larger houses generally pay larger advances, but the pressure requires them to insist that the author have a strong platform or some other indicator that the book will do well. As a result, the big publishers are less inclined to nurture an unknown or little-known author’s career over several books, preferring instead to try and buy established authors or those who appear to have something already going. This means an unknown author may have a better shot with a smaller publisher or an academic press. The big publisher’s model is, generally, to push out and sell as many copies as possible, risking returns, over a short span of time. The smaller presses will print fewer copies but will plan on keeping the book in print longer.

BOTTOM LINE

Don’t let all this tough business talk scare you. Publishing is an ever-changing industry, but readers still need good books, and your primary focus should be writing one good book at a time. The next steps—agent hunting, proposal writing, and marketing—will be easier to take once you have done what an author is meant to do.

CONCLUSION
WHAT’S NEXT?

When is it time to stop pushing for that elusive media hit and start writing your next book? Many authors have trouble letting go and moving on. Here’s how not to be a one-hit wonder.

While there is no one formula for perpetuating a writing career, we’re confident saying this—you need to keep writing. (We warned you at the beginning that we would hammer away at this point. Like the Girl Scouts, the Author Enablers are true to their word.)

“Thank you for that scintillatingly brilliant observation,” you sneer, and not without reason. But you’d be surprised at how many people don’t realize this—or rather, don’t
do
this. Writing is a discipline, and the best approach is to write daily. You will never produce another book (or screenplay or short story or poem) if you don’t start. So, put this book down right away and go start writing.

There may be another reason so many people stop writing in a disciplined fashion after that first book—they might be disappointed with the experience. Many books “fail,” in the sense that they don’t make money, and of those that do make money, few are big hits. The odds of writing a bestseller, especially your first time out, are long. A typical first-time author (or even second-or third-time author) may be discouraged by the experience of being less than an overnight star. It is hard for some of us to accept that we are simply one among many authors. Add to this the fact that your book is likely to have been published by a group of overworked people, some of whom may not have done the best possible job; that you may not have seen your book displayed front and center in stores; that your book may have been reviewed negatively or not at all; and that you may have encountered small turnouts on your book tour (or didn’t have a tour at all), and it’s no wonder that many authors turn to a new dream that is more easily achieved, such as becoming the first English major in space.

And there is another scenario—fear of success. A first-time author may have had a great run, which can be disconcerting in its own way. There are lots of reasons why someone might be apprehensive after an initial success. Perhaps the author doesn’t know if it is possible to follow up with a book that is as good as or better than the first one—in other words, fear of the sophomore slump. Also, most first books are written with the blessing of relative anonymity. There are no expectations and often no deadline—you get to surprise the world with your finished book, and with the fact that you are an author. The second book is a different story. Fans will devour something that took years to write in a few days, then ask for more. Publishers will have ideas about what you should or shouldn’t do next. The paparazzi will be camped out on your doorstep, if you happen to live with Brad Pitt. All of this can make it harder to focus on getting the next book written.

Tough Love from the Author Enablers

Everyone’s a critic. It’s hard, but try not to let negative reviews get to you, and don’t let raves swell your head. Neither of these scenarios is good for an author’s career. Stayed focused on good ideas and disciplined writing. Remember that you are a writer because you love the written word and have a message or story to share with the world. ‹«

Success or not, the real-life experience of getting published can be disturbing for an author for another reason: many writers are introverts, even if they can fake a gregarious nature when called upon to do so. They’d rather be writing or researching than out hustling.

There are more mundane reasons to let your writing go after that first book—you’re too darn busy. You have a life, a career, family, friends, pets, your reading to catch up on. You want to go back to school to become a doctor. You believe in the cause you wrote about and want to put your money and time where your mouth is.

Whatever the reason, take our word for it—you
need
to keep writing. You will be mad at yourself later if you stop now, because if you stop now, you will likely not get going again for quite a while, if ever. If you got this far, you have it in you. You are an author now. We don’t know if you’ll ever have a bestseller or write a world-changing book, but we do know you have something to contribute through the written word.

Give yourself a chance. Most authors don’t have a hit with their first book. In fact, a good career can take a number of books to build, with ups and downs along the way. But if you don’t write, there is no way for your writing career to grow.

Reboot yourself. Get back to the hopeful and excited frame of mind you were in when you got your first book idea, and let the momentum carry you forward. Remember the simple things: write a little every day; if you use outlines, start a new one; if you need to do research, get to it. Bounce your ideas off a trusted mentor or writing group. By now, you should know what works best for you. Perhaps it’s time for you to move out of Brad Pitt’s apartment, find someplace a little quieter, and get to work.

BOTTOM LINE

Writing is serious business, but it should also be gratifying and fun—otherwise, what’s the point? You know you can do it, and so do we.

Thanks for writing,

KATHI KAMEN GOLDMARK
and SAM BARRY
The Author Enablers

THE ART AND CRAFT OF WRITING DEPARTMENT

Amy Tan

Author of
Saving Fish from Drowning
, suggests
Notes on Craft for Young Writers
by John Gardner; all the back issues of interviews with writers in
The Paris Review
; and all the editions of the annual collection
Best American Short Stories
.

Elizabeth Dewberry

Author of
His Lovely Wife
, suggests Robert Olen Butler’s
From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction
. “It’s all about approaching the work as an artist, rather than a craftsperson, which is how many teachers approach it. It’s about going to that well in you that is your unconscious, or the place where you dream, or maybe even the collective unconscious, but the place where you tap into something much larger than who you are as an individual.”

Ridley Pearson

Author of
Killer View
, says
A Writer’s Journey
by Chris Vogler should be on every writer’s desk.

Kim Addonizio

Author of
Little Beauties
, loves
The Joy of Writing Sex
by Elizabeth Benedict. “This book offers some great ways to get around erotic clichés, like ‘a good sex scene doesn’t have to be about good sex,’” she says. “There are examples from contemporary writers, useful advice, and, of course, it’s an interesting read.”

Robert Olen Butler

Author of
Intercourse
, recommends
Aspects of the Novel
by E. M. Forster.

Roy Blount Jr.

Author of
Alphabet Juice
, says, “I know no one wants me to recommend the Uncle Remus books, although looking at those pages while my mother read to me from them, when I was little, was formative. Ethno-stereotypical issues aside, Joel Chandler Harris’s efforts to spell African-American vernacular (whence springs an enormous amount of American oral and musical culture) was fascinating to me. You could spell things that were real but weren’t in the dictionary. There was something almost illicit about it, which was extraordinary coming from my mother, yet also something stone homey. But the main book that has made me a better writer, and now is keeping me from deteriorating too rapidly as a writer, I hope, is the dictionary. The American Heritage one is my favorite.”

Anne Lamott

Author of
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
: “I love Lynn Freed’s book on writing,
Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home: Life on the Page
. It is brilliant, tough, funny, and incredibly honest, just like Lynn. She’s got such a marvelous and dry and sort of nasty sense of humor, and can really make me laugh; but the book is full of wisdom, too.”

April Sinclair

Author of
Coffee Will Make You Black
, says that “
Bird by Bird
, by Anne Lamott, is an amazing guide; warm, soulful, funny, smart, honest and instructive . . .
How to Write a Damn Good Novel
by James Frey is the writer’s bible when it comes to developing craft . . .
Peaks and Valleys
by Spencer Johnson, MD, both timely and empowering, teaches how to make good times and bad times work for you . . . and Elizabeth Gilbert’s
Eat, Pray, Love
is a superbly written, intensely personal, spiritually insightful journey set against the backdrop of three different cultures.”