Hello, writers. I'm filling in for SensibleShoes, who is attending a Saran Wrap convention this evening. I don't know what that means, either. She was vague about the details
So welcome to the off-brand version of Write On!
Tonight's subject is "How to Sell a Novel in 72 Hours (or, Failing to Succeed)." I've sold a novel in 72 hours, and in this diary I will share the secret with you. Of course, you suspect there's a caveat, and you're right: there's a tiny bit of groundwork you need to complete, first. Still, once that's outta the way, it's clear sailing.
First a little backstory.
Song of the Blockhead
Lawrence Block wrote in Telling Lies for Fun and Profitabout a friend of his who'd been editing a scientific trade journal, and decided he wanted to become a novelist.
Monday morning he called in sick and rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter. By the time his wife got home from her job he had eight or ten pages of a novel written. He called in sick Tuesday and did another chunk of the book. Same thing Wednesday.
Thursday he got up bright and early, ate as hearty a breakfast as the next condemned man, and went to his office. A couple of hours later my phone rang. "I just quit my job," he said. "The book's coming along nicely and I want to stay with it...."
Couple of weeks later he presented me with something like two hundred fifty pages of manuscript. Would I be so kind? Ahem. I took it home. I sat down with it. I started to read.
Page for page and line for line, his book was as bad a piece of writing as I've ever been confronted with, and that covers a lot of ground. It was not publishable, but that's the least of it. It was not rewritable, either, nor was it readable. Nor, alas, could it have been described as promising. There was nothing promising about it. No one could in good conscience read that manuscript and encourage its author to try writing anything more ambitious than a laundry list.
I was aghast. My friend had quit a job to produce this? Well, he'd better get another in a hurry. Assuming he could find someone fool enough to hire him.
I didn't have the guts to say any of this. Instead I passed the buck—and the manuscript with it—to my agent. When his judgment echoed mine we tried to figure out what to tell the author. We decided to stall, and while we did so my friend told me he was halfway through Novel Number Two.
The second book was much better. It was still nothing you'd be tempted to call good, but it was written in a language readily identifiable as English. My friend finished it, gave it to me and then to my agent, and went on to the third book.
The second book didn't sell. The third did, though, and the fourth and the fifth. They were not wildly successful. They were published as hardcover mysteries, had reasonably positive reviews and mediocre sales, and did not go into paperback. One got nominated for an award but failed to win ...
My friend went on to write several more mysteries, and these did not sell. There was a market slump about that time, and hardcover mysteries were suddenly about as much in demand as legionnaire's disease. My friend wrote three or four more in a row and couldn't get arrested.
By this time he was single again, and broke. He took a job tending bar and wrote days. After a while he quit writing mysteries that nobody wanted and began doing the preliminary research for a large-scale adventure novel that would capitalize on his interests and areas of expertise. He spent a lot of time on research and more on plot development, and then he went on to spend a great deal more time writing and rewriting. Then the book came out, had a six-figure paperback sale and a six-figure movie sale, touched one or two of the bestseller lists briefly, and must have earned him something like—what? Half a million?
Of course, that was back in the '70s, when a half million was real money. More recently, we've got the story of Nicola Morgan, who only has a pathetic 21 books listed at B&N, though she's published upwards of 90. At her blog, or ex-blog, or something, she wrote: "it took me twenty-one years of failing to get a novel published. At the time, that was more than half my life, and certainly all of my adult life. Yes, ALL my adult life failing to achieve the one thing I really wanted: to be a novelist. That's some bruising failure."
She says the reasons were:
- She wasn't as good as she thought.
- She wasn't thinking of the readers.
- She hadn't written the right book.
- She wasn't even following submission guidelines.
But of all those things are mere bagatelles. They are as nothing beside my Secret--about which more anon.
On the Evil Other Side of the Desk
I will grant you that editors do not have the human capacity for emotion, but even they suffer from failure, or at least an argon-based simul-simula--dammit, what's that word? At least a rough approximation of the feeling.
Ex-editor, now-agent Betsy Lerner asked a bunch of editors about 'the one that got away.'
One editor "admitted to having passed on Cold Mountain. But she didn’t just decline, 'I airily declared to the agent that I grew up on a Civil War battlefield and that if I didn’t believe it, noone would.'"
Robert Giroux had "courted a new short story writer whose work had appeared in The New Yorker. When it came time to offer on his first novel, the brass at his company said it wasn’t right for them: adios Catcher in the Rye."
Another editor "turned down James Patterson’s first novel Along Came a Spider because it was so poorly, sketchily written even though it was pacey, as the Brits say. MISTAKE!"
My point is that this whole industry is based on failure. That's the grease that turns the wheels that move the conveyor belt that carries the money to Dan Brown's bank.
Failing to Succeed
Do you see what I did there? Failing to succeed! That can mean both 'not succeeding,' and 'failing in order to succeed.' Because that's what it takes. Failure isn't just an unfortunate byproduct of the publishing industry, it's a precondition of success. All the lessons of technique and style--dialogue and conflict and font and genre--are easily learned, if you fail for long enough.
The 72-Hour Secret
So here's the story of how I sold a novel in 72 hours. First, per the caveat above, I did the groundwork. I wrote a novel to see if I could finish one. A romance novel, of all things--because I didn't wanna get too attached to the outcome. Well, I finished it. Then I wrote a nonfiction book that got snatched from the slush pile for a low four-figure advance that I negotiated downward, somehow. Then I wrote a couple more nonfiction books that didn't earn out (they were published, but made no money). Then I wrote a YA novel that got me a meeting with the publisher, and still didn't sell. Then I wrote the first three chapters of three novels, and my agent said they were awful. Then I wrote six screenplays that went nowhere. Then I wrote a picture book that didn't sell. Then I got a meeting with a gift card manufacturer who wanted to buy a book from me, but after I travelled 2,000 miles to meet her, she cancelled at the last minute. Then I got a new screenplay to a producer friend-of-a-friend, and he went blind. No kidding. Blind. Then I wrote a novel that didn't get me a new agent. Then I wrote a novel that did! But that novel didn't sell. So I wrote another. That novel didn't sell either. Then I wrote a half-dozen nonfiction proposals that didn't sell. Then I wrote another novel, and the first editor who read the pages said: "This is a rambling, disjointed mess."
Then we realized that 50 pages in the middle of the manuscript had disappeared between my agent's copy machine and the editor's desk. Then I wept. And 72 hours later, my agent called with an offer.
Ta-da!
So what's your record of failing to succeed? How many times have you been shot down? If you've got the misery, I've got the company.
And now for the good stuff: SenSho's Links o' the Week:
Write On! will be a regular Thursday feature (8 pm ET) until it isn't. Be sure to check out other great lit'ry diaries like:
sarahnity's books by kossacks on Tuesday nights
plf515's What Are You Reading? on Wednesday mornings.
cfk's bookflurries on Wednesday nights.
Your happy writing links for the week:
Interesting approach to promoting one's as-yet-unpublished work.
National Novel Writing Month approacheth.
The Intern learns she can write online for money but would rather process a goat.
All right, I admit it: there is another good reason to self-publish.
How to "write" a bestseller. You may not have considered this method-- it involves spending "weeks in San Diego".
RJ Eskow muses on the title of Palin's book-shaped object.
It's Banned Books Week. Oh, to be banned...
And finally, this is just funny.
(I don't know how you weekly diarists do this. Good Lord. I'm a wreck. I need to lie lay lie down.)