You’ve got a story to tell. So what now?
You wrote a book. So what now?
You write. So what now?
“The Suitcase under the Bed”, presented by veteran publishers Alison Lowry (20 years in the publishing industry) and Tracey McDonald (13 years), was a publishing workshop focused on the practical implications for any aspiring author approaching publication.
The workshop turned out to be a revealing look at various aspects of publishing that included how to approach a publisher and how to use agents, deal with editors, competitors and the labyrinth of networks that make the field of publishing far more complex than one might imagine.
The event pushed some boundaries by asking critical questions of the writers in the audience. Some of these questions forced the writers to think more critically about their expectations of the writing business. Lowry and McDonald asked the big “Why?” questions on all fronts. They also raised practical issues such as identifying an audience, emphasising that this includes factors such as gender, age, subject matter and ethnicity. What it came down to for any prospective author was to conjoin such questions with their multitudes of implications and then make a pitch that would score a home run with a publisher.
When bringing your pitch to a publisher it needs to sell you. Something like “I’ve got a story to tell” just won’t cut it. Self-belief should be squared with the publisher’s confidence in the author.
And confidence will more likely be won with an articulate idea that isolates very specific spaces of the literature market (ie audience characteristics).
A writer’s pitch should not only suggest a reason why the publisher would want to publish the book (the “hook”, as they like to call it) but also home in on marketing potential – something writers are not keen to confront, since it forces them to ask themselves what the actual chances of success are in a venture that takes a great deal of effort. No person likes to hear that their effort is likely to be in vain – and that doesn’t even cover the question of personal rejection.
What many writers do not realise is that personal rejection will come from places where they once found motivation, aspiration and imaginative stimulation. This, of course, is the space of the competitor. Not the usual one, since you will obviously compete against every other writer trying to make the cut. No, you will be competing against the established authors that have been mentors and guides throughout your years of reading and research. The voice that once wrote you to sleep will become the haunting voice of competition. The real “rejection” will come from the public reader remaining loyal to such established authors, as you once did yourself.
Who is this public reader? Apparently (s)he is to be found mainly in the non-fiction market. Does this raise the spectre of literature’s decline? Or is the real problem the fact that only 850 000 people, of the entire population in South Africa, are book buyers? Or maybe it’s the fact that cover design and a powerful blurb sometimes carry more conviction than the all-too-average story the latter enthuses about.
The speakers suggested that we should do more research into the subject matter of the books we might have heard about, and perhaps focus our attention once more on the small bookshop with its hoarse, bookish man in the corner offering advice. This is a difficult task for the contemporary consumer caught in an overwhelming flow of white noise.
Another thing that the author will have to realise, in this search of for a willing publisher, is that (s)he simply does not have a big enough network – not an internet network, but one which consists of connections which confer credibility This will increase the odds of an author’s success.
If we could only get the other 90% of the population to become book buyers and readers, it would probably help this network to expand considerably. This is where Lowry and McDonald touched on the increasing importance of translation in South Africa. How much is lost in translation? How many readers are actually non-readers because they are caught in a limbo language that has not received the author’s story?
The event touched on many important aspects that I did not expect in a publishing workshop. I thought I would learn how to publish a book, maybe through a side channel that circumvents the mainstream publisher and still sells a million copies. Instead, I learnt more about the market and the complexity of connections that exist in the field of publishing. As Lowry and McDonald like saying, there are only three things that make a book successful. The problem is that no one knows what they are. But for now, let’s accept that luck, visual stimulation and the reader are three very important things
This report was written by a member of the Contemporary Literary Practice (English) honours group at Stellenbosch University. The CLP module includes report-writing in the mould of literary journalism, along with other forms of writing and literary practitionership. The report was co-edited by group facilitator Leon de Kock.