Michael Allen - A Writer's Guide To Everything Important - The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers

So – be warned at the start. My view is that modern writers (and I’m writing in 2014) mix with traditional publishers at their own risk. The old way now seems to me to be utterly pointless, and, as a matter of fact, dangerous. Dangerous because if you go the agent-to-traditional publisher route, you will end up being asked (required?) to sign away many valuable rights for a period which is as long as your life plus seventy years. Probably longer than seventy years, actually, because there are a number of big-business intellectual-property holders which are very keen on extending the period of copyright far beyond seventy years. Such firms are working hard to persuade American politicians, in particular, to produced the necessary legislation. Some would say that said firms are doing this through bribery. But that, of course, is a wicked lie. In any event, the contract which is nowadays likely to be placed before you by a traditional publisher will certainly be a stinker. (See section 3.9 for details.)

No, the fact is that I could not suggest that there are two equally viable ways for a writer to proceed – not with a clear conscience. If you want more detail as to why not, please read on.

1.2 What is traditional publishing anyway?

Traditional publishing is a term which came into use perhaps ten or so years ago, to distinguish the publishing of old-fashioned books, on paper, from the publishing of ebooks, such as this Kindle ebook which you are reading at present.

Some people talk of ‘legacy publishing’ as an alternative to traditional publishing.

For a good many decades, book publishing for the general reading public – both of fiction and non-fiction – has often been referred to as trade publishing. Trade publishing means the kind of books that you find in bookshops, or in paperback form in supermarkets and similar stores.

There are also a good many other forms of book publishing, which the general public seldom hears about, such as academic publishing (textbooks and scholarly books), professional publishing (reference books for specialised trades and professions), scientific and technical books, and religious publishing (Bibles, hymn books, et cetera). Many of these relatively obscure forms of publishing are, curiously enough, the most profitable. The New International Version of the Bible, for instance, has sold 400 million copies.

In this book, however, we are going to concentrate on fiction and popular non-fiction. That is the side of publishing which attracts the most publicity, especially in the case of big hits, such as the Harry Potter series, or the various Fifty Shades of Grey.

1.3 Why should writers bother to read about traditional publishing?

Mainly for the reasons just mentioned: namely that, until recently, traditional publishing offered the only method for writers of fiction and general non-fiction to achieve high sales, big money, and literary reputation. And you need to know what the old way was, in order to distinguish it from the new way.

At the time of writing (2014), traditional publishing still does offer the principal means of selling books on a grand scale, in every possible market. Not everyone reads ebooks, and if you want to have your book on sale in paperback form in every supermarket, every news stand, and every petrol station, you still need the distribution network of a big traditional publishing company. That is why, even when writers achieve success as a self-published ebook author – having shifted a million or two ebooks simply by writing a book which large numbers of people really want to read – they often sign a contract with a traditional publisher to reach their maximum sales potential through paperbacks. (Examples, E.L. James, Amanda Hocking, Hugh Howey.)

1.4 What are the aims of this book?

This is the fifth book in my series of writer’s guides, and, as with all the others in the series, the aims are practical and down to earth. The book attempts to provide you with the bare minimum of knowledge which will give you an understanding of how things work in traditional publishing, and how you can make the best of your talents as a writer.

More specifically, the aims are as follows:

(i) To provide you with a short history of publishing, from the beginning of the trade in the late fifteenth century to the present day;

(ii) To enable you to understand how likely – or unlikely – it is that you will be able to interest a traditional publisher in your work;

(iii) To enable you make informed and realistic decisions on what sort of books to write, and how much time and effort you might sensibly devote to that work;

(iv) And, finally, to show you that there are now more ways than one to make your work available to the reading public.

My experience of publishing goes back a long way now (see section 1.5, below), and I have often noticed that young and inexperienced writers are usually ambitious, and therefore hard-working. But they are also – excuse me if I sound rude – lacking in basic knowledge about the book trade, and are naïve about the hard-nosed ways of businessmen. I certainly was. The aims of this book are therefore to provide such writers with enough information to prevent them wasting vast amounts of time and effort, and thus making themselves ill with frustration. And if you think that couldn’t possibly happen to you, you’re wrong.

After the introductory sections (Part 1) the book is divided into two further parts.

Part 2 provides a short history of traditional publishing. The purpose of this is to give you a sense of perspective on an industry which has existed (one cannot sensibly say ‘flourished’) since 1450. As we approach the present day the impact of technology has been more and more crucial; in particular, the opportunities open to writers have multiplied many times over since 2007.

Part 3 considers whether traditional publishing can survive at all in the digital age. And even if it does survive (in some mutated form), do the new and as-yet-unpublished writers really need it? Or can they do better as independent self-publishers?

1.5 What makes the author of this book (Michael Allen) think he’s an expert?

An expert has occasionally been described as someone who knows one more fact than you do. And, without being too immodest, I think I’m likely to be in that position when compared with most readers (though not all).

When you are looking at a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who the author of said book is, and what makes him any sort of an authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am a couple of months short of my 75th birthday. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963; since then I have written at least 25 other novels (under my own name and several pen names). At present I have about 60 ebooks on sale as Kindle ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction. These are published under various pen-names in addition to my own, and they vary in length from 100,000-word novels to single short stories. I have written about ten non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers. See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on Amazon sites.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence I have had experience of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s. For about ten years I was also the line manager of a small in-house printing unit, so I know about the technology of printing and book design.

In 2007 I was honoured to be invited to serve as one of the panel of three judges for the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association award of Romantic Novel of the Year.