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
No comments:
Post a Comment