Why An Advance Can Ruin An Author

I know a few literary agents but I had never heard what one told me recently: that an advance can ruin an author and make it hard for them to keep getting published. The irony is that agents need to go for an advance and a good financial deal because their income is a percentage drawn from the author’s earnings. The way to have your novel considered by a major publisher is by getting an agent to take you on, so there’s no way to avoid the problems an advance can cause.

There are a few major publishers who will consider novels without an agent (Macmillan New Writers and Canongate are two, and Snowbooks is another though not so well known). It’s worth looking at the Macmillan New Writers and Snowbooks websites for advice on how to submit. But the usual route to a major publisher is by finding an agent, and novelists often dream of that high advance as their first step into success as an author.

So how could an advance ruin an author? The literary agent explained that an advance is exactly what its name implies – an advance on your earnings. You don’t get paid any more until your book sales earn more than the figure of your advance – and for many authors this doesn’t happen. If your book sales bring in less than you’ve been paid as an advance, not only is the publisher unlikely to offer future contracts, but also other major publishers will judge you by this track record.

Advances of around £25,000 still represent a reasonable amount to expect, but how easy is it for a debut novelist to surpass that in actual sales? Some novels take off and do earn far more than the advance but, from what I hear, even with major publishers sales of under 1,000 copies for a debut novel would be typical.

Major publishers don’t usually offer royalties based on 10% of cover price, but even if they did you can see how many books would have to sell to pay back the £25,000 advance. If you keep it simple and think of £10 as the price of a novel it would be £1 per book in royalties so at least 25,000 books.

That’s a difficult sales figure to achieve with your debut novel – it might be hard with your follow-up novels in a 2, 3 or 4-book deal. The pressure you feel while writing these novels isn’t the best inspiration to an author.

If you take into account the way major publishers calculate your royalty payment it becomes even more difficult. It’s not 10% of cover price, it really is 10% of the actual profit after expenses have been taken off. Seeing as they discount books dramatically to get them into special deals in the bookshops, the earnings per book for the author can be minimal.

For a book to sell more than 25,000 copies it needs to take off and have people going into bookshops or looking online for it rather than the many others on offer. The author’s name needs to have become well known somehow, and no matter how hard we try as authors to give events and get media coverage, it really needs national newspaper, radio and TV to get a name that well established in the minds of readers. People need to be wanting it rather than the latest novels from all the famous names who are being named regularly in the national media.

Major publishers do have publicity departments, but if you speak to them they will tell you they work on a newly launched book but are then asked to focus on the ones that really show signs of taking off. At that point it’s up to the author and you’ll find yourself trying to get into bookshops, trying to arrange events, and trying to build a following so that your contract will be renewed.

The good news is that publishers don’t ask for the advance back if book sales don’t arrive at the same figure. I wonder if they will one day? So it’s still worth going for it, getting the agent, aiming for a major publisher, taking the advance and seeing what happens. You will still need to work hard to help the book take off and it may be down to you more than you realise.

A good few midlist authors from major publishers move to independent publishers if they can’t achieve the huge sales figures the major publishers want, and this is becoming more frequent. Take a look at the author with Sandstone who made it on to the Booker list – she moved down from a well known publisher.

When I spoke to Jim Powell, whose novel The Breaking of Eggs earned him a £150,000 advance, he said he was amazed how little the publisher did in terms of arranging events for him (he said he offered to give events but they didn’t arrange any – authors don’t realise how much they are expected to do on their own) and also to promote and get the book into newspapers (a friend sent it to the Times Literary Supplement reviewer and that was the only review it got before it suddenly took off).

This is typical, but the publisher did send the book off for prizes and Powell was named on TV as one of the most promising novelists of the year. Publishers do generally try for prizes, although they can’t send all their novels and usually don’t tell the authors if they’ve been submitted unless they get on to the longlist.

Another author with a major publisher has told me a similar story – that she was responsible for trying to get her books into bookshops and for building a following and sales. But I’ll write more on these subjects in future blogs.

The literary agent told me another thing about advances. She said publishers were aiming to poach established and successful authors from other major publishers by offering large advances rather than taking a risk on debut authors. They also poach from independent presses where authors have learnt about the phenomenal effort they need to make to work with their publisher in order to build a following, to achieve sales and to get into bookshops.

It may all sound off-putting to writers as we all want to sit calmly at home and write. But this is the state of publishing and bookselling in a culture where fewer and fewer people are buying books, and where so much reading is enjoyed online. People like a good event with readings to entertain them but they don’t want to buy any more reading material.

So much is on offer for free and authors are under increasing pressure to help publishing outlets and bookshops stay open. if we don’t we really will just be writing at home alone and in peace with publishing outlets and bookshops closing. The authors who do make this effort and succeed at it are the ones who will be poached with tempting advances once they establish themselves.

