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

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

EVERYTHING IMPORTANT

The Omnibus Edition of Seven Essential Guides for Fiction Writers

Michael Allen

Copyright 2014 by Michael Allen

This book contains the complete text of all seven books in Michael Allen’s series of practical guides for writers. The seven books are available for purchase separately, but by buying the omnibus edition you get the whole series, unabridged, for less than half the cost of buying them as individual items. This book contains over 125,000 words in total.

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OVERALL INTRODUCTION

This book is primarily intended to provide valuable information for any young or inexperienced writer who wishes to write full-length fiction. Much of it may well be helpful to those who write short stories or non-fiction.

You can start at the beginning and read through to the end; but if you prefer you can jump immediately to the section which most interests you. See the Table of Contents, immediately below.

Each of the seven guides has been reproduced here in full; you will therefore find that there is some degree of duplication. For instance, each book contains a section which provides some biographical information about the author. Occasionally, the same information will be used to illustrate the same point, if it crops up in two different books. In most cases, it will do you no harm whatever to be reminded of relevant facts and examples.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: A short history

Part 3: Final thoughts – will traditional publishing survive? And do writers really need it anyway?

2. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: A short history of literary agents

Part 3: Disagreements and disputes

Part 4: The impact of the digital age

Part 5: Do you really need an agent?

3. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO EMOTION

4. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO VIEWPOINT

5. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO STYLE

Part 1: Introduction to the subject

Part 2: Identifying your strengths and weaknesses

Part 3: Improving your style

Part 4: Using style to reveal character

6. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO SUCCESS

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: The three principal elements

Part 3: Why do we seek it?

Part 4: How do we achieve it?

Part 5: The price we pay

7. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CAREER PLANNING

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: The traditional way of finding readers

Part 3: The new way of finding readers

Part 4: Getting your career under control

Part 5: Final thoughts

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Some writers still want to do things the old-fashioned way.

But is that a smart move? (Clue: No. It isn’t.)

Michael Allen

Copyright 2014 by Michael Allen

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‘There are people in the publishing world – more than a few, actually – who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.’

Stephen King

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PART 1: TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING – An introduction to the subject

1.1 Why did I bother to write this ebook?

Answer: Because for the last few years I’ve been writing a series of books which are intended to be helpful to young and inexperienced writers – especially those who are interested in writing fiction. This book is another in that series.

Although it is fifty years since my first novel was published (1963), all my writing was fitted in at the end of a working day as a professional educator. And since I spent so long as a teacher and educational administrator, my instinct is to try to pass on to younger people as much of my hard-earned knowledge as possible.

It seemed to me, when I began to put together material for this book, that it would be useful to write a short account of the massive changes in book publishing which have come about in my adult lifetime – particularly during the last ten years.

I would end the book (I thought) with a nicely balanced section which would point out that an as-yet-unpublished writer can choose to go one of two ways. Either she can try to get her work published in the traditional way – by approaching long-established book publishers who create printed books which are then sold in bricks-and-mortar bookshops – or she can publish her work independently, without any help from anyone, by self-publishing her novel in ebook form, principally via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. I would leave it to the writer – I thought – to consider the balance of advantages in either way to find readers.

That’s what I thought I would do.

But now, having completed a first draft of this book, I find myself quite incapable of doing any such thing. So I’ve had to come back and rewrite this first section.

In preparation for writing this book I assembled a huge pile of press cuttings and blog posts printed off the internet. And having ploughed my way through all that material, reading it for a second and third time, it seems to me that I have no choice but to speak plainly, and to advise new writers accordingly.

Once, and only a few years ago at that, it was absolutely obvious that an ambitious new writer with any sense would (a) try to get a literary agent interested in their work, and then (b) leave it to the agent to find a publisher for them, and finally (c) work with that publisher for ever more – or at least for a good few books.

But now, I’m afraid, I have changed my mind entirely. Until I had completed re-reading all my research material, I had forgotten just how completely misguided that old way of doing things now is. It now appears to me that any clear-headed young writer, at least if she has taken the trouble to find out as much about modern publishing as possible, has no sensible choice other than to publish her own work by becoming what is often known as an indie publisher.

If you read through the rest of this book, you will at least see why I have come to that conclusion, even if you don’t agree with it.

In the academic circles in which I once made my living, it is customary to expect that books which discuss serious issues will try to present a balanced and calm assessment of various alternative courses of action, without indulging in sweeping generalisations. But that’s not actually very helpful, at least to those who are in a hurry. And in my experience, as-yet-unpublished writers are always in a hurry.

You will understand, I hope, that I am only trying to be helpful when I say that, over my working lifetime as a writer, the trade publishers of this world have proved themselves to be utterly clueless in almost everything that matters. I once used the phrase ‘amateur night’ to describe the performance of firms which should, in theory, have been operating both efficiently and profitably. Well, they weren’t. And some of them were near as dammit criminal.

But for at least forty-five of the last fifty years, we writers were stuck with that. We had to put up with – not to put too fine a point on it – being royally screwed by some very nice and friendly people, people who were so lacking in self-knowledge that they were convinced they were doing nothing that was not fair and honourable.

But now – now all has changed. The advent of the digital age – which we may reasonably say began on 19 November 2007, with the sale of the first Kindle ebook readers – has changed everything. Most traditional publishers, sadly, are too stupid, even now, to understand how deeply it has changed. And those who do understand have mostly responded by devising new ways to screw even more money out of ignorant writers who still think that a printed book and a slot on a Barnes and Noble shelf is the height of success.