'Getting Published' - by Brian Clegg

I’m a non-fiction author, writing books as my primary source of income. These days I write popular science books, but it didn’t start like that. This post is an answer to ‘how did you get your publishers?’ but it comes in three stages.

My first books I sold direct to the publisher. This may be an alien concept to the fiction writer, but for non-fiction there is absolutely no need to have an agent to get published. This started back in 1995 when my first book, Business Creativity was sold. It wasn’t going to make me rich. The advance was £700, and as the book was co-authored I only got half of it. But it was a start. How do you get noticed by a publisher from nowhere? I’d say there were a handful of essentials:

• Research your publishers. Don’t send a business book to a romantic fiction publisher. It really does happen (and the business publishers get sent romantic fiction too).
• Produce a good proposal. With non-fiction you sell the book before it’s written. For a first timer this will include a cover letter, one page summary, market and competitor analysis, chapter-by-chapter outline and one or two sample chapters. Make it exciting and interesting. The outline should be interesting to read, not a chore. This is the hardest job in the whole writing business, but it’s essential.
• Have some reason for writing this book. You don’t have to be an expert, but there has to be a good reason why you are the right person to write it.
• Have sales opportunities – this really helps with non-fiction. Do you give talks where you can sell the books, for instance?
•  Make it a topic that will interest a strong audience – it doesn’t have to be for everyone, but if you write a 500 page book about the lesser spotted tit warbler, and there are only two people in the country interested in this bird, you won’t sell many and a publisher won’t buy it.
• Build useful experience. I had written a lot of articles for magazines before my first book and this both helped me with basic writing skills (and how to meet a deadline) and was a good selling point to the publisher. I wasn’t totally untested.

In all I wrote 24 business and IT books, all published by mainstream publishers without an agent. It was while I was writing one of these that I accidentally acquired an agent. The book was Mining the Internet, so search engines played a major part. This was pre-Google (yes, there was a time) – the biggest search engine of the day was called AltaVista. I emailed altavista.co.uk with some questions and got a response saying ‘Hi, we’re actually the AltaVista Literary Agency – why don’t we meet up?’

As a result of that I acquired an agent and moved into popular science. Agents don’t tend to do business books – there simply isn’t the money in them – but at the time popular science was a hot topic, and it was something I had always wanted to write, having a physics degree and a wide interest in science.

So I can’t give a lot of advice on getting an agent, because it was a total accident. I did benefit hugely from the relationship, but now we have mostly parted company, and I am selling books direct to publishers again. In part this reflects the changing nature of popular science, which has dropped out of the big payment league (unless you are Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins). But it also reflects an increased confidence and expertise on my part. I know publishing a lot better than I did 10 years ago. And in many ways, at my stage of a writing career, an agent is more of a drain on my efforts than a benefit.

That might seem unlikely if you are desperately seeking an agent. But the trouble is that an agent can act as a significant delay in the process. If (s)he is engaged on somebody else’s large project it might be a month or two before you get a reply to an email. This is both frustrating and costly.

Obviously one advantage I now have is being published already. That in itself provides exposure and gives me contacts. It’s much easier to sell a book to a publisher with which you’ve already had a success. (Not so easy after a couple of flops.) But in my time with my agent I have also expanded my electronic platform (I was trying to avoid the ‘P’ word, but it crept in.) I blog, use Facebook and Twitter (@brianclegg) and inevitably have a website. But the most useful electronic tool I’ve had in getting friendly with publishers is something different.

A number of years ago I realized that only a tiny part of the market for my books were ever going to be interested in a Brian Clegg website. But a lot more people would be interested in a Popular Science website. I set up www.popularscience.co.uk as a popular science book review site, and it has built up a good following, with about ¼ million unique visitors a year. This means I have good relations with the marketing departments of most publishers. It doesn’t mean every editor pays any attention to me, but I do find it easier to get access to them and get a positive response.