Poetry Society: To Vote Or Not To Vote?

The situation at the Poetry Society has been baffling for many members due to too much information and too few facts being circulated. Like many people this started to put me off the idea of participating but I’ve realised this weekend how important it is to vote. Unless changes are made the Poetry Society risks losing the wonderful raise in Arts Council funding members were so pleased to hear had been awarded. It’s also clear that change is needed for reasons that go beyond the funding question.

This raise was secured by the Director Judith Palmer, who has since resigned, followed by other key people. Not surprisingly people want to know why, and petitioners have requested and been granted an EGM next Friday when they can ask questions and vote. If you can’t attend you can arrange a proxy.

I’m going to try to avoid what I feel has been the problem in the way this campaign has developed. We need to cut down to the simple facts that are known and provide a message to let people know what they’re voting for either on their own or by proxy.

Forget all the arguments, individual names, guesswork and gossip. This whole issue is about mismanagement and there are legal reasons why those in the know can’t give us the full facts. No doubt they will emerge. I asked to be given more facts before being able to decide how to vote or whether or not to appoint a proxy, but the unacceptable secrecy surrounding what has happened is actually enough of a fact to let me know what to do. Nobody can speak, because even if they leak facts they could be identified.

It’s as simple as this: the way forward is for the Board either to step down and let a temporary Board take over so as to restore trust in the members and ensure the Arts Council funding isn’t removed, or the current Board needs to change the way it works. This change would need to include openness about what has happened. This is what we’re voting for. If you can’t get to the meeting on Friday, then you can appoint a proxy.

The enforced secrecy even makes me unsure about what I can say here in case I cause legal problems for myself or anybody else, and that can’t be right. I had been put off the whole campaign by the diversions into personal criticisms of individuals and I think that has to stop. It can also feel to many members that the campaigners are people ‘in the know’, a clique discussing this with inside knowledge. All of this is offputting to the many members we need to reach out to and include. The Poetry Society is sending out clear, calm professional messages and the campaigners also need to stick to the clear message of what we’re voting for and why.

It’s quite telling that many people are asking the organisers of their own poetry groups what’s going on and what they’re supposed to be voting for. I wasn’t even sure earlier in the week. Those ‘in the know’ don’t realise that for many members the message really hasn’t got across, obscured by all the other discussions, rants and ramblings. Places like the Troubador are sending out emails to let poets know this vote is about mismanagement and not all the other imagined issues.

So I suggest setting all the gossip, rambling and criticisms of individuals aside, and I hope the campaigners will stick to a clear message. We need a new Board, or we need the Board to work in a different way. We need transparency and to be told what happened. I’m not sure if some of the people who resigned could be reinstated once we hear what happened, and there’s a feeling some of them should. That’s it.

To be a part of this you can email Kate Clanchy on kateclanchy@gmail.com for more information and ways to attend on Friday. You need to be a Poetry Society member. Alternatively you can arrange a proxy and need to do that by Tuesday. There’s also a blog set up with more details on http://thepoetrysocietyuk.wordpress.com/

Poetry Raises £4,000 for the Homeless in North London

Despite the past year being a tricky one for many people financially, the Camden and Lumen Poetry project has raised even more for the homeless than the year before. This is a lovely surprise and a great help to the two Cold Weather Shelters supported. Here's proof that poetry can, among other things, serve a practical purpose.

I help out every month on the wine table and organise the website on http://www.camdenlumen.wordpress.com - and Ward Wood Publishing is also helping with the fundraising Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition which you can see on http://www.wardwoodpublishing.co.uk First prize, judged by Carol Ann Duffy, is publication of a 20-page pamphlet of poetry and 50 free copies.

But the force behind the Camden and Lumen Poetry Series is poet Ruth O'Callaghan, so here are a few New Year words from her:

"2010 proved a challenging year but we still managed to raise nearly £4000 (with gift-aid) for the two Cold Weather Shelters we fund, and one of the ministers has already written to say that without the money they would be unable to continue. SO a MEGA THANKS TO YOU for your continued support. Also a very big thank you to Chris, Lynne and Adele who consistently do the bar and door. If anyone would like to volunteer to do the rare evening as ‘holiday relief’ it would be much welcomed.

Also welcome are any suggestions you might have with regard to the evenings. They are your evenings giving you the opportunity to read in front of established publishers (and wonderful, surprising things have happened) and internationally well known poets, as well as being published alongside them in an anthology. Last Christmas, when asked for suggestions, many requested that the poets from the floor had their own evenings enabling them to have a five minute – or longer – spot to offer a wider range of their work. This we did but the evenings were poorly attended so we presume that, in general, you prefer publishers and ‘name’ poets – correct me if I’m mistaken. Meanwhile, there will always be floor spots and the opportunity for longer spots but within the publishers/named poets evenings.

