Publishing Query

Is three years unusual?

The story about going to New York to sign copies of the book, that sounds like a fairy tale as well.

My exp is all in US publishing, mind. A book is "accepted" once the author meets the deadline, submits the manuscript and it's read by the editor who gives the official "thumbs up." Fairly extensive re-writing can follow, plus copy-editing etc. Strategic delays or SNAFUs in the publishing schedule can then postpone actual publication for years. But once the book is accpeted, the author will get paid the remainder of the advance (when depends on the contract terms). Rejection, the other outcome, ominously means re-paying the portion of the advance you've already recieved.

Finding a publisher to buy my proposal for Playback took 4/5 months and 12 rejections before a deal was struck. I didn't get a million!

It's baffling innit. You know, I stopped CoM 18 months ago and it's still getting xxxxx hits per day. Book already written, pitch made, readymade international readership, cited with approval in broadsheets, learned journals and other books, the "anti-Hornby" angle, cross between Schott's Miscellany and Benjamin's Arcades Project, agreement to publish was given - and still it languishes in web space.

I was asked to give a quote for this Guardian article on finances in publishing.

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t use the quote I gave ( lol)

But here it is anyway … pic.twitter.com/MNhQ3wTpva

— Keiran Goddard (@keirangoddard1) October 15, 2024

the point is correct but he could have spent more time killing his darling (long badly told story against richard osman)* and crafting the rest into a pithier and better written (actually quotable) quote

*just say that it's a telling symptom that corporate-funded festivals are considered so crucial!

Agree though I got to the end of that quote and not the article itself (which I started reading yesterday). I switched off after I found one of the quotes they included to be terrible.

Also thought the article was abysmal. One person saying they can't get a job because being a published author makes employers "think I'm a flight risk" - I mean I simply don't think this is true, loads of writers have jobs. The same person going on to say their book can't be published because it's too good, maybe there's a trend here.

It was a strange trio also, like might be more influential if they'd picked writers that have sold books to a significant audience besides their Twitter followers.

“My friends are civil servants and doctors; they have pensions and maternity pay. I am pursuing a profession I feel passionately about and is held in high esteem. It’s very cool when you go to a party and say ‘I’m a novelist’. But actually it’s not very cool to be financially rewarded as if it’s a hobby.”

While I believe it would be good if more people could make a living from writing, I guess not everyone always will, and it seems weird that someone has reached 31 with no alternative career or career at all. Like how have they kept going until now? You sometimes see stories of quite well known of award-winning writers saying they make no money but that article seemed to just pick people who think they should be well known.

I mean idk I'd be all for a generous social welfare system, whatever, but weird and raises questions about how that writer sustained themselves until now?