The Impossibility of Catching a Break, or The Struggle Facing All Unpublished Writers
Why is it, when you haven’t a bean, all the bank do is refuse you loans, charge you for an overdraft, and generally make life difficult, but, when you’re well-off and comfortable, do nothing but tantalise you with offers of credit you don’t require, or bombard you with unctuous communications from your ‘personal account manager’, who refused to acknowledge your existence when the cash machine had eaten your card through lack of funds and wouldn’t spit it out again, but now there's a few hundred thou jangling around your account, can't get enough of you?
When you genuinely need help, there’s none to be found. Every door appears firmly barred. When you’ve made it on your own, without that leg up you so urgently required, everybody suddenly wants a slice of your juicy pie. Nowhere is this exhibited more glaringly than the publishing industry. Try getting your manuscript under the nose of a reputable agent without proven previous sales, a buzzing social profile, a blog or newsletter with umpteen subscribers… It’s like trying to shin up a just-oiled erotic dancer’s pole...I imagine…
What makes every unpublished author gnash their teeth and chuck their Thesaurus at the office wall is the frustrating knowledge that if you already had all of those flippin’ things, you wouldn’t need an agent, or a publisher! That’s what puzzles unpublished authors the most about how agents approach potential business…or, rather, don’t…
I affirm and acknowledge an agent has a commercial decision to make, must be confident they can sell stuff in an increasingly-beige marketplace, thereby securing a sufficiently large fifteen percent to keep them in unscuffed Louboutins for the next five years at least, but… If you make it damn near impossible for anyone with something original to say to get anywhere but the slush pile unless they have ten million facebook followers, a blog to which the equivalent of the population of Djibouti subscribe, and proven sales reports showing they’ve already taken the Self-Pub eBook market by storm, how on earth are you ever going to earn fifteen percent of anything? Refusing to entertain any piece of work that isn’t exactly like everything else already out there (because that’s what sells) means no new and fresh talent is uncovered, and no reader is ever offered anything remotely different.
It’s a depressing fact that the easiest way for a struggling new author to catch a break is to write what sells, further diluting the originality of the market, narrowing the horizons of their poor, unsuspecting, subconsciously-bored potential readership and, sadly, betraying their own creative voice in the process. Yes, every story has already been told, blah, blah, blah. However, there are truly unusual and intriguing ways of telling, and as many angles of approach as there are unfulfilled readers waiting to explore them.
If agents were a little less risk-averse, and prepared to pitch how original a work was, instead of how spiffingly and comfortingly just-like-everything-else-out-there, maybe some thoroughly frustrated unpublished writers might at least be able to force open the industry’s door sufficiently to sneak a toe over the publishing threshold. That’s all they’re asking for. If the work is strong enough, it will then stand upon its own merit. In the meantime, if all you will entertain, dear Agent, is more of the same, then I’m sorry for all readers, and lament the decline of variety and innovation across the industry as a whole.
Unpubs, all is not lost. You can do it alone. Some authors ‘go solo’ very effectively – but be warned! They usually have a strong and established network to kick-start sales, a savvy and vibrant social media presence, or sufficient independent wealth to finance the high and constant cost of the rolling advertising required to get their titles noticed in a crowded world.
I’m sorry, Unpubs, but until the industry wakes up and realises it’s drowning in a sea of lowest-common-denominator celebrity bilge and identikit plotlines, you need to start spending some of the time you set aside for writing on good ol’ promo for the stuff you’ve already produced. It’s a pain in the arse, I know. I understand you are a writer, not an internet marketeer, or a professional public speaker. You just want to write your stories, your way – but successful authors also actively promote, and they sell, which is what pays for them to sit at home and write the rest of the time. Even authors with energetic agents and lucrative deals have to engage in promotion. They just get the expert help, career support, and targeted financial investment the unpublished desperately crave.
Of course, not everyone can scale dizzy heights. The disheartening statistic is that something like one in ten thousand ‘amateur’ authors make it as professionals. You know who they are, don’t you?
Yeah, that’s right, they’re the ones who refused to give up.