FINDING A PUBLISHER FOR FICTION
Advice for new-comers to the game

by GREG HAMERTON

If the book is good, it will sell. That's not what you're up against.

To sell enough books to exceed the cost of the print run and marketing spend is a risky game, especially when the author is an unknown entity. You don't have your own dedicated market of readers yet. 

Writing fiction is the hardest thing I've ever done - mentally and spiritually challenging beyond belief, but ultimately very satisfying. Trying to find a publisher was much harder ... I've had a frustrating time, but I have a good understanding of what's involved in finding a publisher, so can probably save you a bit of time. 

What kind of book is it?
First you need to research what category the story falls into. My novel THE RIDDLER'S GIFT is about magic and temptation and is set in an alternative reality, so it is broadly classified as Fantasy, a genre within fiction (Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fit into this genre).

I didn't bother with any South African publishers at first, I planned to use them only if I had no success in the UK or USA. I figured that there was just so much more of a market in the UK or USA of literate-people-who-like-fantasy, and so the publishers were hopefully more eager to acquire titles to meet that demand. Also I wanted to avoid selling the rights to the book to a local publisher only to have them resell the rights to the bigger markets leaving me with a smaller cut of the sales. I tried London first (the alternative was New York).

Agents
I got an agent in London who represented me, which is the first step. Most publishers won't even accept a manuscript in the door unless you have an agent - I think it's simply due to the volume of manuscripts they are inundated with. As an act of self-defence they insist on 'agented manuscripts', which shifts the work-load of sifting through the manuscript pile to the agents. The good thing about agents is they only earn money once your book is sold to a publisher (they get 15% of your earnings). So they don't have a conflict of interests - they want to earn as much money as possible, so they will try as hard as possible to promote your book to the right publisher, given that they believe in your book. If you decide you want to try the overseas market first, you'll need to try and get an agent.

How? Well, there's a book, the 'Writers and Artists Yearbook' from ACBlack, (available on Amazon) which is published every year, that's a good starting point to search through the list of Accredited (ie. legit) Agents in either UK or USA and make a shortlist of those who specialise in your genre. I identified fifteen and phoned them. "Hi, my name's Greg and I've written a fantasy novel, and was wondering if your agency would consider looking at it. Could I post a sample to your office?" By doing this I eliminated wasted query packs going out - half those agents weren't interested or were overloaded with work and weren't taking on any new clients. I put together a neat summary of my book (synopsis, first 50pages) and posted it off to about 8 agents. Costly, but worth it.

Publishers
After I signed up with an agent my manuscript went out to all the publishers in the UK who deal in fantasy (6 or 7), but since there is this industry standard of only submitting your work to one publisher at a time it took AGES (about 18months) to get through them all and finally have a result. No takers, despite positive feedback. My UK agent sent it off to an associate agent in the USA, and it began the slow sequential submission process over there. Only when I had reached the end of the line in USA did I consider approaching SA publishers.

After meeting a few publishers reps at the Cape Town Book Fair, I send in some queries regarding The Riddler's Gift, but none of the main publishers wanted to get involved in Fantasy. You see, from their perspective it's a big risk to print a thick thick book like mine (above average cost to produce) on the hope of selling into the small South African buying market. Bear in mind that the retail price of most fantasy titles is no higher than books half that size. 

Self-publishing
So where does that leave me as a writer? Hobson's Choice. I either 'give up' on my book, which would lead to a lack of confidence in writing fiction, or I put my money where my mind is, and launch the title myself, a business venture that the experienced players in the game won't take. 

I've self-published two titles before and sold them internationally, but I was well known in that market (paragliding) and such niche-sports are easy to advertise in - there usually only one or two magazines that everyone reads. But fantasy? I'm not well-known in the 'general' marketplace, that's why I was hoping for a mainstream publisher for marketing and distribution support. 

An investor would call such independent publishing 'venture capital'. High risk, small chance of success with a product that has a tiny profit margin once you've taken off the bookstore mark-ups, distribution costs and printing. You usually only engage in such ventures when you have excessive cash. Come to think of it, even the 'venture capitalists' would be getting nervous at this point. Where's the upside?

The upside is personal: it is my writing career. I'm willing to fight for it, because writing is such a joy. So I take a loan and off the cliff we go. Let's see if we can fly.

I have great faith in my book. I've had great reviews from many friends who've read it, my agent loved it, and every publisher who read it has been positive about it, yet still it was a long time after I wrote THE END before I had enough time, knowledge and resources to tackle publishing myself. 

Self-publishing is tough when you are small, because you have too many jobs to do. You need financing, editing assistance, cover artwork, printing advice, marketing, distribution, packaging, shipping, website design, office administration systems, an accounting system - basically you become an entire business. It's a lot of non-writing kind of work .. only you can judge if you're up to it and if you can bear to be torn away from the Muse for what becomes a full-time occupation. Because you're not selling truckloads of books yet, you tend not to have the cash flow to have employees to do all the many tasks that need doing, so like the Ents in Fangorn Forest, it takes a .. long .. time .. to .. do .. anything .. at .. all.

A note on Lulu and on-demand printing
The traditional publishing road does seem anachronistic in a world where you could email your book to an on-demand printer like lulu.com (check it out) and have it printed and available on the net by next week. Maybe it's time for the revolution to begin ... but there again, it's not that simple. Lulu works for the kind of niche books you can charge a lot for. Fiction doesn't work like that - there is a vast amount of choice when you're just looking for a 'good story' to read. I did a thorough costing exercise with on-demand printing and found that my fantasy title would have to sell at almost three times the cost of the average in-store fantasy title in the USA. I'm better off using traditional printing and making it available worldwide on my website. International airmail included, I can still compete with in-store prices if I sell direct. 

Writers, have faith! 
My advice for fiction writers, in a nutshell? Don't self-publish.

Get the current Writer's Yearbook, identify agents in the UK or USA, get to emailing them or phoning, send them a sample, see if anything comes of it. Just prepare yourself for a LONG time. I advise planning many other books before you can expect the first one to be published. In other words, keep your day job. Of course I ignored that advice, and you'll probably ignore it too. Have faith, you're gonna need to be strong, but it's good to know you're not the only one up against the system. 

Keep believing in your writing!