The following is a summary of advice shared by expert panelists who attended our 2020 seminar series, gathered and written up here by members of Neuwrite. To learn more, please see the 'Seminars' tab on the website.
Developing, Pitching, and Publishing a Book Written by Emma Chapman, author of ‘First Light: Switching on stars at the dawn of time’ @dreochapman The first Neuwrite London seminar aimed high. You have an idea and you think it is good... but where to go from there? How do you convert a niggling, amorphous idea into a book? A tough subject! The organisers brought together a panel of experts that would be hard to improve upon: Natalie Bellos, from What on Earth Publishing; Abi Fellows, from The Good Literacy Agency; Kirty Topiwala, from Hodder & Stoughton; Patrick Walsh, from Pew Literary, and an excellent chair in engineer and author Roma Agrawal MBE. The Neuwrite team aimed the event at science writers belonging to under-represented groups, in the early stages of their careers. The expertise that was passed on made it invaluable even for writers already in the market, though. There was a sizeable audience despite the event’s virtual platform, with tickets selling out quickly. Here are the key points that stood out for me: Do I need an agent? Literary agents are advocates for the authors. Their job is to help find the best route for turning your idea into a book on as many bookshelves as possible. They champion your book at book fairs and advertise it to publishers directly. Bellos and Topiwala made clear than the vast majority of their book acquisitions come via literary agents. Editors can receive on the order of ten proposals a week, just for one subject area, and so they trust literary agents as a filtering system. Agents will only take on books they believe in and that have passed their personal taste-test. Therefore, if a book arrives via an agent, they can assume it to have already gone through quality control. Saying that, no one said that it was ‘Game Over’ if someone couldn’t find an agent. Sometimes confidence and passion are enough to make you stand out, even without an agent to argue your case. How to write a book proposal? Fellows provided a clear template for a full proposal:
Fellows said that she really enjoyed helping to prepare book proposals with authors, so they were as enticing to publishers as possible. This was a surprise to me. I have published one book, but have never worked with an agent, mainly because until tonight I had thought agents were for ‘proper’ authors: famous people who won awards. This myth was thoroughly debunked. A first communication with an agent might only involve a streamlined version of the full proposal template. Walsh went further and said that many an acquisition had begun with someone emailing him along the lines of “Hi, I am…. I have an idea about… Would you be interested in seeing a proposal?”. I had always assumed it went more like “Hi! I’m a bestselling author, my 15 books have been turned into films and I can no longer field all the calls, you would be honoured to represent me!”. It was interesting to hear that approaching a literary agent was almost a necessity for having your first book acquired by a publishing house. More than that, an agent would help you develop and refine your idea, and so improve your pitch. I suppose that, equally, it could also feel like having to apply to an agent to apply to a publishing house could just feel like one more obstacle. But it seems like the payoff is worth it. What do agents and publishers want to see in an author? I could condense this discussion down to three words: passion, confidence and expertise. The first of these, passion, will hopefully come naturally to science writers. Science is not always an ‘easy’ topic to narrate, but it can inspire the most wonderful excitement and awe. If you love a subject, that passion will come through, so choose a theme that excites you. The second parameter, confidence, may be harder to come by, but if you don’t believe in your idea, there isn’t much reason for an agent or editor to believe in it either. The last of the areas, expertise, is an interesting one. It is a word that might scare some potential science writers off. Not many people are in the centre of a Venn diagram grouping quantum physicists and science writers. All the panel clarified that expertise did not have to mean you were a professor in the subject, or even had a PhD in it. They used ‘expertise’ in a much broader sense: bringing an interesting, fresh perspective on a subject that you were qualified to cover, perhaps only through a personal connection. How does an agent introduce an author to a publisher? Some agents prefer the author meet potential editors before bids for a proposal are accepted. Others prefer to only organise a meeting after they accept a bid. Walsh remarked that meetings would usually involve wine and a nice lunch, but this was recently abandoned and replaced with everyone’s favourite way to spend their day: Zoom. Show me the money! Walsh informed the audience that advances for a book could range from £500–£1 million, but interestingly the word ‘advance’ could be considered a bit of a misnomer. A usual pattern of payment for an advance is a quarter on signing of the publishing contract, a quarter on acceptance of the draft, a quarter on publication of the hardback and a quarter on publication of the paperback. Not so much an advance, as a payment plan. What are the ‘special’ bits of advice for children’s books? Children’s books differ from adult books so much that they can be considered a different kind of writing altogether. The advice that Bellos gave out for this genre was invaluable and so I must record it here, even if it is not applicable to all budding science-writers. Even though most children’s books have an element of illustration, this was not assumed to be the expertise of the science-writer. It is a skill that is often applied in-house. Warmth, however, was a highly desired quality. An author has to appeal not only to the adult reading the book but also the child being read to, and this requires careful thought and a different kind of writing voice. Because children’s books get less review coverage, book sales for children’s books rely heavily on school and library visits. To be a children’s author, you therefore also need to be a bit of a performer. Recommended word counts varied for the different age groups:
Conclusion This blog has turned into a bit of an information dump. That's only because the event itself dispensed so much focused advice that I probably couldn’t have come across it all myself without reading at least 30 blogs scattered around the internet. I’m not even sure I would have been able to attend a similar evening event in person had it been held in London. The virtual setting was a bonus for me at least. There were minor technical difficulties with the quality of guest connections, all quickly smoothed over, and really they just reminded everyone how everything is different now, including the book publishing business. Agents are still advocating, and publishers are still printing, though. Just be prepared that, when you Zoom your future editor, you will have to pour your own glass of wine. Cheers, and good luck!
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