So if you’re writing non-fiction don’t feel you have to pursue an agent. Get a great proposal for an excellent book, send it to the right publishers and you have every chance of getting published. Chances are it won’t make you rich, but you can have a lot of fun.

Brian’s books include Inflight Science, The God Effect, Before the Big Bang and A Brief History of Infinity. See more at www.brianclegg.net

Posting Extracts - by Kate Kelly

Sarah has kindly invited me over to this blog and has asked me to say a few words about posting your work online.

It’s very tempting for a new writer who has just started their first blog or website to want to showcase their work. I see it often – a synopsis – the first few chapters – or a complete short story posted for anyone to read.

Sometimes the person is asking for feedback. Sometimes they are trying to promote their self published book, but often these sample chapters are part of a Work in progress – or something that is currently doing the rounds of agents' desks.

If you have self published and are posting extracts as part of your book promotion then that is one thing. However, if it is something that you are hoping to sell then you should think twice about posting online.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1. If you post something on your blog you are effectively publishing it. In the case of a short story you will have relinquished first rights to that story. You will no longer be able to sell it to a magazine or anthology as technically it is already published.
2. You will also have made the story ineligible for most competitions.
3. There is no copyright on ideas so do you really want the entire world to share in yours?
4. If what you are posting is a WIP then it probably still needs work. Do you really want the world to see your mistakes?
5. Agents do not trawl round writers' blogs looking for new clients. They have enough in their slushpile to keep them busy. (I’m sure someone will chime in with an exception to this but in general it is true).
6. If an agent or publisher is interested then the first thing they will do will be to visit your blog. If they see a large portion of the work you have submitted to them that could very likely be a deal breaker.
7. If you are looking for good quality critique on your work then a blog is not the best place. Join a good online writers' community such as Litopia instead.

Thank you Kate for a most informative post, which I'm sure will have many novice writers rushing to their blogs and removing material they've unwittingly 'published'. You can read more about Kate and follow her at http://scribblingseaserpent.blogspot.com

William Caxton-ites, welcome to the internet

I've noticed something very interesting of late. If I mention the word "Facebook" or "Twitter" amongst an assembly of unpublished writers, I might as well have let out a loud fart in public for the effect it has on a large number of those present. They fidget uncomfortably in their chairs, mutter comments to each other behind their hands about its dangers, snigger, or ignore what I've said altogether. The concept of "blogging" follows close behind in their little book of suspect practices.


It's all part of the "it-was-better-in-the-good-old-days" mentality, which is synonymous to shooting yourself in the foot if you want to gain global attention for your writing. How do I make these Caxtonites realise that tweeting on Twitter is an opportunity to build up a wide following of people who like your writing style before you're even published; also, that these followers will most likely stick around to become fans of your books after publication, as well as telling their friends about you, and that sometimes an unpublished writer's creative tweets can come to the attention of a publisher, as in the case of Simon Sylvester (@simonasylvester)? 


There is an excellent article titled 'Build your profile on Twitter' in the February 2011 issue of Writing Magazine (www.writingmagazine.co.uk). It stresses the importance of connecting with a community, as well as having the opportunity to practice your writing within the very tight 140-character constraint of a tweet.  


Facebook is more about connecting with people you know, although it also provides an excellent opportunity to share writing news amongst your friends, or send them invites to literary events and book launches. As well as this, you can start a facebook group for your writing circle and, if you like, make the information it contains more widely available to other facebook users than you might with your own personal information or status updates.              


I'm at a loss to know what do about the Caxtonites, some of whom even go as far as objecting to emailing or to word-processing. Perhaps it's one of those cases of my needing to show by example rather than ramming a concept down people's throats with evangelical zeal and ending up being blacklisted or lynched. So often, rejection of something new is based on fear of change, or of appearing an ignoramus because you don't understand how it works.


Who knows? Maybe I spend too many hours on the internet while those other aspiring novelists are secretly penning a masterpiece that will - um, dare I say? - end up as a published novel available for sale on Amazon or for download on an e-reader.