Straight Talk About The Long Odds…
… with the assurance there exists a way to beat, or at least mitigate, those odds.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, 96 percent of manuscripts submitted to literary agencies for representation are rejected by those agencies. They won’t even try to take your novel to market.
That means only 4 percent — a huge slice of which includes revisions and rewrites stemming from those rejections — are getting a shot at traditional publication. The odds are just as long with small publishers who accept manuscripts directly from authors.
There has to be a better way.
Some of those rejections certainly can be explained by bad timing or other non-qualitative factors. But the truth cannot be escaped: most of what new writers, frustrated writers, and even published writers seeking to continue their career are submitting simply isn’t good enough.
Either the story idea isn’t strong enough (newsflash: your brilliant writing alone will not get you published in the genre fiction business), or your execution — which too often includes the writing, but always include your narrative strategy, story structure, scene execution and character substance — isn’t up to a professional standard.
The solution for both — better story ideas, and better execution — resides in an understanding of the criteria that define what those professional standards are.
Meet the criteria and you stand a chance. Don’t… and you don’t. At least until you do.
Self-publishing doesn’t change the math.
It only tears down the barriers to seeing your name on a book cover. In truth, the percentage of self-published authors who reach the sales levels of A-list traditionally published authors is microscopic. Sure, that tiny fraction of the many millions of titles on Amazon can do really well… but the math still isn’t bright and shiny.
The average self-published novel sells about two hundred copies, and that average includes the successful slim percentage that have much higher novel sales numbers. And while those authors may have done well in marketing their work online (a different acumen than the writing itself), it is the actual storytelling, and the degree to which it delivers principle-driven reading experiences, that will bring readers back, again and again. It is the storytelling — because almost all self-published success stories are genre novels — that dictates the attainment of a word-of-mouth tipping point required to propel a novel onto a bestseller list. This is true whether you are aiming for a contract with Hachette or your own series of self-published novels on Amazon.
Your Process isn’t the issue… unless it defines your problem.
In terms of the quality of the end product, it really doesn’t matter how you write (your process), nor does it does matter how anybody else writes (their process). If your process is more like finger-painting that mining the gold in the explosive union of your vision and your skill… if that’s you… then indeed, your process is part of the problem.
And marketing your novel is what it is, whether you are self-published or traditionally published (the main difference being a traditionally published novel will end up in major bookstores, the self-published novel likely will not). Either way, unless your name is David Baldacci, then you’re pretty much on your own.
A great story is the best marketing strategy of all. Thing is… one writer’s great idea may be a reader’s idea of… “meh” (shrugs and moves on).
From idea generation to story visualization to drafting and revision, all of it is writing. At least in the context of the discussion we are having here. Which means, what others say about process may or may not be of value to you, even if it comes from a famous author. Which it often does, because famous authors love to wax lofty about how they do the work.
If you know what that famous writer knows — be very careful in assuming that you do — then you may succeed with the same instinctual, criteria-driven basis of comparison. But if you don’t, if you can’t instinctually recognize what needs to be there upon completion, in what order and to what degree, including what isn’t there, then you will benefit from having an external standard to apply.
Another name for those standards is criteria.
See what one famous writer — Robert Dugoni — says about this HERE.
****
These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.
Scroll down to find the previous posts in this series. If you reading this via email, click HERE to go to Storyfix.com (see the menu of prior posts in the middle column).
One Response
Beating the odds…requires INSIDE information.
Beat Vegas? Professional players don’t gamble, they use CRITERIA to count cards and make bets. You can bluff when you don’t have the cards, but—your bluff is that you DO have them. Hence you have INSIDE information on what cards are in play and what are left.
Self “publishing,” in my opinion, isn’t actually publishing. Think of it more like “listing real estate by owner.” Wrap your head around THAT.
Why can you sell by owner vs. using a realtor? ONLY because you know what you’re doing AND your house–IS IN DEMAND.
Location location location…first three rules of real estate. Why? Because of what benefits there are to being in that area. PERIOD.
Pretend your novel is like a house. What location is it in? It’s not just genre…is the writing voice in demand, do the characters compel rooting for them? Do you even know the criteria that exist for a hot story like an in-demand house?
You live and die on Earth by what you don’t know and acting upon what you do know. Anything else is luck. Strategy is NOT luck. Currently, we’re living on planet lockdown. What is your plan? It’s based upon what you know. Most don’t know anything at all, so they’re like rookies at Vegas, getting their money fleeced. Arguments here are valid for what you can control and what you can’t.
Controlling real life? I’m all in for a magic lamp.
But you CAN control your novel because you’re the God of it. Having stated the obvious doesn’t help, does it?
You can wing it and see what happens which is THIS:
“According to an article in the Huffington Post, 96 percent of manuscripts submitted to literary agencies for representation are rejected by those agencies. They won’t even try to take your novel to market.”