On Literary Agents

Let me take you on a journey. It's 2002 and I've just submitted my lovingly crafted manuscript to five literary agents. I don't really know what I'm doing, of course, so I've picked them out more or less at random. Less than two weeks later and my mobile trills. It's one of them, bubbling, champing at the bit, not just excited about my novel, but also the fact that, as a professional performer, I will be brilliant at promoting it across the UK and...wait for it...globally. Yes, this was what the lady told me during our first conversation. Oh, and we're not talking about some grubby, pay-us-for-reading-your-MS, back street, fly-by-nights; we're talking J K Rowling's agents.

Well that was bloody easy. Wasn't this agent business supposed to be a nightmare? Shouldn't you endure 82 rejections before you get even a tickle? I mean, even the saintly J K got rejections. There was a catch, of course, but a smallish one, I thought. They wanted me to work with one of their editors to get the MS into shape before formally signing me up and submitting it to the major publishers. Well why not? They're the pros, they know what sells. Undoubtedly, many of their comments were valid - my female protagonist was too male, too hard - and some of the structuring needed tweaking. I re-submitted the draft but was then asked to soften the protagonist further. Because they'd missed my point. She was meant to be strident, someone whose independence and fuck-you attitude masked her emotional instability and desperate craving to be loved. They wanted her to be a timid, emotionally together, run-of-the-mill office worker who somehow goes off the rails. Boring.

Well what would you have done? My guess is that you - and, indeed, any sane person - would have done whatever they told you to do. J K Fucking Rowling's agents!!! Come on! Key to the door. Well not me, thank you very much. No, I stood by my artistic principles, told them they didn't understand the book, and walked away. What. A. Fucking. Wanker.

A couple of the other agents expressed an interest but it went no further and, two years later in a fit of narcissistic pique, I published it myself through Matador. Turned out I was pretty good at selling the book - I shifted 400 on the back of some local radio interviews, personal appearances and good reviews, but it was all after the event and half-hearted. Chance missed.

That book was a psychological thriller. But I'm a comedian and thought my next attempt at novel writing should be something within my natural genre. So Song In The Wrong Key was born, the story of a middle-aged man whose idyllic family life falls apart when he's made redundant. Redemption is achieved via his serendipitous selection as the UK's Eurovision Song Contest entrant. It's probably best described as an edgy romcom, with the emphasis on com.

And so on to another ridiculous dance with the agents. I submitted it to 6 of them, and three responded asking for the full MS. A good hit rate, apparently. A fourth didn't bother with all that. He wanted to sign me. I'd only applied to him because he accepted MSs via email, which saves a lot of bother, as well as photocopying and postage costs. And I was flattered - or, to put it another way, still being a fucking wanker. He was an established agent, but one with a conspicuously thin roster of fiction writers. To cut a long story short, it didn't work out. My feeling is that his contact list amongst the fiction publishers numbered no more than two or three. When they didn't take the bait, there was nowhere else to go.

So I left him. Now I've published the book through my own company, Lane & Hart. I've had it professionally typeset and the cover professionally designed. I've engaged a top class PR agent and we're lining up radio and press interviews and personal appearances. I've run a giveaway on Goodreads (745 people applied) and will do another. I uploaded it to Kindle and have been receiving sparkling 5 star reviews (likewise on Goodreads). Would I rather have done all this through traditional channels - an agent championing my book, a top publisher with a serious marketing budget, top chains stocking it etc? Of bloody course. But that all takes patience and a thick hide, neither of which I possess. Yes, you can earn more money per unit by selling on Kindle, but that's not what this is about. Writers need validation and, as much as I value and appreciate the reviews of the handful of readers who've bought the book so far, a traditional deal would open my work up to a vast readership and set me along the path I really want to follow, that of an established author with an established readership who can't wait for my next book. It might come to that one day, but my guess is that it's more likely to happen if an agent and a traditional publisher pick up the reins from here. Well come on. What are you waiting for?

http://amzn.to/xaosKp
http://bit.ly/xu34Hh
@SimonLipson

On Writing My Book

I’d feel a bit pretentious if I declared that writing is in my blood or that it’s my consuming passion; I don’t have to write to live. I can survive on chocolate, if it comes to it. But it’s a marvellous means of expression, a wonderfully creative and fluid medium for the ideas that rattle around my head. Being a comedian and comedy writer (and ex-solicitor, but we don’t talk about that), I can express myself on stage or in a script, but both forms are necessarily limited by what audiences – who offer a very instant response - or terrified-for-their-jobs TV/radio producers demand. Novels, though, unfurl slowly; they allow you room to breathe, to lay things out, to establish rhythms, to colour every character in, right from the opening sentence. I suppose the people who read my book will tell me whether I’m doing it right but, so far at least, they seem to approve. 

I’m an avid reader – contemporary fiction with a humorous bent being my favourite genre – and I always felt I could ‘do’ a Nick Hornby or David Nicholls if I put my mind to it. Surely it couldn’t be that hard? Well, as I discovered, it is that hard. In the way that comedy is hard. I was always the quite amusing guy amongst my friends, the guy with the quick ripostes and funny voices, but I was a million miles from being a guy who could make a roomful of strangers laugh rather than throw something heavy at me. It took me a while – and the odd bruise - to bridge the gap between the two.

The dialogue in Song In The Wrong Key came fairly easily to me, but structure, story-lining, pacing, knowing when to cut out the distracting quips, avoiding the self-indulgence, were elements of the writing process I had to learn mostly through trial and error. Every time I thought I’d completed the definitive draft, another ‘quick’ read-through convinced me there was still work to do, cuts to make, bits to shift, commas to add. In truth, you can refine a draft ad infinitum, but at some point you have to say ‘that’s the one’ – it’s never an easy task to let go, like watching your child go off to university.