And we do have good relationships with publishers – congratulations to those who have done the mentoring/workshops and have subsequently have been published, and to those who will be in the 2011 Poets-from-the-Floor anthology due out in May.

We have a fabulous line up of poets for 2011 including Anne Stevenson and, fresh from the brilliant Aldeburgh Festival, Matthew Caley, Bernard Kops and Imtiaz Dharker – her Mumbai lunch box is a must. And that is just in the first few months. The second half of the year is equally exciting and there will of course be publishers’ evenings so please make the most of the opportunities offered.

In fact, the first event of 2011 – 7th January at Camden – is that dynamic new publishing house Ward Wood presenting poets Mike Horwood and Ann Alexander. Come along, meet the publishers, find out what they are about.

We are growing. We now have a competition with the winner having a pamphlet published, the glassses of wine are a tad larger and the raffle – OH, the dear old raffle – prize is increasing from £25 to over £30 worth of goodies. The free raffle evenings were much appreciated so perhaps we should have spontaneous i.e. unannounced, ones during the year. Again, if anyone has any other suggestions please let me know."
- Ruth O'Callaghan

Would You Know Your Own Child?

Imagine my surprise when I realised the hard-to-believe premise of Deceptions, by Rebecca Frayn, is based on a true story. If your son disappeared at the age of 12 and returned a few years later, would you be able to recognise him with certainty? Would you know if the returning prodigal was an impostor, and if so would you pretend not to notice?

It really doesn’t matter whether this is credible or not, or that we can ruin part of the plot by reading about the story that inspired Deceptions in the back of the book. The character who fascinates the reader isn’t Dan, the 12-year-old who vanishes without a trace, or his widowed mother Annie, whose obsessive search is completely understandable. Our attention is all on Julian, the man who had moved in with Annie and had just asked her to marry him when Dan set off on his bike to school one morning and didn’t come home again.

Frayn has taken a real risk with Julian, and so has the publisher. Not so long ago aspiring novelists were told main characters had to be likeable, and Julian certainly isn’t able to get our sympathy at any level. Annie wants to be totally politically correct, with her left-wing views, her relaxed attitude to parenting, and her determination to live in a poor area and send her children to the local failing comprehensive.

Julian is an art specialist and valuer, pulling on his hygienic white gloves to study and evaluate fakes and masterpieces in the art world. The comprehensive school is disturbing to him, with the sound of lower class accents and children of diverse nationalities. There’s an undertone of racism and snobbery running through his first person narrative.

We don’t feel we can believe what he says because he’s so unsympathetic to us. As his dislike of Dan becomes more apparent, together with his resentment of Annie’s continuing love for her son, we do wonder if he knows more about this disappearance than he’s telling us. Annie’s daughter is quite different, seen as delightful and intelligent by him, and he likes to take her for long walks. We don’t quite trust him alone with her either.

The character of Julian is so well drawn that we can’t tell if he’s the good man he makes himself out to be, devoted to Annie and her daughter and just repressed and lacking in social skills, or if his dislike of Dan’s lack of intelligence and poor grammar is part of a dangerously abusive hidden side. Even Dan had started to be embarrassed by his mother’s Guardian on the table and had stopped bringing friends home, so it’s up to the reader to decide exactly what’s going on and who to like, if anyone.

Before Dan’s disappearance, Annie and Julian liked to joke about their different personalities, enjoying the roles of ‘right-on parent’ and ‘old fogey’. After Dan goes, their personalities force them apart, as Annie sees her engagement to Julian as the reason he ran away – if he ran away. From his lonely new bachelor flat at a distance, Julian sees the shabby residential area as a kind of utopia he wants to return to.

It’s a pity the book blurb informs us that Dan is going to turn up again as this could work well as a surprise. But is it really Dan? Can we trust Julian who has lost all respect in the art world by calling a genuine painting a fake and losing a client a small fortune? Would he not want Dan to return and convince himself any pretender to his place with Annie was an impostor? He certainly kept hoping she would forget Dan, and this insistence ruined their relationship. Or would Annie be the one to delude herself?

There are all sorts of questions in this book that keep us reading on, not least the difficult problem of how we can fit a new relationship into an established one parent home.

Poem For My Father

This morning my brother called to say my father had died in his sleep during the night. It was exactly how he would have wanted it, after a day helping the neighbours to keep their radiators working well. He was the oldest of the neighbours but he never stopped with his DIY and wanting to spend time with others.