Song In The Wrong Key is my second book. My first, Losing It, was a psychological thriller based, loosely, on something that happened to me as a young man. I started it about 18 years ago, left the first 50 pages in a drawer for 10 years, then started again. At the time I’d been reading a lot of grim, gory thrillers and felt I had it in me to emulate the genre. It was a difficult process for me because the tone of the book is fairly po-faced...and I’m not! Even so, J K Rowling’s then agents took a shine to it and offered to represent me, provided I made some changes. Which I did, but not entirely to their liking. Stupidly, I refused to make more changes and nothing came of it. In a fit of pique, I published through Matador, sold 400 copies and forgot about writing for a few years.

It was about 4 years ago when I decided to write something more in keeping with my natural comedic bent. I’ve always been drawn to stories about nobodies suddenly rising to prominence and, having been a wannabe pop star myself, Song almost wrote itself. The first draft flowed – I’d say it took a couple of months to finish - and I took great joy in writing a story with which I connected personally and was predominantly a comedy. Needless to say, the first draft was over-written, lumpy, occasionally illogical and chronologically confusing. Writing – good writing - as I’ve already suggested, is bloody hard work. But it was something to work with and I think the ‘stream of consciousness’ approach brought out the best in me from a comedic perspective. Structure, character and story-sharpening came later. I particularly enjoyed getting my teeth into the breakdown of the protagonist’s family and the central love story, both of which, hopefully, will tug at the heart strings (I get a bit misty-eyed watching Love Actually, so you know where I’m coming from). Some readers have already owned up to shedding a few tears which, as someone whose principal aim is to make them laugh, is a huge compliment.

Like most writers, I drew from experience. As the father of two girls, Millie and Katia were easy to write (mine are called Molly and Katie – that’s imagination for you!). And there’s something of my own life story in the protagonist, Mike’s, obsession with the former love of his life (I’m over her now, darling). And it’s through Mike’s voice that I was able to express many of my own attitudes and ideas. Friends who have read the book tell me it’s like listening to me prattle on, grumble, grouch and attempt to amuse. Mike is a heightened version of me, as is the protagonist of my follow-up novel, Standing Up – about a solicitor who becomes a stand-up (where do I get my ideas?).

My aim is to stick with edgy romantic comedies for the foreseeable future. But I shan’t put the cart before the horse. If no-one buys Song In The Wrong Key, though, I can always revert to gory thrillers.  

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-The-Wrong-Key-ebook/dp/B00492CQ2K

Great Book...How Many Have You Sold?

It's a question I've been asked a few times.

Not many's the answer.

Here's a salutary tale. Several years ago, I approached some piddly literary agency with my debut novel, Losing It. They were called...er...Christopher Little, if memory serves. Oh, you mean J K Rowling's billionaire (ex)agents? Yes, that's them. Less than three weeks after receiving my hopeful little package, they were all over me. Loved the book, said it was a potential best-seller, that I'd be great at promoting it given my performing pedigree. Oh, could I just make a few minor changes? Here we go. All right, go on then, if you insist. So I did. They wanted more. Grudgingly, I re-drafted. What, more changes? This time I told them to stuff it lest they destroy my artistic vision.

Idiot.

Absolute, 100%, 24 carat cretin.

If they'd insisted I re-cast my female protagonist as a Taliban warthog with acne, I should have got on with it. They were Christopher bloody Little, J K Rowling's...who cares about artistic effing vision?

But you see, I (the aforementioned cretin) figured, if they loved the book, so would everyone else. But I made no progress with the handful of other agents I approached and, in a fit of pique - tarring all agents with the same brush - I published it myself. That'd show them. I eventually sold 400, which isn't bad, I'm told, but only after nagging libraries, appearing on radio stations so local only God was listening in, chivvying local book shops and wasting a smallish fortune on useless PR. Net financial loss? Let's not go there.

And that's when I gave up writing novels for a few years until inspiration struck and I rattled out A Song For Europe, an edgy romantic comedy more in keeping with my day/night job as a comedian and scriptwriter. I gave it to a few trusted folk to read and received rave reviews. Which is when I approached another handful of agents. This time, one came back on the same day I emailed them a sample, champing at the bit. Not quite in the Christopher Little league, but long established and respected nonetheless. Sadly, they weren't particularly set up to promote an edgy romcom and although there was a ripple of interest from publishers, nothing happened.

But I believed in the book and, rather than suffer the misery and financial flagellation of self-publishing, decided to stick it on Amazon as a digital download. Kindles everywhere would be loaded up with my David Nicholls-stylee novel within days.

Except that didn't happen. The problem is, if no-one knows it's there, it might as well not be. What to do? I've had my head buried in websites claiming to know the secrets of promoting digital books. I've started a Facebook fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Simon-Lipson-Author/140280092721031 - 95 fans and counting - none of them have bought the book). I've started tweeting for all I'm worth (@SimonLipson). Still nothing. I'm sure I can do more, but I'm beginning to think I need to commit A Song For Europe to good, old-fashioned paper.Then... ring up libraries, contact local book shops, appear on Radio Sark...you know the rest. Somehow, I have to get the 'word-of'mouth' thing going, but there are only so many hours in the day. And if I shift 400 copies, so what?

I'd love to hear from anyone who's been through the self-publishing maze and/or stuck something on Amazon Kindle. Maybe we can knock heads and work out a strategy for getting our works of genius into the hands of a deserving public. As an avid reader, I know a hell of a lot of inferior crap gets published. There's no rhyme or reason. So - sisters, brothers! Let's do it for ourselves! (ahem - sorry, quite forgot I'm British for a moment).

http://www.amazon.com/A-Song-For-Europe-ebook/dp/B00492CQ2K - as if you're going to buy it.