When my mother died five years ago he moved up to a place near Edinburgh in Scotland to live next door to his closest friend. So I know he was happy, in company, and was active and enjoying himself right up to the last day. His unusual silence this morning meant he was missed immediately and he was found in his bed as if he had slept without knowing a thing about his passing.

Here's a poem I wrote for him a few years ago, and my thoughts also go out to everybody who has lost a father this year or other years, especially at this time.


MY FATHER’S LANGUAGE

Each night my father –
a one-time sparks
on Greek merchant ships –
sent us off with
Da-dit-dit-dit, dit, da-dit-dit,
or Adi ypnos
which even the dog understood.

When arguments loomed
he de-stressed, a teenager again
on stage at Drury Lane
in bell-boy uniform,
ukulele in hand,
Leaning on a Lampost
or Mr Woo.

He parted his hair in the middle,
crossed his eyes
and found jokes to punctuate
attempts at conversation –
like The only head bigger than mine
is Birkenhead, and Why
do giraffes have such long necks?

But when he spoke of his past
he only said it once.
How, in storms at sea,
he cupped his soup-bowl in one palm,
then swayed it like a hammock
so the spoon never lost a drop –

that the eeriest place on earth
is a hurricane, the silent eye,
where the sea surface is oil smooth
and the only way to safety
is to leave this haven,
hold on tight,
confront the battle raging
through its troubled tail.


Notes:

Sparks - radio operator
Da-dit-dit-dit, dit, da-dit-dit - morse code for B-E-D
Adi ypnos - My father’s Greek for go to sleep

A Pageturning Novel About Alzheimers?

Pageturner, alzheimers and novel aren’t three words you’d normally expect to see in the same sentence, and yet they go together to describe Still Alice, the debut from Simon & Schuster by Lisa Genova. When I saw the blurb I was a bit reluctant to start reading, thinking the subject would be depressing and stressful. How wrong I was.

Still Alice is a remarkable novel that will change the way you view alzheimers and the way you respond to people with this condition. It will change the way you think about alzheimers if you are ever diagnosed with it, and will certainly influence the way you relate to people close to you if they become affected. If you are already living with alzheimers, as a patient or as a friend, relative or professional, Still Alice is a novel you should take a look at.

Genova puts us right inside the experience of alzheimers by telling this story through the first person narrative of Alice, a university professor who is just 50 when she gets her diagnosis. She knows exactly what this will mean because, like Genova, she is a neuroscience specialist. The novel opens with Alice at her most capable intellectually – known in academic circles for her amazing ability to remember the detailed facts of her subject, including where precisely to find the quotes to reference research papers.

Alice relaxes by jogging round her town, knowing the map of the area and loving her independence. Admired by her colleagues and loved by her husband and daughters, she’s the type of career woman and successful family organiser many would aspire to emulate. Like us, she puts the first signs of memory loss down to trying to do too many things at once, but the diagnosis comes quite early in the novel. After that, due to her professional expertise, she knows how to recognise and chart her own progress into alzheimers and how she feels she should prepare for what is to come.

This knowledge also lets her find strategies to cope with each stage and to plan for what she wants to do when it goes too far. She knows she won’t be able to remember how or why she will want to end it all at a certain stage, so she leaves instructions for herself that she hopes she will follow regardless. Her Blackberry soon becomes her way of giving herself a To Do list to follow, as memory fails, and it has one important instruction of how to find the means of suicide on the day she can’t remember the answer to a few simple questions.

Once she no longer remembers simple information about her family she feels it will be time to use some items she has prepared to kill herself. Many of us would feel we would want to do the same. But as the story progresses, as we really feel what it is like to be Alice, will we still want her to commit suicide at that key moment or will we see alzheimers in a different way? Will Alice manage to go through with her initial plan right to the end?

I won’t spoil Still Alice by giving you the answers to this. All I can say is that suicide won’t be a plan I’ll be making if I ever get this diagnosis, and I’ll remember Alice if ever those close to me are affected by alzheimers. I will never see this condition in the same way again, and that’s a remarkable achievement by a novelist writing about such an important subject. On a purely stylistic level, Genova never swerves from her course of only seeing this through Alice’s eyes, and once we start this experience with her we can’t stop reading until we see it through.

Winner of the Support-A-Bookshop Prize

The winner of the Support-A-Bookshop prize is Wayne Rattle. One of the Ward Wood books will be on its way to Wayne once he selects from our first authors or one of our New Year launches.

Thanks for supporting bookshops by ordering over the counter. High street bookshops have been surprisingly easy to approach and have helped Ward Wood Publishing get started by stocking our books. They also provide some of the best venues for launches and book clubs.

I know many of you can't order through a local bookshop, particularly from overseas, so I'll be announcing another prize soon for those who order online.